Content Suggestions?

I recently got slammed on the mootools forum, I agreed with them on a few things, but I was rather heated after reading the reply. Anyway one of their key points was the lack of content on my index page. Another person agreed with them as well. I’m thinking, big deal it is the index page, nice and simple. If people came here to look they will look right? I mean if you hit a dead link from a search engine, do you go back or do you go up one level and see if the content is there...

I have a single column layout, no ’news’ / ’blog’ articles or feeds from elsewhere. I do have great information on the other pages though.

Please look at a few pages and give me some constructive criticism on how I could beef up my index page
http://sweetskies.fruitwerks.us

Thanks!

the bad manners at the mootools forum are well know, unfortunately. its hard for them to give you constructive critisism if you get some at all - enough said.


why don’t you show some summaries of some of your other pages e.g. FAQ on the front page - should be fairly easy by e.g. using ditto.

the bad manners at the mootools forum are well know, unfortunately. its hard for them to give you constructive critisism if you get some at all - enough said.

The most constructive piece was "Hire a professional Web Designer" - Wow.. sounds like a master Myspace Layout maker to me.. Anyway!

Yeah I was thinking use Ditto to pull a random faq and breeder profile and spice up the newest listed and sold birds I already have on there. Oh goodie.. time to make more classes

Anyone else that happens to check it out and comment, I would like to hear about load times

Thanks!

yeah, I saw that comment - it’s kind of annoying how the treat their visitors but there is nothing one can do but leave the forum and the framework.

anyway, one other suggestion - you’re top link navigation should be styled a little better so the hover effect just encompasses the area from one divider to another.

I’m not exactly sure what you are saying about the nav bar? I just plugged it in earlier today and have some styling to do still... I’m not sure what you are talking about? Give it it’s own div?

Thanks!

I think the site is fine. It is easy to get around, everything seems to work and there is plenty of information.

Visually the tips that I may offer would be 1) fine tune the navigation to give it some consistency in width and spacing (I am on osx/firefox and the menu looks a bit squished in the breeders menu and is nice and spacious in the products menu You will be amazed at how a simple thing like that will make a big impact. And 2) would be to style the products section to be the same as the rest of the site. For me it seems that the white background and framed content space is missing and only the blue background shows.

Yeah that darn menu is a thorn in my .. well I just switched over to it, had a nice one, but it didn’t work in one browser, fix that and it broke another...

Yes the products section is the forgotten lands of the site.. I think I should just take it down. We sold 30 of the cups to a local store and that was about six months ago, they still have 10 or so, and we go to shows, nobody even looks at the toys. The original site had a white background and it looked decent. I think I saved them as jpeg do cut the overhead of gif / png files.

I just need to look into the css for the wayfinder menu... uses static sized blocks and I had to tweak it to work with my current layout.

fyi - if you are just joining in on this thread, everything below the slideshow on the index page is new. I can’t think of much else to put. I searched for some feeds related to the site but no luck.

Thanks!

Quote from: fruitwerks at Sep 18, 2007, 02:08 PM

I recently got slammed on the mootools forum, I agreed with them on a few things, but I was rather heated after reading the reply. Anyway one of their key points was the lack of content on my index page. Another person agreed with them as well. I’m thinking, big deal it is the index page, nice and simple. If people came here to look they will look right? I mean if you hit a dead link from a search engine, do you go back or do you go up one level and see if the content is there...

I have a single column layout, no ’news’ / ’blog’ articles or feeds from elsewhere. I do have great information on the other pages though.

Please look at a few pages and give me some constructive criticism on how I could beef up my index page
http://sweetskies.fruitwerks.us

Thanks!

you’re not alone: http://forum.mootools.net/viewtopic.php?id=5645 - it’s just ridiculous

Actually, I found the extra stuff to be a bit much. I’ve always tried to avoid having anything below the "fold" on the home page. The same people who will be interested enough to scroll will also click on links. Other than that, I liked the site. The YAPS people are still stuck in the 90’s with trying to cram all of their crap on one page, so that you can’t make heads nor tails of what it’s all about, or find anything. Fortunately, the KISS principle is prevailing now. Google didn’t become so successful just because of its search engine.

If you feel the need for advice, I can strongly recommend digging through the articles on A List Apart.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/homepagegoals/

mmjaeger - yeah I saw that one too. Their documentation is excellent, if you a are at least a mid-level coder. Some things are easy, but other things are like.. hmm.. I start here? But ..how? I indeed try not to go there.. anyway.

sottwell - I checked out that link, Other than having users login, I think I covered everything, and have had most of it covered from the start. Both boxes below the slideshow are dynamic, but looking at it this morning, the second box is not that great. I think I will take it down for now.

I need to fix up the menu and beef up some of the styling, but other than that, not much I can do.

Thanks!