Out of site, out of mind

Freeway
1

Dear FreewayTalkers

It may be a surprise to some of you that the whole of the Freeway site
has had a root-and-branch refit.

Sneaky devils that we are, we replaced the existing site less than 48
hours ago with one driven by Freeway (of course!) coupled with
Expression Engine. The entirety of our e-commerce structure was also
replaced with Esellerate - a Digital River Company.

I hope you like the new site, and I hope it serves you better. Please do
let us know what you think - it is a work in progress.

Does it look good?
Does the navigation work?
Can you find what you need quickly?
Whatever else you feel would make the site better?

Just before I leave-off, I want to thank Paul Dunning for his truly
sterling efforts as webmaster in making this all work, Fred Kylander for
some lovely design work, Joe Muscara for the basic EE Action Suite that
got us started on the right road, and the whole of the Softpress Team
who have suffered masses of mostly unjustified abuse at the hands of a
mad man.

Have a great weekend,

R

–
Richard Logan
Managing Director
SoftPress Systems Ltd

“You supply the creativity. Freeway handles the code.”

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2

Might not quite live up to Max’s expectations of this morning!

http://www.freewaytalk.net/thread/view/52935

But, seriously, a good clean site that seems to navigate well on my
first quick look. Might be some areas you could tighten up spacing
e.g. FWPro Tech Specs spread out to a longer page than needed, IMHO.

Well done Softpress folks and friends.

Colin

On 15 May 2009, at 16:32, Richard wrote:

I hope you like the new site, and I hope it serves you better.
Please do
let us know what you think - it is a work in progress.

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3

On 15 May 2009, at 16:32, Richard wrote:

I hope you like the new site, and I hope it serves you better.
Please do
let us know what you think - it is a work in progress.

Very nice Richard! Kudos to all who wrought it.
There’s a glitch on the ‘Quotes’ page; the links at the bottom say “<
previous (1 - 8 of 100) next >” but if you click ‘next’ you get the
same page.

best wishes,

Paul Bradforth

http://www.paulbradforth.com

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4

On 15 May 2009, at 16:32, Richard wrote:

Does it look good?

Yes, it does. Should it be otherwise?

In my quick trawl I found but one glitch: It’s the graphic on the
Press home page, where there’s a bit of descender clipping going on.

Good work chaps!

Heather

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5

Great!

Noticed one little omission, homepage does not validate, just a small thing causing two errors.

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6

Well done to all concerned. A great looking site and a big improvement
on the old one. The only things I spotted that l think need fixing are;

  1. The Blogger feature page <http://www.softpress.com/products/greatfeatures/blogger/

contains the content for scriptaculous,

  1. The text links look, to my eye, unstyled simply because of their
    colors - blue links, purple visited, etc.
  2. Hitting the search button without entering anything in the input
    field displays a very uninviting error page.
  3. The ‘You are only allowed to search every 15 seconds’ error page
    could, also, do with some attention.
  4. The following page came up in a recent search but I hit a 404 when
    trying to click through to the article;
    http://www.softpress.com/index.php/man_your_actions_stations/
    Regards,
    Tim.

FreewayActions.com - Freeware and shareware actions for Freeway
Express & Pro.

Protect your mailto links from being harvested by spambots with Anti
Spam.
Only available at FreewayActions.com

http://www.freewayactions.com

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7

There are some things connected to the main menu (Home-Products-Store)
Home is highlighted when being there. But also when following links from the submenu to ‘Sitemap’ ‘Quotes’ and ‘Awards’.

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8

:slight_smile: somehow, it looks more like a website ‘we’ would love to make, than the old one.
i never like the old one. The navigation was horrible, now i can even push a button and come to a section a want to go ! and i can find what i was looking for.
LOVE IT!

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9

Looks really great, love the new layout and the inclusion of a real life situation on the home page (the photographer)…just a wee suggestion but it would be nice to have that as a slideshow that switches between various examples

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10

Well … wow! Very nice indeed. But the badges have to go. Fast.

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11

Except for the homepage and the Press-page, the graphics are poor handled. I notice a lot of disturbance.

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12

Which badges don’t you like? I don’t see any problems in that area…

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13

It’s just my personal opinion. I just do not like that ‘flag waving’ at all. That ‘look-who-likes-us’ behaviour. I understand that when it’s done on one page, but come on … every single page. But it could be me. I just have this thing for minimalism.

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14

I suppose you do have a point there (I wasn’t sure previously if you meant the new ‘made with freeway’ badges!) I think they do have a place on the home page but I agree about having them on every page.

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15

On 17 May 2009, at 10:39, Richard van Heukelum wrote:

It’s just my personal opinion. I just do not like that ‘flag waving’
at all. That ‘look-who-likes-us’ behaviour. I understand that when
it’s done on one page, but come on … every single page. But it
could be me. I just have this thing for minimalism.

One reason for doing it is if you expect multiple points of entry from
search engines. However, I tend to agree with not on “every single
page”. It loses the impact of more discrete use and, I must admit, I
just saw the “flags” as part of the wallpaper. In fact, I’ve only
just clicked on one, following your comment, to find out how many
more"flags" get waved!

Colin

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16

FreewayFolk

I haven’t quite been at all sure what “flags” y’all been talking about…?

The national flags in the footer lead to 4 of our major distributors who
sell localized copies of Freeway. They’re there so that they can been
found/visited by those interested in Freeway, but are not necessarily
speaking English as a first language. And 3/4 of the sites is built with
Freeway.

The W3C point to the validators - just to show Freeway output always
validates (except rarely when we’ve been “fiddling about”).

Is it the “Great Reviews” that are so bothering and repetitious?

All this is interesting to hear. Thanks, R

–
Richard Logan
Managing Director
SoftPress Systems Ltd

“You supply the creativity. Freeway handles the code.”

I suppose you do have a point there (I wasn’t sure previously if you
meant the new ‘made with freeway’ badges!) I think they do have a place
on the home page but I agree about having them on every page.

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17

Is it the “Great Reviews” that are so bothering and repetitious?

If it is that then I think they should stay. This sort of thing
does make a difference to how potential buyers feel about the
product, and yes, people could arrive at any page in the site from a
search engine result.

Don’t be too English - wave the damn flag and toot that trumpet. :slight_smile:

k

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18

Ah, I see, wasn’t sure whether they were more reviews or foreign sellers…

That makes sense though. And no, I wouldn’t take away the Great Reviews (after all…their great!). Did you notice that it’s not validating? http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softpress.com%2F;accept=text%2Fhtml%2Capplication%2Fxhtml%2Bxml%2Capplication%2Fxml%3Bq%3D0.9%2C*%2F*%3Bq%3D0.8;accept-language=en-us%2Cen%3Bq%3D0.5;accept-charset=ISO-8859-1%2Cutf-8%3Bq%3D0.7%2C*%3Bq%3D0.7

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19

On 17 May 2009, at 11:15, Richard wrote:

I haven’t quite been at all sure what “flags” y’all been talking
about…?

My comment was mainly about the ‘Great Reviews’ , but the ‘not on
every page’ could also apply to the block of national flags. Once the
site is entered, repetition isn’t entirely necessary as you will only
change language once, presumably, and probably bookmark that. Having
said that I don’t find the repetition a problem, sat at the base of
the site.

Where I think you may miss out is by not making greater display of the
“Great Reviews’ on specific pages where the decision to buy is being
made. The Home page, certainly, and also the key product pages and
product comparison: this is where emphasis on good reviews is needed.
Tucked at the bottom they are off screen for most common monitor
sizes. Not everyone has 24” or more!!

Overall I think the site is clean, modern, easy to follow and has been
generally well thought out, but like all new designs, it is only when
you get everything out in the field you see how it really works. Going
by this Forum, it is easy to se that there are many who come to
Freeway, like I did around its second iteration, with limited web
knowledge and even less understanding of the differences between
applications. They choose Freeway because it promises a
straightforward approach, with no need for coding (initially at least)
and the kudos of the ‘Great Reviews’ should be an important persuader,
as you obviously know.

As an occasional web site designer (I’m really a copywriter/strategist
about 60% retired!) I welcome the ease of Freeway. so your approach of
home page testimonial plus reviews is to be applauded. As the site is
developed, perhaps this could be developed more with some brief
interviews of users on both sides of the Pond and elsewhere across the
globe - I often use short case studies like this successfully for my
clients - which can be reached via an archive page for the that want
to review Freeway in depth. Seeing the success of others is a great
persuader.

But I ramble on (typical copywriter, you may think). Summing up,
therefore, maybe a little more discrete emphasis, rather than
repetition, might add even more positivity.

Colin

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20

The site looks brilliant! Excellent job. Very clean, very nice.

Wonderful!

– Jamie

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