Opinions? http://www.sewandvacdirect.com

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Hello,

On the page at http://www.sewandvacdirect.com/sewingmachinehome.htm colors are kind of hard on the eyes, dark background, dark text, and dark colored photo backgrounds make it a bit tough for me to pic the words out of the background. You might consider a lighter background, or brighter type color.

Your backgrounds jump around a bit, rather than a unified theme to give your business definition and clarity, the site gives me the impression of a patchwork quilt of sorts. Not sure if that is what you have in mind for your potential visitors or not. I could see where quilts and sewing go together, but if you are trying to stick with a professional image, I would suggest a more uniform format for your pages, or at least trying to keep changes uniform throughout entire areas of the site ( i.e. all your product page backgrounds one theme, maybe your company information pages another, etc. )

I guess I should rephrase that a bit, as I am writing this as I am moving through your site, it's not so much the change of background, it's the change of page layout that confuses me a bit. Some pages have a left navigational area, others have a top navigational area. I'm not sure where to click from page to page to get around. I would suggest keeping your navigational areas consistent throughout your site. It is more natural that way, and people learn your site navigation quicker because they know where to look on each page to get around. But I would DEFINITELY suggest doing something with the sewingmachinehome.htm page to blend it in with the rest of the site.

Your calendar page has "Electric Hospital" at the top of it? I thought I was at Sew and Vac Direct? Again, confusing. Makes me wonder if I am still at the same site I went to in the beginning. From my experience, MOST companies tend to use the top area of each page as a reminder to the surfer of where they are at. It's something that people tend to expect from the conditioning they have gone through resulting from their time spent online surfing. If you go against that conditioning and "natural feel", you risk the possibility of alienating or confusing your visitors. Confuse or alienate them too bad, and they won't come back.

On the positive side, your site is VERY clean. Each of the pages are layed out nicely in my opinion, I would just suggest that you pic one layout you like, and make the rest of the pages uniform so as not to confuse your visitors. Navigation through the links also is good, as I was not stuck anywhere without a way out. I didn't need to use the back button, and that is something to strive for. You made the site easy to navigate as it sits, and that is important because it allows the visitor to get anywhere else in your site from another page in the site.

Your site is also informative. I never knew what a serger was, but now I do :o), and allot of the sewing machines I've never heard of, but then again, I'm a guy, so maybe that isn't all so strange LOL. For a business site, consistency and uniformity are key issues. You need to be uniform with page layout, font, colors, and font sizes. I hope that this helps you.

Best of Luck

Care to review my site? Goto this thread please :o) Thanks in advance.

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trogar

Thank You! I believe as you do about the pages. There really is no flow. My customer wanted a unique site, and so I'm experimenting with some ideas. Some of the things he wanted to do, such as the "stories" page made me wonder just what exactly he wanted me to develop. I have tried to follow his "vision" and can only try to provide him what he wants. I appreciate your input and welcome all input from others.

Thanks

__________________
I reject your reality and will purchase my own.
Live Free and Die what?