Website Review and Suggestions

**Spacyjane** · 07-04-2007, 07:35 AM

Hi,
This is my final website that I've spent hours on the design, colors and content. I would appreciate honest opinions regarding the following:

Style & design (Is it appealing and catching?)
Layout (Is it easy to navigate and simple to understand?)
Content (Does it need more text?)
Interest (Does it excite you at all and keep you interested?)
Anything you think I could add?
On the whole for the above, what would you rate it 1-10

I've been doing the SEO myself and can see a real improvement with page placement and the hits have doubled as a result. Still, sales are sluggish and I need some input in this department.
Any critiquing would be very much appreciated.
SpacyJane
http://www.modernabode.com

**Mooofasa** · 07-04-2007, 09:32 AM

Overall, you have too many inconsistencies and no clear underlining structure. To say you have spent hours on the design, you've clearly not taken aspects such as usability into consideration.

**davidshaw** · 07-04-2007, 09:44 AM

I like the idea of the site,

Looks very cluttered.

You also have 149 errors:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbos...rnabode.com%2F

With a bit of work you can get this site looking alot better, pm me if you need any assistance!

**adirondackwine** · 07-04-2007, 12:38 PM

You've got a lot of pixelation in images and more - the other problem is too many click throughs on the products - you need larger images one page back with the price next to it, if the customer wants to see more they can click again at that point.

**Mother_Sheep** · 07-04-2007, 12:50 PM

I think it looks like a good start. I would try to keep images to similar sizes where possible and perhaps stick them in a boxed area for clarity. Perhaps echoing the boxes on your main page. I think you could make your navigation a bit clearer too. Also just a little thing but whenever I see a logo I expect to be able to click it to go back to the main page. Might be worth adding that link.

I'm no professional designer myself mind, so just a few thoughts. Keep at it

**gavino** · 07-04-2007, 01:22 PM

I'm no pro, its just my opinion.

1. I would change the background, the blue stripes each side look ok, its the blocks in between.
2. Its easy enough to navigate
3. yeah but not to much more
4. Not really my thing but if i came across it i would look into it more
5. maybe some way to pass the product info to the order form
6. 7 out of 10

Keep up the good work and enjoy it.

Gavino

**freshfruit** · 07-04-2007, 06:18 PM

No clear structure. Did you use Bluevoda? I recognize the template.

Work on it, eh?

**Spacyjane** · 07-04-2007, 06:25 PM

hi freshfruit,
when you say structure, do you mean lines defining photos or what? thanks
spacyjane

**Sphinx** · 07-05-2007, 12:37 PM

You might want to remove the "<meta name="generator" content="Yahoo! SiteBuilder/2.3.1/1.5.0_11">" from the code.
Another suggestion:
consider adding alt-tags to the menu, as it contains pictures. An even better alternative: remove those pictures and replace them with text links, as they are not designed in any way.

**Lyaksej** · 07-05-2007, 12:59 PM

Interresting idea, but:
1. I don't like logo
2. you should increase jpeg-quality on your image like ( clock, chair,header shadow...)
3. maybe something else, don't know how to explain
Good luck

**Spacyjane** · 07-05-2007, 01:05 PM

THANKS FOR YOUR SUGGESTIONS SPHINX. you mention alt tags for the pictures. i thought i had these because when you mouse over the pictures it shows the words art, chair, tables etc. is there something further that you are talking about? you also suggest removing the pictures and replacing them with text links as there isn't any design to them in any way. i see lots of websites with just pictures and you click on them. i'm confused. i'm trying to get something that looks good without a lot of text because then it's clutter. please explain further if you can
spacyjane

**highanddry** · 01:55 PM

Looks like you've made some real improvements on the old design Jane. I still think that the navigation is a problem however, as there is no links back to the home page and the first links that I could find. I would suggest that you try to keep the navigation the same for every page, leaving subsection links on the content area of the page.. A site with that many links should probably make good use of a css drop down menu or other more advanced navigation system to keep things well organized.

On another note, I side with those recommending higher picture quality for your logo, and I disagree that all your images should be text links. I for one would not want to click on links to see images. Thumbnails are a much better way to show visitors a preview of your image before they commit to loading a full size image.
Good Luck!

**Spacyjane** · 07-05-2007, 02:14 PM

Thanks high and dry,
Yes, the links back to home page... someone else mentioned and i'm working on it. also i also agree with the navigation bar. not knowing css has really inhibited my design for sure and sitebuilder doesn't expand on drop down menus. i'm going to take suggestions and try and keep all the navigation bars the same. I'm going to get my logo changed and enter it again in the logo contest. i don't really like it either although it has been ok for now. thanks again for your positive comments.
spacyjane