OK, I'm gonna submit myself to the peanut gallery and see if my stuff is up to snuff:

http://www.ruffseedfarm.com

Be warned, though: There are many design problems & shortcomings I was forced to make against my will: for instance, I have a shortage of good imagery of the client's business. (Hence the huge header graphic)

Also, the content is somewhat constrained at the request of the client. (They don't want pricing data on the net for regulatory reasons.)

So, I'm looking for more of a big-picture critique.

And if anyone suggests more animated .gifs and bright or blinking text.....I'll not be held responsible for the consequences. :)

thanks
Brandon

the site looks good... but I would make a few suggestions...
When I clicked on 'crop info' , I went to the links page..
Under products - that info should be under crop info... perfect information for that subheading.
your Home link does not work on all the pages...
your index page.. some of that info (happenings, etc.) should be unders news - this way, your index page is not overly long, but I would try to get some more informational text for that page... maybe take some from the About us page... (even if you have to repeat yourself... the index page is probably going to be the one that the search engines look at and that is where you need to have more information (text), without dealing with pricing...
you give no information as to what will be in the newsletter, so you give no reason for anyone to sign up for it...
all in all, it's a good site, considering the constraints you had to deal with
I, for one, would never suggest animated gifs, blinking, etc... that kind of stuff is not professional looking...

__________________
Mary Ann
Affordable Websites Designed - www.m-goret.com

When you refer to your 'huge header graphic' did you mean its physical size or its byte-size?

I tried a few quick things - the reason being that I know a few farmers in the UK and broadband doesn't usually make it to farms over here. Therefore download times are important.

Your original (51kb):


64 color GIF (34kb):


32 color GIF (28kb):


70% JPG (19kb):


The site reads very well, and everything is clearly and neatly laid out.

One observation: in the Soybeans section the title text is smaller than that used for the seed types. Then I noticed that the text size of the 'CORN' title is larger than either 'SOYBEAN' or 'WHEAT', and this is variable throughout the site. I think 'the 'CORN' title is the way it should be... but just make them consistent :)

On that same (soybean) page you have links to 'information' and 'BROCHURE' - the use of lower case and capitals makes the text appear significantly different in size (and I think 'information' is smaller anyway). Again, just be consistent.

In the About us section Mr McClure (I assume that's not you :)) talks about 'environmental issues' affecting soybean harvest. My first thought was 'GM crop' for some reason - then I realise he meant 'environmental conditions' or 'environmental factors'. Not sure if that is of any use or interest :)

You might want to look at your keywords. Some words appear several times. Also, you typically don't need more than maybe 30 or so of them, and I notice that although the business is concerned with seed sales the keywords contain things like 'yellow mosaic virus', 'leaf rust', and various other crop diseases. Is the business really interested in competing with people, like research organisations, who might be pushing those things harder than you can?

Seriously, though, it does read very well and looks the part. Somehow the font you've used goes with the business it is advertising.

__________________
Sualdam

It seems as though the information is well organized. One thing I was hoping to find as I clicked around was pictures of the farm. I don't know that it's necessary but I was really hoping to see some! I like the site quite a bit.

__________________
Leisa
Wholly Wholesale - Wholesale Auctions - http://whollywholesale.com
eStoreFinder.com - eCommerce Store Directory - http://eStoreFinder.com
WholesaleLowdown.com - A Guide for Retailers - http://wholesalelowdown.com

Yeah, i just went thru this week and converted it from a framed layout...so there's still little dumb things like the home page button that I've overlooked.

I tried reducing the header graphic size and didn't get that good a result! What package did you use for that??

...on the crop info section I'm waiting for more detailed info from the clients....it was formerly a one-page section.

So that little kludge job was of my own doing. :)

The animated gifs remark was directed at what a believe to be a facetious or sarcastic remark from another forum....someone suggested more animated gifs to someone else. It was meant to be humorous.

The newsletter has been put out once sent I implemented that feature. It remains something that the client is very interested in, and about twenty people have signed up for it now, hopefully we come up with some newsletter stuff as the new growing season comes around.

thanks!
B

I absolutely agree...and was beating my head against the wall trying to get the file size down without sacrificing too much quality.....so you have big-time thanks from me on that one!


Yeah, we here in the states are not as worried about GM crops as folks in Europe are. The environmental conditions statement refers to the fact that here in Ohio, some farmers had banner years while others were utterly rained out.

I used this purported optimizer: http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

Though I notice the keyword relevancy that was formerly reported as 'good' is now 'poor'. Back to the ole drawing board!

I decided to use the more obscure keywords because they're mentioned on the products pages, and not too many people seem to be using them....we've got #1 google rankings on a few of them.

My big project right now is trying to improve the SEO. I got seduced by the dark side of the force and tried using a remotely hosted php script that claimed to increase targeted referrals by cloaking pages. By the description they gave for the script, I figured it would simulate pages on things like Yellow Mosaic Virus....instead I got referrals from people looking for the band Marcy Playground and for the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre. So I removed that crap. Hopefully, I don't get PR0'd on Google for trying to do a legitimate thing illegitimately!

It's really painful, because I took the original site I did and converted it to frames in an attempt to make it easier to use for newbies.....without realizing that frames would take my not-too-shabby Google pagerank of 6 and reduce it to zero virtually overnight. So right now, it's all about getting back to where I was. I'm halfway there. :)

Thanks to everyone who took a look!

Any graphics package will do it, plus there are plenty of standalone ones.

Obvious ones are Photoshop, Ulead products, Adobe products, etc.

You need to make sure you're only adjusting one thing at a time, otherwise you get unpredictable results.

You can obviously use the ones above just by saving them.

__________________
Sualdam

I am viewing your site on an iMac. There seems to be a huge amount of extra black space at the bottom of the pages Iooked at. The Newsletter sign-up page had too much white space on the top of the page so I had to scrool down to get to the info.

Otherwise a nice clean site!

<sigh> That's what I get for using the **** layers. I'll try to find a suitable alternative for the next revision.

__________________
Brandon Dawson / WPW: Ender
http://www.athenainternet.com
brandon(-at-)athenainternet.com