Website 4 an e-zine

There is way too much on that screen for my tastes. A lot of sites do that, but IMO it makes it harder to find anything when there is too much going on - especially to someone who has never been to your site before. You should probably get rid of most of those pictures in the middle part and just use them to highlight one or two of those things. Streamline the navigation. Ask yourself whether all that stuff along the sides is really necessary.

If you're aiming at newbies you might want to fix it so it fits at 640 x 480.

Are you going to change the rest of your pages to look more like the first one? The colours on there are terrible - they should coordinate more with the main page. Speaking with the colours on the main page, those could use some help too. You have that bluey-purple for the background, a more red-purple for navheaders on the left, teal links, peachy vlinks, maroon subheading backgrounds, and a navy blue background for the "short circuit" box on the bottom. Too many colours that don't match each other at all! Pick two or three that match, add white and stick to the colour scheme! Also stick to one set navigation setup for those pages too - I've come across three or four different layouts.

Since you're aiming at newbies, you really have to make your navigation scheme easier to use. Those headings don't always have obvious meaning, the categories aren't organized in an obvious way.... you should read some of Jakob Neilsen's articles on usability at http://www.useit.com

I completely agree with everything Megan had to say. I also want to say one more thing...white space. Having white (open/blank) space can really help visually and in practicality. You need to use some. Everything is so crammed together that it makes it hard to read and overwhelming.

Brooke

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www.cataluna.com

Yeah, I agree!

1) If most of your visitors are going to be newbies, you have to have an easy to navigate, clean site. You HAVE to make the site 640x480 res., and need to clean up the overall layout. If I were a newbie, I wouldn't waste my time looking through the site.

2) You need to put a border around the site. Without a border, it looks crappy. It just looks like 20+ boxes stuck next to each other.

3) Colors are next: they arn't great. You'll never get someone to say it's not colorful enough, but you they will say "LESS COLORS!" Also- you need to pick ones that match/go together.

5) The logo isn't half bad, but I would get rid of the fade, and just have the whole thing the same as the bg of the page.

6) I'm assuming that all the pages (once you find a design), will have the same layout? I really think you should, really.

7) What is the overall theme of the site? There seems to be 2 million different things (from basketball to music). What's the site supposed to be about?

Wow- that was too long...

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