rsgerry

what makes a good website? fast loading, easy navigation, easy on the eye, informative. i have my favourites, but ford oz is one of the best about. easily meets the criteria.

however, try ford.co.uk. what a complete pigs meal of a site. it takes an age to load (at work with broadband) and just doesnt work from home.

dear mr polites. please send some of our desingners over to the uk and get them to redesign the website. i am dying to order some broochures but cant even get in.

__________________
You wash your car like it was your firstborn child, you tend to its needs like it was your own body, you protect it like it's your family, then you drive it like you stole it.

Weapons of rice destruction

2002 Ford Falcon AU3 XR6
1985 Ford Sierra XR4i
1980 Ford Escort RS2000

Xyphoid

Yeah, bloody great point here rsgerry !

Just a little note to some people with Home pages,

If the site doesnt load within 15 seconds @ 56K Dial in connection,
Or at least get a fair amount of the page in about within 10 seconds, then most people will close the page.

Its a Harsh reality that the majority of people do not have Broadband.
It is also a harsh fact that most Dial Up ISP's are very slow.

My suggestion, for a website Default, or Index page,

Remove Midi, music, avi, or any large GIF/JPG files.
(I consider any file greater than 40Kb to be Large !)

Try and put the text component of the Main Page before any of the above.

Be very descriptive of what your website is about, or the contents of your website, on the Main Page.

Nothing peeves me off more than waiting 30 seconds for a Midi song to load up, when all I have on my browser window is a black screen, Or waiting for a huge animated GIF to load, that is only a spinning text logo of the site, and then find out that after waiting endlessly for this crap to load, I will probably be redirected to yet another page, with exactly the same crap as the first one.

Think of websites much like TV shows.
If the screen is blank for any period of time, Im gonna change channels (and so will the majority of viewers)

3Toed

Amen, Xyphoid. Amen.

There's nothing worse than waiting ages for a page to load and then it's just full of crap.

Ones that really take to biscuit are the ones where people try to make their page great with all sorts of scripts and stuff but all you get are endless popups that tell you of an error on line x of the script. Blah blah blah.

I won't even start on popups, either...

I run Pop-Up Stopper and it's only slighty less useless than mammaries on a bull.

Ford Fanatic

Ford's Oz website really is awesome. With anything I design I try and use as much text as possible, keeping in mind that the larger the font size the worse it looks on older computers. I make my images as small as possible, using tables for different background colours. Being able to navigate it clearly is a big one too, there is a certain amount of psychology involved when designing a page as you must think how someone is going to react, and weither they will know how to navigate the site. I hate sounds on a webpage, not only do they take a while to load, but they are usually really annoying and do more harm than good.

Good work Ford Oz, keep the good stuff coming!

XR_Strider_GuY

Wooooooooooooooops. Think my website is in this unpractical boat.

__________________
Motor May 2001 Quote: "Believe it or not, there are actually a bunch of weirdos out there who reckon a six cylinder is the dux gutz. Bugger it: I'm one of them" :s5

AUII Late Ed XR6 HP T5 Venom- Full Tickford Body Kit, 17in Wheels, Herrod Bi-plane Spoiler, Momo Steer/Gear, T-Series Interior Options, Premium Stereo and a very light-tuned 4.0L I6

(FPV-Tickford Club of NSW Member and Co-Founding Member of 3FB Inc, Ford Forums Food Bandits)

Xyphoid

No No No !!!!
EF_Falcon_Guy - Your website serves Midi Files.
I know that If I am visiting your site, I know what to expect - Midi songs !!!!

What I meant was basically If I am visiting an Automotive site, I expect it to be automotive related. (I.E. I dont expect the emphasis of the Home page to be a whopping great Midi File).

I would get peeved off if your website had a whopping great disclaimer, a huge animated Gif, and took me hundreds of clicks just to get to the midi files, but your website is easy to navigate, and straight to the point !!!!!

Yeah I would have to agree with the Ford website ! One of the best. -
My only complaint about it would have to be that they need more pictures of the cars !!!!
I still havent seen the full interior of the Fairlane or LTD, And dont really know what the differences between the Fairmont, and Ghia's.

Before, around the EF/EL Days, Ford had Suround vision of all Ford Oz models. You can pan, and zoom all around the interior of each model, and compare them to see how the leather looked, what electronic gizmos each car had, etc etc.

I like the idea of Fords thumbnail gallery, but I would LOVE to see hundreds of thumbnails, not just 8 artsy fartsy pictures of a headlight, grill, wheel, spoiler, etc, etc.

russellw

I agree with XHypoid on this one - the iPix images they used to host (and they had them in the early days of AU) were very handy.
None-the-less it is a well designed site and a credit to the guys at Icon Media.