Website Review and Suggestions

**wayfarer07** · 12-12-2007, 01:28 PM

Here's my problem: I am good at CSS. I am a decent programmer. I have good HTML. I know lots of obscure web-stuff. I am not, however, as good of a designer as I should be. My layouts tend to get cluttered up, mostly due to the way I approach design: from the CSS layout perspective, instead of from Photoshop on down. I tend to add details along the way, and end up picking up the pieces slowly to make it better.

On this site, I spend so much time thinking about how it should be programmed and optimized for Google, that I got somewhat lost along the way. This site now gets well over 2000 visitors per month, and definitely needs to be better, design-wise. It's not completely horrible, and I have some ideas about what would make it better, but would love to hear an impartial third-person opinion.

Here is the site: http://www.ojos-de-dios.com

**Paraiba** · 12-17-2007, 02:22 PM

It's kind of nice in places. That sounds bad but it's not. I like most of it but there are two things I'm really not keen on.

The menu bar which on its own is OK but where you have it it just doesn't look right. Try just plain tabs.

The second is the content block with the turquoise background. It just looks very odd. The orange fading to yellow then white behind it is very nice so why not get rid of the turquoise background?

**joder** · 12-18-2007, 11:20 PM

The wrapping text in the left section looks bad. The background image in that section is cut off.

It's a nice start. Keep up the good work.

**graphicgal** · 12-19-2007, 08:26 PM

too many colors. simplify it alot, take a look around, there are alot of free photoshop templates around, if you are good at css then you can slice them.

simplify the colors and streamline the look

**iammarcus** · 12-20-2007, 01:07 PM

maybe it was just me but the pages were taking a while to load. overall i like the design, it seems very southwestern. Also you have a nice product.

good luck
Marcus

**EViS** · 12-20-2007, 11:12 PM

I'll start from the top;

Incorporate the navbar into the header by using the background header image as the navbar button background too. At the moment it looks as if it is floating in the middle of no-where.

Get rid of all the colours. Way too much going on. Choose no more than 5 colours for the site (incl. text & graphics) and stick to these in an orderly pattern.

Decide upon a single layout for each page and STICK TO IT. This means pictures always in one area/order, text always on the same side of the page, nav bar links always on the same side.

You need to think about your users and the instant speed they need to familiarise themselves with your site...

Hope this helps.