Website Review and Suggestions

**yarrgh** · 03-15-2007, 04:50 PM

I posted this a while ago for review, and the comments were extremely helpful.

I've taken the comments into consideration and completely redone the site, from the code up.

http://www.augiescoffee.com

i'm interested in anything you have to say. especially the design and look. anything that seems funny or out of place.

**robthebuilder** · 03-15-2007, 05:14 PM

I think if you added multiple pictures of the coffee shop down the right hand side of the page to fill the void, it may spruce up the page. The navigation bars seem to me out of place; you have one above the bar and two below it. Kinda unsure to what purpose that serves. The shop looks so goood from the one pic, I am sure other pics will not hurt it, but help it.

**plin924** · 03-15-2007, 05:15 PM

nice looking site. i like it. very professional looking. how are you planning on marketing it?

**chris714** · 03-15-2007, 05:35 PM

Very nice site, very professional and clean! it makes me want a cup of coffee from there some kind of bad,lol. I would add more pictures to your front page as Rob stated, because you truly do have a awesome looking shop!

**wdwp** · 03-15-2007, 06:43 PM

You should to canonize the URL's on the server. Internally you link users to www.augiescoffee.com/index.html, while externally you'll be probably using www.augiescoffee.com
This will definitely create multiple entries in the search engine index for the front page and split its rankings between those entries.

I like the footer and the content parts of the site, would prefer if it was centered on the screen.

**yarrgh** · 03-15-2007, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wdwp

I like the footer and the content parts of the site, would prefer if it was centered on the screen.

sorry, what would you prefer centered? the footer? how do you mean?

**yarrgh** · 03-15-2007, 06:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plin924

nice looking site. i like it. very professional looking. how are you planning on marketing it?

I have no idea. What's a normal way to market a site? All I know is that it should have links from relevant places. Some of the suppliers link to the site, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by robthebuilder

I think if you added multiple pictures of the coffee shop down the right hand side of the page to fill the void, it may spruce up the page. The navigation bars seem to me out of place; you have one above the bar and two below it. Kinda unsure to what purpose that serves. The shop looks so goood from the one pic, I am sure other pics will not hurt it, but help it.

Hi. Are you saying the void is a bad thing? I intentionally made the text very thin so as to have lots of whitespace. the page also does not go beyone 1024 pixels wide, to accomodate smaller monitors. those were the reasons, but i am interested if you think that it looks bad the way it is. is there too much whitespace? do you think i shoudl fill the space to the left of the text as well?

also, i'm being bandwidth-conscious. more pictures mean taking longer to download. you think it's worth it?

**veach** · 03-15-2007, 07:09 PM

I really like the site. I am often told on my own projects to avoid large amounts of text on a single page, though, because people lose interest too easily. My only suggestion here is to divide the content on your index page into multiple pages that can be digested quickly and effortlessly. My experience has shown that the more you keep the visitor moving while balancing a solid amount of information intake, the more they will stay focused on your content.

I hope this helps.
-Anthony

**wdwp** · 03-15-2007, 07:19 PM

I mean, centering the site's content.

**Sczzy** · 03-15-2007, 08:21 PM

The header and the pictures that you do have are really nice but if you can, try to make it seem more inviting. Maybe put some pictures up of customers or workers or both. Generally when we go into a coffee shop it is largely due to the environment so if you could provide customers with an idea of this they might be more drawn to it. If you sell bags of coffee or any accessories maybe list some pictures of those as well. I like that your hours are listed.

Thanks,
Sczzy

**bazzler** · 03-15-2007, 09:35 PM

That's a wicked looking site, really like the logo and the header graphic at the top as well as the footer.

My only gripe is the navigation, like robthebuilder said. It's just a bit confusing having the two lines on top of eachother. My suggestion would be to condense the bottom two lines into one line, and ditch the non clickable text. Each link is pretty much self explanatory so the reference is not really needed.

**robthebuilder** · 09:46 AM

Well, I've relooked it over since the first reply. Sure, you can't have every space covered and white space isn't bad when it is managed well. The white space appears to be in bulk both on the left and right side. So, another idea fusing what veach said:

Quote:

My only suggestion here is to divide the content on your index page into multiple pages that can be digested quickly and effortlessly. My experience has shown that the more you keep the visitor moving while balancing a solid amount of information intake, the more they will stay focused on your content.

and what I said earlier:

Quote:

I think if you added multiple pictures of the coffee shop down the right hand side of the page to fill the void

You could break up the pictures and text left and right by your green headers. For instance, the first header matches the picture you have since it introduces you customers to the shop. You can then add a picture of customers having a good time by the "Good to be here" header and so on. Just my thoughts. Take them for what there worth (they're free of course, free to use or abuse

).

**tomas7** · 03-16-2007, 06:28 AM

I like it!!!

**sweb** · 03-16-2007, 10:55 AM

i'm getting this error:

Someone seems to have moved this domain, without updating their DNS. Until they get their act together, enjoy these ads.

**Angelosanto** · 03-16-2007, 12:27 PM

I think that the site is very good. The only thing I'm not 100% on is the navigation - I think thats a little weird.

**a.hugh1** · 03-16-2007, 02:19 PM

I think the site looks great mate.

**Kibeth** · 03-16-2007, 04:20 PM

Well its a very nice site, and i like the coffee style colors too ;p Man... now i want coffee!

**LadynRed** · 03-16-2007, 04:53 PM

It's very nice looking for sure. Nice graphics, good white space. Maybe ONE more photo on the left side, but I don't think it's a huge problem.

The navigation is definitely odd. Why not put it all across the top in a single line ? It would much more logical.

Codewise.. ACK !
Put a valid DOCTYPE in there, you don't have one !
You have lots of validation errors, mostly due to the lack of a DTD.
You have no headings, meaning not a single Hx tag. Instead you're putting classes on <b> tags. If you want a header, do it the right way and USE A HEADER tag !

Last, but far from least - it's a mess of TABLES.. bleaaahhh. The site could be done w/o them.

**yarrgh** · 03-17-2007, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Last, but far from least - it's a mess of TABLES.. bleaaahhh. The site could be done w/o them.

thanks for the encouragement to validate. i will go with 4.01 strict, possibly transitional if there are hang ups, the next time overhaul (few weeks).

can you please elaborate on what is so bad about the use of a table for the top nav, and to organize the layout of the site?

i know the top table is a mess, but if you ignore that, the table is pretty simple. and i still don't know what is really so bad about use of tables anyway, besides that tim berner's lee doesn't like them. they're useful and make coding simple.

**wdwp** · 03-17-2007, 06:46 PM

One of the advantages of using DIVs instead of tables for site layout is that you can easily control how pages appear for printing and for mobile devices by specifying separate stylesheets for each medium. The HTML file is the same, but displays differently.
You can't do that with tables, so learning CSS layout is at least a very good long-term investment.