A very new site from a newbie

[nicktoeman]

I have created my first ever website (developed in NetObjects Fusion 7): www.carntowan.com (or http://72.41.50.62/ if the DNS servers haven’t been updated yet). I’d appreciate some constructive feedback because I need to start getting hits (and business) from September, a peak booking month for UK holidays.
Some points I have discovered already:-
A friend has found an irritating horizontal scroll is required where the RHS is being clipped (I have plenty of space even on my 15” laptop). His screen size is 800 x 600 but I was using the Fusion 7 default of 760 x 573 – he must be using side bars. I was thinking of just reducing the LH border to make the screen about 725 x 573 - is that a good idea?
I have a mixture of jpeg and gif images of different size and compressions and wondered which work best. I haven’t tried dial up yet, I have a DSL connection. The photo albums on my PC are a bit of a mess because I’ve compressed and resized them for various uses without always saving the original. I’ll need to take some new ones but hope these look OK for now.
Any suggestions on the best way of hiding my e-mail address (which is why I am using a temp. address)?
I have accessed the site with IE and Firefox. The latter has a small problem where I have overlapped objects (on the “Maps” and “Contacts & booking” pages) which seems to have caused some coloured text-box backgrounds to shift a bit. I’ll fix that. These are the only browsers I’ve tried.
All comments welcome of course. Thanks,
Nick

 

[ian]

1. The navigation links on the left hand side, the text looks too small, and it is a little hard to read, could do perhaps with being just a fraction bigger.
2. I dont like the way you have bolded a lot of words on the homepage, completely uneccesary and it looks odd.
3. I dont think you need the text which says "[font=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Sans-serif,sans-serif][size=-2]You can navigate this site using the menu buttons or by following the suggested link, bottom right"[/size][/font]

 

[hikoboshi]

Not bad for a 'newbie'. I agree with Ian on all points, but would like to add some of my own-

The menu on the left looks out of place. Its style isn't consistent with the rest of the site.

The layout is nice enough. Keeping it simple is a good idea. Those orange blocks, however, look tacked on and disrupt the simple, effective composition of the page.

It seems to work fine in Opera.

 

[nicktoeman]

Thanks Ian and Hikoboshi. I used one of NOF 7's standard templates and replace the boring banner with a nice view of the horizon from one of my photos. I must look at the menu buttons and see how these are changed too (I'm not sure to what as I'm no designer). It's interesting that NOF defaults to rather small button text, I wonder whether it's OK on 800 x 600 screens and we're all using higher resolutions (I am). Anyway, I'll fix that.
I was thinking about what the keywords might be when I bolded some words - guess I should let the search engines worry about that rather than people's eyes.
Regarding the "Where next?" links, I guess I was trying to steer people towards the cottage I'm really promoting rather than the ones where the agent gets more than enough business (I'm experimenting with being my own agent for just one). I suppose I should unclutter the site and let people make make their own choices!
I'll wait 24 hours for any more feedback and for the DNSs to catch up and make all the changes you've recommended.
Thanks guys, very valuable.

 

[nicktoeman]

Made the changes you suggested (plus some others), except for the menu buttons - it ain't that simple in NOF7 but I will do it when I can work out how.
Regards,
Nick

 

[tank126]

Hi nicktoeman,
well i check out your site. i thought the page layouts were pretty decent. my biggest problem had to do with the navigation menu. it was kind of hard to use and felt a little akward. The sub-categories you had for other cottages,Sennen Area, & Getting There kind of caught me off guard when i clicked on them because the whole menu expanded. So i guess my suggestion is to maybe change it to a mouse-over menu where the sub-categories are displayed off to the side or maybe even change the layout to a horizontal navigation bar with drop down mouse over menus.....

anyway, something to think about.

Tank126

 

[nicktoeman]

Thanks Tank,
I'll try that, when I have worked out how (the menu stucture I used is standard NOF7 format).
Nick

 

[nicktoeman]

Button text now enlarged. Will leave the more radical menu changes you suggested Tank to a later release - I still have a lot of things to learn.
Nick

 

[Kiwiberry]

I'm using firefox (800x600) and beside Tank's comments I think it's looking pretty good,

 

[RAJO]

1-i think u need something more graphical to put as logo or top banner for the page
2-there r too many white spaces
else i guess it's very good design and simple