Well at the Greater Kansas City regional this year 1777 Viking Robotics took the cake for the website award. Congratulations to them and keep rocking the massive amounts of info you have.
But on a similar note to Adambots, what can we do better?
Lets do a comparison. (i know i know… but its the only way i can see the flaws)
design wise, i think 1777 wins. although your design is much “cooler”, it doesnt function as well as a content display. also, your site is heavily image based and takes a lot longer to load. a LOT longer.
most importantly, however (aside from the amount of content), the information on team 1777 seems way more “at your fingertips” than it does on your site. For example, 1777 found a way to have all their major “about us” pages display on every page in a very predictable location. Your site has 4 links on every page in a predictable location that has 4 links on it- to your home page, to your about page, to first, and to the sponsor page. It is much harder to find information on your website with this scheme, when the paths to the information should be obvious.
It looks fine, but it is just too busy.
Try to simple things up
First, I would advise people not to try to make this a comparison between 1777 and 1710. That’s not quite in the spirit of gracious professionalism. Just evaluate the site on it’s own merits.
Also, I would highly recommend putting your sites from past years (assuming you have been changing the site) into separate subdirectories to be showcased, and moving those awards for best website to a different location. This helps keep the judges from thinking you’re just resubmitting an award winning website.
You have a very symmetrical website, with similar areas for buttons, for next/previous images, the quick news and upcoming dates, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However then you have the inventor model and visualization animation, which are slightly offset from each other. I think this goes against the feel of the rest of the site, and would look nicer if you lined them up.
You make extensive use of images for buttons up at the top, and then you have simple text links for next image and previous image, both of which are fairly major buttons (leaving text links at the very bottom for a secondary navigation is fine, and fairly common). It would look nicer and more consistent if you replaced both of those with image buttons, similar to on your top nav bar.
Also, your repeatingboxbackground (the background for the quick news and upcoming dates titles) extends all the way across the page. It loads before your main picture (the one in your slideshow), so it briefly displays black background with the grey bar all the across until the image loads. I would highly recommend changing that, because it gives a bad look on your first impression of the site.
Actually, you ight want to consider moving upcoming dates and quick news onto the same side. With the two elements facing each other like that, it feels like the page is being constricted and squeezed. Having them stacked on one side might make it feel a little more open.
Then you have your light dimming/raising which is a really nifty idea. However, using it forces you to reload the page every time. Maybe consider just using javascript to change the background image instead of reloading the entire page.
On all of the index pages in the directories within /2009/team/ you have the same left navbar among those pages. Again you have a prominent page feature using simple plain text links, not even a stylized font. It would look nice if you spiced those up somehow, either images, or changing the font and size.
Your logo at the top of every page (/2009/images/navigation/1710logo.png) is rather small, which makes it too hard to read the team name. I would suggest either trying to expand the image horizontally, and enlarge the text, or perhaps remove Ravonics Revolution from that graphic and put it someplace else on the site (Maybe push everything else down a bit and give a separate line to the name? But you would have to be careful about having too much blank space to the sides).
Hope those ideas help a bit, if I see anything else I’ll add it later.
Content is the most important factor in FIRST Robotics website scoring. Your missing a lot of stuff that you should have.
Info about:
- The Students
- The Robots
- A big one this year Alumni
- Progress in the season
- How you guys are doing during events
The Vikings did these things very well.
I also think that the FIRST logo and your sponsors should be near the top of the page, but that’s just me.
Thanks everyone, there are a lot of good ideas here we are working on. I’ll see what all I can get done this Monday before nationals, but overall I have a good base of things to fix next year.
I am a type of person who does not like dark colors. I think add some like or color to the page to make it stand out instead of most the of page being one color. (if possible)
as others have mentioned the links show up on top of each other (varies from to computer to computer)
If you can add more tabs. it seems like on a couple of pages i keep scrolling down (alot of information to one page) and shorten paragraphs… bullit information because some site visitors may not have time to read all the paragraphs
Add the game for the year to website so family,friends, and sponsors can see it from your site
If you have pictures for the community outreach section, add them. It be easier for your users to get excited about what you are doing if they see a picture there so they do not have to go through the picture gallory
Mentor: idea have it where you click on the mentor’s picture then you can find more info about the mentor instead of scrolling all the way down to read about your three awesome mentors.
Award section: i think if you shorten the section … just list the competion and year and what award you received.
These are just some of my thoughts when i go through the site and compare it to what i like as an individual so just ideas
But good luck this year! and years to come!
The first think i would change is i would redesign the home page based on the rubric.
For example When the site loads there is an little first logo down near the bottom. I would replace the logo with a larger one near the top of the page.
Next I would put more stuff about first on the site. I would give a separate page for each first event. (FLL, FRC, etc…) I would also improve navigation, the way it is now you kinda have to hunt around to find stuff.
other than some design issues I personally think it’s a great site.
My advice is just take a look at the website rubric, and make changes based on that.