Realmac Software

Currently, my site is under a test phase and a few pages are being finalised. Here it is: http://www.holistiqe.co.uk

I have a few issues that I want to resolve still:

1.) Purchase page: temporarily, here are the resellers. I need columns or some HTML formatting to achieve a visually pleasing appearance. Any suggestions?

2.) Click on the first slider on the opening page (Our new showroom). That should be a 2 or 3 Tab stack. Am I using the wrong one? Isn’t that the one that Karn kindly shared? That page needs some tidying, sides are still a bit messy.

3.) Opening page looks a bit bland to me. Any suggestions? Should I introduce some extra content, even if it means using Stacks with PlusKit?

Site seems nice to me. Although I honestly probably am not the one to ask. I wish I understood how to make templates or even just take more control of the ones in RW. I’m very new to this process.

Andrew S. - 21 July 2010 07:01 PM

Currently, my site is under a test phase and a few pages are being finalised. Here it is: http://www.holistiqe.co.uk

I have a few issues that I want to resolve still:

1.) Purchase page: temporarily, here are the resellers. I need columns or some HTML formatting to achieve a visually pleasing appearance. Any suggestions?

2.) Click on the first slider on the opening page (Our new showroom). That should be a 2 or 3 Tab stack. Am I using the wrong one? Isn’t that the one that Karn kindly shared? That page needs some tidying, sides are still a bit messy.

3.) Opening page looks a bit bland to me. Any suggestions? Should I introduce some extra content, even if it means using Stacks with PlusKit?

Your site is looking good! I like the big bright banner on the home page. As far as adding content you may try adding something under the text on the home page, like 3 columns of text or images, maybe a quick “hook” for a special you are running or one of your unique products and more juicy content, tell me why I just have to stay and look around!

Keep up the good work!

Jacob

Andrew,

Likes:
â?¢ Header Title, for me, is an excellent design and caught my eye.
â?¢ Banner plugin looks nice and the scrolling images are beautiful.

Dislikes:
â?¢ Grey arrows on the banner blended into the image and I did not notice them at first.
â?¢ Paragraph below the banner is a bit too far away and is a bit wideâ??for my taste. In the design world, there is a limit to how wide a paragraph should be.
!!! Your images are not zooming at a consistent size. Some are huge; some are the same size as the thumbnail. I’d suggest using Photoshop, or other photo manipulation program, to make them all the same heightâ??and no larger than will open in a browser on a laptop screen. There should be a margin on the top and bottom when the image opens and no scroll bars. I generally limit my images to a maximum height of 450px at 72dpi.

Suggestion:
Using custom css you could create a Drop Cap with your fancy letter “B.” Also, it’s a good rule of thumb to create the “B” so that if it does load it’s replaced with html. This is called “CSS HTML Text Replacement.”

James

ialamin - 21 July 2010 09:40 PM

Site seems nice to me. Although I honestly probably am not the one to ask. I wish I understood how to make templates or even just take more control of the ones in RW. I’m very new to this process.

Thanks very much, anyway. If you are going through these threads, you’ll see that there are a few developers making extremely nice themes and that’s the same with the plugins. The market is growing, but if you just start off with a few of the best ones and follow their themes, you’ll find a real wealth of knowledge about modifying their themes or taking maximum use of them.

gamrcobe - 22 July 2010 03:03 AM

Your site is looking good! I like the big bright banner on the home page. As far as adding content you may try adding something under the text on the home page, like 3 columns of text or images, maybe a quick “hook” for a special you are running or one of your unique products and more juicy content, tell me why I just have to stay and look around!

Keep up the good work!

Jacob

I know what you mean and actually, three columns of extra content (links) was the original plan, before we decided to keep it simple. However, I have the feeling that in this case, ‘keep it simple’ resulted in being slightly plain.

Thanks for your reply, Jacob!

Commercial Pilot - 22 July 2010 04:21 AM

Andrew,

Likes:
â?¢ Header Title, for me, is an excellent design and caught my eye.
â?¢ Banner plugin looks nice and the scrolling images are beautiful.

Dislikes:
â?¢ Grey arrows on the banner blended into the image and I did not notice them at first.
â?¢ Paragraph below the banner is a bit too far away and is a bit wideâ??for my taste. In the design world, there is a limit to how wide a paragraph should be.
!!! Your images are not zooming at a consistent size. Some are huge; some are the same size as the thumbnail. I’d suggest using Photoshop, or other photo manipulation program, to make them all the same heightâ??and no larger than will open in a browser on a laptop screen. There should be a margin on the top and bottom when the image opens and no scroll bars. I generally limit my images to a maximum height of 450px at 72dpi.

Suggestion:
Using custom css you could create a Drop Cap with your fancy letter “B.” Also, it’s a good rule of thumb to create the “B” so that if it does load it’s replaced with html. This is called “CSS HTML Text Replacement.”

James

Thank you for the compliment and the advice! Strangely, the header was probably the first thing that I’ve done to the site and the sliders are the last (they are still growing in number).

The grey arrows are there intentionally (although, on Firefox, they are a few pixels off. I noticed that the overall effect is better, if the sliders are not exactly straight on the sides. But I will have a go at them again just in case.

I agree that the paragraph is too wide. I’ll try to put something there, maybe a sidebar.

Unfortunately, I am limited in the picture stock of the Broadhurst collections and a few of them are indeed small pictures. The other collections were mostly photographed by me, so I have more control over them.

One reason, why I separated the sample order pages from the gallery pages was that I wanted to give visitors the opportunity to enjoy the pictures in high resolution. I might set the limit of 700 on the gallery pages and 500 on the sample order pages.

I have to admit, I haven’t considered your suggestion about the Drop Cap but now I will do some research.

Again, thanks for your reply! Kind regards,

Andrew

EDIT:

- Purchase page is fixed, it looks better now