I have redone my site

mom2373 · #1 12-03-2006, 07:56 AM

after long hours of searching for images for my website (I could not find any free ones that I liked) I finally found some I liked and purchased them and have redone my site.

I know it still needs work, but can you give me some comments on what I have done so far?

http://best-home-based-business-idea.com

Thank you

leoni_v · #2 12-03-2006, 09:29 AM

Whew, it looks like you put a lot of work into the site! Just some points:

Information overload - just way too much stuff on one page. I am aware that you want to make as much of an impression as possible without the visitor having to load more pages, but that bothered me.
It took forever to load in completely. Probably due to #1 above. I have a 64kb satellite connection ... I shudder to think what this would do to a dial-up connection, and there truly are many millions of people still accessing the internet using dial-up all over the world.

I am very very glad that you don't have a bunch of flashing text or animated gif files everywhere!

mom2373 · #3 12-03-2006, 09:48 AM

Ok . Thank you I appreciate your comments. What would you suggest I do to make my site load faster? Again, I welcome your as well as anyone else's comments. This is what makes this a great forum

leoni_v · #4 12-03-2006, 10:04 AM

Mmm, either have less pictures, which will make it boring, or divide up your site in smaller sub-sections that each have less text and pictures.

It's psychological, but I'd rather load in a few "quicker" pages than one huge "slow" one - even if a bunch of smaller pages might end up taking more bandwidth. But that might just be me...

Sadain · #5 12-03-2006, 10:33 AM

Wow you win the prize for most links on a single page

Very nice looking site nice and neet

SChajin · #6 12-03-2006, 02:01 PM

I'm on DSL so it loaded quickly for me, but I can see where it might take some time on dial up. Lots going on there...Lots of work...I agree good job

mom2373 · #7 12-03-2006, 05:15 PM

Thank you all for your comments. As I said I appreciate it and I have learned alot here.

Ok, Leoni, you suggested divide my site into sub sections with less text.......can you give me some suggestions on what you mean and how to do that? I think I know what you mean, but not quite sure

Bethers · #8 12-03-2006, 06:38 PM

For the type of site you have - I'm not sure I'd divide out the home page into more pages. But that's up to you.

When I was on dialup last summer (I shudder at having to do that again anytime soon) - I preferred long pages to constantly uploading new pages - as I could slowly upload a long page - and be looking at it as it uploaded - and wouldn't bother hanging around for too many more pages on slow loading sites (if it took 30 seconds to download one long page and someone divided that into 3 pages - it generally would take 20 seconds per page- which would now mean 1 minute versus 1/2 a minute - I opt for the 1/2 minute!)

But, I'm guessing you could optimize your pictures and speed up loading - because most of the site is text. Also - you have sized pictures so that they are distorted - not a good thing to do. ALWAYS keep the relation in the picture so that doesn't happen - do NOT make the picture fit a size you want - that won't work. Those distorted pictures are a big turn-off for me.

You use the term "click here" as a clickable term and that's a big seo no-no - as it doesn't tell anyone what they are clicking on.

mom2373 · #9 12-03-2006, 07:43 PM

Quote:

But, I'm guessing you could optimize your pictures and speed up loading - because most of the site is text. Also - you have sized pictures so that they are distorted - not a good thing to do. ALWAYS keep the relation in the picture so that doesn't happen - do NOT make the picture fit a size you want - that won't work. Those distorted pictures are a big turn-off for me.

Bethers, Can you tell me how I could optimize my pictures to speed up loading? And How I could get my pictures to not look distorted?

naghosthunter · #10 12-03-2006, 08:36 PM

loads quick on my end but i will agree with others too much info and photos needs resizing. site looks good though.

mom2373 · #11 12-04-2006, 05:31 AM

Ok, I have resized my pictures with pixresizer. Do the pictures look better now. How can I make them load faster?

j_enriquez · #12 12-04-2006, 06:13 AM

Good afternoon, mom2337!

The welcome or index page is busy loading files.. It seems that although you resize/reduce the images it keeps busy loading images..

What type/format did you use in saving those images?

Regards,
Es0n™ Cabanela

mom2373 · #13 12-04-2006, 06:25 AM

I saved them as JPEG. Is this what they should be saved as?

leoni_v · #14 12-04-2006, 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mom2373

Ok, Leoni, you suggested divide my site into sub sections with less text.......can you give me some suggestions on what you mean and how to do that? I think I know what you mean, but not quite sure

I had another look (it took 2 minutes to load in completely with my satellite connection...) - It seems to me you are duplicating a lot of things. For example, you have a link button on the left to "article directory" and at the bottom of the page, you have a large table with article links. So perhaps consolidating some of the info into broader groups and then linking to pages dedicated to those groups... but as Bethers said, this is a matter of personal taste and not all people would like that solution. Also, you have so many links going off-site to your affiliates that people might get confused as to what is your own content and what isn't.

So perhaps just try to streamline the one page, I don't know.

mom2373 · #15 12-04-2006, 06:39 AM

Ok, I am in the process of changing it up and removing some of the text. My biggest question right now is as I am resizing my pictures what format is best to save them in? And how do I optimize them to make them load faster?

leoni_v · #16 12-04-2006, 06:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mom2373

Ok, I am in the process of changing it up and removing some of the text. My biggest question right now is as I am resizing my pictures what format is best to save them in? And how do I optimize them to make them load faster?

That's a hard one - it depends a lot on what software you're using (at least for me to explain!) You'll be using either JPG or GIF compression. You'll have to experiment with both formats (and with compression ratios for the jpg) until you find a compbination that still LOOKS good but has the least possible amount of kilobytes.

On my page (www.leo-design.net) I have four very large "pictures" making the layout. The two sides I felt was okay with GIF at 14kb each. The top was a 59Kb GIF so I saved it as jpg to bring it down to 25Kb. These are large pictures, though. For a small picture in the text I try not to go higher than 5kb, and most are about 2kb (on my site, that is!). This gives fairly quick loading times for me, so hopefully it's lightning fast for people with DSL!

mom2373 · #17 12-04-2006, 06:55 AM

Quote:

That's a hard one - it depends a lot on what software you're using (at least for me to explain!) You'll be using either JPG or GIF compression. You'll have to experiment with both formats (and with compression ratios for the jpg) until you find a compbination that still LOOKS good but has the least possible amount of kilobytes.

On my page (www.leo-design.net) I have four very large "pictures" making the layout. The two sides I felt was okay with GIF at 14kb each. The top was a 59Kb GIF so I saved it as jpg to bring it down to 25Kb. These are large pictures, though. For a small picture in the text I try not to go higher than 5kb, and most are about 2kb (on my site, that is!). This gives fairly quick loading times for me, so hopefully it's lightning fast for people with DSL!

Ok, I am sorry but you completely lost me on this one.I have no clue as to JPG or GIF or how to reduce images as to not use so much kilobytes.

Can you explain to me about this so I can try to figure out what I should do? I am sorry, I do not mean to sound so dumb, I just am lost here