I’m looking for critiques on our team website: www.team2168.org Anyway that we can make it better, please comment below. Although, I’m attending college in the fall I’d like to get a clear direction on where the new website team should start next year during the fall pre-season. Any criticisms are appreciated.
Here are some notes I made when I went through:
- “What is FIRST?” needs to be accessible from a link not found on homepage
- Jedi/Padawan confusing. Just leave mentors/student.
- On the student and mentor pages, consider new formatting for text. Having the image float to the left with the text wrap makes reading slightly difficult.
- Make another page of navigation for student/mentors with a list of names and/or pictures so the page will not be as long. Allow users to click on picture/names to go to the team member’s page
- Cut out word “testimonials” on dropdown and just leave alumni
- make list of awards to easily scan. Have a list at the top and allow users to click items on the list to get description later down the page.
- Move “branding” to media
- Allow users to be able to click the headers on the menu and direct them to a page where they can navigate to all the pages in the subheader. This will make it easier for people viewing your site on mobile devices as often javascript is not enabled.
- Why is news in media section? I expected just pictures. Move event descriptions to team history or new header/subheader for news.
In General:
- Don’t tell people to click things. Let them come to the conclusion they can click using link styles.
- People don’t like to scroll unless it’s really interesting.
- Most people scan websites and don’t tend to sort through large bodies of text. Short and concise writing is the way to go.
Overall nice website! Not much in the way of original coding but colorblind badge is great! Impressive amount of team-produced resources!
Thank you. Anymore feedback from the CD community would be deeply appreciated.
Here were some of my first thoughts/impressions while quickly browsing the site:
I like the overall look of your site because your colors carry your team’s style. The top headed seems very well integrated.
I also liked your navbar, well compartmentalized and I am planning to do mine in a very similar way (following my annual website redesign).
You do have a lot of information on your front page. That is not necessarily a bad thing. Based on my research that is the main (and sometimes the only) place general users will visit. However, all the information might seem a little overwhelming. I was once told at a FIRST website seminar to try to minimize the amount of scrolling visitors have to do. Food for thought.
I actually like the Jedi/Padawans thing. I noticed it immediately and it showed some personality on your team. I can see how it could be a little confusing to the outsider though. Maybe instead of Hedi (Mentors) change it to Mentors (Jedi) ? That way people would read the important information first and the joke second. On a similar note I would probably rephrase ‘Alumni / Testimonials’ tab to ‘Testimonials from Alumni’. That gives a clearer picture on the webpage’s function.
I also liked how you had a lot on information about your sponsors. I am sure they appreciate that too. I also liked the resources section because it seemed to offer a lot of help.
Just a few thoughts from webmaster to another.
Only real negative I saw was that it is almost like you have two Home Pages on your Home Page…
Also you may want to try and make the Nav Bar icons a bit smaller, Whatever is after Media is showing up on the Next line in Chromium Version 19.0.1084.46 (0) at least. (Chromium is the Open Source Test-ground of Chrome)
Hey guy’s this is my first site EVER designed and I want to get your input on how it looks so far I just did it in the last hour or so
Also do you know a good domain hosting provider because our last one SUCKED!
Thanks
[email protected]
tmohall, these where my initial pass-through thoughts…
Your website has a very clean layout, that I admire greatly. The bold polygons of color draw the eye and shape it nicely. Your header is simple, which is not a bad thing. Do note, however, that one of the first things of the website rubric is whether the judges can quickly find your team’s number, name and physical location. I would try to incorporate your city and state, and possibly your high school.
On the front page you have several boxes/panels that go through a slideshow like rotation. While this creates visual interest, I think you might have too many going on at once (a tad distracting). Also, be careful about rotating out text. You wouldn’t want a reader to be interrupted in the middle of a sentence. A similar idea applies to the contact us and team page. You seem to have all the important information, but it is not as accessible as it could be.
The “Become a Member” page is well done, kudos on a registration form. I believe for some of the pages you forgot to change the title, hence the “Photo Gallery” and “Become a Member” page both have the title of “Home”.
awesome job for your first time! I like the layout, and it’s nicely organized. looks great! 
When you click on the links under “FIRST News and Headlines” you are lead to notebooky looking pages full of code. Link fix?