Please Give Input On My Site (Country Custom Tile)
Please review my site and give me any pointers that you can. Design, layout, coding etc. I was told that my color sceme was to dark. Does the color being dark really affect my traffic like I was told. I am trying so hard to get my site right. Please help with this. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am using Dreamweaver 8.02
http://www.countrycustomtile.com
Thanks in advance for any help,
Rick
Megan posted this at 20:41 — 17th August 2006.
She has: 11,421 posts
Joined: Jun 1999
It wouldn't have an affect on your traffic, since nobody could know that before visiting your site. It would have an affect on the effectiveness of your site though. Dark backgrounds generally look less professional than lighter backgrounds. They do work well on entertainment or artistic sites but not usually for businesses.
Your site does have a very unprofessional look, to be honest. A lot of work needs to be done on the visual design, layout, and font styles. Avoid trying to put everything on the front page. Try to highlight a few key ideas and allow users to navigate to other pages for more information.
The navigation menu looks really strange. It looks like it was borrowed from another site or something. It looks completely out of place - the design doesn't match the rest of the site at all. At first I wondered if it was an ad or some sort of plugin type thing for another site. To make things even more confusing, it disappears on other pages and is replaced by a text based menu.
Megan
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MarcMiller posted this at 21:47 — 19th August 2006.
They have: 25 posts
Joined: Jul 2005
Hi
the link to your site is presently not working for me. I do not know if this is intentional in regard to the criticism you received above or if you are not aware of this. I have obtained a link to your site via the Internet archive. It was of the site as archived on Feb 08, 2005. The link is here. http://web.archive.org/web/20050208063413/http://www.countrycustomtile.com/
In this archived version you make a statement." We want to enhance the beauty and practicality of your home through the installation of Tile and Stone." Yet I do not see any pictures of your tile and Stone work. Pictures taken by you may be good even if you are not a professional photographer since you may have a feel for how tile and Stone could beautify a home. The pictures must be saved and are appropriate low-resolution version for the Web. Which numerous graphic programs can achieve some of them being freely available as free downloads on the Web. The pictures should be kept small because of download time considerations. However as I see it what you need is some over all impression shots may be just one or two to gather with a few detailed shots of the tile and Stone. The site I saw as the same utility as a phone book ad which may possibly help your business, however when I go to the Web I anticipate seeing pictures for a product like yours. And unlike a printed advertisement you get picture rendering on your web site almost for free. There will be only a little extra a cost for server capacity if you include some pictures in your site.
Marc
mrcountry posted this at 21:42 — 20th August 2006.
They have: 10 posts
Joined: Aug 2006
Yes I was aware of the site being down. My host said that the data center has had major problems. I am trying to find a new host as we speak. I understand things happen but when you call and call and support want answer or wont call you back there is a problem. It's back up for now and I am in the works of changing the whole site. Thanks for taking a look.
Rick
mandyjb posted this at 03:25 — 21st August 2006.
She has: 164 posts
Joined: Aug 2006
Lovely site. but i think their is too much text jammed all in one section. It needs partitions. Try some curved boxes or coloured boxes to differentiate the columns.
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http://www.animalcorner.co.uk
dataman posted this at 14:39 — 21st August 2006.
They have: 7 posts
Joined: Aug 2006
When people visit your site you have won half of the battle, they are paying attention to you. Your site must entice them to stay and look at your message. To keep them interested you must use all of your skills to cater to their needs and desires.
Color conveys a mood. Think of the mood you want your customers to be in and select colors that suggest that mood. Select text and background colors that contrast well for easy reading, but are not jarring. You want attention focused on what you are saying not the colors you select. Unfortunately your current dark color selections would be better suited to promoting a video game where you hunt underground monsters than selling tile.
Eliminate clutter do not try to put everything on one page. If your page is too complicated the visitor may be confused and give up before reading your message. Look at your competition what mood do they convey, what can you do to improve their pages. Let them inspire you to do better.
Use pictures man is a visual animal. Show the beauty of your tile but keep the image files small for quick loading. Consider using a subtle tile pattern as a background image.
To have an effective web site you must learn view your site from their perspective.
Here are some tips and tricks that may help you improve your website.
1. Learn to use external style sheets. They allow you to easily try several font and color combinations easily. Try using the same file name with a unique number such as $style1.css, $style2.css, and $style3.css. This will allow you to have several different style sheets on your website at one time. Use a include statement in you header such as : . Now you can rename each file in turn to style.css and view the results.
2. Keep a duplicate copy of you web pages on your website. I copy the files into a empty directory and then prefix each file with a ‘$’. Next copy these files back into your main directory and load them on your website. Note this works better if all of the links are modified with the ‘$’ also. You now have a private operating copy of your website to experiment with. When you are pleased with the results simply remove the ‘$’s from the files.
3. If you still need help on color selection look up information on using a color wheel and how colors affect our perceptions. This information is used extensively in the interior and graphic designs fields.
4. Learn to enhance your pictures brightness and contrast or get a photo program that automatically optimizes your pictures. Professional sites need professional photographs and many pictures look dull and flat directly from digital cameras. Your photographs must sell your product, learn how to take stunning photographs or hire a professional.
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