Thread: Please critique my new web-site

Hi all,
I would greatly appreciate an honest critique of my new web site - www.americaneaglesigning.com.

I'm new to creating web sites and to this forum. I hope I didn't make too many mistakes!

TIA
Paul

Hello

Welcome to the Forum

I'll have a proper look when I have more time, but after having a quick flick around have a look at this page http://www.americaneaglesigning.com./page3.html I am not quite sure whats going on there. It looks like you have tiny web page at the top, which is unreadable?

I wouldn't also have a FAQ's continued button, I would just add this content to the page and keep all your FAQ's together.

Darren

Thanks!

I don't know where the tiny web page came from so I dumped everything and re-loaded it. Hope it looks better. I haven't had a chance to combine the FAQ's yet but I will.

Paul

Hi Paul

Nice site. Apart from what Darren has mentioned above with the FAQ's, i've noticed that your menu bars on the left jump around from page to page. Also, they change size and get bigger as you go through the site.

Ideally, you should have these all the same size and all in the same position on each page so it makes for easier viewing, and less distracting to the eye. At the moment they all move around.

Also, you need to add some key words in your page titles at the top. This will help with SEO (search engine optimising).

Other than that, nice site, well done.

Thanks

It appears that on your index page, that you did not begin adding your elements at the the far utmost left or made sure that your navigation menu was exactly in the same spot on each page after that.

If you start with a page that is to your liking, and then use the bv builder's copy icon on your menu to copy it and then paste it (using the bv builder's paste icon) to the new page, the menu will be in the exact same spot.

Some suggestions that were found on this forum...just thought it might help.

Curious as to the change in header from the index page to the interior pages...why? Just curious.

Hi all,

Thanks for the inputs. I'll try to make the adjustments based on what you said.
Karen mentioned using the same header from page to page. I thought of this but them thought it would look too busy. What say the rest of you?

Hi 007,

"Also, you need to add some key words in your page titles at the top. This will help with SEO (search engine optimising)."

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are these "hidden" words in the page title? If so, I don't have a clue as to how to add them.

Hi Paul

Not quite. What I mean, is by adding key words next to your page titles, it will help you with your SEO.
Basically, at the top of the page where you have named your pages, i.e "Home" "About" etc, you need to add keywords next to the page names.

If you look at my site (link below), on my Home page I have "Perfect Sense: Nutrition & Weight Management Consultancy" , for my About page I have "Perfect Sense: Nutritional Advice, Dietary Habits, Healthier Lifestyle" etc.
These key words are taken from the text contents specific to each page, so each page has different keywords specific to its contents.
Hope this make things a bit clearer.

Oh yeah, its very easy to do. Just right click on your page and at the top in the TITLE box, where you have added your page name, just add the keywords next to it.

Thanks

Good to see a website that loads fast for us underprivileged dial-uppers.

A few points:

1/ What's under the eagle? There is a broken link there.

2/ I'd suggest changing your titles to something like "American Eagles Signing Service - About Us" to make your site easier to find in the search engines.

3/ I'd also centre the page rather than have it on the left hand side of the screen

4/ Your print is a wee bit small. I use a Font size of 10 but yours looks smaller (maybe because of the font). Someone who needs glasses but refuses to acknowledge their failing eyesight will find this a very hard website to read and will probably give up and go somewhere else. It might be worth increasing the font by a smidgeon.

Hi 007,

"If you look at my site (link below), on my Home page I have "Perfect Sense: Nutrition & Weight Management Consultancy" , for my About page I have "Perfect Sense: Nutritional Advice, Dietary Habits, Healthier Lifestyle" etc."

I looked at your site and saw the "Perfect Sense: Nutrition & Weight Management Consultancy" for your home page but didn't see the difference you mentioned on the "About Page"??? I'm sure it's me and it's probably staring me in the face but I don't see it.

Hi Paul

If you literally just read the title for each tab, and look at the keyword directly to the right of each tab, then you will see what I mean.

(Just use your mouse to hover over the tabs)

Thanks

Its a good start so far.. I have problems reading shadowy words an all so maybe there are other like me whose eyes are going.. if you had plain texk without the shadow maybe it will be better

riccii

Hi all,

I really appreciate all the help so far and as a result I dumped my previous web pages that were done with MS Publisher and created these with BV. I'm still having a problem with the last page due to it being a php instead of a html. I'll work on this with the technical gurus. Riccii - please let me know if the words look better.

Tks,
Paul

Not sure what problems you're having with "php" but just in case you didn't know.

You right click on your page within BlueVoda, select "Page Properties", go down to File Extension and select "php". Then publish as normal

Plus you'll then need to define your link to /contactform.php not /contactform.html

Hi Muzza,
I did set page properties to php (actually it did it automatically when I used the Form Wizard") so I know that's wasn't my problem. However, I didn't set the link as you mentioned so I'll do that now!

Hi Muzza,
Changing the links to pnp worked! Now I have only one problem to solve with this page. When I fill in the contact information it links to my email OK but the only thing I get is "Values submitted from web site form:" nothing else. ???

Thanks all! I got everything working!

Hi all,
I finally finished my web site - www.americaneaglesigning.com with all of the changes/corrections that you sent me on this forum. Would appreciate another look at it to see if I missed anything. TIA

i didnt see it before but it looks good, very clean site very nice...

Well done, but I personaly don't like 'counters' like the one you're using at the end of the page.

Cheers,

Hi,
Looks great (professional) links all working. Just a couple of suggestions,
1. I agree with NZBR about counters. You can check out the number of visitors in your control panel and I personally think counters look amateurish (and your site does not)
2. The aqua scroll bars do not match any of the colours on your site nor does the home page scroll bar - IMO default grey works better. You have it on one of your pages.
3. In your links page I clicked on 2 of your links and it took me away from your site. Some people do not hit the back button when they are sent to another site they just exit. I did and it closed your site. (I generally bring up BV to check that I have the right words but I do not have time so off of the top of my head to keep your website open when they click on your links you need to have '_blank' in the target space which you find in the page properties)
4. From an editing point of view I would say 'Hi & welcome to American Eagle Signing' on your home page (rather than 'our website') but I also believe that from an SEO point of view we have both missed the point and you need something there using keywords (but don't know enough about it).
All in all I think your site looks very professional and gives a feeling of security which I imagine would be most welcome for your clients
Hope this helps

Hi Again,
I knew I didn't have it quite right. to Get your link sites to close without closing your site you find the empty target box in your navigation bar. I found it by clicking on edit for an address. I haven't sent anyone off my site but when I want a separate page to open on my site i select the'_blank' to go in the target box.

How about instead of Hi and Welcome.......use something like.....

American Eagle Signing Service - Your Certified Notary Signing Agent

This makes it a good h1 and includes your main keywords.

I see you have been working hard and it SHOWS! Keep up the good work.

Thank you all for your inputs! BySandra, I did as you and nzbr suggested and removed the counter. I also fixed the scrollbars back to gray and changed my "welcome" line.
With regards to my "Link" page I did as you suggested added the _blank and it worked! However, I discovered that if you are on the "Home" page and you click on the "Links" page the Links page comes up in a separate window. It only happens with Home/Link combination. I tried all the others and they work fine. The only change was adding the "_blank" to the Links page. Is there a way to fix this???
Again, thanks for everything. This forum rocks!

Looks good.

To stop a new tab opening, like your links button on your homepage try changing the "_blank" to "_top" and it will open on top of the existin

Originally Posted by Paulk2

However, I discovered that if you are on the "Home" page and you click on the "Links" page the Links page comes up in a separate window. It only happens with Home/Link combination. I tried all the others and they work fine. The only change was adding the "_blank" to the Links page. Is there a way to fix this???
Again, thanks for everything. This forum rocks!

Just go back to your menu, double click, click on links, click edit and on the target...highlight the "_blank" and right click and delete, click ok.

Hi Karen,

Yes I know how to delete it but that really wasn't my question. BySandra suggested adding the _blank to my Links page so that a viewer could go back to my web site after viewing one of the links. By deleting this I'm back where I started.

Hi

Looks great. Well done.

Speaking in my professional capacity as a legal proofreader, I am viewing in Firefox and a some of the text overlaps on the aboutus page. It's nothing serious but I'm a perfectionist. (Yes - it's so easy with other people's work! I expect my own site will be full of typos.)

Hi Byzantia,

Do you know what I should do to fix the overlapping? I'm using IE and everything looks OK.

It's a pain but you need to download FF (Firefox) and view your website in FF and IE. The differences are sometimes small but you need to alter your website to cater for both sites. It might be that you just need to add and extra space between lines in some places but it makes a huge difference.

I used to design my page using a product that previewed in IE and I had continuous hassles tweaking it to look good in FF.

Now I design it with BlueVoda and preview it in FF and it looks good in both.

FF viewers make up almost 30% of my audience (and growing) so you need to cater for them.

Thanks Muzza,
I downloaded FireFox and updated a couple of pages that I saw with the overlap. I think I caught it all.

Paul, Sorry i haven't been here. (working on patterns and web sites)
To Fix up the new page opening for the links button you will need to do what Karen said and leave target empty. I have just worked out how to fix it if you haven't already. You need to change the target in the sites that you are linking to. Go Back into your links page and on each link you have - change the target box in each hyperlink to '_blank' When you hyperlink in BV the same box comes up to fill in, as it does for the navigation buttons. So if you added a new link (to another site) and clicked on the hyperlink the box that comes up to fill in the URL also has the target box. i think I have made sense - Hope so

Originally Posted by Paulk2

Thanks Muzza,
I downloaded FireFox and updated a couple of pages that I saw with the overlap. I think I caught it all.

A pleasure.

Just to be safe I also downloaded Chrome, Safari and Opera as well. It makes a big difference knowing what your clients see.

Plus if Chrome really takes off (and I think it might) then having that browser could be really important to make sure your site is displaying properly.

Thanks Muzzi,
Unfortunately I'm still running with Windows 2000 Pro and Chrome & Safari run on Vista/Xp etc. I'll have to rely on others to tell me if the site looks OK.