REVIEW REQUEST: inkprintercartridges.com

Welcome to TWF, I guess ink cartridges must be a big business, about 1/4 of the spam I get these days is about it.

The layout is clean, simple and nice but think you need a logo and maybe product image/s
why you have a no right click is beyond me, but ok its your site.
looking at your source code (yes no right clicks dont work) I think you may have gotten carried away a lil with the meta tags, watch out using to much of one word, this can be considered spaming by some search engines.
whats

Quote: Originally posted by Texas

All said, don't be afraid to express what you think. I wanta hear the good, the bad & the squigly! From colors & fonts to load times & navigation...what does the content (not necessarily the context) of this website do for you?

You really don't have to say that. We are very free to express what we think. Our main goal is to help people build better sites.

Your site is okay. By okay, I mean that it functions well for what it was intended. It is simple and clean but improvements could be made. Here are some things that I would consider changing or doing:

• Logo - One of the more common faults of sites is not having a logo. Your site is lacking in one. A logo helps to brand your site and gives you a better indentity. At the very least, have a logo with printer cartridges or mfg names in it.
• Graphics - some of the graphics are a bit 'hairy' with halos and other blurs to them. This makes it look a little unpro. You might also add a picture or two.
• Overall style - It appears that your general style is a clean site with very little distractions. I would say that your text is maybe a little too small. I would also align your blue navbar with the screen edge. Increase the font size on the links also. I would also do something different with your top navbar. Increase the font size and put it in some kind of box also.
• Code - the code using was very, very bloated. Your home page had 229 & nbsp;'s alone. Lots of Divs, a couple of different sections of styles, several tags left open also. I really see no reason at all for the site to be coded as it is. 3 or 4 tables would be all that is neccessary for it to work. The style sections could all be put into an external stylesheet. I would also advise you to use verdana instead of your Arial, sans-serif, since it is more readable on the web. I am assuming that you are using a WYSIWYG HTML editor. If so, throw it out and get another. It writes overally bulky code.

I again don't see why you are using layers, get rid and use tables. I also agree with what the others have said, it's a nice looking site in general but with a bit of work it'll be very nice. You need a logo and the first page needs some images and I'd change the way the drop down takes you away from your site, make the links open in new windows.

Busy - the auto scroll means that if the page content fits in the screen without the need for a scroll bar it removes the 20 pixels (or whatever it is!) of grey from the right side and you don't see the top & bottom arrows. This is only IE5> I think.

Quote: Originally posted by Busy
I think you may have gotten carried away a lil with the meta tags

I'll say. Actually, I think you've accidentally duplicated them. There are 2 sets of tags, not to mention 4 style blocks.

The site looks clean but not terribly exciting, although printer cartridges are hardly a sexy topic.

I agree that you need a better logo and perhaps a spicier graphical navigation.

And get rid of the "no right click" script. It is totally pointless.

Welcome to the forum Texas!

At first glance I was confused as to which is your main navigation....the links at the top or the ones on the right in the blue bar.

Idea....put a Home, Specials and Contact at the top and the rest in the blue bar on the left. Then put Printer Cart. Special, Printer Cart. Warranty, Ink Refills, etc. along with "Printer Cartridges" in the blue bar. Have the different printer cartridge companies as an unordered list below Printer Cartridges. Did that make sense? Hope so.

You say you are adding more catagories....better reason to stick your main navigation on the left. That way it can grow as the site grows. DOn't think you can fit much more up top.

For sure you need a new logo and maybe make your fonts a we bit bigger. Some text links at the bottom would be nice.

I am not crazy about the layer thing either. That has already been mentioned but I thought I would just throw in my opinion for the record. (in case you are keeping score)

Scrounge up a couple of nice, small images to go on the home page. That will give visitors a bit of a visual of what the site is about.

Oh, don't forget to delete those extra meta tags. And while I am in that department...make sure that you have no more than three instances of any particular keyword (i am not sure how strict this is but that is what I have read and been told). I notice that you have the word "ink" listed 11 times. (not counting words like inkjet and inkmail) And about the same amount for cartridges and printers. You could ask in the search engine area of this forum for more help with your keywords but I believe that phrases would be better than just single words.

This is another design that I think is lacking in visual interest. You don't really seem to have a strong colour scheme or design style at work here. A more interesting logo would also be an improvement. I agree that the fonts are a little on the small side, and your navbar could use some improvements as well. Give your site some character! This site:

http://www.allyoucanink.com/

Has a neat style, for example, with the ink splatter background coming up before the table content.

Howdy!

I'm grateful to everyone for their detailed thoughts and advice for my little ink site. Thank you Busy for welcoming me to the forum and pointing out certain aspects of the site. Take note though, there is a page where I used mouseoevers to disguise URL's in status bar.

http://www.inkprintercartridges.com/all-ink-cartridges.html

Thanks to you Mark for taking the time to provide such well-informed feedback. I couldn't agree with you more.

Webmistress Julia, you my friend, get right to the point! (while at the same time appealing to my male ego...thanks for the compliment) What am I using to create the site? Just as Mark correctly assumed, a WYSIWYG editor. It's called Cool Page. Not only does it render bloated HTML pages with unneeded code, it mandates use of layers, side-stepping tables altogether.

Currently, I am learning pure HTML using notepad & the editor Arachnophilia & working toward becoming more proficient with tables. I do hope to redo all my sites eventually.

I realize & understand the importance of what everyone here has said and I appreciate the comments. Alas, in the end though, the site is only a click-through mechanism to another site...created totally as an affiliate "link site". That is why Busy, the drop down menu URL's open in the same window.

As for the layout & visual appeal, Taff said it perfectly, "The site looks clean but not terribly exciting, although printer cartridges are hardly a sexy topic".

My thoughts exactly Taff. I wanted a site that was simple to navigate and served its purpose, one that loaded quickly and was keyword/phrase weighted to rank well in the search engines. Beyond obvious shortcomings of the editor used to produce the site, I am close to achieving this goal.

As for branding the site, developing a tag line, becoming renown or famous, creating a memorable logo, etc...one has to remember, the site serves one basic purpose...to elicit a click-through and cause a sale. Other than needing to built in tables, I suppose what I need is suggestions on marketing the site & its products.

Given the ink catridge product line & all the competition, this isn't terribly easy to do. I'm attempting to be creative...incorporating special sales prices, a resource directory for related services/products, free classifieds, and exploring various viral marketing avenues (other than tell a friend scripts).

Again, thanks to all for taking time to review my site and I look forward to further ideas/critique anyone has to offer.

All the best,

Texas

Megan,

Thanks for your input. I agree with you on its lack of visual interest...to a point. However, I must reiterate that the sole purpose of the site is to attract search engine traffic and redirect to the allyoucanink.com site.

As for allyoucanink.com being visually captivating, perhaps...that is, IF the visitor is connected via cable or DSL. AYCI loads excessively slow and is currently the subject of an ongoing debate between myself and its owner.

Although I have the luxury of DSL and Cable, I preview my pages using a dial-up 56K.

Warm Regards

Hi Disaster-Master!

So much of what you have said is true. Indeed, that is why I am here at the Webmaster Forum...to hear how others find the attributes of my site.

I'm a little unclear as to exactly what you meant about adding more categories to the left nav...and it's probably my fault. Let me explain my needs more clearly.

All product categories are complete. I refer to additonal categories (or less categories) for the Resource Directory.

http://www.inkprintercartridges.com/resource-directory.html

Also, since I'm looking for "stickyness", any of your suggestions on categories for the free classifieds would be most welcome!

PS- Since the Resource Directory is accessable only via the top nav "links", do you think I should promote it from the index page with a small gif or something?

Thanks,

Texas

Quote: Originally posted by Texas

As for branding the site, developing a tag line, becoming renown or famous, creating a memorable logo, etc...one has to remember, the site serves one basic purpose...to elicit a click-through and cause a sale. Other than needing to built in tables, I suppose what I need is suggestions on marketing the site & its products.

But the point is that it can serve the same purpose by making some minor changes. You don't have to have the fanciest of logos, just something for people to remember your site more.

As far as the marketing suggestion, you might also educate the customer a little. What about refills? Are they any good? Should I buy the mfg brand of cartridge or a generic? These seem like questions that you could answer in a few short sentences.

The basic code for getting the site down via tables would be something like this:

Hi Mark,

Excellent reminder to educate the consumer on the refills. I think I might do that tomorrow.

From my past experience though, selling ink cartridges online, even from my own personal buying experiences, most people already know what they want. Upon arriving at your site, they know which cartridge they need and they know how much they've paid for it in the past. At this point they're comparison shopping...looking for the best price and the fastest way to get to their product.

When it comes to saving money, few people could give a hoot about how your site really looks. Just as long as it's neat and organized, easy to navigate, loads fast and gives them what they need.

Personally, I agree with you on the logo thing. I would prefer having a better visual impact design, however, again I'm faced with the dilemma of beauty versus practicality (file size). The current logo is a tiny 713 bytes and loads in a blink. Whereas a fancy graphic might be above 3K-10K in size, defeating my quick-load mandate.

http://www.inkprintercartridges.com/navlogo.gif

Since everyone else seems to be focusing in on the logo too, when you have free moment, I'd like to hear any suggestions you may have for a better solution to the logo.

Regards,

Texas

Tex, we are all faced with the same dilemma of speed vs. beauty. Adding a graphic or two will not perceptibly change the speed that the site is accessed. You can still keep it simple and speedy with the addition of a decent logo of probably around 5-7K.

Hmmm, for a logo, you can add some subtle shots of printer cartridges along with a larger logo maybe have a copy of drops of ink to emphasize the ink part. I played around with one that turned out to be only about 3K.

You will have to forgive me. I tend to type my thoughts sometimes which make sense to me but not everyone else. I also wasn't paying attention to where you said you wanted to put the other links. Thought you were going to add links to the home page but I see now you are adding them to the directory page. My bad.

I still feel that it would be better to have all of your links in the blue bar part and have them arranged in catagories somehow. With the exception of a Home and Contact link that would remain at the top right. That is just how I visualize that I would do it. I am not familiar with the structure of your site so that may not work for you. Any who.....just soak up all of these opinions and advise and come to your own conclusion and it will look just fine.

Ideas for a logo: A printer with the name of your site coming out of it. Or an ink cartridge with the name of your site being spilled out of it. Again, those are just more of my wierd visualations. Can ya draw? LOL

Yes, add something on the home page about the Resource directory. I had to look through several pages before I found it. Not sure what graphics you would use but definately a text link. Or you could change "links" to resources.

Busy - the auto scroll means that if the page content fits in the screen without the need for a scroll bar it removes the 20 pixels (or whatever it is!) of grey from the right side and you don't see the top & bottom arrows. This is only IE5> I think.

NS does this automatic probably why I've never seen it used lol

Disaster-Master, adding a gif link to the resource directory from the site's home page is now on tomorrow's to do list.

Thanks for the inspiration.

By the way, here's probably one of the slickest designs and sales-provoking sites around for website critique (besides The Webmaster Forums).

Ever heard of 'em?

http://www.mysitestinks.com/