Topic: please look at site (Page 1 of 1)

Hi

could you please have a look at the following site and tell me what you think, it a site i did for myself for my wedding.

Cheers
http://www.geezonline.co.uk

The menu has to many elements. You should always to try keep bellow 6 or 7 menu elements. With less than 7 elements the user has a much easier time to disinguise and regocnize the different elements. The 'bookmark us' link should go, your user know how to bookmark a page and if he wants to bookmark your page he'll do it even if you remove the link. The dotted line just bellow the menu isn't really necessary, you've got one at the bottom to separate things.

In the top left corner you got a number floating without any description. Since the number increased when I refreshed the site I'm guessing it is a page counter. If it is a page counter you should remove it, if it is not a page counter you should also remove it since it doesn't serve any purpose except make the user wonder what it is there for.

You've also got a 'Today is...' text at the page. I've never seen a reason to add something like that. The user knows what day it is, and if he don't he won't go to your page just to check it out. You should also update your page more often, a 'last updated sept 2003' doesn't make the page seem very active so people aren't likely to return. Bellow your header there is also a 'there are only' text floating around. Any reason why it is there?

The page doesn't validate. You should take a look at your code again and fix what errors there are so it valid. A CSS based layout (instead of a table based one) would also have been favourable, but I won't go into that now.

But I like the layout and colors. Simple and effective, as it should be. But you might consider adding some warmer colors to the page. All the colors you've used now are kind of cold. Maybe make the headers on the right hand side more orangish instead of the yellow tint they have now. At least I think you should have some warmer colors in there to convey a warmer, happier feeling



_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

i don't know why but for some reason when i viewed that site i felt an urge to grab a pair of scissors and start clipping coupons...

I like it, but have a few suggestions.

1)I have two problems with the dotted lines. One, they don't match the backgroud, they are slightly off, at least to me. Two, as Boudga insinuated, there are way too many of them. Maybe make the main lines solid and the lines inside the main body dashed. As it is now they all run together like.

2) I like the colors, but I agree with Veneficuz. I personally prefer a bit more contrast also. Nothing is really standing out to me on this page. And all kind of just sits there and waits for me to make a decision, instead of just grabbing me and leading me.

3) Too much dead space above the header.

4) I realize the page counter would be something somebody with a wedding web site might request, but I would put it in the traditional space proceeded by the words "This page has been accessed X times." or something. As Veneficuz said, it's not very explanitory. I hit refresh as well just to be sure.

5) Learn CSS layout, you won't regret it.

I could be wrong, but don't search engines allow only a certain amount of keywords? Could somebody clarify or debunk this, as I've often wondered.

Ramasax

[This message has been edited by Ramasax (edited 01-17-2004).]

Hi,

Thanks for posts, i also forgot to mention that this is also my first proper ....ish site, and would class myself as very very very novice !! as you can all probably guess.

Will look at changing some ares as suggested

Pain is weakness leaving the body!

When I rollover the photo of the people hugging the color image jumps up a couple pixels. I'm not sure if you meant for it to do that but it's kind of annoying to me.

In your already mentioned egregious menu, "Accomodation" should be "Accomdations."

That little status bar randomizer text thingy annoys me. That's just a personal opinion.



:::11oh1:::

quote:

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I could be wrong, but don't search engines allow only a certain amount of keywords? Could somebody clarify or debunk this, as I've often wondered.

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I've never heard of any search engine having a max allowance for keywords. But some search engines (Google among them) ignores keyword meta tag. Google uses the actual page content when deciding how 'important' your page is. So to get a good ranking in Google the keywords should be used in the text. Words inside <hn> and the <title> tag are also given more importance than other words.

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio -

Hmm, thanks for clearing that up for me.
*wishes all search engines were like Google*

I can't even get my site to come up at all on MSN search, and in the past, most of the time it takes months to get on there.