Show HN: Our Vancouver based web agency just launched. We'd love your feedback. (opens in new tab)

This page is proof you can make pretty websites. Sadly, it might also evidence that you may stink at marketing. Its way to busy for me to follow a distinct line, and there is abosolutely no structured copy for me to read. Plus you put the very little copy you have in a carrousel and made it hard to read with some weird color choices.

Now, luckily for you, I'm not your target market ( I think, there is no way for me to know ). Which makes me ask the following question:

Who is your target market? If you answer with every business in Vancourver who wants/needs a website done, then you are taking the wrong route here.

Note: I'm not trying to rain on your parade. So dont take it as an insult, but as real feedback from someone who does copywriting/marketing.

Dead Links: Privacy Policy and TOS link in the footer [1]

Landing Page: changed on me while I was reading the first slide, suggestion: on hover pause slideshow

Contact Form: Major pop in due to the form element shifting in place when animating, suggestion: avoid the .toggle and use CSS3 transitions, specifically I would use a linear 350ms transition on the top property and move from -400px to 0px. (fallback to JS animation if the browser doesn't support CSS3 transitions).

Seeded Comments: Your DISQUS integration has a number of 5 month old "test" comments, suggestion: get rid of those :) [2]

Unoptimized Static Assets: I know you're using Wordpress, but IMHO it always rubs me the wrong way when marketing sites brag about "dev prowess" and fail to concatenate, minify and optimize CSS, JavaScript and Images; suggestion: do all those things. Also, use ImageOptim and you can compress your site images and net some performance [3]

[1] http://cl.ly/image/3J3d1F2r0P2f

[2] http://cl.ly/image/1q3f1D440H1J

[3] http://cl.ly/image/0N3d3H0m2803

The first thing I noticed was that your header text is part of the same JPEG image that has each background image: http://redstamp.ca/wp-content/themes/redstamp/images/layout/.... This is especially visible with the red text, which is thoroughly mangled by the compression, but it's just as obvious with the white lettering if you're used to being grouchy about how browsers all render text differently poorly ;)

Speaking as a nerd / web developer, I would of course be delighted if you managed to use @font-face (via Typekit or whatever) with something clever to draw the strikethrough, or an SVG, since that would scale really nicely with high resolution screens and mobile browsers (which use funny DPI numbers). For a simple and widely portable solution, though, please please please just move the text from those images to transparent PNGs. It's making my eyes hurt.

Of course, I'm hoping you fix it because I expect to see more of your website. Good luck! I live here, so Vancouver-based web developers are my favourite :)

Great looking site, and I love the strike-through approach you used in your marketing copy.

However, I did notice a couple issues:

1. There seems to be a few problems with the font you are using, as some of the words seem to run into each other, at least on Chrome. Some of the sub-headings on this page are borked, for example: http://redstamp.ca/design/

2. I like the carousel, but found it fairly annoying when it would continue to auto-scroll after I had clicked on one of the Design, Development, or Marketing links. I eventually noticed the pause button, but I think it would be far more intuitive if you automatically paused the auto-scroll when a user clicks one of those links, as with that action they are showing an interest in that particular service, and probably need time to read the content on that carousel panel.

:)

It's a wonderfully designed site; I love how the splash page draws your eyes to where they belong, without being overly obtrusive. One criticism: on http://redstamp.ca/development/, you may want to change the menu that changes position as you scroll. Maybe keep it fixed to the top of the screen as you scroll down, but when you scroll up, it should stay in position until it hits the bottom of the screen, and then begin to move up once it's out of the viewable area. When you're at the top of the page, it can move back to its home. That's just a suggestion on top of what's already very nice work.

Looks like you may be loading three separate instances of modernizr.

http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/2.0.4/modern...

http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/2.0.4/modern...

http://redstamp.ca/wp-content/themes/redstamp/js/modernizr.c...

In your contact form, you're using ticks, but you can't choose more than one. This is inconsistent with the way radio buttons usually look.

Would also be good if your Google Map linked to the Google Maps site, rather than just an image.

Might just be me, but I find the two column layout of your blog bizarre to read, especially as the first column doesn't end cleanly before it goes onto the next.

I wonder if the "Contact" is prominent enough (knowing how dumb some potential clients can be...) maybe have it in red too?

"We’re full-service, Vancouver-based, work-proven, and incredibly lovable."

Sounds like an Escort Service.

Am I correct in assuming you're all under 25-years old? Hey, there's nothing wrong with that. But I would suggest a little bit more gravitas for the website.

And the stock photographs make the website look like a travel guide.

Having said that, I think the website is very well done, if somewhat "busy", and I predict you'll soon have more work then you can handle.

there is no 'people' or 'about us' link. i can't find a single person's name.

Your contact form doesn't look right for me in Chrome (the "email" and "pm" options are pushed down a line). Also at 1024x768, the page wiggles when I scroll down by dragging the middle mouse button, but the extra horizontal content is just unintentional-looking whitespace.

In chrome, the "Email" label is pushed down, below the checkbox.

Beautiful! If i still lived in Vancouver I'd come work for ya :) I would however recommend a responsive design considering you do mobile web development.

We're also about to re-launch our website and we have very similar service offerings. Reading the critiques and praises here is helpful for us also :).

The carousel at the top rotates too quickly. I didn't have time to read a single complete block of text.

Otherwise the site looks great.

There are quite a few CSS bugs in chrome/windows. You see it a lot with the titles overlapping themselves and with the link hovers.

Domain in html title tag is: RedStamp.caredstamp.ca

Could that be your dev domain since it doesn't match production?

Typo on 'both' in /marketing/ "To E or not to E ... in btoh direct mail and e-mail campaigns..."

Always great to see new agencies in Vancouver. Site looks really nice as well.

lots of roll-over issues in chrome. Especially in the footer. http://i49.tinypic.com/35jf6zc.jpg

good luck in Vancouver, eh.

No mobile version of the site?

In your headings, my eyes were immediately drawn to the block letter text. It was only after I processed it and realized that your message couldn't be "we do mundane things" that it occurred to me to re-read it. Then I found the strikeout and scribblings.

You might consider beefing up the strikeout line and using a stencil font with a more fetching shade of red. Perhaps laid over the revoked text.

Or just drop the idea altogether -- I mean, what's the message there? "We were going to tell you how ordinary we are, but at the last minute we decided we're actually pretty extraordinary after all."

I would not call that your best foot.

I don't have anything constructive to say, except that if I had to leave New York I would love to live in Vancouver. How hard is it to find talent/clients there?