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[urgenthost]

Please review our website.

UrgentHost.com

[sheepdip]

First thing I noticed is that your graphics are way too bulky. 75k?? each? This slows down your page dramatically at 56k connections and the graphics can stand a lot of compression and remain attractive. Don't let the browser resize those images. Use smaller images to begin with and it will look better and load faster.

I'm always an advocate for simplicity, so I like the clean look of your home page. I would replace the bright blue, and amateur-looking navigation buttons with something a little more professional looking. Three-state buttons are very nice - clean, but not static. I suggest you look at http://www.codebrain.com for some great (and free) tools to spice up your site. Java applets are not difficult to install and give the appearance of competence in design.

Also detracting from a professional image is the slightly cropped logo image on all pages. (See the "m" on the right side.) This is your logo - on the web, it represents YOU and must be perfect.

I don't think you need a welcome or splash screen. Your homepage is very clear and unless you use the time that your splash is displayed, to begin pre-loading those big image files, there's no point to it.

Not to be harsh here, but on your "Virtual Hosting" page, you have a "more information" links, next to tiny titles which offer no information at all. Table this page and include a more descriptive title for each plan, perhaps with MB/GB and price, THEN the term "MORE information" will make sense. Check your code on this page. IE5 is returning a lot of errors.

Also, delete the link to Dedicated Servers, until that is available. Visitors hate following dead-end links to "under-construction" pages. Just include the news of "upcoming events and services" on your homepage and interested visitors will check back or contact you.

This site appears to be in the early stages of development, so I hope my comments won't be read as negative criticism. I take the time to look at sites objectively and comment as thoroughly and honestly as I can. I think with some jazzing up, it will be a good, stable site. Do try to find ways to personalize it - so it doesn't look just like 1,000 other web-hosting sites.

Best of luck,

[BlueZebra]

Oh my!

Yes, uhhh, wow, that is a big image. I don't mean to be harsh. But you NEED to cut those up... if you don't know how, look around for someone that can do it... it's pretty simple but it's a must. Also do all your buttons at the top as GIFs, everything is fuzzy, when we say compress. We mean try different formats then mess with the colors, quality, and such. Use a program such as Adobe ImageReady to cut and optimize, don't use JPGs for buttons or solid color/non-picture images

[akashik]

Took a look at the index, and the signup page. The size has been addressed so I won't even go into that. The graphics themselves are seriously compressed. jpgs are a royal pain in the ass to get right as they are big no matter what you do to them. Crunching them down like that just bleeds them out so they look all runny like they do on your site.

The old rule of if you don't need to use a graphic then don't use one applied here in a big way. That white space to the right of the business guys is a good 20 odd k of wasted bandwidth. Cut that puppy up and table it. Delete that white area and just type in the text.

Personally I'm a huge fan of rollovers so I'd be getting rid of the imagemap menu and replacing it with some gif buttons. 6 buttons, each with rollovers will come in around 15k or so tops (just comparing that to the apparent 75k behemoth that's there now). I do know the MySql, PHP etc graphics load in at about 1k a piece as gifs so why change them to jpgs?

I like the idea of attempting to use people. It's a great idea and looks very professional when it's pulled off right. Maybe just one or two placed just right. I recently picked up a 'photo object' collection with 50 000 precut photo images (without backgrounds) so I'm kinda huge on real life images right now *lol*

Hmm.. the blue in the top nav is a little bright too... A darker blue would look more professional.

Greg Moore
http://www.akashik.net