Originally Posted By: wcampbell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Well I have a question for you. I see that you have a link to NACHI’s COE and ASHI’s Standards of practice. Yet on the links you just show NACHI. Are you a member of both. Or you wanting people to think that you are> Also the areas that you cover would be easier to read if you hust put the counties that you work. Or a certain “known nick name”. Such as I work the “Texas Coastal Bend”. That way you don’t have to lool and see if your city is listed or not. Other than that it looks nice.
Originally Posted By: mzwerin This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
William,
As you prolly can surmise, I'm not an ASAHI member, nor do I aspire to be! Just that, people out there familiar with that group like to see a link to ASHI... (maybe?) It's also a way to have a clear, quick reference to the COE & another to the SOP. I kind of consider it a "subtle suggestion" but not by any means is it trying to be a misrepresentation.
What do the rest of you think about the idea of having a link to ASHI's SOP on my "More about us" pages? Unethical in some way?
Every page on the site lists "For quality Home Inspections in Palm Beach County Florida." right above the city list. The city list is just there to enable better search engine response from my keywords. In fact, even the page title is "MTC Home Inspections - Palm Beach County".
Originally Posted By: Blaine Wiley This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Since I am not enamored with ASHI, my first impression of that link is obviously not good. If you are going to conduct you inspections under the scope of the NACHI agreement and standards, then I would think you would want to link there, instead of ASHI. Other than that, the web site looks good. Have you considered adding links to other informative sites, i.e. CPSC, etc.?
Originally Posted By: gbeaumont This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Hi Michael
I agree with the other comments about linking to the Ashi SOP I woul not do it for 2 reasons, firstly you are not a member, secondly Nachi has a more comprehensive SOP (thanks Joe F).
My other thoughts:
I would change the font from "Times new roman" to a sans serif font a it looks cleaner. and I would put a picture of your own ugly mug on the "about us" page, remember people buy people.
I hope business is good, look forward to seeing you again.
Originally Posted By: Blaine Wiley This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
William,
We sure have licensing over here in Charlotte County, FL, UUUGGGHHH!  But at this time, there is no statewide licensing for home inspectors.
Originally Posted By: Blaine Wiley This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Charlotte county, in all of it’s infinite wisdom, decided that home inspectors were “out of control”. So the county commissioners decided to make home inspectors a “Licensed Contractor of Home Inspection”. For this we have to prove 3 years experience (tax records), carry 300k gen. liability, workers compensation insurance , provide a personal and business credit report, provide all fictitious name filings, corporate minutes and bylaws and…Pass the ASHI entrance exam . Inspectors who already had a licence under the old system of simply paying $35 for an occupational license are NOT exempt or grandfathered, and as of midnight tonight, anyone who performs an inspection in Charlotte County must be licensed by Charlotte County, as there is no reciprocity with other counties. As of today, there are only 6 of us out of the previous 42 who have met the new requirements. Hopefully this will be good for my business . So to make a short answer longer, at this point the counties can do whatever they want with licensing.
Originally Posted By: mzwerin This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
OK, took you guyz recommendation to loose the ASHI reference. Changed it to NACHI’s SOP & made the link direct to that page. Also made the NACHI COE link go direct to our COE instead of just going to the home page. Both make lots of sense!
As for saying "We're licensed..." Well, we are; by Palm Beach county & by the city of Boynton Beach where we are based. It is a true statement you know.  OK, so Florida doesn't [yet] impose a state license requirement, but we are licensed to do business as Professional Home Inspectors in this county. Have't looked into the other surrounding counties yet.
Gerry, I appreciate the input regarding the use of Times New Roman. Personally I agree that it's a rather yucky font, however, using only one sans-serif font throughout a site such as Helvetica or Arial is visually ummm, dull. If we could be sure that viewers out-there had lots of kewl fonts, then I'd use numerous other serifs like Minion or Galahad. I like to have a serif font for body text and limit the use of sans-serif to headlines. I think it's easier on the eyes.
If my camera might survive taking a picture of me, I'd do it... Just don't wanna crack that lens Yea, yea, will do it.
Anyone else have some more ideas on what-all-else to add or delete from the site that'll make it more professional or accessible or user-friendly or that would make it a better sales tool? Chris?
Originally Posted By: Chris Morrell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Michael,
What I immediately notice when I come to your site is the scrolling marquee in the title bar and status bar. These not only look unprofessional (have you ever seen a legitimate website use this method?) but they're also distracting to your potential clients. On a small browser window the two scrolling areas will be close enough together that they might even distract someone from reading the text on your page.
Regarding the issue of fonts. Fonts are typically designated by a FONT tag or via CSS (I'd highly recommend removing all FONT tags and replacing them with CSS selectors). Web friendly font faces/families include:
Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif
If you really need to use a serif font, a good family would be:
Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif
In the case of the serif font, make sure that your text is large enough. Text that looks good at .75ems in a sans-serif font might need to be .90ems or more in a serif font.
Because web browsers come in many shapes and sizes, you want to account for different widths in your design. Your current design is fixed at 706 pixels (which will be too large for many browsers, and too small for people like Nick who set their screen resolution ultra-high on a laptop screen). No matter what your site should look decent at 640x480 pixels. Many argue that it should be 600x480. Netscape Navigator always loads on a Mac at 470 pixels wide (though this setting can be changed). This means that ideally your site should look good at 470x300. This is often not reasonable, so don't worry about it too much. Most netscape users resize their window. But you also want your site to look good at 1024 pixels wide. Notice how nachi.org changes with the size of your browser.
Not everyone is using a graphically capable web browsers. People with screen readers and text-only browsers won't be able to navigate your site because none of the navigation links are text. You should add ALT tags to your images, and add additional navigation in text form at the bottom of your page.
Your rollover javascript needs not be so large. A single mouseover currently is done by the following code:
The above example isn't perfect. It's still pretty large. If you just look up rollover scripts, you will find ones that are better. They will also pre-load your images so that when you put your mouse over a menu item, it doesn't take a second for the image to load up.
Are the two pages with forms supposed to have a white background?
I feel like the image on your index page that is sort-of a collage of pictures needs a little work. The blue and the red behind it don't work for me. That's more a personal taste issue, though.
Good luck with it! Feel free to respond with any questions about my comments.[/code]
Originally Posted By: mzwerin This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Great Stuff!!! Thanks Chris.
Deleted the Title Bar scroll but left the Status Bar scroll. Figure I can use one without the big-time distraction of the other.
Re-did [a bit] on the homepage collage. It still needs a more refined appearance, will do more as time permits.
Oh, yea, the two forms are set on white backgrounds unlike the other pages.
Will take your advice on the CSS, etc. coding. Might take a while to do. I agree, they're all too big for the little they do.
Originally Posted By: DShelton This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Mike,
As a professional web designer, my comments would be to lose the bottom scroll. The reason I say that is, the obvious…it is distracting from what is on your website. People will be watching it and not reading your website which is what you want them to do. Scroll bars are usually associated with breaking news and people will look at them, then realize it isn’t news, but will be distracted by the movement. Second, when you mouse over an area most people look down in the corner to see where it goes. Habit, but most people want to know where it is going and with the scrolling you can’t see where it is going. The collage is distracting and I realize that you probably don’t have the tools to bring it together and make it smooth, but not to be tacky, it looks a little hokey, but I understand why you put it there but you want it to look professional. Usually, subdued colors work better, primary colors are associated with children-sorry . Muted blues, greens, tans, beiges don’t take away from your site but rather enhance it and if you changed the background colors to the muted colors you will see the pictures and not the colors. Colors sometimes can be distracting at times and don’t feel you have to use a background color if you don’t want it.
If there isn’t a reason to have a picture or it isn’t readily apparent, then lose it or move it. Handshakes can go near something that is to imply trust. Items to be inspected near the text describing that instead of all in one group. I hope I didn’t offend you, just what I picked up when I looked at it.
Originally Posted By: mzwerin This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
DShelton,
As it goes, I (like most ppl) need all the feedback I can get re. “What makes a professional website”. Will follow your advice and work on the homepage art and will “consider” loosing the statusbar scroll. Yup, I also look to see where I’m going and the scroll does block it.
Russell,
I know what you mean. The pages are done with a fixed width for an 800x600 screen resolution.
Originally Posted By: DShelton This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Eric,
Sorry, but I will be brutally honest here. You need a website! Call me or email me.
I am sure you are an extremely good inspector, but the impression you are giving here is you are not. Never, never, never use these group areas, AOL Websites, Yahoo, Comcast....etc. It makes you look like you are too cheap to invest in your company or yourself and if you are that cheap, I don't want to use you because you leave the impression that you will be cheap on my inspection and I can't afford that liability.
Who cares about your band or your party, or cars or favorite links. This is no place for that. You want to show you are professional and my first thought is this guy is a partier (nothing wrong with that), but he won't take my business seriously.
I do what I do for small businesses that can't afford at this time to invest a lot of money in their websites. I provide domain names, email,pages, hosting and maintaining for a relatively inexpensive cost. Please, I beg of you...  contact me for a professional website! There is so much wrong with this one that there isn't enough time or space to comment. If you can't afford one at this time, not a problem, but you are hurting yourself more by keeping this one, so lose it all together and have nothing! No impression is better than a bad impression and this one my friend, leaves a bad impression regarding you. Sorry, I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, but I have to be honest and give you honest feedback and that is you are hurting yourself and your business by keeping this. If I was looking for an inspector, I would click on by you.
Just as an afterthought to help you...your links on the side don't even link over to your standards of practices and a few others don't work, .Net keeps popping up and that is annoying. If you didn't ask for feedback, I would have been gone a long time ago and not given you a second look and you would have lost my business. I wonder how many more potential clients you lost? Just a thought.
Originally Posted By: Chris Morrell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
I have to agree with Debbie on this one. Either hire a professional or drop the whole thing entirely. Most homemade sites come off somewhat unprofessional as it is, but when it’s hosted on MSN Groups it just comes off as cheap.
As a side note, when/if you get a site made for you,
- Make sure your "designer" doesn't design in FrontPage. As I've said early, websites made with FrontPage are only called websites for lack of a better term. They only look decent in Microsoft Internet Explorer, and they load up to 10-15x slower than they need to.
- You need not pay more than $15-20/mo. for hosting a simple site. Maybe a little more if you want the hosting to be very reliable.
- Domain names should cost you about $10. Godaddy offers very reasonable prices.
Originally Posted By: DShelton This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Chris,
I have to disagree a bit with you on the Front Page. For what most of these fellows are doing, the use of Front Page is more than adequate. And as it stands, the majority of users, a very high majority, use I.E. so the loading issue is really a non-issue and 10-15x faster for a site that loads at 3 seconds is really a non-issue. For more advanced designers, such as yourself, this would be an issue when designing very intense websites. But even then the loading is still an issue when it is very intense. The NACHI site here, is a very slow loader at times because it is very intense. Not sure if that is the reason, or if it has to do with the cable company, or the computer they are using, or the traffic on it, but there are times that I go get a cup of coffee and it is still loading when I come back. No website is perfect and there are a lot of variables to take into consideration when designing and you won’t meet each one, even though we try.
As far as GoDaddy. Purchased a domain from them, to find out later it was not available. But, we all know that is an issue with everyone selling domain names, but only had that problem with GoDaddy.
As far as hosting, 10-20 is available, not very reliable at times and as with each hosting company, they do not maintain or make the changes...always an issue.
I design in Front Page (which I do like and haven't had any serious problems) and Dreamweaver which is difficult to hand over to someone that wants to maintain it themself. There are so many variables when choosing what to use to design in, you really have to go with what the customer wants and their needs. But to make a blanket statement that websites made with Front Page are only called websites for a lack of a better term, is a bit much. The last corporate site I designed and maintained was in Front Page with integration of Igraphx. It had 2,500 pages, 6,000 links and 4,000 documents. Never had a loading issue, that is what the corporation wanted so they can turn it over to someone to maintain. Don't discount Front Page too much, because some pretty nice things can be made with it. And when you look at the cost of Front Page vs Dreamweaver, that is substantial and the user friendliness of it, Front Page is a little better for beginners and they have substantially increased the abilities of it from the first version...as with all software packages. I guess I really don't discount too much, because each item has it's good points. Just my thoughts.
Originally Posted By: Chris Morrell This post was automatically imported from our archived forum.
Debbie,
I have to disagree. I've seen a page made with frontpage that was so short that it didn't even scroll, and yet the code was longer than the code of this page. I also know plenty of people who aren't using internet explorer. When we're talking about a percentage of all internet users, the minority is still a large number. Chances are that pages designed with frontpage will turn clients away, either because of slow loading (remember the 7 second rule) or because of jumbled content.
Another issue is web standards. Frontpage certainly does not adhere to the HTML 4.01 or xhtml standards. It also avoids most accessibility rules. This means that sites designed in frontpage won't work for anyone using screen readers or alternate user agents such as PDAs or cell phones. If your potential client has a disability, frontpage may again be turning them away.
Here's a quote from Jeffery Zeldman's (a founder of the Web Standards Project) book, Designing with Web Standards:
Quote:
A third product in the category, Microsot FrontPage, is little used by professionals but widely used by semi-professionals, possibly because it is bundled with other Microsoft products. Professionals in the public sector might find themselves stuck using FrontPage because the budget doesn't allow for an "additional" web editor.
"We already own a web editor," the bean counters might tell you. They're wrong. FrontPage is not a visual web editor. It is an IE page editor.
Because of its non-compliance with web standards, pages designed in frontpage are less likely to rank well in search engines. All the extra code it produces also 'dilutes' the content. Instead of seeing an entire page dedicated to home inspections, search engine robots will see a page partially related to home inspections, and thus rank it lower.
Your clients are trusting you with the biggest purchase they will ever make. If you go cheap, you will lose clients.
Now it is true that I'm sort-of throwing stones from a glass house. The NACHI site was designed quite a while ago. It has certainly grown out of its current clothes, and I'm actively working on a redesign. The problems with load time have to do with various server-side scripts that we have running. The stats calculator was slowing down the site, so I downgraded it. You might have noticed the difference a day or two ago. Some pages load in 2 seconds rather than 10.
Even just a year ago, things were so different. Web design was done differently, and so was the programming language that runs this entire site (PHP). With a site as large as nachi.org, it's hard to keep everything up-to-date in terms of technology. We're looking into moving to a new server this coming July or August. With this move I hope to implement a massive change that will bring nachi.org up to speed literally and with regards to new technology and standards.
Ok -- I've gone off quite a bit. Again, you can get hosting with a 99.9% uptime guarantee for under $20. I see that you offer 99.9999999% uptime, which I'd love to see backed up. Even the most reliable, managed hosts on the internet don't make a claim like that.
As for godaddy.. if you've had bad experiences with them, then go ahead and spend the extra $25 or so and go with network solutions. But just remember that they're a lot like ASHI. They charge a lot up front, and then continue to charge you for every little service you need of them.
, provide a personal and business credit report, provide all fictitious name filings, corporate minutes and bylaws and…Pass the ASHI entrance exam 
Thanks Chris.
. Muted blues, greens, tans, beiges don’t take away from your site but rather enhance it and if you changed the background colors to the muted colors you will see the pictures and not the colors. Colors sometimes can be distracting at times and don’t feel you have to use a background color if you don’t want it.