Preserved Topic: First go at a commercial site - suggestions?

Crowmart

I've been asked to do this for a friend of a friend. The story goes something like this....

Q: What do you sell?
A: Anything really.

Q: What audience are you aiming it at?
A: Everyone

Q: Have you seen any sites you like?
A: Lots. Don't know why or which.

Q: Is there anything specific you want/don't want on your site?
A: No.

Q: Do you have any colours that you'd prefer?
A: Something not too harsh

Q: What's your company called?
A: We don't have a name. I quite like the sound of Crow Mart though, because my name's Crow.

HEEEEEEEELP! This is the man who doesn't know what he wants (or apparently what he does!) but he has still asked me to do a site ASAP for him!

This is what I have put together. It is only basic and I am only a beginner. Can you think of anything else? Anything that needs changing?

Comments appreciated. Cheers

Well...here we go.

• Great color scheme. I'm a big fan of muted colors.
• The mouse-trail is inherantly irritating on a commercial site. People go there to find what they need and buy it--they dont' want to be entertained by birds following their pointer.
• With that in mind, you'll want to lose the animation of the bird flying over trees (and apparently getting shot down and killed at the end of it--which doesn't make sense), because it simply adds more activity to an already active page.
• The scrolling marquee at the top is also rather disctracting. Really, let me change that--anything that scrolls without my input is irritating on a page.
• The animation for "hot deals" looks as though it was just taken from one of those CDs with lots of gif animations on them--again, it's distracting and unprofessional.
• The more I look at this page, the more distracted I am. 6 things that animate on one single page is way too much. One is almost too much.
• In general the layout is fine--it's clean and concise, which is completely upstaged by the fact that your animations constantly drag people's eyes away from what is really important--selling shit via the internet.

I recognize the type... my last customer came to the meeting when we were talking about he wanted for the page, only bringing his business card to show what colour he wanted the logo to be. As for the rest he had no idea.

I will have to agree with almost all what Twitch said about your page. I like basic colour, but there are far too many things moving around. The blinking bird in the upper left corner I like. I also thought it was fun that it opened its beak when the mouse was moved over it. (The colour of the beak is perhaps a little off to be a crow, but I am sure I am the only one that would even notice or care about that sort of thing <g> )
The rest of the animations I would probably get rid of. The bird to the right looks ok too, and if this was a page that was aimed only at crows, it would work, but not for a company that sells things that has nothign to do with the birds besides their name.

The white part in the middle looks a little too dominating to me, but that might only be because I look at the page in maximized screen. When I make the window smaller it looks much more well-proportioned.

I think this is a page that has potential, and I am sure you will get it to look even better.

hmmm... the only comment I have is htat your navigation is not very obvious... apart from that the page is OK.. also too many moving things bug me..

Guess I overdid the crow thing as it was all I had to go on! You are right though, I shall take some off.

Cheers for your advice - more always welcome.

Ali

wow... those crows? that follow your mouse around are like a big rubberband... heh... i really havent read anything else here so is this dude selling crows? you dont have to answer that.....

Gee this review shtuff is easy.
Everything above x2 =)
They said everything I was going to. Sorry.