MY first website..

tschultz · #1 04-23-2007, 03:13 AM

I would love some feedback on my website.

www.tnatrainlayouts.com

Thank you,
Teresa

Karen Mac · #2 04-23-2007, 07:30 AM

Teresa

I didnt spend alot of time on your site but heres a brief run thru of what I did see without going into real webmaster details.

Your titles and Fonts are WAY TOO BIG, and I had to scroll alot to see what I wanted to see, and that was your trains. You can probably half that font size easily and still be readable unless your audience is blind.

Most importantly, theres no navigation between pages. You need some way to navigate back and forth without using the back button or just closing and hoping to find you again. When I did find navigation it was way to the bottom of the home page, and then it disappeared everywhere else.

You have a nice start to what will be a very nice hobby train site! Good Luck!

Karen

LadyEye · #3 04-23-2007, 07:34 AM

Hi Theresa ...

Custom train layouts, wow what fun, only run by your imagination eh!!

You've got a few things that you could work on here to make things run a little smoother ... First comes to mind is reducing the kbs of your images, for a very physically small sized image, each is over 700 kbs, too too much over the limit ... the kbs of this image should only be around 20kbs or so ...

So, you need to optimize (reduce the size of the kbs) of your images ...

you can do this by using the free pix resizer available here at vodahost or the online image optimizer available here

The width of your pages, should be the customary '800 width, which allows all viewers to view your pages without sideways scrolling ... so you might adjust that ..

I would also recommend a navigation system for your site, that allows all pages to be viewed from all pages ... for an explanation of this you could read my blue voda tips found here. Have a look and see if you can make some changes so that there is a natural and smooth flow to your site..

Hope this helps a little bit ... you're going to have a great site, you just need a bit of tweaking .... (lol, more work eh!!)

Mirelle · #4 04-23-2007, 05:13 PM

Hi Teresa

I loved your first site, it brought a genuine smile to my face.

Im just learning myself so i cant give you website specific advise ( like bandwidth etc) but i would say the scrowling from side to side was a nuscience.

Best of luck to you and dont forget, target the U.K. we have quite a few model train enthusiasts here, who all need track.and layouts

PS:I was just at your site having another look and checking the layouts there bueatifull by the way but how do you get from one to the other i couldnt find a next button or a way to navigate without closing the window hope that makes sense.

proactivator · #5 04-23-2007, 07:46 PM

Hi,
Really take on board what ladyeye has said re the size of your images: the file sizes are truly massive. Although I do have a broadband connection I really lost the will to live during the aeons it took to load your home page! Congratulations by the way: your home page is the largest I have encountered ever (6678 kb). I remember telling someone recently that one of his pages was a whopping 700+ kbs. Seriously though, you will be absolutely fine when you have optimised those images. Good luck with your site.

tschultz · #6 04-24-2007, 12:12 AM

Hello All - THANK you for all of the feedback. I plan on resizing my photos to start..then to attack the sizing and navigation. I truely appreciate all of the feedback I have received.

HEHE - Wow - do I get an award for largest images?

Thank you Ladyeye for the great tips page

SAman · #7 04-24-2007, 12:33 AM

Hello.
You have got a great idea and a good start. Listen to the "lady".
Just an Idea, could you put lincks on your train pics, or text to link forward and back to other pages. Good luck.

aconstas1 · #8 04-24-2007, 12:34 AM

Just curious if you knew that "T & A" has a negative connotation behind it. Perhaps you don't care, or don't think it is significant, just pointing it out. The trains and accessories are beautiful. I would suggest a little less moving text. kinda made me go crosseyed for a second. Overall, Well Done! You're getting the hang of it all and it seems you will get your site all together fairly soon. Keep up the good work.

tschultz · #9 04-24-2007, 02:29 AM

Hello -

T & A....trust me, I know. My husband insisted. It truely stands for Teresa and Andy.

tschultz · #10 04-24-2007, 02:31 AM

Ok...I edited the site..take a look and tell me what you think.

Guppie 1 · #11 04-24-2007, 02:45 AM

Thats not bad keep up the good work

aconstas1 · #12 04-24-2007, 07:31 AM

you've made huge improvements.... I no longer have to scroll to see the page.. the layout is better structured... I still think you have some navigation issues. You need to put your menu buttons on all of your pages so that visitors can go from page to page with ease. Well Done... keep up the good work.

proactivator · #13 04-24-2007, 10:52 AM

Hi,
Absolutely huge improvement on your home page (now a perfectly acceptable 323kb). Agree with comments about moving text: we all do it some time or other. That is doing something fancy just because we can. You dont have to change it now, but I bet you will sometime in the future. Now that Your home page loads in a trice I actually went into "lionel" which takes too long to load: again it is bloated image files. However you know what to do now so I'm sure it will all be sorted soon. Well done.

Collectors-info · #14 04-24-2007, 01:15 PM

Hi, looking lot better on the image sizes. Could do with some sort of theme through out the site with colours & backgrounds. Was having a play with watermarks earlier on & this may give you some ideas. Try the link below.?
http://www.collectors-info.com/testing/train.html

tschultz · #15 04-25-2007, 10:28 PM

Hello Chris -

I love the watermark idea. Is it up for grabs???

Collectors-info · #16 04-26-2007, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tschultz

Hello Chris -

I love the watermark idea. Is it up for grabs???

You have mail.

SAman · #17 04-26-2007, 03:52 PM

Hi Teresa,
Great changes! The pages load quick, and they look good. I like the water mark, the hatch in the header makes me look hard to find something in it, maybe if it was softer, but that's just me, I like picture puzzels. LOL

karel · #18 04-26-2007, 05:22 PM

Hi Teresa, love the subject, takes me back to my scabby knees and shorts days : )

Just a couple of comments, the page below I found it very hard to read the orange writing on the grey background, in fact it hurt my eyes.

http://www.tnatrainlayouts.com/plans.html

I would also like to see a menu bar that is consistent as I had to keep pressing the back button to get where I wanted, so a little tweaking on the navigation.

Also it seems some pages are centred and some are not, so my head was going from side to side.

I hope all the comments from myself and others help you to achieve all you want from the site.

Paul

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