Bookseed Website

Greetings to All!
Well, I'm finally feeling brave enough to invite comments, criticism, suggestions etc for my website. All designed with SiteSpinner.

I'm now in the process of developing a shopping cart with Zencart so that my customers can shop directly instead of emailing orders but that's going very slowly.

I would be very grateful for any comments or suggestions that anyone may care to offer. And many thanks to all for your invaluable advice on this forum. I have gleaned much information from here that was very helpful in getting the site up this far. Hopefully, I may be able to return the favour one day to other new starters like myself.
Regards,
Beverley

Hi Beverley,

Great looking site, and some nice products. I should be down your way in a couple of weeks (from Newcastle).

One of the first things I noticed is that it all seems a bit cramped. Not the page’s contents themselves, but the top (and also probably the bottom) of each page.

I think you need to work on the page navigation menus a bit. They need to be a lot larger, probably centered, and given a bit of space at the top so that they will stand out. By the way, you have not included the menu on the “Visit” page. As to the bottom, you could add a blank text object a little below the last legitimate object to create that bit of “breathing” space.

All in all a job well done.

Hi Beverly,
Congratulations, a well crafted site. I will just add a couple of suggestions to what Terry already mentioned.
1. On your 'Home' page you have several short texts on the right hand side. I would advise on either left-aligned or fully justified text in stead of centered (the header and the text under the image can stay centered). That will create a more 'balanced' overall feel and reduce the 'cramped' effect. It seems that you've divided the page in three sections. If you think about those sections as three elements of your site and look at the 'left' and 'middle' elements, they are kept within kind of two straight lines. The right section is centered around one (invisible) line and thus makes it the odd one out.
2. You could also top-align the three elements unless there is a reason to have the right and left elements placed lower then the middle element. I would probably move the last part of your right hand section (starting with 'I am one of the artists....')to the left hand section in order to create a better balance.
3. Regarding your navigation I would also add a hover feature to make the navigation more dynamic. Have you considered to include 'My Blog' link into your navigation bar? If you prefer to have it stand alone I would consider to make it more than just a link. Maybe an info box with more information about the subjects/content of your blog.
I hope it helps.

I wasn’t sure if it was intentional. The site map for “Visit ” does not exist on the top like other pages, so needing to go back to “Home” to access other pages.

TS

Thank you! Thank You! The value of fresh, more experienced eyes - so good.

No, I did not see that the Navigation from my Visit page was gone. A little slow it took me far too long to realise the difference between 'Delete' and 'Cut' from my copied pages. Had to keep going back and putting them back again - must have missed one.

And the Blank Text Box for Breathing Space - great idea - never thought of that.

Yes the Homepage kept growing and is now a muddle and I couldn't see why. Thank you Roma - will work on your suggestions. And feeling a little excited about the idea of Hovering for Navigation. Hopefully, I can pull it off.

Hello to fellow Aussie! And thank you all for your help. Greatly Appreciated.
Beverley

Hi Bookseed.

Nice looking site and lovely products, well done you!

A few observations.
The site seems designed for 800px wide screens, It will help you better - and give you more screen real-estate to play with if you design for 1024 wide which the vast majority of people have these days. personally at work I have 1280 wide and at home 1440 wide,on this your content area looks a little agoraphobic in the centre of the screen.

http://justaddwater.dk/2006/08...ize-not-screen-size/

2ndly, try not to have a vertical scroll bar on the home page, surveys have shown that only 16% of people scroll below the fold - that is the bottom of the screen. If this is unavoidable, put the less interesting stuff at the bottom.

3rdly I would personally have a footer on each page, this way you know where the page ends and is also a good place to put important stuff like your copyright notice etc.

4thly. the content looks a little lost on the page. Having a white background is fine, but
if you look at the justaddwater link you can see that the content area of the page has focus by being white against a dove grey page bg. This focusses the eye to the centre of the page.

You could use a highly desaturated image of flyleaf marbelling as a page bg with the content area being white, this way, people like me with wide screens have something nice to look at where smaller screen users don't lose out either.

Lastly. I would personally have the gif ideas links on every page so that people aren't constricted by having to go back to the home page to get somewhere else.

Apart from this, you've created a lovely site and I hope it does well.

Best regards

Geek-u-like