Volunteers to review new Web site?

[keithbenjamin]

Hey guys,

I'm finishing up a new Web site for our lab and was wondering if I could get some of you to take a look at it and give me your impressions and feedback. The goal of the site is to be more than a brochure for the lab, but to be an ever-expanding repository of information and a resource for practitioners and for anyone interested in optics (lofty goal, I know).

Coming into the optical industry from the tech industry I noticed a real lack of good web sites and online sources of information (except for Optiboard, of course). I'd like to begin to remedy some of that with this site. In that same vein... if anyone has any articles, writeups, and such they wouldn't mind contributing, I'd be most grateful (of course, proper credit would be given to the author for anything published on the site).

This is a Web site for you. So, if you can think of any tools, product information, references, articles, general knowledge, etc. that would be valuable to have available online, please let me know and I'll do my best to make it so.

The site isn't quite finished yet. I'm still working on adding content and registration/authentication for customers. Feel free to try the online order form and "ask the lab" features as they just go to me right now. The site can currently be viewed at http://216.25.63.52

I'd like to hear any suggestions, comments or criticisms you might have.

Thanks so much,

Keith

[BobV]

Keith:

Your site is very well laid out and I especially liked the "learn" aspect of the site. It is user friendly but I don't think you should put the price list up.

Bob V.

[keithbenjamin]

Thanks Bob for taking the time to look at it and for the compliments.

The pricelist will be under the customers section which will be a secure area, not accessible by the public.

Keith

[keithbenjamin]

Another note:

It is currently possible to put unrealistic values and combinations in the order form ...it is after all my first attempt at a Web page... but its also something I plan on fixing in the near future.

-K

[JRS]

Nice start Keith. The site loads quick (big plus if you want people to order from it) and is well laid out.
You mentioned having some interaction between the various pieces, so one consideration is to only show product that goes with specified materials - or vice-versa. Lot of work. If you plan on it competing with VisionWeb, you need to make if reasonably bullet-proof.

Are you planning on having a direct link to your lab system so all DE (data entry) has to do is a brief edit and assign a tray number? It's been awhile since I was in your lab, and I can't remember who's LMS you run there.

And I also agree with BobV's answer on the "learn" portion. Nicely done.

Best of luck.

[keithbenjamin]

Well we won't be competing with VisionWeb per se, as the online order portion of the site will only be a service offered to our customers, but yes that is idea. I also plan on linking to the LMS for online order tracking.

Glad to hear its loading quickly. That is something I was striving for, but a little worried about.

Thanks again for taking time to review the site and make comments!

-K

[Billy Brock]

K,

awesome download speed ....... the mouse over images are a favorite: LOL LOL ( home & learn ) ...... great sense of humor .......... very simple to navigate

all your efforts present a very nice accomplishment


B

[John R]

What screen resolution have you designed it in ? as running at 1024X768 your site only fill a small part of the screen (Top left corner maybe 75% of screen).
I would guess you have designed the site on a laptop running something like 640X480.
Could you not switch to using percentages rather than fixed widths. Which would allow site to expand to fit all resolutions.
Not a complaint just a observation, other than that very nice. Neat well laid out and easy to navigate.
Well done.

[keithbenjamin]

Billy and John thanks!

John,

Sizing a Web page is often a quandry in Web Design. There are a couple different schools of thought. There are many issues involved. For various reasons, I chose to go with a fixed 800 x 600 design. This is the tact most Web designers seem to be taking these days as there are supposedly only some very small percentage of computer users with 640 x 480 resolution (my luck, they'd all be in the optical industry :hammer: ). But I find it hard to imagine anyone who spends any significant time on the Web surfing in 640 x 480.

Funny, being a newbie at this, when I started the site, I actually sized the pages to 800 x 600, not taking into consideration the space consumed by the browser window, so about half way through the project realized the error in my ways and had to resize everything (smaller) so the whole page would be viewable on a 800 x 600 screen.

-K

[wmcdonald]

You have done an outstanding job on this site. As an educator who designs and teaches web-based courses, I see hundreds of things like this. You will find a wide variance in opinions on how it needs to be done, but you have touched all the right bases and provided folks with a number of well designed areas. The very fact that you are asking opinions like this says a great deal about you and your organization....good luck with the site!

Warren

[Robert Wagner]

Like everyone has said, the load speed is great and it is very user friendly, I like some of the verbiage that you use in the site.
It makes you feel like you and the staff do really care for the private practice and will do what ever it takes to produce a quality product even if your own lab cant or plain do not want to try. (I respect that) Good luck and I am going to put your web site in my favorites, who knows I may give you a try!:D

Keep up the good work

Robert
;)

[Robert Wagner]

One more thing. Is that really true about removing some small scratches with the micro/water/let cool method?

Has anyone else tried this? or am I so far out of the loop that this is old news.

Robert
;)

[keithbenjamin]

Robert and Warren,

I'm ecstatic you like the site so much. Warren has offered to forward some articles for which I am most grateful! If anyone else has any articles they wouldn't mind having published, please email me. Warren also got me thinking about calculator tools... are there any calculator tools anyone can think of that would be useful to have available online?

Keith

[keithbenjamin]

Robert,

As far as the water/microwave method of removing scratches from 1.60 and 1.66 product, it works! Sometimes even on pretty severe scratches. We actually stumbled across it about 10 years ago, contacted Optima, they ran tests and have published it in some of their literature.

-K

[keithbenjamin]

The site is live now www.laramyk.com ...although far from complete. Thanks to everyone for their input! I still have a lot to do and it will probably be ever-evolving, so if anyone else has any comments, suggestions, criticisms, ideas, etc. please still feel free to post them or email me. Remember, I want to turn this into a resource for YOU.

Thanks again! :cheers:

-K

[Chris Ryser]

Good site....................

Miss your "contact us" button and your e-mail so other websites can propose reciprocal links as you do have a lionk page.

I would be interested to exchange links, for the obviuous reason, the more links the more popularity you get.

[edKENdance]

I really like the site. I think someone mentioned the formatting. It should fill the whole page. You're paying for a bunch of white space. That's not right. Also, I love and live with AR and I'm glad you have the AR council link but isn't it one of the worst websites ever? Who designed it? Looks like it was made in 1989 and not improved on since. Anyone can do a much better job. They take a great application and make it seem as boring as plain toast.

[keithbenjamin]

Thanks for the input, although I believe the last input on page size was that is was too big and it couldn't be viewed in its entirety on a small screen. :hammer: :bbg:

I agree with you entirely on the AR council page, unfortunately its typical of so many Web pages in the optical industry. It's part of the reason I'm trying to do what I am doing.

Thanks again,

Keith

[Chris Ryser]

edKENdance said:
I really like the site. I think someone mentioned the formatting. It should fill the whole page. You're paying for a bunch of white space. That's not right. Also, I love and live with AR and I'm glad you have the AR council link but isn't it one of the worst websites ever? Who designed it? Looks like it was made in 1989 and not improved on since. Anyone can do a much better job. They take a great application and make it seem as boring as plain toast.

Let me give you a little food for thought ......................

You mentioned you like the AR councel link because you like AR, another says he finds the AR council site old fashioned.

What links are for: is to get and exchange reciprocal links with other websites in the same field as the health related ones under which the optical industry falls, and you dont have to care how good that site looks like, but how well it is doing.

When the web crawlers search the websites they will find the links and will crawl these links. The more you are linked on reciprocal links, the more you will be listed and recognized by the search engines world wide.

We should not care how the other website looks like because if you have a lot of links you have not enough time in the day to look at all of them.

but when you go into Goggle the largest site of all of them or as a matter of fact any of the others and type in "Optochemicals" you will get dozens or hundreds of answers relating to my own webite through the resulting reciprocal web linking.

WHY AND
HOW WAS THAT DONE ? ...................................

You can pay to get listed in these search engines and they will list you as long as you pay them, right on top under preferred listings.

You can als do it by follwing the rules and functionong of the web by adding a lot of reciprocal links and suddenly your name pops up whith the right or not so right question to the search engines and your web ratings climb.

In my own case it worked to get from 8,000 hits a month to the 30,000 mark last month and today in September 14, I am over 25,000 in half a month and should get close to 50,000 by the end of September.

All you guy's who have websites pay a lot of money to some web masters to set it up, but are not paid for to do the follow up which can be very time consuming to make a site successful

A site has to be upgraded continuously, as the Optiboard is upgraded automatically with each posting, sometimes hundreds of times a day and therefore gets a top hit and other ratings. You need reciprocal linking with other sites,and the more the better.

Just by putting a link to somebody will do no good unless the other site links back to you. In this case a link to the AR council is good for somebody looking at a site but will do no good to get it promoted. And if your site does not come up on search engines only your friends, the ones that know about your site, will look at it. Like if you spend a thousand dollars for a quarter page advertisng in one of the trade journals and see no results.

That's enough heavy stuff for a Sunday morning early ........................

(Actually if any of you optiboarders have understood my message and want to profit from and by reciprocal linking send me an e-mail and I will increase my links as well as you will)