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Site Name: Dropbeat
Owner: Jake
Reviewed by: Georgina
Reviewed on: 21st February 2010
Site Name
It’s quite a catchy name; I like it. As for a hosting site I’m not too sure but it’s definitely easy to remember.
Coding and Validation
Your coding has 18 errors and your CSS 5 warnings in CSS3.
Quite a few times in your coding you’ve put <br> instead of <br /> – which is what you should be using in XHTML. Your coding is also a huge mess; you have a <body> tag at the end of your coding and your coding isn’t even following a basic structure.
In XHTML all tags must be in lowercase; <TD> is therefore not appropriate.
In your CSS, Century Gothic must be quoted.
Browser Compatibility & Usability
Your site is navigable and functions in Firefox, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.
When I hover over the links in your navigation, they appear misaligned until the background image loads. It would be a better idea to use text links instead of images. The navigation is also really small. It seems out of place with the layout, since it doesn’t take up the same amount of space, and is sort of in the corner. Having it under “Dropbeat.net” would be a better option, and having it span the width of the layout.
Layout
While I like the dark look, it doesn’t look very welcoming. The blue and green are a nice touch, but they are a little too light for the dark colours. More white would have balanced this layout better, and the black would look better as a dark grey.
I’m really not liking the stripy background. It could be more subtle, and should also be set to background-attachment: fixed so that it doesn’t scroll with the page, as I find the way it moves a bit distracting.
I don’t like the amount of fonts you have used. Monospace and Georgia and Arial don’t seem to work together in this layout – and you have thrown in Century Gothic as well. Opt for less fonts and maybe colours that work better together.
Content
Pinch
I’m not too sure why “pinch” is used so commonly on hosting sites. Wouldn’t “small” be a better idea?
This page already has me confused at a glance. Are these plans for subdomains or domains? Do you offer subdomain hosting at all? To be honest, I don’t really find these prices reasonable. For just 150 megabytes, you’re asking for a price of $4 USD a year. Most hosting sites offer this kind of package for free.
Bandwidth should never be “unlimited”. It should be “unmetered”.
Shared
I don’t really see anything wrong here.
Reseller
Nothing wrong here.
Support
Perhaps you should include other ways of contact on this page as well, in case the form is not working or if people would like to email you directly.
About
Are you the only owner of this site, Jake? Who is “we”? Perhaps visitors would feel more compelled to buy from you if they know who is behind the site, considering your site isn’t an 100% professional hosting site.
Terms and Conditions
your forgot should be you forgot
incorrect should really be incomplete
revunds should be refunds
we will should be will we
Addons
How can you order these?
Testimonials
There are none. Why not add this page when you actually have some?
Blog
This leads to Rainbeat.net… on “maintenance mode”.
Credits
Nothing wrong here.
Originality & Creativity
In terms of a hosting site… I can’t really say much here. I can see you are aiming for a professional look, but if you are the only owner behind the site and manage this on your own, it is misleading to use “us” and to put on such a facade. I know such is the trend lately to have professional layouts for hosting sites, but even so, I think the current layout needs some work and the colours could be more welcoming.
Organisation & Errors
Not many problems here; I’ve already outlined the errors. There aren’t many. The site is fairly well organised.
Overall Comment
Since I haven’t reviewed too many hosting sites, I’m not sure how to sum up your site. Personally, I don’t like how some websites appear professional but actually aren’t – there isn’t a group of professional people behind the screen there to answer questions and whatnot. I think that you could have a better support page and let visitors know about those working behind the site, and since you mentioned you were more like a “family” rather than a “business”, perhaps you could make it look that way by introducing yourself somehow.
There’s not too much I can say about your actual service since I’m just a passerby, but to be honest, I would like a lot more information on the site if I were someone looking for hosting, even subdomain hosting.
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