

Ask HN: We just launched our new company website. Thoughts? - pstinnett
http://www.fragmentlabs.com

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thrdOriginal
I find it a little presumptuous that you're going to create the best part of
my business...

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bmason
I second this. I like the visual design a lot though.

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wwortiz
I have slowish dsl connection and it took a while for your site to load
(mostly that background image).

Clicking on the links and moving around wasn't too bad but the nav is a little
bit confusing especially for normal users.

When I got to the blog link it took me to another page which kind of broke
your whole navigation scheme in my opinion.

And to be perfectly honest this:

 _Fragment is a group of highly-skilled, creative minds with experience in web
and mobile interface design, application development, motion graphics and
internet marketing strategy. We unite to make it happen by building and
shaping your piece of the web._

doesn't really say what you do.

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BSeward
Appropriate amount of well-selected content. Catches my eye.

I'd suggest that the information architecture flow is a little lax. You have a
clear conversion goal--get users interested in your services and contact you--
but to accomplish it it falls to users to first choose to click through your
menu. You should have clear calls to action, starting from the landing page:
"See what we do" or a couple recently finished projects, and make it easy and
compelling for potential clients to contact you directly from project detail
pages. I'm sure your newsletter is also a good conversion path--you could
integrate into the projects section as well: "Learn more about this site in
our newsletter! Click to subscribe!" I'd put your phone number in the footer
too, and perhaps investigate a click-to-call implementation.

From a user-experience perspective I'd make sure every clickable element is
clearly actionable (links to Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn don't look like links)
and has a hover state, consider Fitt's law (e.g. the "Web" and "Print" links
on the Work panel are incredibly important, but awfully small), and validate
submissions on your contact form. From an implementation perspective, the way
elements scroll in on each panel is a little jumpy--maybe that's intentional,
but it looks rough. From a tech perspective I'd be more impressed if you'd
chosen to use @font-face instead of image-replacement, but that's a little
silly.

What does "Your Piece of the Web" mean? If it's regionally-appropriate and
you're appealing mostly to local clients then it's good, but otherwise, eh,
multivariate test a couple options maybe?

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eplanit
Many of us use NoScript, and allow JS only after we've grown to trust a site.
You should handle JS-disallowed browser behavior, and present a compelling
argument to allow JS. Well-designed sites with a clear purpose and draw will
in most all cases lead the user to at least temporarily allow it. Then you can
win them over to permanently allow it.

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falsestprophet
That is not really true. As of 2008, 95% of users have Javascript turned on.
To put that in context, consider the fact that about 3.5% of people in the US
are colorblind.

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#Prevalence>

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Judson
More specific, when I clicked on "Work", I would probably let it default to
"web work" and then let the user use the menu to change to print. For a
second, I thought the button didnt work.

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maxdemarzi
Looks nice...

The moving background is a little disorienting until one gets used to it.

I also suggest you change the picture of Brian Henderson. I can't see his
head, and my eyes are drawn to "$5 PBR Lunchbox Shots ALL DAY!"

While you are at it, change all the pictures of people that look like they are
out drinking. Hate to be a buzzkill, but it's the wrong message to send to
clients.

Replace with pictures of people working on stuff. Doing frameworks, shaking
hands, presenting, etc.

~~~
bigsassy
I don't know about the last part. Are you saying take away pictures of them
for the same old, cookie cutter, every websites got 'em, pictures of
multicultural business people doing mundane tasks that STILL don't say what
the company actually does or what kind of people work there?

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biggitybones
Like others have said - the moving background is a bit confusing but you get
used to it. Same with the nav - at first I was expecting something to appear
and realized it was a small menu in the upper left. It's consistent though, so
just a matter of finding it the first time.

That being said, I love the design work you've done. Very impressive.

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catone
I like it, but two thoughts.

1\. Though the effect of panning along the picture is cool, its also somewhat
jarring.

2\. You're covering up faces on a couple of the staff pages with the content
box... might want to flip the images (so the face appears in the right side)
or find a new image for those team members.

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pstinnett
Yep - I just flipped some of the team photos around.

Thanks!

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jqueryin
In regards to the actual site:

1\. The SWFAddress handling could be extended to encompass more of your site,
making it easier for google to index (i.e. individual team member pages)

2\. Sub navigation did not always have a hoverable state (i.e. your team
members).

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pstinnett
We're a web development company from Raleigh NC and just rebranded ourselves
as Fragment. Previously we had our blog / a landing page up, but we just
launched our new site. I'd really appreciate any feedback / comments from the
HN community! Thanks.

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tseabrooks
I find the background to be a bit disorienting. When the page loads my eyes
are looking at the center of the page and that portion of the image is blurry
and the portion in focus is far down to the right and the text is in the top
left. I can't tell where to look when it loads.

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jetsnoc
I clicked on work and the image was AWFULLY slow to load. I'd drop the
filesize or outsource the hosting to an S3 bucket or something.

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tomh-
The background image loads extremely slow. And I have 100 mbit. I suggest you
fix that :)

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swah
Nice design.

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swah
How long does it take an expert designer to make a site like this?

I'm wondering if can/should a programmer learn to do this? Because I intend to
create a startup and would like to save money there...

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edw519
_Fragment is a group of highly-skilled, creative minds with experience in web
and mobile interface design, application development, motion graphics and
internet marketing strategy. We unite to make it happen by building and
shaping your piece of the web._

Let's do these guys a favor and crowd source this to something a little less
"Corporate Mission Statement", a lot more descriptive, and more about the
customer, preferably under 10 words.

I'll go first:

"Raleigh's One Stop Shop for your Whole Web Presence"

