www.exabytes.com.my

Foreword

hi, this is raymond from AT HOME CREATIVE. im the creative director. now, we are 2 in soho company doing multimedia design. internet benefited us as we can work at home style office, get connected with outsite world. the company is built by 2 person with physically disabled. thanks for exabytes provided excellent and reliable web hosting service, enable us to climb higher.

we are so excited as we are 1 of the 100 to have preview on exabytes new web site. listed down below are few suggestion and command for improving the web site.

A – Improvement from current new design
A1 – contact us
This section should be appearing in front page although you have a link under ‘about us’. impressive about you have seperated contact for each department. yet, not sure about online-live-chat help, is this feature included? we found live chatting is a good way to provide your client instance solution, it’ll helps clients to understand the question further, instate of waiting for reply and reply and wait. for previous experience on using live-chat help on exabytes, the operator always ask us to write email to you directly, yet, that really performed what a live-chat help should have. suggested that, you have live-chat for each department, provide real time solution. or the operator should able to help to submit support ticket once they have been told what the need is, but not asking your client to repeat the same question on the email. anyhow, we are impressive about attitude of who is replying and take care about our ticket, although we should have to wait. besides that, we called to your office for some serious billing enquiry, yet, we can’t get though the call 4 of 5 calls, is that you have only one operator? this is a serious issue which should be solved. as your official is located in penang, we as client in kuala lumpur, calling expenses isnt small, suggested that you have special tol number on local rate. anyhow, we are very impressive about how the account department handled our issue when we called last time. good job!

for live-chat solution, please have a look:
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/helpweb?cmd=_help#
(interesting, yet not professional enough, if it do, truely can help to provide solution, yet cut down man-power, serving more people at once, more human like experience.)

A2 – User Interface Design (UI)
if compare to the previous web interface design, previous version score 90/100 on every interface presented to us, included newsletter. your graphic design department really helps to upgrade exabytes into another level of good serving. yet, in graphic aspect, current new web interface didn’t keep the quality, major on the layout arrangement dropped, it didnt remain the excellent of previous web but being dragged down 2 level, no surprise no energy. in design research term, the style isn’t clear and unique(beside the images from previous web). suggest that, go for clean and clear style + ajax non-flash navigator design, this can help to focus what are new(the nice design promotional theme) yet the navigation got minus surprise, but not the static look as current new design (this doesnt mean you should have a lot flash/gif animation which will improve the experience.) i found you applied ajax at tooltip(alt) and tab, which is nice, but more can be applied on main page.

for ajax web experience, please kindly refer to:
http://www.apple.com / http://www.apple.com/trailers/ (the trailer section)
apple.com been awarded as best ‘clean and clear’ category in web design. and current most navigation design used ajax technique( (the way pop up shown, the way button act when it’s active) which is excellent, that is what modern people need. excellent service must have excellent web design, but not old fashion.

another ajax style used e-commerce web site:
http://www.shopcomposition.com
(have a look on the combination of clean interface and interesting menu.)

A3 – client log-in panel

the panel isn’t obvious located on index. not sure where to log-in. clients are who already know what you have on web site, so please provide a quick log-in panel on index, but not log-in after few other clicks.

A4 – navigation for the index
previous web site have tabs for business, personal/soho, student and reseller, each on the tab as a title, the theme will be appear once we mouse over, this method is nice, as the measurement is big, that will be even nice it shown as slide, fade in fade out as transition. compare the new web, only one is focused, 3 others are small and lost impact listed a row below, to make the page interesting, the big one on top should come with minus animation, or what used in previous web is recommended as well.

for slide announcement board, kindly refer to (chinese web site):
http://www.eslite.com (the header and the announcement board)
eslite is the no.1 book shop in taiwan, there have no.1 design announcement theme among others. have a look on one of the announcement: http://www.eslite.com/html/event/080916_dragon/millennium.shtml
this is another level for exabytes to achieve, animated promotion theme.

A5 – the Express bar

obviously, if you’d like to stick on current new layout design, blue gradient will be more suitable instate of red. yet, you have better way to present ‘we offered different solution for different people. first, you need person representative, and you a situation. with people images, represent whether he is a student or a business man, using video to present his need and come with solution. this is how oversea doing informative web site currently, got 6-9 months history. video as contents. you have the concept, but the way to present it isnt good enough.

case study:
previously, adobe creative suite announcing cs3 packages for different user groups, graphic, web, multimedia and video etc, their previous web use different characters on video, as to deliver the message. using video on the web site can prove how stable your download speed is, a good way to prove as well.

for video like web site, kindly refer to:
http://www.u.com.my/ (unfortunately, not smooth enough)

B – Interaction that suggest to be remained/added
B1 – prizes campaign

great strategy. and good prize as well. really made us happy. suggest to have exabytes logo on some souvenir, like bag, tee, cup… can give away as gift as we like your logo very much. yet, cash and value prized also attractive too. hehe.

B2 – official blog
great idea. i hv added the blog on my google reader.

suggest that you can add the latest topic on exabytes main page, together with forum latest topic. try not to only posting exabytes related topic, some other IT news as a new category, would be interesting as well. dont hide the link under ‘about us’, should spread it, at least a latest topic on main page, as this is what other service provider dont, a good team-work spirit.

C- Conclusion
we’ve tried different hosting service companies in malaysia, in term of servicing, speed, support, exabytes.com.my is the best experience. so we are trying our best to transfer hosting we have in other company to exabytes. expected you have a better web site to serve your clients better, not only in malaysia, you have good potential to expend business internationally. we are proud to be one of your clients!

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