Site critic wanted - first site.

[Chunkford]

Red and green should never be seen.

Isn't it blue and green should never been seen?

Anyhow +1 on getting rid of the little man. But then i'm guessing your client loves it and has asked you to put it on the site.

[paulcreedy]

Thanks for you comments :-)

I'll look into implementing a pause/play button for the walk on, as it would be better if the user could stop the video.

There are just so many funiture sale website it is an extremely competitive market. Love them or hate them, walk ons are becoming more popular to make a website stand out amongst others when the competition is high.

A user may browse numerous website for funiture before making a purchase, forgetting half the web urls they have visited. The walk on is designed to put the company name in the users mind allowing them to easily remember it and make it stand out. The same goes for the colours - a bit of a shock value - but easily remembered.

[pinbrook]

There are just so many funiture sale website it is an extremely competitive market. Love them or hate them, walk ons are becoming more popular to make a website stand out amongst others when the competition is high.

A user may browse numerous website for funiture before making a purchase, forgetting half the web urls they have visited. The walk on is designed to put the company name in the users mind allowing them to easily remember it and make it stand out. The same goes for the colours - a bit of a shock value - but easily remembered.

I have to say i totally disagree with this logic. If i visit and bounce straight off the site- it never even reaches my psyche to come back it it.

A striking design makes it more likely i've remember which site was the one i wanted but not an annoyance.

Fortunately the walkon is only on the front page, so if i were to visit via a search engine hopefully i'd land on a relevant page and never see it

[Chunkford]

Even if they did remember that site with the little man with the crazy colours, they still wont remember the url. Try a nice bookmark this page button instead.
Also, you want them to give their email address. Either by offering free info, competition etc. Then you can remind them of your site easily

[Mike Hughes]

I agree with Jo.

Bright colours, flashing gifs, walk ons, etc are just gimmicks. The message they send to the customer is something along the lines of "I don't care what you're looking for, we're the kind of business that's going to drag you inside and try to sell you some cheap tat."

Mike

[Rich Brady]

This is who you/your client are competing with:

pinesolutions.co.uk

Found be googling "pine furniture"

Neutral colour scheme, it's obvious what is being sold, good navigation. That's where the client's site need to be heading towards IMO

[paulcreedy]

Thanks for the comment everyone.

[thomas]

Paul the talking man is a marmite situation and I like them but still find the cost of having them a bit limiting.

For me the best is a compromise that people can click play if they want to hear them or not, and as someone pointed out to me the other day, a lot of work computers don't have speakers or there sound on so it ends up as upsetting them because they feel they are missing something.

I assume you know when it plays it covers an area of your homepage text making your site look a little out of shape.

[paulcreedy]

Thanks

If you looked within the last few days, the current video isn't 100%. The original was larger with a transparent background.

We're now building a flash video player to give a pause/play/go away button, and make the background transparant. The current player is just there for temp and doesn't have a transparant background yet so it covers some text.

If you browse the net looking for companies to make these video, you will unlikely find them below £500 ex vat. Usually they are around £600-£800 We're in a position to get them made at a considerably lower cost.

Love them or hate them as designers, online walkons and commercials are being used more and more. I work in an area with over 100 web design companies within a 10 mile radius, 300+ within 25 miles. With that competition you have to offer the client something different, and the clients themselves want something different.