Please Critique/Give Suggestions For Website...Needs Overhaul.

Welcome to TWF,

Firstly can you please post your reviews on some of the other sites in the forum. This will help out others having a fresh pair of eyes on their site and then they in turn will help you out.

I've just had a very quick look at your site and the first thing I will say is that it needs a logo, as this will give the site an identity and make it stand out. Other than that it just looks a bit bland. I don't think the stripes help, so maybe get a good strong colour scheme and think how to incorporate that.

Don't center your links, any text centered is harder to read and just makes it look less professional.

I would also say that you need to make it clearer what links stay on your site and which go elsewhere.

I'll carry on looking and post anymore findings in a bit.

Welcome to the TWF GrainFarmer, could you help us out by critiqing other sites as it helps us all out having different peoples opinions, thanks

Looks pretty much the same in IE5 as it does in Netscape 4.7, at 800x600 which is great

A few things thou, the text title at the top should realy be a icon or banner, the name by itself looks like an advertising link.
The tractors should be transparent (if used at all) and spaced away from the animated banner, also add border="0" to the banner to take away the blue border.
the links (mainly on the left side) are to small, and should be aligned left instead of center, center can make links look messy when different lengths.

the blue links and blue tractor are a little bit to much blue, maybe swap the lined background for a netrual color to blend these blues.

At the bottom left you have a weather do da, I always feel left out when I cant use these , only zip code I know is 90290 or whatever that tv program was.

I took a quick look inside your site (for sale page), the right column is to wide compared to your index layout, make the middle section the main view point otherwise people could get confused which is the main part to be viewing.
and your links are different colors, use the same font style and link color/style throughout.

THe tractor on there is definitely the wrong colour. IT should be green. That's right, green Tractors are green, not red or blue or yellow:)

You really need to find a better picture there for your logo... I'm not sure where you could go about finding one but there's got to be something out there. If you're planning on doing more webiste work you might want to invest in Hemera Photo Objects (I think it's only $100 US or so) - there are some good photos of (green) tractors in there. Find a good photo and put "Used Farm Equipment" beside it in an interesting font.

I agree that the design here is rather bland. If you had a better logo that would help a lot. Also define a better colour schme (how about green on a white base with yellow accents??). I'm finding the links on the left to be a little on the small side and they definitely shouldn't be centered. Make sure your look and feel is consistent throughout the site.

One thing I'm wondering about is your location. If your ad services are limited to a certain country or geographical region you should make that clear on the front page.

Quote: THe tractor on there is definitely the wrong colour. IT should be green. That's right, green Tractors are green, not red or blue or yellow:)

am I guessing right that you like green
In NZ the standard color for a tractor is red, green is a brand named tractor, john deree, so using green, yellow and white would/could be saying this product is related to them. some of the very first tractors were black with big steam engines, hey now theres an option lol

I was mostly kidding about that, thus the smiles. I was trained at a very young age. My dad made us sallute when we went by a John Deere dealership. When I was in grade one we had this farm unit in school and there was this little activity book we had to do. One of the pages had a picture of a tractor with the instruction to colour the tractor red. I thought 'tractors aren't red they're green' so I coloured it green and ended up getting called up to the teacher's desk. Dad and his farmer buddies are always arguing about what kind of tractor is best... it's kind of a running joke. I kind of thought that all farmers had an allegance to one brand or another.

(by me)

I remeber the first tractor I ever drove, actually it was the first thing I ever drove, I was about 11, couldnt reach the clutch and brake at the same time as the center section was to high, going up a narrow track, dirt wall on one side, long drop (not the toilet) on the other and a silly cow that wouldnt move fast approaching, I was only in 2nd or 3 rd gear but to me i was racing, all i could do was close my eyes and move the front bucket up and down hoping to scare the cow away, the person teaching me to drive was laughing so hard they nearly fell off. no one got hurt.

anyway, back to the ideas, why does it have to be a tractor? the sites about equipment and even thou a tractor is a main item it isnt the only one, maybe use whatever your best selling item is (if known), even if only on one side while tractor is one the other

I would fill in that large blank area at the lower right.
Also but some CSS codes in between the of your site to have some fast easy mouse over effects on your links. Go to any search engine and type in "free css codes"

Hello Grain Farmer,
I reviewed your site to see exactly what the discussion was about. I instantly noticed no distinguishing logo, uniformity, or visual smoothness to page.

I would start your overhaul first with designing a page layout containing a logo and uniformed background color/image scheme to match (creating a template). I would align the most popular links at the top, then working the popularity of each link accordingly.

I would instantly trash the "white-blue tractors" at the top of page, and use alternative "farming" images using "clear" gif image background to allow natural blending of image.

The links you have on each table should have a "title header" for categories in bold colors or images to seperate each section. This will segregate each section as to not looking like they run on & on without uniformity as your page currently demonstrates.

I hope this has helped you. You can get some tools to help you by stopping in our site.
http://www.designerwiz.com

Your site looks great to me.

Maybe a nice looking logo design would be good in the upper left corner but that's about it.

George

...definitely pay attention to what others have said. Lots of great tips!

First of all, I didn't see any tractors.

It would be ok to collapse your top level links:
Farm Equipment
Auctions
Ag Markets
Farm Financing
Farm Store
Other Links
Advertising Information
Contact Us

Also, you do not need to repeat Farm so many times. Your site is about farm equipment and topics related to farming, so you don't need to repeat it throughout your site.

When moving around sections the link color scheme changes. Too confusing. Keep it consistent. You also need to incorporate a method of letting the user know where they are on your site.

Hope that helps. Look forward to seeing your update!