Well I have never asked this before but I offer myself up for a site critique.

Please feel free to post all comments (don't be tooooo harsh though ).

http://www.goldenwebjewelers.com

Thank you for all of the input it is appreciated,

Brian

------------------
Work hard, play fair, stay sane

A few comments though, primarily related to useability and to the layout of your text content.

I am not mad about your font - I find it a bit difficult to read and, this is a personal thing, would prefer ariel or verdana or something plainer.

I also think you need to break up your paragraphs a bit. I would be inclined for example to split the main text on the home page (the bit starting "British hand engraved gold wedding bands") into at least two paragraphs, and give each a clickable heading. You could even place content side by side on the page - ie two columns - as narrower area of text are easier to read. A bit of editing to make it less wordy would also make it snappier and more likely to draw people in.

I think we often beleive that people will behave differently at our sites than we do at theirs By which I mean we imagine they will actually read our carefully crafted text. But tell the truth - when you go to a site while browsing do you settle down for a good read or scan for something interesting to click on?

This may be something you are planning but I would like to see more images in some areas - for example in the wedding anniversary stones area I sat for a while waiting for images to load - then realised there were none. You could also ue this area to link to the selling areas of your site. I don't think you have exploited your imformative areas fully in this regard - they have great content and will be likely as such to show well in search engines so use that to draw people into your actual goods and get them to think of buying. Even a simple thing like putting a link to your wedding rings on the words "Get Rings" in your wedding planner calender

One more major thing - you have quite a significant sideways scroll at anything even a smidgeon below 800 wide. An awful lot of people will have stuff open in the side of their browser window or will not have their windows maximised or whatever which means you will not have the full benefit of their screen width.

Nice site though - I really like it.

------------------
Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

I've looked at this site before - think it looks great and fits the producy well.

Only change I would make would be to use Arial or verdana for the font - I know others will disagree but I think they smarten the page without distrating from content. I'd also add a contact address to the bottom of each page.

Hope the store goes well for you - it should do

Cheers
Andy

------------------
Internet Business Solutions S.L. (Spain)
Dreamweaver Users Forum

Your missing the famous "ALT TEXT" on your images.

You might want to try a different font, book antiqua isnt that easy to read. Its always nice to use a crisp clean font with straight lines, much nicer to look at IMO.

The search boxes at the top are crowding the logo and make it cumbersome. Try moving the jewellery search box to under the Jewellery Colection menu and move the other one to under the information centre menu.

The JVC and J logos could possibly go at the bottom or maybe on the right hand side and the Free US Shipping/Freen Earrings on the left. It looks like you were try to balance both sides of the page and since the logos are different sizes it doesnt work.

That ICRA logo looks nasty on the dark background. If you have to and want to use it put it on the white of the main page all the way at the bottom.

Thank you for the responses. I do greatly appreciate it !!!

Andy- Both comments will be implemented. I love external CSS files . I was using Arial and verdana as second and third fonts for the font face in the CSS file. I wanted to give Book A. a try just to see how it would look. Great call on the contact address. Love includes as much as external CSS. Two seconds and bam, bing, what a wonderfull thing .

Albino- ALT text, I was having some problems on weighting keywords on the SEO front and had removed them. I will revisit that though, thanks for the reminder. By paring down the content on the page I could probably offset the higher KW density by utilizing them now (while keeping them natural and informative).

I don't understand what you mean when you say "The search boxes at the top are crowding the logo and make it cumbersome." could you expand on that thought, you caught my curiosity. I was trying to utilize the prime real estate areas when I moved them up there.

"The JVC and J logos could possibly go at the bottom or maybe on the right hand side and the Free US Shipping/Freen Earrings on the left" I will give that a spin tonight and see how it looks. You are correct though I was trying to balance the four images and break up the text, good thought. Good thought on the ICRA logo, just wanted to give the OK for all ages confidence. I'll move it down and on the white, thanks.

Abbeyvet- What can I say but wow, thank you .

I'll play with that paragraph and by all means put in clickable headers. I am assuming you mean the H1 tag with a hyperlink when you referenced that?. Also I will look into cutting it down while keeping the denisty of the KW phrases inline. I think by utilizing the ALT tags mentioned by A;lbino it should bance the KW weight nicley.

Thank you for the knock upside the head on deep linking to my products. Duh, that seems sooooo natural now that you mention it, very good suggestion as I have around 100+ pages of content.

Not sure what to do on the scroll. Yes I made the site with 800X600 in mind, just not a reduced windows in mind. The main culprit is my divider bar. I will shrink it down 25% or 50% and see how it works out there.

Again thank all of you for the time and posts, it means a lot. The first time I did this was three years ago. Got slammed so hard that I stopped posting on the forum and retreated in general. Don't get me wrong I always welcome honest and blunt opinions but they were more like out and out flames. Much relief .

Thanks,

Brian

------------------
Work hard, play fair, stay sane

I took care of the font issue and have to agree there. I also took care of the "Contact Us" in the footer. I'll start hitting the rest this weekend. Got an Unreal Tournament match to take up tonight. Jack's got to play sometime or ...

Thanks again,

Brian

------------------
Work hard, play fair, stay sane

[This message has been edited by GWJ (edited 09-13-2001).]

One other little thing. Maybe I am missing it but I do not see a link to the home page on any of the internal pages. Might be worth adding, or, if I am just not finding it, making it more prominent.

------------------
Katherine

InKK Design
LinKKs - Kilkenny's Online Magazine

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
"Dogs have owners, cats have staff!"

Observations as I strolled through:

* Any chance of a title on the ring pages (plain text would do)..I found I'd click on a page have a look and then not know whether I was in Wedding Rings or ??? (mind you, I also have the memory of a gnat sometimes),Bob...drat, I mean, Brian.. See?

* Found myself at a loss if I'd wanted to be nice and order my husband a ring. He's a size 14. What would people do for odd-sizes? Maybe a "Sizing" page?

* Go over (or have somebody else do it; works better) your pages and check for spelling and consistency. i.e. Engraved Rings - some are Scrolled Free, Scroll Free and 1 is Scrol Free. On the Wedding Rings page the word "comfort" seems to be a titch UNcomfortable in a few different forms of itself. I know it's hard, you've looked at it so much that you don't even see the text anymore. Been there, done that, had the typos.

* I think your link to "home" should be at the top of your links, not the bottom. People are conditioned to look at the top. Perhaps even add another large beveled button with HOME PAGE on it?

* Your animated rings gif at the top left of your home page needs, IMO, to be "centered" in its cell. It almost runs off my page. It's very well done by the way...why not use it on the rest of your page corners as well? It will already be loaded in cache, so....

Okay...enough ring shopping for me, I must be off. Nice site, Brian, it looks classic and tasteful. Nice job.

Jego

You didn't get to the font on the shopping cart though, it is definitely not verdana (when you go to checkout).

------------------
Summer McFarland

Thanks again all ,

Brian

------------------
Work hard, play fair, stay sane