Thread: 1st Time Web Builder

Hi, this is the first draft to my site, as well as my first post. This is all new to me. Would like to here ways to improve or comments in general. www.omahaonline.biz I have now linked the ad pages yet.

Hi Jim,
"impactive" is the word that comes to mind after waiting quite a long time for the 1st. page to load :) You have side- scroll so you need to check your page widths
I also found these.
index: at a fraction of the cost
thingstodo: Eugene T. Mahoney State Park

Mother Nature outdid herself with this breath-taking State

Truly an adventure getaway,
Joslyns’ mementos and books were set in lead-glass set in lead-glass cabinets- once is enough, I think :)
A place to behold in all its splendor
contacts: or to schedule an appointment - X 2!

OK, love the photography & it can be that the text for the descriptions of all the "things to do" was not written by you? If so, as an advertising medium I would suggest you check all incoming copy very carefully before using it on your site. Everything on your site will be seen as a reflection of your standards, blah-blah-blah LOL
good luck,
david

Pretty good first attempt, I like the layout and colors. Didn't see any problems while browsing but I didn't look in depth.

Thanks for the input guys, some of text was furnished by the sources. I will look into them a little closer in the future.

Jim

Your site is great looking. Just a few tweaks to think about: You shouldn't name you home page title name "index" - it means nothing to SE that is relevent to your content. All your other pages are untitled. This will hurt you in search engine ranking. while you add the title pages names, you should include your meta tags page description and keywords (even if the keywords are not so important, some SE still use them).

We kept clicking on the orange circle in the center of the photos... But nothing happened; it did not open to the rest of your site. We then realized we could scroll down. (That experience could lose customers).

The type of flash presentation you have should be a great landing page through which people go to get to your home page. But, the home page and all subsequent pages would not have the "full-page" flash as the header. The alternative would be to make your presentation smaller; and making your navigation tabs immediately visible.

Look at the flash intros to the chamber and visitor association as examples for your local "best practices." Note how the flash does not over power the page. And, navigation tabs are clearly visible.

Since you're planning on getting local businesses to advertise at your site, I trust you did become a member of the chamber of commerce. Your site colors should reflect Omaha - farm colors, variations on official city colors, or compliments to the chamber colors. You shoulld have inviting background colors.

Notice how the city's web page expresses blue skies above and an endless sea of yellow corn tassles below. Then the visitor center uses a faded sky blue as its background while the restaurant guide and Mutual of Omaha uses the yellow. Use color to say you're a part of the community.

Your page is off centre as your not building from the left of your BV screen & have the width set at 1200px.
985px is a good width if you dont want side scroll.