My first plung into web pages..

[ozwinner]

Hi all.
I have made a website for our shop, and I want any hints/tips you lot can give me about the layout, feel of the place.

Is it too cluttered, too slow, too anything?

I havent included any email contacts because I dont want to be bombarded with crap from Russia etc.

What about the sites security, what do I need to do or be doing?

http://www.treasures-on-plenty.com.au

Thanks guys and gals..
I expect you lot to be brutal, so dont hold back, just make sure you are wearing your leather Cod Piece when you whip me.

Al

[Wood Butcher]

Looks pretty good. The only thing I would change is the colour of the text listing down each side of the page. It is a bit hard to read against that background. Otherwise has everything you need.

[bitingmidge]

Well it certainly reflects the shop!

The pics could do with a navigation button when openened in a new screen, and I reckon are too big.

I think they could do with some words as well, just to keep the spruiking thing happening.

I wonder how many people will find that they are "clickable" without help?

I don't mind the grey, even though it's harder to read, it sort of reflects where the treasures are...all there in front of you but you've got to look for them and if they were black or a different colour they could well make the page look a bit cluttered.

Your phone number runs to two lines on my browser, so the buttons could be further apart to allow for the html between to spread out a bit. I think they could be a bit bigger too, I missed them the first time round.

But I'm an uncluttered sort of girl!

Cheers,

P

[Coldamus]

On computers with screen resolution of 1024 x 768, it looks fine. On 800 x 600 it is not so good - as per Midge's comments. The viewer has to scroll right and left as well as up and down to see a whole page.

Personally I would re-do it in 800 x 600 mode and then it should look OK on anything from that resolution up. It is generally accepted that 1024 x 768 or higher is now the norm. For people in the IT industry it certainly is but your target market of mums and dads are more likely to be using older computers.

But hey, you're on the web and that's one major hurdle overcome. You can take your time now and refine as you go.

regards
Coldamus

[womble]

looks good, now you just have to catalogue and photograph everything and upload it to an online format, should be easy

[echnidna]

An email address on your website is very important Al,
You could do it as a text within a graphic, that way the bots won't see it.
Or get a yahoo email address that you can dispose of if necessary.

I use 2 different yahoo addresses,
plus emails to my domains are redirected to the yahoo addresses.
I don't get that much rubbish,
but then again I don't surf the sites,
they do send you a lot of junk.

[chrisb691]

So you want brutal..huh.

I'm not so good at brutal, so constructive criticism will needs suffice.

1) The site needs to be as pleasing as possible for the most possible number of visitors. Now you can't, and never will, please everyone. However, the bulk of pc users are still using 800 X 600 screen resolution, so you need to build you site to suit this res. When you work on the site, change your display over to 800 X 600, then you'll be seeing what it looks like to the majority of visitors.

2) On your front page, I found it hard to read the sidebar text. You need to bring the visibilty up somewhat.

3) I have several comments re you photo pages
a) If you are going to put photos up.....make sure they are in focus.
b) set the size of the photos to 640 X 480, which will ensure they will display okay on a 800 X 600 page.
c) I know they say that a photo is worth a thousand pages, but that is crap. You MUST have some text to explain what the visitor is seeing, otherwise it's just boooorrrring.
d) You need to put a navigation link back to the previous page, otherwise your visitor might hit the x button (thinking the page is a popup), and you've lost them. I did it.

Otherwise, it's a fair enough first attempt, which you'll improve on as you go along.

[Daddles]

Sorry Al, but it looks cluttered and messy to me, and you can blame the pictures for that, there's so much in them that it pervades the whole page which is a pity because in reality, the page isn't cluttered and messy, it just looks it thanks to those pictures being so busy.

The grey on grey text at the sides is a non-event ... they're so hard to see that few will take the trouble - the average time spent on a webpage is a few seconds, no more.

Anything underlined on the internet is assumed to be a link so your underlined heading with no link caused a few moments of wondering if it was or wasn't.

The little statement at the bottom isn't needed legally and I don't really think it's needed in the real world either. At the moment, having it so large and having it there at all screams 'amateur'.

Not having an email address says that you aren't all that interested in being contacted. Sorry. The paranoia about bots and spam is just that, paranoia. Go to my (now horribly out of date) website and you'll find my email all over it, live and clickable, and I don't get a lot of spam and certainly far less than people here complain about. Put it up - you'll get more annoying emails from seppos who don't understand that they can't drive to you than anything else (this experience from running the ex's shop website for eight years).

I'd open the pictures in a new window, otherwise you'll get people doing what I just did, click the red cross and close the lot.

At the moment, your site just tells us there's a shop there - it doesn't tell us anything. Put some of that up, plus freebies, everyone loves a freebie, so add some pages about cleaning stuff, restoring stuff, the sort of eejit question people ask.

Speed? I'm on broadband and it popped up as sweet as you please. I'm also got my resolution set at above 800x600 so it looked fine apart from the above comments.

You did NOT include any dates of latest changes, etc. This is GOOD. Well done. This page will not need constant updating to keep it current and that, coming from someone who has maintained a series of sites over about 15 years, is a good thing. Maintaining a website can be a bear and even one as benign as yours will go out of date with a frightening speed.

You're smart to keep the initial site simple and not to promise too much for the future - sadly, the future often doesn't come despite the best intentions. Keep the thing 'complete' on the web - no blank links.

Do you have some method of tracking who visits? There are websites that, if you include a little bit of code to your page, will tell you how many people have been there, where they went and where they came from. This is very useful for working out what is working and what isn't on your site, and where your hits originate from. I use StatCounter.com - they offer a free service and a more comprehensive pay service (I use the free).

You avoided the temptation to use the frames, java, css, and all that other #### the the pros like to smother pages with. Keep it to simple html code and you'll be able to work on it yourself and you won't people off when they visit you.

You did well Al. Seriously. The comments above might feel like I'm overly critical but I'm not, already it's better than a lot that I see and that includes work by so called 'professional' web designers. You'll tidy that up nicely as time goes on and as you realise that something is bugging you or wants changing. Keep it simple and it will serve you well.

Richard

[maglite]

Bl###dy amazing, i never realised that that you could get that much sh.. , erm quality merchandise onto an acre

[Daddles]

Bl###dy amazing, i never realised that that you could get that much sh.. , erm quality merchandise onto an acre

You'd better tell Al about the 'quality merchandise', I'm sure it's not supposed to be there

Richard

[Andy Mac]

It looks good! I'm sold and wanna visit, but you're in Mexico!! My only comments, and I'm not an expert, so take it with a grain of salt:

• the grey is YUK!
• It seems you have doubled up the list of goods on each side of the front page, is that for symmetry? I thought they were seprate items, and also tried clicking on them for a better look!?
• The photo of the shop is fascinating, but I found it out of focus, and it took up the whole screen.

Keep going, I'm sure it will do your business good!

[chrisb691]

Daddles does brutal really well.

[echnidna]

I reckon Daddles is right on the button Al,

Keep it simple.

The easier it is to read the more likely you will get sales from it.

I'd just have 1 pic of the shop and I'd call it something like "shoppers heaven"

Add pics of selected items, priced and all,
I'd even put "buy Now" buttons on the items.

You might sell some stuff online,
(lets face people buy anything on ebay so why not from your website)
you need to make it so easy for your buyers they snap the goodies up.

[Barry_White]

Your phone number runs to two lines on my browser, so the buttons could be further apart to allow for the html between to spread out a bit. I think they could be a bit bigger too, I missed them the first time round.


Cheers,

P

Hey Midge you obviously need something better than a Mac.

[sbranden]

I agree with the grey on grey being difficult to read. Also:

• change the title tag to have more than just "index"
• I get the over one acre of goodies line covered up with the images
• phone number is split over 2 lines
• must have an email address
• need text for the pics
• navigation doesn't work when javascript is turned off
• 640x480 images would load quicker
• doesn't validate with some minor errors http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...-plenty.com.au

It is one of the better first attempts though