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Anybody wanna rate my first "professional" website


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Guest nickcornaglia
Posted

I have a friend who is a graphic designer. He did a logo for a local fish company. Then had the opportunity to re-do their website and he passed that off to me.

Now...it's not going to set the world on fire. They are just a local company with 4 stores. The owner wanted a really simple low-graphic design to match their logo with some basic info, some of which I would update monthly.

Here is their original site. (crappy)

CLICK HERE

Here is the site I'm working on

CLICK HERE

It's still a work in progress. Much of the text is just filler 'til the formatting is done and many of the pics are just temporary.

It uses flash6 and html....I'm newer to html than flash. This is my very first site for someone else...but could you offer some positive and negative criticism? Thanks in advance.

Guest James
Posted

I like it mate... very good.

i like to see a site that is well thought out and easy to find your way around... for once.

Guest Mr_Protozoa
Posted

It's much MUCH better than the original. Once the content is sorted it'll be really good.

Did anybody see the intro on the old site. I almost wept.

Guest JabbaTheSlut
Posted

the new one's very good, however-the 1st thing that caught my eye was this, and i couldnt help but laugh-lots

Summer Special: Crabs, Crabs, CRABS!

Come in and get them before the Summer's over!

might need a rethink, unless i'm just being crude and no-one else thought of it?

sorry! :)

Guest nickcornaglia
Posted
the new one's very good, however-the 1st thing that caught my eye was this, and i couldnt help but laugh-lots

might need a rethink, unless i'm just being crude and no-one else thought of it?

sorry! :)

I actually didnt catch that :o ...But I just put something there to take up space!

Guest nickcornaglia
Posted
It's much MUCH better than the original.  Once the content is sorted it'll be really good.

Did anybody see the intro on the old site.  I almost wept.

The intro to the old site had me on the floor rolling the first time I saw that. I'm going to hide a link on the new site with that in it.

I really appreciate it. Thanks for the feedback....any negatives?

Guest Phooey
Posted

hi

nice concept - love the layout and the table resizeing - the colours are superb and the way you have kept it simple means you have made it very effective.

perhaps a search function might be suitable - say a friend of mine had told me there was a recipe for salmon something on there and i wanted to find it - i'd like to be able to search for it - there is a simple search function you can use from Atomz which is FREE and effective - i have used it on a couple of my sites.

are you going to be using frames within the site to display the different information in the windows [tables] or are you going to be database driven entirely?

if the site is going to be quite sizeable i'd also include a cookie crumb trail - ie. to let the user know where they are and where they have been - unless EVRYthing is going to be displayed on that one page - but i guess it isn't as the format for your contacts page was different. the format could read..... your location: HOME: FISH: Atlantic Salmon (current page) its very simple yet helps people move abotu and give the site a viewable structure.

can i ask what software you are using to create this? if you are using dreamweaver you can win bonus points with your client by getting them to buy macromedia contribute which would allow them to update the site monthly - downside for you is no monthly bonus work - upside is you get to work on more of the big stuff!!!

great effort though - be interested to see the final version

Phooey

ps. original site had me laughing but they had to start somewhere

Guest nickcornaglia
Posted

Thanks for all of the comments and suggestions.

Yes, I'm using Dreamweaver but I don't think the customer is computer savvy enough nor willing to make the site changes themselves. But CONTRIBUTE it is good to know about for the future. I'll look into it.

Search may not be appropriate for this site as what you see is about all they will have. Possibly if the recipe DB gets big enough.

Monthly updates will include:

1 new recipe every month.

1 new news update every month.

1 new "specials" update every month

I originally had frames with the navigation on the left, in place all of the time. But it didn't work well in a 800 x 600 resolution.

I don't know anything about DB driven sites....I still have SO MUCH to learn. But at $2000 + $50/half hour in montly updates...I'm off to a good start! :)

Thanks again for all of your comments!

Guest martin
Posted

Good job encece.

It looks great on the SPV too as its split into two perfect columns. Is this how you are going to keep it throughout the site ? Everthing load fast and scrolling is instant, ready for those fish buying mobile web surfers as well as those using PC web :)

Guest nickcornaglia
Posted

I had to go look at it on the SPV! Many of the graphics are flash including all of the titlebar headings. So you wont be able to see any of them on the SPV :)

Guest Phooey
Posted

your link for contribute mind you i guess you can get it from a certain peer-to-peer networking site for free :wink:

now - search engines - this'll win you brownie points with your fishy client and give you more clients for the future - (as long as you have YOUR URL listed on their site either in your source code or prefarably as a link from their page!)

have you got all your meta tags etc in place for search engine optimisation? i noticed that your meta tags within your HEAD code are a bit barren - these HAVE to be sorted if you want search engine rankings!

do a search on your URL rather than keywords to see if the site is listed at all? Just type in www.domain.com in the search box to see. If it is listed then it means the site is badly optimised for the chosen keywords. Optimising for single or two word keywords is almost impossible now (unless it is very specific), it is best to go for multi-word phrases that match the site content.

The golden rules are:

Have your main keywords in the title.

Ensure you have your main keywords near the top of the page and preferably in H1 style format.

Ensure you have good keyword relevance (how well it relates to the text around it) and good keyword density (the number of times those words appear)

Ensure you are linked to by as many other sites as possible.

The best way to get listed is to pay for submission - Excite do a good and cheap submission tool about £50 to get listed within 7 days in some core search indexes that drive looksmart and MSN etc.

Hope that helps, I am away for a couple of days but if you want any pointers on setting up meta tags codes then pm me. I will reply when i can.

Cheers - Phooey

Guest SirGaz
Posted

Another really good place to start is www.dmoz.com. This is the main database site used by a large number of search engines. Submit to that and you get on a few search engines automatically.

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