Any hints and tips are welcome. I am wanting to know more about page loading time. Do they really take forever? If so I will have to go through and change all pic sizes or what? What about the layout. Is it ok or not? I know it is definately not optimized, I just need a push in the right direction I think. I have made a few small sites before for friends but I have never went for a specific look. Professional. I would like to hear any helpful advice you all have. Thanks

Hi,

yes page loading is a bit slow.
I clocked your front page at 38 seconds on a 56k dialup. You should atleast cut that in half.

Before optimizing your site, I would have a close examination of structure and linking.
Visitors shouldn't have to scroll to the bottom of the page to click a link. Should move it to the top

I would consider looking a little more closely at the overall design as well. consider adding some more graphics and colour. The baby-blue of the background and text makes it difficult for anything to stand out.

Consider adding descriptions to your products, which will also help with search engines.

When the Paypal link is clicked there is a security warning which may scare some visitors off. What you need to do is put that logo(top-left) under SSL.
Find out if your host supports shared SSL.
Then the link to that graphic would look something like this:
https://www.somehost.com/~kristiscov...ntpagelogo.jpg

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I like the background image you used. But I have some comments on the text, First, with the font color you used, it's not so readable. Second, you used Papyrus for the font face but in my computer the font appeared as Times New Roman (because I have no Papyrus font installed).

If you want to use Papyrus for "Tigerlily Lullabies", you have to use an image (.gif) to achieve the effect that you want. But it's not advisable for the rest of the text.

I also suggest using a logo that will not be overshadowed by the other two logos at the top. If I didn't know your site is www.kristiscovers.com, I would think it's www.topbabypages.com.

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Hi, Sites colour scheme is perfect for the subject of your products. I think you could improve this site by using a font such as arial or tahoma which seem to be almost standard on most e-commerce sites these days as they are easy to read and are very crisp. Use a darker blue almost navy and i think you could still keep the feel of the site. Dont upload until you have gone throught the site and sorted small hitches like the hyperlink blue surrounding only a couple of the pictures, this can make the difference between a site looking OK and professional.

Hope these tips help.. good luck

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Hi Kristi,

Per your original post, load time is a little slow. I'm running a pretty respectable dial-up connection, and I was right at 42 seconds loading the homepage. Your picture files are a bit large, all seem to run in the 32 to 37kb range, and with all of them on the page, that presents a pretty substantial on-load burden. I'm not familiar with Front Page Express, but if it has an Auto Thumbnail feature, by all means try it.

Whether you thumbnail them or not, you might also try running your pictures through the compression tool at ~
http://www.netmechanic.com/GIFBot/op...htm#ses_sample ~ And, see if you can't trim the file size a little bit to help with your load speed. Although it won't reduce the physical dimensions, as would auto thumbnailing them, many times you can cut up to 50% of your file size without a loss of resolution.

Have to agree with 'nickfoster' on the border surrounding the pictures. It appears some are linked, some are not, some of those that are have the border, some don't. You need to seek some consistency there, both with the links, and with the borders. Likewise you have several different sizes of pictures there, and it would give you a more professional appearance if they were uniform in size.

You also need to find a consistent width for your tables, and consistent width and height for the cells therein, rather than randomly sizing them all. At least a portion of that is caused by the various sizes in your pictures however, and uniformity in the pictures would cure at least a part of this problem.

I would recommend you move the banners top of the homepage, to the bottom of the page. The last thing you want to do on a commercial site is point someone out the door, before they get their foot in the door. Comparitively, that's sorta like the greeter at Walmart inviting you to go try K-Mart or Target as you walk in! And, where you're having problems with your load time, folks might be inclined to accept that invite.

Not sure how you might incorporate it, but you really should work a navigation bar in at the top of the page someplace too, having to scroll to the bottom every time for navigation might be construed as bothersome by some. I'd suggest between the Header/Logo and your product pictures, as you already have the homepage layed out for such. And, you need to check your links at the bottom for Captialization and spacing errors, "home" "2pcset", Again think consistency, it's key to professionalism, it reflects attention to detail.

Positive aspects ~ I love the wallpaper, Font, and Color selection. Very befitting of the product, and elegantly coordinated in design. Have always loved the fixed background properties over wallpaper as well, it adds a certain mystique to the site. However 'waanagaran' has a valid concern in respect to the font, and although it's quite legible on my monitor, I would think there likely to be a very real conern on reported difficulty seeing the font on a brighter monitor as well.

Overall it's great site, it just needs a little tweaking to make it a killer sales tool! Nice work.

Rocky

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