[Feedback] New Solari Studios Website

[soniCron]

I have a new (simple) site infrastructure that I wrote from scratch, and I want to see if it functions correctly. In addition, I've got some text that may or may not be spelld correktly, so I'd appreciate some eyes on my updated site:

http://www.SolariStudios.com

Does it work? Any strange happenings? Attractive? Pleasing? The site should support both JavaScript-enabled and -disabled browsers. (The JS gives some things extra functionality, like email verification, etc.) I've done some tricks with CSS, so I'm wondering if the button rollovers work or not. Does the store page feel like an extension of the site? Give me your thoughts.

Known Issues:
The screenshots are dumb.
The copy is dumb.
The copy mentions a back story that hasn't been implimented in the game.
Plimus integration layout problems that I haven't the capacity to solve.
This is a soft-release: Some of the functionality is limited or does not exist.
Pages don't have specific titles.
The floating images in the copy have faint shadows that some monitors don't display, making the text seem like it's wrapping funny.


Note: There have been minor updates to the version of Jeweltopia available there, if you're interested. (Specifically bug fixes and twice as many in-game songs.)

[cliffski]

looks very nice to me. order page is esp well integrated.

[Anlino]

Looks relly nice! The only thing i can think of on the fly is the bottom text (Support, Privacy police and so on). It's color blends in with the background color too much. Changing it to black just as the rest would probably do the trick.

[revve]

I agree - a very good looking site. The only thing that should change is the orange links at the bottom of the page - there's no contrast between that and the background.

[Roman Budzowski]

I like it. Would be great if 3 small screens would match the width of big one.

Roman

[Gilzu]

I like the overall look&feel - it looks nice and polished.

One thing though, change "get help" to tech support or something similiar it doesnt bring the right message IMHO (unless youve got Dr. Phil there :D )

[Andy]

Grey buttons should be blue :p

[Ricardo C]

I like it a lot, particularly the big screenshot that greets visitors right off the bat.

I do wonder though, what the hell happened to the little alien creature that was on the placeholder site? :D

[Gnatinator]

Unfortunately, there are some problems on OSX. Dunno if this is platform specific or not, I havent tried the site on a windows computer yet.

Check it out here. (http://www.indiewebstudio.com/solari.jpg) The newsletter sign up and buttons get misplaced on both safari and firefox. This probably isn't a big deal if you're game only supports the windows platform.

Overall the site is very nice looking

[mooktown]

very nice :)

[princec]

Looks kosher to me, straight to the point, and I appreciate the blurb/copy with the sort of sense of humour I've got.

Cas :)

[Nexic]

Yeh the site looks great, but where is the cool little alien you had hanging around on your previous page? Bring back the mascot!

[Rubs]

Hmmm! Very nice looking site! Good job!

I've read the comments and I completely agree with cliffski, Anlino, revve and Andy :). Go for it!

[soniCron]

Wow! :) I'm overwhelmed with the positive responses I've gotten so far! Thank you, everyone, for taking a moment to browse the site! I'll see about those link colors, the buttons, and the Mac layout issue. (I intend to release a Mac version of Jeweltopia over the course of the next few months.) Thanks, again, everyone! :) Keep 'em coming!

[illume]

It took me a while to find the download, and purchase links.

Download & purchase are the things you want people most to do? Make them more obvious.

Put download & purchase in the top navigation as the first two links. Perhaps draw more attention to the other links.

In 800x600 a lot of your screen doesn't show up without scrolling. You can't see the download & purchase links in that resolution without scrolling. Perhaps move download&purchase to the top left of the page. So that even in 640x480, people will see the download&purchase links.

The End.

[soniCron]

It took me a while to find the download, and purchase links. Hmm... that's a problem. This is something I want to experiment with, but one thing I considered as I was making the site was that people probably aren't going to be downloading the game before checking it out first. (Looking at screenshots, maybe scanning the copy, etc.) As such, this design adequately filters their attention from the large image, to the copy, to the screenshots, to the download link, in much the same way the average user decides if they are going to commit to a download/install. (I'll speak more about this in my site post-mortem, later.)

That said, I will be putting some links at the top and tagging them with a special code once I start trying to get normal visitors there. This way I can monitor where users are clicking and adjust the site accordingly. If I find that almost nobody is clicking the top links (as I suspect), then I will again eliminate them. And, incidentally, you're the first (and so far only) person with a screen resolution lower than 1024x768 to visit the site. Of course, that doesn't mean anything, because I've only announced it to developers! ;)

[Nexic]

I think 1024x768 minimum viewing size is too big, according to my logs around 20% still use 800x600 or less, and I'm guessing your audience will be more casual than mine.

[soniCron]

I think 1024x768 minimum viewing size is too big... The minimum viewing size is 800x600. But, I'm not terribly worried about the download links being at the top of the page, because almost every user will look at the screenshots, read the copy, etc. first. As such, the page adequately filters the user's attention from the introduction of the product, to a little blurb about it, then some screenshots, and finally the download and purchase links. I wouldn't expect anyone to visit the site without the desire to at least see what the game looks like before downloading it. Would you? ;)

[Nexic]

Ah in that case ignore my last post, I just skimmed through some of the later comments without reading them properly, and it seemed like there were problems at 800x600.

[soniCron]

Because a few of you were probably in transit to the GDC when this was announced, I thought I'd just bump this once. Any more feedback would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance! :)

[Phil Steinmeyer]

(I intentionally haven't read the other responses yet, to give an uncolored opinion)

Overall, I think it's quite solid. But I think there's a bit of a split - the top 20% of the main screen says business, the bottom 80% says FUN. I like the bottom better - I'd see if you could liven up your logo and maybe the background behind it a bit.

I like the Jeweltopia logo and the warped, blurred screenshot behind it. I like the rounded corners all over the place. I like the happy face and the heart. Overall, the navigation feels solid. Well done!

(now I'm going to read what everybody else said :) )

[jankoM]

You pushed(bumped) it so here it comes :) , I wanted to write earlier but hadn't had time, I see people say it's great but I dont agree, it's all just my un-pro oppinion so take it as you wish:
** I general, your site is not in-tone with it-self, it's not balanced with itself, it pokes itself in the eyes... by this I mean
* "solari studios" is totaly diferent font, color style than that big jeweltopia below - header bgcolor has color that doesn't match any of the many colours from the big jeweltopia image below. header says "we are trustworthy profesionals with style" big image below says "we are wacky - have fun!!!"
* "Jeweltopia" is by far bigger than you header logo and more intense so that is the thing that looks like your logo or header and it's just strange to have another smaller and different header thing above it...
* That "SMILE" on the right also confuses things - visitor will ask he/she-self "what is this?? title of a game? title of website? what??" again it's bigger than the website logo text so it's really strange.
* menu links below the header have far too-little contrast with the background. - they are in style with the site header but totally off-style with yeweltopia images and these are the dominant thing on your webpage (same for download - buy button)

ok that is all.

//edit: ok, so in the time I was writing this P.S. said some similar points (person has to be carefull here to not get accused of parasiting stuff)

[Dan MacDonald]

I had a hard time reading "jeweltopia" in that font for some reason, other then that I agree with the rest of the feedback. It looks very industry standard (which is set fairly high these days).

[chanon]

I was going to comment before, but for some reason changed my mind. Maybe it was because everyone said it was great while I really didn't agree. Well here are my thoughts:

1. Fix the download + purchase buttons .. they should be bigger and brighter. The word Download should stand out on the page. It should not be gray. The download button should say "Download our game!! Its fun! Click Here!!" not .. "Hey .. if you're looking good enough you will see this download button here ... click it if you want to. Its a gray game you know, so it might be boring. Its not really what we want you to focus on on this page." ..

You're imprinting the grayness of it into the users mind when you make your download button like that ... think about it. Click small unimportant looking boring gray button => Jeweltopia game.

Basically putting the download button under the textbox like that makes it feel like it is a newsletter subscription form .. and some people would automatically ignore that area. The button is gray like a form button too. At least if the download button is big and bright, people will still notice it even if it has the text box over it.

Personally I missed the Download button because of this.

I mean .. its ultimately what you want visitors of your page to do, so why not make it stand out more. Positioning closer to the top of the page, or maybe nearer to the screenshots could also help.

2. I dont' like the gray background. It doesn't give a "fun" mood to the page.

Yellow on gray, gray on yellow .. reminds me of a tooltip in a boring office application.


There you have it :D