Review Request: Booman Floral

Welcome and Thanks for reviewing some sites.
the old one made by frontpage is the better one, except the text at the bottom, don't use font like "Abadi MT Condensed" for the main reason people may not have it, and if they do it's to hard to read at size 1.
The reason I like the old one or rather dont like the new one as much is its to square, everything is boxed and it doesnt flow with the topic (plants and nature and things) you need more curves to let the topic flow into/with the design. Same as the colours, you have bright green, darker green, browny yellow and a light yellow of which none really go together.
If it was mine, I'd make a banner and blend pics of flowers together across the top, pick a colour for a side column and use all the page (100% widths) as the white space will give inpact to the pictures. art gallerys seperate the displays for a reason.
The link color on the light yellow is to hard to make out from the text.
You say your just begining but I reckon you've done this before but number one rule, just because you can doesn't mean you should. remember that rule, another is KISS - keep it simple, silly
IMO background change on hover is anything but professional or tidy (was a big phase for a while) but you have to stop and think of your targeted visitor, is he or she a home gardner, a store owner, a cyber nerd? do they know what a link looks like? )if you remove the underline), do they know a picture that adds/removes a border when mouse is placed over it a link?
I haven't got a green thumb so could be understandable I don't understand some of the terms in the descriptions, or should I? example, what is PPP ? or 1500 to 2000 fc ? or even 180 ppm N ?

You have the right idea and are off to a great start, just need to expose it a bit more, create a flow of page design and content.
last bit you should add to your contact page that you are in USA and if you deliver overseas or not, or could take orders from someone overseas for someone there

I have to say that I totally agree with Busy! Although there are many things I'd change about the old design I really do prefer the curves and free flow of it compared to the boxyness of the new one. You could still have the new layout but with the use of some nice curvey graphics and a good logo the feel would be completely altered.

Same with the colours, those greens just do not go together! Green is perhaps one of the hardest colours to get different shades to look right together. Really it should be limited to two shades of green, one light & one dark, plus maybe some brown shades if you need more colours.

The pages should really all be the same width (or stretch to fit) but on the Facilities the page suddenly gets wider because of that big picture and causes a horizontal scrollbar at 800*600. I would actually suggest having all the pictures on the first page as thumbnails and then people can click on them if they want to rather than suddenly having a huge photo load up.

On your side nav section the bottom two boxes aren't the same width as the top ones when viewed at larger resolutions and they then look odd.

For your titles don't put Booman Floral at the beginning of each one and don't just have a list of keywords. The title should be around 8-10 words with the main keyword/phrase relevant to that page at the beginning if possible and be a sentence. Same with a H1 tag, although this should be around 6-8 words.

You seem to have a mixture of css embeded on the page and a global style sheet. IMO you should have everything in the stylesheet including your 'strong/bold' to get rid of those tags on the page.

Good start but some tweeking needed IMO to get the right feel for the site.

I'm not really crazy about either version but since it is the new one that you are looking for feedback on, I'll concentrate there.

The site is clean and well organized but it lacks style. It has a very generic feel to it and fails to generate any sort of "corporate identity." In a nutshell, it looks to have been "programmed" rather than "designed" - make sense?

The old site does utilize a logo and if this is a part of the company's identity, you should attempt to use this (or whatever the client currently idenifies itself with) in the redesign. The nature of the business (plants) suggests colour, life, and growth. I'd suggest trying for something less.. mechanical.

Try to incorporate images into the design, not just placed as content. Busy's suggestion of a "banner" is an example of this. The current site says to me: "I have no graphics software"

Another thing I dislike is the colour scheme. Again, given the nature of the business, I'd go for either an "earthier" combination (deep greens, browns) or something a little more flowery (bright vibrant colours)

Like I said, despite the above criticism, the site is well laid out and organized - it just needs a little flair.

OK, I made some changes... not major ones, but let me know what you guys think =)

The link is http://members.cox.net/angeldaniel/angeldaniel/index.html

Thank you again for all your input!

-somier

I'm getting an error on the page - IE6:
Line: 46
Char: 1
Error: Object expected

I do like the top part, but I'd loose the green line that's directly above the blue section and I'd actually make the blue section either a green shade or maybe yellow or orange to blend better.

I don't think the rest of the layout goes with the top section at all now! You really need to incorporate some of the finese & style from the top section to blend the harness of those boxes.

I don't like the way the green box appears behind the leaves on the home/about/contact. It spoils things IMO.