[soulethal]

hello all,
i am trying to find out if my site is on point.
is there anyone out there that can possibly let me knew with some constructive criticism, what changes i might need to make on my site in order to make it more presentable..
the url is www.soulethal.com
i can either be contacted on her, or at my personal email address, [email protected]

thank you

 

[Despotte]

Hmmm... I don't really know were to start.... It is not very ... Customer friendly. It looks like a myspace account for a kid and not like a store. if anyone scrolled down far enough to see that there were products for sale they would be VERY confused by the subject matter. If I were coming looking for Street Teez I would be turned off by the crystal angels. If I were coming for nice crystal angels I would be turned off by the Street Teez. It seemed to Chaotic overall. ON the Plus side The Tees Looked Decent (not my style but well designed and good art)

 

[badalou]

When you ask you will get answers.. in this case maybe more then you bargained for. Busy is a word I would use, confusing is another.. don't try to be artistic as if you just discovered how to use photoshop for the first time. This may be your first time doing a web but you really are going to send people away more than your going to get them to continue. Are you using a web design program or doing it with your own coding. It also should be centered. There is more. I am not going to be the only one making comments. But I bet when you listen to everyone and re do a few things you will have a better web site. Lou

 

[farennikov]

hey bro don't take it personal, but the first thing that sticks out is the flashing thunder animation that's plain disturbing. Most usability studies show that any animation (especially with blinking) is a bad idea for a website. Second, you've got too many font colors.
btw I use this helpful resource about web design, it's got a lot of great links:
Essential web tools in one place

 

[farennikov]

Here's another link called 10 biggest mistakes in web design

 

[Dave G]

I agree with the others. Very busy.

 

[soulethal]

hey all,
you all have been really helpful, and i will deifnitely, make major improvements on the site.

if there are any other problems, please let me know.
i'm dealing with T-shirts 70%, and home products 30%, whats the best way to expose that on my website

 

[soulethal]

what can i possible do to make this non chaotic, to where you'll feel comfortable about shopping here

 

[soulethal]

dont get me wrong, i have lots of customers, who buy frequently from me. but i want more, how can i get more.
whats the best layout that you all, think will fit and drw more people in fro my site?

 

[farennikov]

what can i possible do to make this non chaotic, to where you'll feel comfortable about shopping here

You know, if you aren't very familiar with web design and don't want to hire someone to do this for you then you can get a paid template from sites like www.templatemonster.com or free templates from Open source web design and customize them.

 

[Twinge]

It's mostly been said already, but I'll give my (admittedly harsh) take as well:

No animated gifs. At all.

Ditch the guestbook.

Drop the font color variations significantly; I would suggest maybe 2 colors, 3 at the most.

Don't advertise your myspace page on the front page of your site.

Have a navigation panel at the top or side as well (or instead) -- it's hard to find the one at the very bottom.

Keep a consistent layout. Clicking on a link at the bottom makes it looks like I've gone to an entirely different website. The navigation again is completely different for the t-shirt page comapred to the front page or info pages. You should probably look at using something like SSI or PHP to help keep things consistent if you're only using pure html pages right now.

Clicking on the left 'Home Products' image brings up a full-size image of the product instead of entering the site.

The html generated by Yahoo's sitebuilder is really messy; you might consider cleaning it up a bit manually (but you'll have to learn some html to do this if you don't know much already). This will also have the added benefit of making the page load faster on dialup (currently: about 45 seconds) and make search engines like the page more.


And a good note: your site appears to work well on 800x600 resolution. Keep this true - that's a good thing =)

We can review more subtle problems once you address some of the big ones.

 

[T-BOT]

...just a quick note.

this URL

http://soulethal.com/

is the same page as

http://www.soulethal.com/

maybe do A 301 re-direct from one to the other.
i know its old news but.... this way the value of your site might get an extra vote from Bots.

 

[soulethal]

It's mostly been said already, but I'll give my (admittedly harsh) take as well:

No animated gifs. At all.

Ditch the guestbook.

Drop the font color variations significantly; I would suggest maybe 2 colors, 3 at the most.

Don't advertise your myspace page on the front page of your site.

Have a navigation panel at the top or side as well (or instead) -- it's hard to find the one at the very bottom.

Keep a consistent layout. Clicking on a link at the bottom makes it looks like I've gone to an entirely different website. The navigation again is completely different for the t-shirt page comapred to the front page or info pages. You should probably look at using something like SSI or PHP to help keep things consistent if you're only using pure html pages right now.

Clicking on the left 'Home Products' image brings up a full-size image of the product instead of entering the site.

The html generated by Yahoo's sitebuilder is really messy; you might consider cleaning it up a bit manually (but you'll have to learn some html to do this if you don't know much already). This will also have the added benefit of making the page load faster on dialup (currently: about 45 seconds) and make search engines like the page more.


And a good note: your site appears to work well on 800x600 resolution. Keep this true - that's a good thing =)

We can review more subtle problems once you address some of the big ones.

thanks for the advice. it really helps to know that there are people who are actually willing to help others.
once again, thanks