Website Designers

[taxin]

Anyone know any good website designers in Phuket ?

Farang or Thai is ok, so long as they can show previous work done.

[N47HAN]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

Jon Cully is the web designer 0874 983630 .

Have a look at our site see what u think and give them a call.

Note;

I am NOT affiliated in anyway to these guys , just a happy customer

[kash]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

That can hardly be called design, its a free template changed here and there - awful in my eyes, but I guess as long as the customer is happy ... hopefully you didnt spend more than 1k on that, but I guess you did

[N47HAN]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

That can hardly be called design, its a free template changed here and there - awful in my eyes, but I guess as long as the customer is happy ... hopefully you didnt spend more than 1k on that, but I guess you did

All opinions valid , first negative one i have had though .

Before we went live i asked a fair few people their opinions and honestly had only positive feedback.

Oh well

[WOOHOO]

Without adding a few naked women, I'm not sure how a web site gets any better than that!! Looks as good as every other web page I've ever been to.

[Somtamnication]

Most of us use templates, then change them to suit the customer's needs. If the customer is happy, easy to navigate for the their customers, then it is a win win situation.

You can view my work at either www.greatphuket.com or www.newstalkasia.com. PM if interested.

[GmB]

Most of us use templates, then change them to suit the customer's needs. If the customer is happy, easy to navigate for the their customers, then it is a win win situation.

I agree.

Beside this Taxin you should care also at the functions you website will needs. Do you need a static website or something you can manage by yourself with an admin interface? Does it needs a database? It will be multilanguages?

This is my last job http://www.firenzelodging.it/ PM if interested and i will provide dozens more.

[SurferBob]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

Jon Cully is the web designer 0874 983630 .

Have a look at our site see what u think and give them a call.

Note;

I am NOT affiliated in anyway to these guys , just a happy customer

No disrespect.... but web sites, you get what you pay for. So many people can 'build' a web site, but not many really can do it well. It's not just the way the thing looks but more importantly, the code behind, technologies used and the server it sits on. I've been a web designer/developer for more than 10 years now and it's taken a lot of that time to reach a point where I'd say I'm a professional, but I'm still learning and improving all the time, it's a never ending cycle in our line of work.

Your new site is typical of the types of people that are coming to us for a new replacement site - unhappy with what they got for cheap - very poor design, old coding practices... clumsy at best and will probably do more harm than good for your business in the long term.

It's odd really (this is directed generally) - people pour their blood sweat and tears into building a business that supports them now and hopefully for the future. But when it comes to spending money out on a web site, something that is going to be up 24/7, 365 days a year reflecting the image of the company, they scrimp... get a mate to do it, outsource to a cheapo overseas company or just pay some crap company 10 pounds and half a pickled egg to copy the files from one of their existing web sites and change the images and colours (a bit).

I agree.

Beside this Taxin you should care also at the functions you website will needs. Do you need a static website or something you can manage by yourself with an admin interface? Does it needs a database? It will be multilanguages?

This is my last job http://www.firenzelodging.it/ PM if interested and i will provide dozens more.

Your site: http://www.firenzelodging.it/ doesn't even validate... which is fine. But seeing as you have logos on the bottom claiming it's valid XML & CSS, you might want to think about checking if it actually is.

Not trying to flame here, just being straight up.

Cheers,

//Bob

[N47HAN]

ok so now youve got me thinking....

I would say i didnt scrape on cost ?

What you see there now cost me 100,000THB !

The total page number is in the region of 400 with maybe a hudred or so more pages on downloadable pdf formats ?

Value for money guys ? yes / no ?

I honestly thought it looked ok.

But more important thoughts than mine are potential clients , and thats all of you !

Honest and straight opinions greatly received and if it means spending more than so be it . We do deal with the major developers and architects in Thailand so it is Very Important that the web-site is clear concise informative easy to navigate and creates a good impression.

As i said guys honest opinions very much appreciated !

[mouse]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

Jon Cully is the web designer 0874 983630 .

Have a look at our site see what u think and give them a call.

Note;

I am NOT affiliated in anyway to these guys , just a happy customer

You paid 100,000 Baht for that site? Wish you would have talked to me before doing that. Although primarily publishers that use the net heavily, we also have students that are Dreamweaver experts, that

would have done it for less than 10,000 Baht.

[donna]

to be honest i dont really like the dark blue at the top. its too dark.

if i click on, say, living areas, there is some red text there that you can click on, but i do find it very hard on the eyes. in fact, i find that i have to highlight it before clicking to read what it says.

[Simmo]

Some opinions on your site - first off its ok for a first time site.

A few things I'd change

The dark green/blue to light green/blue gradient in the main content area is really bad for legibility of text and hard on the eyes- should be just one colour.

The site URL & navigation structure is really poor for search engines. Every link is /index.php?p=X. Links should be something similar to /kitchens/index.php or /bathrooms/index.php

Links deeper into your site point to a different server eg: The "bathroom cabinet link" on the bathroom pages points to http://66.7.201.44/~projects/index.php?id=45. Google and search engines will possibly not index any of that content or possibly punish your site for such shenanigans.

The flash titles on each page are pixelated and just slow down the loading of the page. Looks like some of the images in them have wrong aspect ratio and look squashed as well.

The email and print links on each page point to the contact page?..

[stevenl]

A design is always personal, and it is impossible to have everybody like a design.

However, easy navigation is always important (IMO ok on your site), easy to read (so so), as is search engine friendly site, and I am no no expert in that respect, but have the feeling something is lacking there. But how important is that to you?

[WOOHOO]

You guys obviously know your stuff and it would seem his money would have been much better spent had he come to one of you. But surely the people that come to his site aren't web designers but building contractors and project managers etc, therefor perhaps your criticism is a bit too in depth. They won't see what you see. As someone who knows nothing about web design, to me it looks fine and I wouldn't hesitate to purchase his products from it. It's just a shame it would appear he could have got the same results for a much cheaper price elsewhere. We live and learn.

[burman]

Poorly design site really, a bad colour scheme which makes the writing difficult to read, poor layout and navigation, and looks like no work has been put in to optimize it for the search engines. 100 K seems expensive for what looks like a basic job. To be totally honest were it my own I'd be looking at redesigning it soon.

[Somtamnication]

But if the customer wanted it that way, who are we (designers) to argue. We can set a plan, create the site, but ultimately, our paying customer says yeay or nay.

[bino]

N47HAN - I agree with the others, the site is difficult to see, read, and navigate.

My $0.02... I noticed that the site has a zero page rank. A look at the source code revealed a serious design flaw in your keywords and description:

<meta name="keywords" content="Thailand Project Supplies Direct">

<meta name="description" content="Thailand Project Supplies Direct">

These are exactly the same as the site title, therefore they are redundant and not telling the search engines anything.

The keywords should be carefully chosen from the "body text", and the description should be a descriptive sentence of about 160 characters using the best keywords.

Optimally, every page should be uniquely described and keyworded to match the content of the page, different titles too. It isn't always possible, especially in the case of active / server driven websites, but to simply insert the site title as a description and keywords tells me that your designers don't know a thing, or are lazy / take the money and run types.

Another thing to consider is adding Thai language to your website. It stands to reason that a lo of the contractors reading your site will be Thai, and possibly a fair number of potential customers will be "Hi-So" Thais also.

Edited March 17, 2008 by bino

[Somtamnication]

Weve just had our site revamped ( www.psdphuket.com )

Finflix and simple biz are the guys Jon and Omar , based in Chalong.

Good service and price in my opinion ( actually got their number from a post regarding exactly this a few weeks back )

That can hardly be called design, its a free template changed here and there - awful in my eyes, but I guess as long as the customer is happy ... hopefully you didnt spend more than 1k on that, but I guess you did

All opinions valid , first negative one i have had though .

Before we went live i asked a fair few people their opinions and honestly had only positive feedback.

Oh well

Hi Nathan. The site is ok. You should consider someone to proofread the English. Many mistakes on the front page.

I did not see any menu issues as mentioned by another poster. May be a browser issue, as opposed to a site issue. But, if you indeed did pay 100k for it, I am shocked.

I saw your request for a designer a few months ago and I was too booked with other projects so I could not come to your aid. I would have charged you far less than that. All 400 pages were redone?

Edited March 17, 2008 by Somtamnication

[burman]

But if the customer wanted it that way, who are we (designers) to argue. We can set a plan, create the site, but ultimately, our paying customer says yeay or nay.

Whenever I have done design work I have advised the client on certain issues concerning their design. If they want to take that advice then that's great, if they don't that's great also as long as they pay.

At the end of the day if you can advise a client on their design and it works out better for them than they originally planned then you have provided a good service and will get repeat business.

[steelepulse]

I'd charge that design firm a fee for the links to them at the bottom.

[taxin]

100% agree with Surfer Bob ! Finding someone who "can" is easy, finding someone who can do it well is another thing. For me there are far too many "self taught" people who can build sites, but will build them very badly !

I have always found that its impossible to find an all rounder. This being A. graphic design skills, B. back office skills (i.e. database, programming) and C. SEO skills (Search Engine Optimization). I have yet to find in all my years of doing business ANYONE that is actually skilled in all these 3 areas.

For me SEO is vital, someone once said to me that a website is merely an online brochure, unless your site has an audience thats all it is, an expensive online brochure ! I too am very surprised that no effort was made to optimize the PSD site in terms of the site description/key words. I dont believe for one minute that the owner of this site doesnt care if his potential clients can find him or not. My only guess is that the company that did the site is not familiar in this area.

I find the PSD site pretty bad myself, I think the customer has merely paid all that money for the content and sheer "man hours" put into it. On the other hand as someone mentioned its upto the customer to say what he wants, me personally I would not have the dark blue/red/black theme but you cant blame the designer for this.

Although to the human eye the firenzelodging site may not look much however, it is by far the best one from all the sites mentioned in this thread.

By the way, I didnt mean for this to turn into a thread about how a site should look. But still, its interesting.

[SurferBob]

ok so now youve got me thinking....

I would say i didnt scrape on cost ?

What you see there now cost me 100,000THB !

The total page number is in the region of 400 with maybe a hudred or so more pages on downloadable pdf formats ?

Value for money guys ? yes / no ?

I honestly thought it looked ok.

But more important thoughts than mine are potential clients , and thats all of you !

Honest and straight opinions greatly received and if it means spending more than so be it . We do deal with the major developers and architects in Thailand so it is Very Important that the web-site is clear concise informative easy to navigate and creates a good impression.

As i said guys honest opinions very much appreciated !

I won't site on the fence here mate because this is a subject I feel passionate about.

No you didn't scrape on cost and should have a got a decent site for what you've paid.

Design is subjective and as some have said if the buyer is happy then that's ok. Well if you're the one buying all your own products then yes sure that is fine.. however as this is unlikely then it is not, you need to be putting yourself in the position of the potential clientele.

Bottom line is:

• The Design is a tragedy.. this is the year 2008, not 1985. I actually think it might induce seizes if you stay too long.
  • Colour scheme is difficult to read and contrasts in colours mismatched.
    
  • Layout - tables based, any designer worth their salt has been designing in pure CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for some years now. Tables are for... yes tabular data.
    
  • Embedded flash that doesn't actually add any value to the design. I'm all for Flash I love it.. when it's used in the right context.
    

  [*]The coding:

  • Numerous errors.
    
  • CSS & linking to external URLs?!
    
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
    • See Simmo & Bino posts
      

You guys obviously know your stuff and it would seem his money would have been much better spent had he come to one of you. But surely the people that come to his site aren't web designers but building contractors and project managers etc, therefor perhaps your criticism is a bit too in depth. They won't see what you see. As someone who knows nothing about web design, to me it looks fine and I wouldn't hesitate to purchase his products from it. It's just a shame it would appear he could have got the same results for a much cheaper price elsewhere. We live and learn.

I disagree mate – first impressions count, more so than ever on the internet. There are so many ways of losing a potential client/sale through poor design, coding, usability and execution etc. This makes it even more crucial that you get things at least mostly right. If you arrive at a site with the best intentions wanting to buy something it's very easy to get deterred subliminally – without even realising what happened you closed the browser or surfed away because you couldn't find what you wanted, got lost, something broke, annoyed you etc.

The conversion rate for sales on the web is very low anyways, one of our clients is currently changing his whole e-commerce site/package because his current conversion rate of visitors to sales is too low... something like 0.3% when it should be closer to 2%+ .. which is pretty dam_n low when you think about it. Considering he only launched the site a year ago I think it shows the importance of getting it right and that spending more money in the short term will be worth it in the long-term future of sales.

I'd recommend you go back and ask for them to address the main issues at least, at no additional charge of course. The development & support cycle does not end after the product is delivered so it's only fair you get them to follow up and take care of you.

Best of luck,

//Bob

[LivinLOS]

ok so now youve got me thinking....

I would say i didnt scrape on cost ?

What you see there now cost me 100,000THB !

The total page number is in the region of 400 with maybe a hudred or so more pages on downloadable pdf formats ?

Value for money guys ? yes / no ?

I honestly thought it looked ok.

But more important thoughts than mine are potential clients , and thats all of you !

Honest and straight opinions greatly received and if it means spending more than so be it . We do deal with the major developers and architects in Thailand so it is Very Important that the web-site is clear concise informative easy to navigate and creates a good impression.

As i said guys honest opinions very much appreciated !

Honest answer.. WAY overpaid.. 15k maybe 20 tops..

Currently testing out a thai guy in BKK.. Seems to be clean code, asking the right questions about the business for SEO optimizing.. Offered a full CMS site for 29k.. After discussions and he found out the only client updating required compromised with a news box to be read from a text file and a gallery, going to cost under 20. Site to have quite a bit of flash graphical work involved as the customer has images and low content (its a B2B contact point really not marketing online).

My mate was going to pay 100k for a less advanced service until I stopped him.

[N47HAN]

Thanks for the feedback guys,

I must in defence of these guys say I know as of yet no work has been done on the search engine stuff ( they are waiting on some info from me regarding one of the many domain names that link to the main site ).

I am due to see them over the next few days and i am pretty sure things will work out well.

I personally really thought it was ok !

The concensus of opinion certainly points in the opposite direction though.

As for sales derived from the site , that is not really our main objective , it is meant to be informative concise and understandable for people who allready know us.

All of the points that have been raised so far i am of course greatful for , as i said b4 you guys are our some of our potential clients so your views do count.

Keep em coming !

P.s OP sry to hijack your intial post

[DrDave]

Relative to the PSD site - I agree with most of the comments posted by others. (*edit* - sorry, I posted this as a reply to the OP instead of N47HAN). IMHO, this is a very basic, template-based site - and the cost should have been closer to 10-20K baht. The number of pages is irrelevant, as most of your pages are generated dynamically (e.g. no development cost). Hopefully, you've been provided with some good administrative tools that makes it easy to manage your content yourself.

I did notice a few coding errors - particularly with the breadcrumbs near the top of the page when drilling down to product details. In one case, I notice two sets of breadcrumbs (one above the other, with the topmost one being incorrect).

I do have to say that the new site is a vast improvement over your old site, though. At least there seems to be much more content. With the old site, I really couldn't get a good sense for what products you had on offer. There didn't seem to be any detail at all, and gave up after getting nowhere in my search for some specific things that I suspected you might be selling. With the new site, I'd be more inclined to contact you when in the market for these types of products - which is the whole point of having a site.

Your new site (though seemingly expensive, and more of an "off-the-shelf" application using older technology) may in fact work very well for you. When implementing a commercial site such as this, you need to define it's basic purpose, and role in your overall business. It it your business's primary "face" to your current and potential customers? Who are your target customers - individuals looking to remodel or build a new home, or developers who would be buying in quantity? How important is it in the generation of new business, and retention of current customers? Who are your target customers - individuals looking to remodel or build a new home, or developers who would be buying in quantity? How much product information needs to be available on the site? How much competition do you have, and how readily available is product information from your competitors (both brick & mortar, and online)?

The more important the site is to your overall business, the more you need a site that differentiates you from your competitors. One way to do this would be with a customized site that is specifically tailored to your market, target customer profile and your business objectives. What you have now seems like a good entry as a first step. As your business grows, and you have a better idea of how your site fits in your overall business plan - you may want to look at investing further in a custom site.

Edited March 17, 2008 by DrDave

[mark lamai]

one thing i know from having built my own sites and worked on others is that it takes 2 to tango.

coders cannot design well (that's me),

designers are hopeless coders.

get a good one of each if you want a good looking and efficient site.

the best designers have been brought up on print advertising.

and keep it clean and simple.

do not throw in awful animated gifs of all sizes like the way they are messing up this forum.

[GmB]

I agree.

Beside this Taxin you should care also at the functions you website will needs. Do you need a static website or something you can manage by yourself with an admin interface? Does it needs a database? It will be multilanguages?

This is my last job http://www.firenzelodging.it/ PM if interested and i will provide dozens more.

Your site: http://www.firenzelodging.it/ doesn't even validate... which is fine. But seeing as you have logos on the bottom claiming it's valid XML & CSS, you might want to think about checking if it actually is.

Not trying to flame here, just being straight up.

Cheers,

//Bob

Hi Bob

You are right about the logos and i apologize. The customer absolutely wanted the logos even if i explained him the website was not validating.

Beside this, you are a coder from 10 years, i think you know it's not easy to validate a dynamic website with such features.

Google and Yahoo aren't validating too

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ine&group=0

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ine&group=0

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%...ine&group=0

For ex. the images are dynamically resized and displayed through a script (see http://www.firenzelodging.it/itemimage.php...2.jpg&w=500 try to change the last paramenter... w=200 ..... w=360 .... and you will understand what i mean) wich is not validating.

By the way what do you think about that website? I just want an opinion from a professional coder. It's builded on a platform that i wrote that can manage multiple domains with individual templates.

Take a look at some screenshots of the admin interface http://phuketrentals.gianmichele.it/interface_screenshots please (i am sorry this is just a white page with some pics on a demo website still in progress ).

Any opinion is welcome at all, we never finish to learn.

[taxin]

What does validating mean ?

[GmB]

What does validating mean ?

A website will be validated when it is written according the w3c standards wich are very stricts.

These standars should guarantee the full compatibility between browsers but in the real word is almost impossible to have a website fully compatible without to cut a lot of functionality and considering the many browsers on the market.

Personally i always double check my websites testing on Internet Explorer and Firefox wich are the most popular browsers; it's an hard job expecially because of the differences between the released version (ex IE6 and IE7) but has to be done.

You can check if a wesite is valid at http://validator.w3.org/ where you will find more information.

[DD18]

Ok enough! I made the original recommendation on the basis that I was happy with Jon & Omer's work, and I personally know other people who would recommend them. On the cost issue they are not the cheapest but no way near the dearest. As usual people spout cheap prices but in reality its bullshit and at the end of the day you get what you pay for. As for what colours are used..... please!

To N47HAN - I would not worry about who you identify as potential customers in this thread, in their opinion your products would either be far too 'expensive', the wrong colour or could be be bought for the fraction on the price from Joe Bloggs down the road!

Please remember that some people have to work to make a living and take pride in that work. Ok the other web guys are just back stabbing which is to be expected, they would like your custom, but also please note only one has included an actual web link. Those of you who do not know what the hel_l you are talking about just remember it may be your business under the spotlight next week.

Edited March 18, 2008 by DD18