I decided to finally start charging for my website design work so I made a website for it. Please let me know what you think about the site and if there's any issues. Both of my PC's are XP SP3/Firefox 3 so I can't tell what it looks like in other settings.
GRM, if this is bordering on advertisement (please not I only take work in from my county's residents) please feel free to take it down.
(Yeah, I suck at coming with names, Auto X Design was available everywhere so I took it 
)
Displays fine on OS X Safari. I'd take out the "for family and friends" in your about us spiel - no need to advertise that you don't have any paid experience.
I do have paid experience on web design. So yeah, I'll take that line out. I just don't know how to put "instead of asking for cash or trading I want to actually make a profit".
Auto X Design is based in Kelso, Washington is beatiful Cowlitz County
Grammatical, or spelling errors on your website might not help you get work. It looks like one of those free, or $5.99/mo websites.
It displays fine in Safari, but I'd prefer to have all the links on the side, or at least together.
Heyo fellow web designer! First of all, good job getting the site up. Like G.I. Joe says, it's half the battle (forget that "knowing" crap). Hopefully, I have some constructive crit for ya, with a grain of salt of course.
From a design perspective, I like the way the page adapts to different screen sizes, but you might want to limit the horizontal length of the text section anyway so it is easier to read on larger monitors. (So the eye doesn't have to move as-far back to the start of the next line) Also, although I'm a fan of dark gray text, I think the content font is too light and hard to read. Lighter text like that works better for pic captions and such. I might also add 10-20px more left hand margin, but that's just me being picky.
I know the site is a brand new baby, but the pages are awfully barren. Some supporting graphics and work examples (beyond your linked would go a long way to making it look more professional. That said, I understand it's a work in progress.
I don't mind two different navigation sets, but their distance from each other doesn't make it clear that the side navigation is a sub-nav of sorts for each page until you've looked at more than a couple pages. I think most people prefer them a little closer to one another. Maybe list the nave below the header?
Also, I would make the "About Us" and "Contact" a part of the main nav at the top, rather than only available on the home page. I might even suggest that you put your email link somewhere obvious in the design, so that it appears on every page.
I wouldn't mention the phone number unless you're going to post it. I know you want to let potential clients know that they will be able to reach you by phone, but it's somewhat off-putting to say, "we have a phone, but you can't have it yet". I list my clients' phone numbers in the page design itself.
Lastly, (and the last thing you'll probably want to do) is the site name/url. As much as I love Autox and design, unless you're designing stuff for autocrossers I think that the title will be confusing to "most people". There's a danger they'll confuse the title with Auto-EX (as in the letter, not "cross") They may even infer that you do some sort of "automatic" web site design with templates or whatever. I've been working in marketing and design for 5 years now and I'm continually surprised by how people will misconstrue anything unless it is obvious. That's not to say your name has to be "websitedesign.com", but I would stray away from anything misleading.
Hope some of that helps! Good luck with the new endeavor!
P71, I had no idea you were in the same gig as I am - good thing we're on opposite coasts or we'd be competitors ;)
Matt B. offers up some great advice. I agree that the pages look pretty stark. A little bigger font and maybe some stock photography might take you a little farther and help fill up the pages a bit more. Try iStock.com for some images. They don't cost much and you don't need super-high res images for what you are doing, so it might be a good investment.
Come to think of it - I should revamp my site: www.jasonloy.com
I'm also a big fan of istockphoto.com - good suggestion. You can get not only photos, but vector imagery, flash, video, and audio there too. It is my #1 resource for stock due to the high quality and low prices. Photostogo.com, Dreamstime.com, and (if you got the budget) Gettyimages.com are also good resources.
Jason - l'm liking the left/right brain concept on the landing page. Cool concept.
Your site needs more content and a little more piks
Needs more cowbell. 
i have to agree, more contact info, large fonts cause its hard to read, pics would help, the grey does kinda leave you feeling that way, look to change the color of your font also to something briter like white or something might work. the name you might think about also....i also think something about autocross stuff for cars also. if nothing else, just use you name for your site or something. i should do some links to really bad sites that where talked about in a couple of webclasses i took at the local college and there where some really bad ones though.
Great start! More will come in time, but I agree that content is king. You should also check out templates for websites. I needed to quickly update my company's site and used a free template I found online. With the content from the old site and some new photos, I wound up with a decent update in a short time.
suprfly,
Thank you! That's why I let somebody else look at it before I "release" it
Matt B, Keep em coming! I'll darken the text and enlarge the font. I literally just built the site, I only have a few hours in it. I'll content it up before Ii "go live" on Jan 1st. I dunno what to do about the Nav. I kinda like the double-menus but I understand they might not be the best. I left the content low on purpose so I wasn't "married" to the basic layout. E-mail on every page is smart, I'll do that! I'll take off the phone # spiel.
On the name thing, I dunno what to do. I like the name and most of my work will come from word-of-mouth anyways. I learned from grandad that using names in business is bad, you gotta stick with something impersonal. Like I said, autoxdesign was available and on gmail to boot. Everything else with "design" was taken or stupid expensive. This is a side project to make a couple bucks, not a venture capital project.
Carrera4, Cool site! I won't need any content bought off of the web, I have plenty. I just want to finalize the "look" before I start throwing crazy amounts of content at the thing.
pinchy, GREAT site!! Holy cow! I would appreciate some emails about how you did that...
OK, I enlarged the font, changed the color to dark gray (nearly black), fixed the typos, deleted the phone, colored the links purple, made the screenshots linkable, and added a favicon. I also registered it on Google with my account (the Google webmaster stuff) to track the search results and stuff. I think when I go "live" in 2010 I'll do the "local" AdWords (within 20 miles) and see what happens.
Any other criticisms would be greatly appreciated.
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