rooster

I have a website i have been working on a little.
I make and sell stuff made out of leather and metal.

I know all the links arnt working yet, but if you click "cowboy boot purses" that link works, and keychains works, and my contact form works. I am adding the other links soon, but I have to take pictures for everything.

but look at what I have so far, and let me know what you think, and what you think to improve it.
yes, i use frames. and no, i do not have a shopping cart yet. I am using etsy.com to sell the stuff. this website is just an overview of my items.

thanks!

www.tkleather.com

ronaldroe

I suspect you aren't interested in really learning more modern coding techniques, so I won't beat that dead horse...get it? Horse...because...you're selling...cowboy...Ok, anyway, back to the critique. If you're interested in learning how to fix what's under the hood, let us know and we'll point you in the right direction.
The one code issue I will point out is that you need to declare a DOCTYPE at the top. It tells the browser which version of HTML you're using. If you don't declare one, the browser uses "quirks mode", which is exactly what it sounds like: quirky.

Design wise, take a look at a few things:
The giant leather image for the background is waaaaay too zoomed in. It's distracting. See if you can find a repeatable leather pattern that is smaller and less detailed.
Your menu text is way too large. It pushes more than half of the menu below the fold on my average-sized monitor, so you can imagine it on a netbook or mobile browser.
The text in the content area is too close to the edges of the container. Add some padding to the text to make it come in a little.
Drop shadows are a privilege, not a right. Try to go easy

Start there, then see how you look.

__________________
Ronald Roe
Small Business Web Design

Fireproofgfx

As the site stands right now, really its just going to hurt any sort of business you hope to bring from it. I don't mean to sound harsh but there is a lot you need to do to make it better. First off, the overall color scheme and leather background doesn't look pleasing and the beveled and Bleeding Cowboy font and red fonts that don't match the overall color scheme just don't work. You need some better graphics skills and you need to work on the coding more. But keep at it this is how a lot of peoples first sites look.

webdevcloud

Elementary design and concepts. May I suggest that you start with checking out how standard websites are designed these days? Just search for "CSS best design" or something like that in Google. Go through the list of designs to get an idea of what web designs mean. The color combination, font size, layout - there is still a long way to go.

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Web design company - Quantumcloud

rooster

Yea I know the background image is way too big and distracting.
And the colors were not my choice. As for the old coding - that's what I learned awhile ago, so I was trying to remember it. I haven't looked up too much newer stuff like css. As for the fonts in the menu being too big, I'll fix that. I has it smaller, but other people told me to make them take up the whole side, so I did. But I'll change it back. Less shadowing? I'll fix it. And I'll fix the padding too.

What about the iframes? Does anyone still use them? I only did because I keep changing the layout so I don't want to do it on every page I make. Is there another way? Anyone suggest another color scheme? Needs to be "western" looking colors.

iniedrauer

Just say no to beveled edges. Just say no.

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Isaac Niedrauer Web/Graphics Design

rooster

I am colorblind, so the colors and beveld edges dont look all that different to me - just doing what other people suggested.

so will you review a few of my "competitors" websites?

www.diamond57.com
www.rootintootinboutique.com
www.westtexastotes.com

and tell me why you like their sites better?
what should i do to mine to make it more like theirs?

ronaldroe

www.diamond57.com
The best of the 3, but still crap. The background and overall color scheme aren't bad. The worst thing about it? On a 1366px wide monitor, I still have to scroll sideways a good bit to see the right side of the page. Want more reasons to hate it? Take a look at the code. They call 8 stylesheets and still have styles in the head as well as inline styles. Nevermind the table-based layout.

www.rootintootinboutique.com
Clearly just a GoDaddy template, and not even a particularly good one. The color scheme and general layout don't fit the content in the least.

www.westtexastotes.com
Yours is far better. This looks like it was done by a 5th grader in 1995. And we still have table-based layout, style tags, inline styles and deprecated HTML 3 tags.

__________________
Ronald Roe
Small Business Web Design

Fireproofgfx

You are on par with all 3 of those, but you shouldn't shoot for par, you should aim higher. All 3 examples are pretty bad. The only saving grace for any of them is that the diamond57 colors scheme works better than the rest.

I was thinking you might be color blind since you used red with everything else. Red wouldn't look to bad to you because it would be darker and not so bright like it is to someone who isn't color blind.

rooster

so with those being my competitors, atleast i know from a professional standpoint, theirs is crap too.

Im going to leave mine the way it is for now, while i work on a new layout.
but im not sure what to do. i need a few ideas, but not sure what. I think i need to play around with CSS a little bit.

It sucks being colorblind. back in the day, when i first started HTML (Ive been doing it for about 10 years... well kind of, i did one site 10 years ago, and just wanted to do one again myself 10 years later, with the old knowledge) but when I first started, I learned alot of the hex codes for colors, and what each number kind of represented, but that info is long gone out of my head. it gets old relying on someone for matching colors.

so all in all - quit with the beveling and shaddowing, and take out the red, pad the info inside the frame, make the menu smaller. should I keep the two rectangle blocks like I have them? Except make them flat? or is that too much still? my BG image is a picture. I might make something in PS or take a small pic of something that will tile well.

are people still using frames?

also, anyone know a cheap shopping cart? I dont have a tax id number, which a few ask for.

thanks again!