The Spalding Drive is sort of the center for Beverly Hills cosmetic surgery and dermatology. They've got a site up at spladingplasticsurgery.com, and I'm here to criticize it. Heeheehee.

First impression? "Hm... White."


Second impression? "Hmm... Too white."


Third impression? "-sigh- WAY too white."


Okay. Being a minimalist, I actually LIKE white, and keeping websites clean and... white. But this website, I think overdid it a bit.


The other colors are fine: brown and black work well with white, actually. But even though the sidebar has a brown background color, I still think that the pages are too bland.


Bland and crowded.


Dear readers: if you have a lot of content, make sure that you separate them accordingly (like what Spalding did), and make sure that you have enough space between small divisions, too (not like what Spalding did). Don't stuff your homepage with little itty boxes and expect the viewer to know where to go. Many, good options are nice, but make sure to organize them well. When I saw Spalding's homepage, I kind of felt overwhelmed.


What's more, their main links on the top look like regular text... They don't attract the eye to them at all, and they don't make the hand gravitate toward them to be clicked. If you've got a lot of pages, navigation is very very very imporant. Surfers should feel that they know where they can click.


I'm sure this site has a lot o information, and I'm sure their clients are good. (Especially since they're doing surgery in Beverly Hills, of all places!) But, to be honest? I think their website needs a bit of work.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

scrutiny: The Rhinoplasty Center

The Rhinoplasty Center is an educational guide to rhinoplasty. It's mainly by Dr. Daniel Becker, who does nose job rhinoplasty in Philadelphia.

My first impression of the site is that it's very basic. Basic in a good way, I suppose, but basic nonetheless.

Colors are kept subdued and solid (which is good). Different colors demark different divisions, giving the viewer a clear idea of what he's looking at. The white background for the main content is always a good idea, as it not only gives the eyes some rest, but it also draws general attention there. Layout is, again, clasically simple. Banner on top, main nav under tha banner, sublinks on the left, info on the right.

I think I'd say that this site is "just fine". Nothing spectacular, and there's nothing too wrong with it, either. I suppose that makes it perfect for its objective, as they say they want it to be an educational site more than being a commercial one.

If the designers had wanted a classic, plain and simple look, I think they did their job fine.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

scrutiny: Surgeon's Adviser

Man. Now THIS is what I'm talkin' about. I've been blogging (and complaining) about several surgeons' websites, and I keep saying how a lot of them need help from professional web designers.

Well, as it turns out, there's one specifically for them!

Surgeon's Advisor is a website that offers help to surgeons get (or improve) their internet presence. Whether you do plastic surgery in Toronto or anywhere else in the world, I think this website is a great help. I've seen their clients' websites, and I must say that the sites are really really good.

The company's own site is very well done. Easy navigation, good colors, cool look and feel. Aside from giving help to clients, they have design tips, SEO techniques, and other literature you can browse, even if you're not a plastic surgeon. Personally, I want to study their case studies to get ideas for my own clients. Haha! Learn from the masters, so they say, so I shall.

Hm. I think I'll be frequenting this site often starting now. XD

Monday, May 14, 2007

scrutiny: drphilipmiller.com

Yeah. Another surgery site. Told you so. This time, it's on New York liposuction. Expect a couple more of this. Heeheehee.

One thing I'll say: Dr. Philip Miller got himself a good web designer.

Colors: Arrrghdammit. I LOVE the use of colors on this site. Smooth, clean, and soft. Blues and greens most usually works well, I think, since they're pretty close in the color spectrum. (But still, some websites pick the most horrid blue+green combinations.)

Layout: Enough white space, good content organization. Cool structure. Hm. These guys are good!

Navigation: So many links, but nicely organized! So few websites achieve this. I think it'd be more interesting, though, if they used rollovers for the main links.

Content: I like how honest they are. In th FAQ section, they answered the questions honestly, but they have a way of making it sound good. Haha!

Fonts and Graphics: Photos are minimal, but that's perfectly fine. Although the pages are wordy, the font (color and face) on the background makes it easy on the eyes. The swirls and gradients in this websites give it sort of a feminine look, yet not going overboard. Nice, nice.

My overall rating: 9 \10

Yep. I like how this site looks. Very nicely done!

Sunday, May 13, 2007

scrutiny: Dr. Andrew Frankel

Dr. Frankel is a rhinoplasty revision specialist in Los Angeles. It's basically a site about him (his academic history, credentials, philosophy about surgery, etc.), but is also contains a handful of information about surgery itself.





Design: Nice. Professional looking. A bit too professional-looking, though, since, upon loading, I thought I had stumbled upon a Business Consulting website. Hehe. Although I think that the colors can be improved to make the site look even more inviting, I think that the grey, white and blue works nicely. The graphics are done well. The way they're cropped (not the usual square shapes) make the site look interesting.

Content: I like the writing style, actually. Straight to the point, yet not stiff-sounding. Not bookish at all. I wonder who wrote them. Hehe. The content has a good balance between those about the Doctor, and those about surgery.


Navigation: Everything is clear. Links are self-explanatory, and you can go where you want to easily.


Layout: Margins are pefrect, and it's easy to read things. Although pages are wordy, it's not tiring at all!


My overall rating: 7/10
This site works, and it works good. That's what's important. Although it didn't wow me or anything, I'm smiling about it, nonetheless.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

scrutiny: MyBodyPart.com

The scrutiny continues! Hehehe. For this batch, I got offers from several companies... Eight out of ten offers being from plastic surgery companies. It feels weird, but what the heck.



Scrutiny #3: MyBodyPart.com



MyBodyPart.com is a network of plastic surgeons in the United States. Aside from (obviously) giving surgeons a place in the Internet, the website's aim is to be a directory to help people who are looking for plastic surgery. Like, if you're looking for Orange County plastic surgery, all you have to do is go to the website and look at their directory.

Okay, I'm going to be honest here: As a web designer, I didn't like the website. At all. About the only nice thing I liked about the design is that the banner has a nicely masked photo.

Colors: Although my favorite color is blue, and I tend to like blue-colored websites, this one made me wince a bit. The blues and white would've been fine, but the red boxes here and there totally destroyed the design. They stuck out like a sore thumb.

Layout: The sidebar on the left would've been better off with a background color, too. Maybe the dark blue they used on the banner? Also, they have WAY too much advertisements, too. Or maybe they just couldn't fix adds in an attractive way? I mean, it IS possible, as I've seen websites with a hundred Google Ads on them, but they didn't look annoying...

Navigation: The good thing about this is that the navigation tools are right where they're supposed to be, and I guess they're pretty much organized. But to tell you the truth, I still felt kind of lost as I browsed the site. In the homepage, it says on the introduction that the website is a network for surgeons. But as I browsed through the site, I kept thinking: where is the network? Okay, maybe I just couldn't see it when it was right in front of my eyes, but isn't it that important links should be visible? So visible that it should be seen even when someone isn't looking it?

Content: Maybe this is the second thing I like about the site. It has a lot of literature about plastic surgery. On top of that, they have literature about surgery in the cities they've got listed.

*sigh*

I'm sorry if I sound oh-too-critical, but...yeah. I would rate this site 1 out of 10. Lots to work on, really. Maybe they should get professional web designers to work on improving their site.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

scrutiny: glasgoldgroup.com

Yeah, I'm on a roll.

Scrutiny#2: New Jersey Plastic Surgery

I don't know why, but most of the medical sites I've seen so far have score low on design for me. But this site... This site scores good, I think. Their layout is easy to use, easy on the eyes, and contains quality content.

The colors are nice: they used earthly green and brown and managed NOT too look like an environmental website. The writing's good: straight to the point while being slightly (but not too obviously) adversatorial.

The images are nicely done. The doctors on the banner look wise and intelligent and nice. (they may not be the real doctors, anyway, but who cares?) I especially liked how they did their before and after pictures. Some cosmetic (and even home improvement) before and after photos make their 'before" photos look ugly so that the "after" photos look ethereally good. In this site, though, the "before" photos look fine, but the "after" photos look better. Kudos for that.

The rollovers are clean and simple, and they managed to organize their hundred gazillion links properly. Everything catches the eye's attention, but they don't compete with each other. They complement each other, and the site doesn't look cluttered.

The only thing I can criticize about it is that the hover color for the links in the footer make the anchor text disappear. But that's about it.

Needless to say, this website scored high points to me. I give it a 4.5 out of 5. Look at this website, I say, and learn from it.