Updated website

[Tomissan]

Hi All,
I've updated my website, mostly the colors. I would appreciate any/all comments for improving it...thanks in advance...Tomissan

[ahimsa]

Re: Updated website

Sorry, but lots of negative reaction I'm afraid :(
1st. side scroll on every page - check page width in page properties
2nd. all pages open in new tabs - leave the target window empty
3rd. Contact page has a lot of strange characters floating around ?? & no link back home
4th. Payment Options: link to Home not working
5th. Gallery has no link back home....
etc. etc sorry but I think you have a little more to do....BUT
don't give up - you're off to a good start,
david

[Collectors-info]

Re: Updated website

Ditto with ahimsa. Your opening page is also 3350kb?
350kb would be pushing it.

[indytnt]

Re: Updated website

Main Tabs:
Each page opens into a separate window. Where the House slideshows should open into a new window, changing pages on the main tabs should remain in the same window.

Contact Page:
The Thai letters and English letters need to be contrasted so people can read the words

Link page
The tabs are formatted differently from the rest of the site.

Gallery Page:
Background and layout is completely different from the rest of the site

About Plans page
1. The paragraphs need separation between them
2. Remove the (~ ) symbol from the beginning of the first paragraph of each section

3. For the “Construction Plan” list –

• Add bullets to identify separate items
• Some items are separated by a space, others are not. Whatever way you choose, make them consistant.

[Tomissan]

Re: Updated website

Thanks all for your feedback & suggestions.
Ok. I've gone through the list and have updated the site.
any more thoughts, pointers, etc., appreciated.

[Collectors-info]

Re: Updated website

Not sure on the logic? But i see your home page has gone from 3350kb to 4443kb. Worth remembering that the SE's will just skip your site with pages of this size.

[wysiwyg4]

Re: Updated website

Hi,

1. In a menu-driven website, you don't have to open a new window.
2. The index file, home has no link to index file - Only http://
3. The menu at the top does not stay in the same place on all pages.
Occasionally, it shifts to the right.
4. The marquees is OK when you have content changing like news.
5. The index page is too crowded. That's your introduction. Make it interesting with some contents.
6. Divide the plans and categorize them.
7. It will be good for the visitors, the search engines and would not strain eyes.
8. Keep it simple.

Menu at same place on all pages

You create a menu in one file. Let's say in the index file.
Place it in a certain place. Make sure that's what you want.
Remove menu from all pages but keep pages open in BV.
On the index page, lock the menu item(s).
Click it once to select it.
At the top menu in BV, click Copy.
Then on each page, Click Paste.
The menu will fall on exactly the same place like the original.
When all pages are done with the menu, you can leave them locked so they don't move.
Don't use CTRL-C and CTRL-V.
The condition is to use Copy and Paste at the top menu after you have locked the menu item(s).

A wise man once said:
1. Take one step at a time. Don't attack too many fronts at the same time.
2. Divide and conquer. Too many images slow a page down.

[ahimsa]

Re: Updated website

Sorry, but lots of negative reaction I'm afraid :(
1st. side scroll on every page - check page width in page properties
2nd. all pages open in new tabs - leave the target window empty
3rd. Contact page has a lot of strange characters floating around ?? & no link back home
4th. Payment Options: link to Home not working
5th. Gallery has no link back home....
etc. etc sorry but I think you have a little more to do....BUT
don't give up - you're off to a good start,
david

OK....1st. point - still happening
2nd. - ditto
3rd., 4th. & 5th. seem to have been corrected but......
in Gallery you have click on any house for slideshow over the text for "More Plans"

and all pages are loading too slowly to keep me there :(
keep at it, you'll get there :)
david

[Tomissan]

Re: Updated website

ahimsa: I've gone through and tried to correct everything.
the page size is 600 wide, down from 700 before. It looks fine on firefox & IE on a 17" monitor. Also, I've deleted a lot of old files, mostly .jpg's thinking this was the cause of pages opening too slow.
Collectors-info: any advice how to reduce the size further? It's showing 55355 bytes. ?

thanks again for the suggestions.

[Collectors-info]

Re: Updated website

Its been mentioned in other threads about your images being too large for web pages.
1. Don’t have so many images on 1 page.
2. Don’t use the light box for this many images?
3. Don’t use the blue handles to reduce the physical size of the images.
Have a look here for some tips.

[wysiwyg4]

Re: Updated website

Listen to Chris, always.

I just have general comments.

You have lots of homes displayed, presumably to sell their plans
and perhaps build them.

Buying a home is a big decision, maybe the biggest financial decision
of my life, of anyone's life. I am gonna take my time. For me and many
other folks, buying a home is not on impulse.
I gotta plan and gotta work it out. To buy a home takes time.

Look at it from a business point of view. You know the market.
Have some introduction, have some description. In your case, it's
OK for you to imagine that folks would like to go to "deeper" pages
to look for what they want and to give them what they want.

Pictures are fine but tell folks why your site is unique but more
than that why your products are unique. It's a huge market, almost
saturated. Describe each plan as if you are discussing their plan
- and not yours - with them.

What folks would like to see you do is to split your
website in many chunks, in groups - some alike and some special ones.
Make it as user-friendly as possible.

Bells and whistles are fine and dandy but only when
they make good business sense. Always follow your business plan.
Tools and utilities (hammers and nails and screws and website builders)
are easy to find to build your business.

[Tomissan]

Re: Updated website

Thanks for the tips....

Actually, the market for Thai house plans 'isn't saturated'. Unless you can read Thai, there are only a few sites offering design & house plans. If you do a search for "Thai house plans" on Yahoo, Google, MSN, my site is #1 and has been for several years. Also, the cost for design & finished construction drawings is quite small compared to the west as is the cost for finished construction, around $30 SqF for a decent house, twenty years ago in California the average cost was $125 per SqF. so many westerners build houses here on a few months salary, not like the west where you pay everymonth for the rest of your life. I only design & prepare construction drawings, I don't build anymore, too much of a headache here.

The couple suggestions that the home page was too large: "Ditto with ahimsa. Your opening page is also 3350kb?", 54.06 KB (55,355 bytes) is what shows in the page info. Is this too large? 54 KB ! Or am I reading this wrong. The home page and other pages seem to open ok and not too slow (on my machine), and my internet speed is quite slow, far from the city..

I am redoing the site using some of the posted suggestions and appreciate the feedback & corrective criticism. cheers, Tom

[Collectors-info]

Re: Updated website

Yes! it will appear to load fast on your machine as the images are already in your machines cache, so you don’t have to download the 3-4meg of image we have to. In BV click on “Tools>Page Weight” to see the size of your pages. Your index page = 4286kb of viewable KB’s
As mentioned before, many SE’s will only read around 1000kb & leave the page. So it will also hurt your rankings.
You can easily get the page down to 250-350 kb max with some redesign & image reduction. .

[Tomissan]

Re: Updated website

ok Chris, thanks for the tip, I didn't know about “Tools>Page Weight”.
I'm redoing every page and reducing the size as much as possible. I've got the index page down to 650kb but still not finished, possibly 700-800kb when complete.
250-350kb seems difficult if I want any detail in the photos......