New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

[Kenswift]

Ok folks. I created my first website but need some help. I didnt design it as a traditional website. I wanted it to be fun and whimsical. I am aware of 2 broken links, the party supplies and email. I also think its too slow on some pages but optimized as much as I know how. Please advise me oh mighty Voda sages!

www.atlantainflatables.com


Thanks!

[PennieNPence]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

It looks great!!!!

You remembered your audience and went after it.

I do have a few suggestions:
1) your FAQ page is still untitled
2) the black against the red on the FAQ page is kind of hard to read on the eyes
3) you might either want to make the menu bar on the bottom of the page stand out more or move it somewhere else (you don't want people to have to search around he page to get to another page.

It looks good though congrats

[Collectors-info]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Hi, like the style/colours/ not sure if the BIG menu could be smaller to save loads of scrolling. The page widths need to be brought down quite a bit as there is a lot of side scrolling. Page loading times aren’t bad, but you could get more info on the page widths less KB’s. Hope you don’t mind, but was having a play around. http://www.collectors-info.com/testing/inflatables.html for some idears.
On your key words, description & titles its worth thinking about good words & what you would enter as a search in any search engine. Would you enter (This is where your party gets jumping) to find bouncy castles or slide?? All these words must be also on the page in some way.

Good luck.


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[Kenswift]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Thanks so much. I am out of town so can you leave it up until Saturday so I can print it and tool around with that idea. It means an aweful lot that you took the time to do that. I originally had a lot more fun graphics (animated) but it was brutally slow. (Over 300K on homepage). Also, I thought the metatags were the keywords that show up in search engines.... Should I just put keywords in the description as well?
Thanks again!

[zuriatman]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

People with glasses will find the large band of primary colors glaring.
It would be much pleasant to view if the colors are softer pastels.

[Kenswift]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Chris,
Is there any way to make those little colored frames you did into links or can I just link the text?

[Collectors-info]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Hi, it was only some ideas using your styles, its also brought the page down to about 125kb, only a small saving, but every bit helps.
On the linking. You can do it one of three ways either make am image map using BV & the image below. But this is not very flexible.

Place a shape over each buttons area & click the radio button to make the shape transparent. Then add your link to the transparency.

Link each shape & then link the text on that shape. If doing this way? It would look better if the styles was change to keep the links all the same with no underlines & no change on colour for visited links.

Good luck.

[Dream Lady]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

How fun this site is! I like Chris's idea as well. The only comment I have at this point, is to make sure people know when they first come on your site, that these are for RENT and not for SALE. It really doesn't say that anywhere, until you start reading a little. Other than that, super job!

[willw]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Looks cool. The nav buttons at the bottom are a little small compared to the large feel of the rest of the site. I agree with advice to put "transparent" borders around blocks and make an active link. Will make it easier to click through since so much of the area is not text.

And most important from sales perspective -each page should have "order now" or "reserve now" button so people can reserve/rent when they are online.

Good job
Will

[whiteshepherd]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

I love this site and agree with the oher comments ... especially about the size of the links on the front page ... keep up the good work ...

[Kenswift]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

I made some changes. I still need to finish the Party Supplies page and link to my email but other than that I am pretty happy. I made the boxes into big buttons so you can click anywhere and it seems to have a lot more continutity. I took a lot of your advice. Let me know what you think! (I still need to name some pages as well)

WWW.Atlantainflatables.com

Thanks for all your advice!!

[larazovich]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

I like the general feel of your pages - the bright colors and graphics feel like a party, nicely done.
A couple of comments/suggestions:
Your header is enormous - although the name and number of your business is really important, when you first open the page it would be nice to see more of the rest of it.
A big problem for me, anyway, is the side scrolling. You might consider reducing the width of your pages, which seem way overwide to me. In addition, the pages seem to be right justified, so right away when I go to your home page I have to scroll to the right to get to the whole picture, and then down to see what there is on the page.
IN general, if you reduce your widths to 800 or so, you will accomodate every screen of every viewer.
Nice site - you have done a fine job.

[Kenswift]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Thanks.. Chris from Collectors-Info had pretty much similar advice. How do I fit all that in a page width of 800 without redesigning everything. I cant even fit all my buttons in that page width, even if I eliminate the space inbetween. I will also look into the advice about the header. On my work computer and both my laptops it looks perfect, but to your point, on my friends and yours, it requires scrolling. Please advise.
Thanks

Harlan

www.Atlantainflatables.com

[Kenswift]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Chris and Liz,
See how this looks on your monitors. Is it centered and does it require scrolling? It looks horrible on mine though. The links wont work, I just did this as a test.

www.atlantainflatables.com/test.html

[larazovich]

Re: New site! Need your advice pleeeeaaassee!

Thanks.. Chris from Collectors-Info had pretty much similar advice. How do I fit all that in a page width of 800 without redesigning everything. I cant even fit all my buttons in that page width, even if I eliminate the space inbetween. I will also look into the advice about the header. On my work computer and both my laptops it looks perfect, but to your point, on my friends and yours, it requires scrolling. Please advise.
Thanks

Harlan

www.Atlantainflatables.com

Well, Harlan, it's a matter of choice. Do a search in this forum on page widths and you will see that there is quite a controversy about what width is best.
Most will agree that designing to 800 will guarantee that nearly everyone will be free of the dreaded side scroll.
But many are designing to 1000, and just figuring that the 20% of viewers with smaller screens will eventually upgrade.
Any wider than that and you run the risk of alienating too many potential customers.
And, nope there is no easy or quick way to do it - it is a redesign thing. You can reduce the size of your buttons by using a program like paint.net, and then rename and reinsert into the navbar folder in BV, so it comes as a choice in your drop down.
In terms of your header, same thing, you can reduce it.
But, as I said Harlan, it's a choice. Best is to design the site for your potential customers - what would they like to see?, and what would they find easiest? What is going to promote your business the best? and what are the barriers you can remove if any to make your site the most approachable?
Good luck, you have a great start..

hey harlan now it looks off to the right, not centered?