Need some feedback on my new web site taloma.com (five simple pages)

July 4th, 2009
  • Dear Google Researcher, Taloma Corporation -- http://taloma.com -- is a consultancy specializing in prototype-based market research for the communication system industry. I have recently put up an e-shingle, so to speak, and am looking for a web site review. I need an expert Researcher, preferably one who… 1) has usability analysis experience and 2) who can put themselves into the shoes of a potential customer …to perform a usability test on my site. My potential customers are VPs or directors of marketing in a communications systems (e.g. wireless, optical fiber) company, needing help to probe a new market or product line extension. My customer’s company could manufacture systems, or semiconductors; or they might be a CAD or EDA company serving the first two. I'm looking for impressions/feedback/opinions, and suggestions for improvement. What did you like/not like? Please help me understand the reasoning behind your opinions. I'm not after books, or services, or links as to how to design a website, or who can do this. My aspiration for the web site is to intrigue the potential customer enough to send me an email asking for more information, and establish a dialog. If there are HTML flaws that you see, please state your OS & version and browser & version. For example, some friends who have looked at it with Netscape 4 say some special characters show “raw” For example, ” “ do not show as right double quote and left double quote. Thanks in advance for your assistance! Note: I thank the Headsets.com questioner for giving me the idea of posting this question


  • Hello Woz2, I enter the homepage at: http://taloma.com/ My first impressions: - Clear, easy understood layout; could be more "polished" (design, as well as logo)* - The pattern to the right side is a bit too much; have more subtle contrasts to not make it the center of attention - The font seems to be unusually big, this goes for both navigation & headline as well as contentual text Reading through the text of the first page, I find the first sentence could be a little easier to understand. My suggestion: break it up in two sentences. Make it as easily understood as possible. Just imagine somebody has 20 links after entering a keyword in a search-engine: that person might open up 10 of the pages, depending on if the title fits or not; that person might give you 5 seconds to get your point across if indeed you have to offer what he wants. I mentioned the importance of the title. If taken on its own, with no additional context information given, do you think a reader will know it's exactly what she's looking for? You will get many hits by people entering from search engines; you will get the most hits from that group if you optimize your title to be as self-explanatory as possible. I'm now reading through the list -- the "Taloma will" line might have a line break to allow for easy scanning of the page content. People do scan webpages, without caring about what came before and what comes after, jumping from headline to the first line of a paragraph to list items, to the text following an illustration. And yes, a list is already very good to help here. You mention "MATLAB", "Simulink" and "Real-Time Workshop". If you're unsure wether your target group knows what this is, why not make a link out of it which jumps to a little glossary on your page? This will additionally make sure you have some more of that keyword-heavy content search-engines love so much. Now, you say you want to communicate with the customer directly via email. Suggestion: don't simply end the page when you're through with the information; involve the reader actively, and end with a very easily recognizable email-link at the bottom. It should not read "Email", nor "Contact", but it should explicitly be the email-address (containing the @-character), in a different color, and underlined. Finally, the footnote; all I can say here is that I suggest a left-alignment, while also making sure there is some additional white spacing at the bottom before it turns into the blue background. *My suggestion for the site layout; have a design company optimize the details (e.g. some round edges, some interesting & recognizable, but subtle patterns). There is no "one right way" to the perfect design, but a good design company (or a talented freelancer) will offer you more than one to chose from. If you want to polish the design yourself, I suggest loading up an image editor and playing a lot with a variety of designs; to ask your friends about what they think; to look at your favorite layouts of other sites, and take some inspiration. ----- I'm now going to the second page, "Partners": http://taloma.com/partners.html The page follows the same basic design, while switching the "tab" at the top, which is good. Again, you mention "MATLAB" and "Simulink", but this time without the (R) registered trademark symbol. I would suggest consistency in this issue, at least on the first pages. You mention "The MathWorks, Inc" as partner. Why not link to them? Make sure your site won't attract the customer away with the first click, but also don't have it look too much like an "island solution", a self-contained system without communication to other companies. The second page, in my opinion, could lead slightly more text; I'm sure you got many things to say, communicate them in small chunks, but do so. Keep to the "inverted pyramid" approach of good websites, and start with the most important points first, while slowly going into more detail. ----- The third page, "Clients": http://taloma.com/clients.html The same comments as for "Partners", like a little more text go for this page too. The illustration of a hand-shake is self-explanatory, but make very sure to not fall into the "clip-arts" trap; you need to communicate professionalism, and many "hobby sites" also use clip-arts. Often, a photograph of the same can make the point more subtle, while making sure the design is as appealing as can be. I notice a switch in font-size; here too, keep consistency. My suggestion is to not switch to a smaller font unless for special footnotes, image captions and so on. Moving my mouse over the page I notice "Straight-line BER" is a link; make it visible as such, not just by using a bold font, at least by underlining; additionally, by using a different color too. ----- The fourth page, "Biography": http://taloma.com/biography.html The illustrational portrait is nice; you need to decide wether or not to switch to photographs like suggested, but if you do, again, I suggest consistency. In the right design, such sketched images can fare very good and make for a modern, fresh layout. Again, the font-size is switched, and links are not clearly communicated as such; see comments above. An email and additional contact information are appropriate on this page too (it doesn't hurt to have such information contained on several pages; no need to wait for the reader to go to your last page, "Contact"). On the biography, it is unclear "who's speaking" about Colin W.; quote http://taloma.com/biography.html "During 13 years at AT&T Bell Labs (Lucent, Agere), he had multiple roles in both the marketing aspects (...)" You might think about switching to first-person when addressing the reader. ----- The fourth page, "Contact": http://taloma.com/contact.html Indeed, now you speak in first-person. My only suggestion to this page is to leave a little more spacing between the introduction sentence and the actual address, and again, to clearly visualize links. The quotation on the bottom hints at being a footnote (rule above, size, alignment). I would suggest to use a style more differentiating. ----- All in all, you did a good job of getting straight to the point. Don't give up on that by adding unnecessary details, but think about what may still be important to get across. Some technical illustrations would also help to add to the content. As to the quote problems; to avoid any hassle on the browser-side with so called HTML named entities, I suggest using simple double quotes: "Like this". A quick look at the source also revealed the CSS being used in the head part; you might want to think about putting it into an external file to allow for caching (and thus, faster loading of pages). Please note my criticism is very frank (and might appear "a little picky"); to give you the most value I didn't shy away from negative criticism. I hope this answer has been constructive and informative to you. Good luck with your website, and good luck with your business!


  • j_philipp-ga: Thanks for the feedback, which is very good. As far as the HTML correctness is concerned, and apart from your comment re: the non-underlined formatting of the hyperlinks... 1) did you click on the hyperlinks to check them? 2) were any broken? Thanks


  • Hello Woz2, Good news: all links work!







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