Hi,

I have never been a part of a forum and I'm looking forward to any comments (good or bad).

Thank!

Maybe I should have provided a link here...www.firewaterwind.com I am truly a newbie!!

Cathy

Lots of content, little information. You go way overboard on meticulous, but ultimately trivia details. The benefits to the customer, where listed, seem obscured in a sea of detail.

This seems done by a technician, trying to deliver a speech at a trade show of similar technicians.

The layout looks okay. You need 1) Copy which informs potential customers of the benefits. 2) You need a unique selling proposition which differentiates you from competitors (in a meaningful way). 3) Boil down the USP to an essential tagline.

This site isn't talking to the key benefits customers need to buy. Technical detail is fine, but it shouldn't obscure essential information customers need.

Hmmm....food for thought. Thanks so much for your input. It was my understanding when designing this site that the target for this site would be insurance adjusters and some technical people. I added the info on health concerns for the general population that may find this site. I'm really not much of a writer in my own opinion. Do you think I should move some of the info around or just plain get rid of some content?

Cathy

As for the content I would consider integrating the links listed at the bottom of the page into the copy at the top. As for the layout its pretty decent. Usability wise the site could use some work. The CSS almost validates but the HTML comes out with 23 errors. This site loads pretty slow for users on anything but high speed (30+ seconds) consider optimizing your images. But the biggest flaw that will hurt both your load time and SEO is the flash buttons for navigation. You should replace these with CSS buttons. Or at the very least combine them into a single file instead of separate files.

Hope this helps!
NV

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Thanks! I guess I have my work cut out for me, not that I totally understand how to go about it, but I will... Onward Ho.

I can't tell everyone how much I appreciate your comments.

Cathy

Cathy,
Here's a couple of sites that might help you get started in the right direction :)

http://w3schools.com
http://glish.com/css/home.asp

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Might consider making your main font the same size as other areas on the main page. I think I see about 3 different size fonts, not included the headers.

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While you are right about the different fonts and sizes (I'll fix). Why would a person want to make them all the same size?

Not sure that's what he means. I believe hes suggesting that you use CSS or something to keep the same font settings with each level of text. Some sites will have several different fonts, sizes, and colors applied to a h2 element while it works better visually to identify each section with the same type of header text.

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Thanks Null,

You've been so helpful!!! And I like your baby pic. Before I checked this forum, I changed the fonts...it looks better. So basically, I need to keep things more consistant? I've always known that anchor text was the way to go and will be changing that as well (in my spare time). Your advice on the flash buttons - going to change but will take a little time as I will be making my own this time in photo shop. But flash buttons were fun while they lasted! I refuse to get rid of flash at bottom of page, everyone loves it.
I have dial up and it doesn't seem too long of a load to me (maybe borderline too long).

Truly a Newbie!
Cathy

Hey Cathy,
Glad I could help. I would try to make your buttons using CSS instead images. Personal preference but this lets the search engine read them whereas images can't be read. They also load a lot faster than images. This is a great tutorial for creating CSS rollovers.

Oh and the flash at the bottom of the page is fine, it was mostly the buttons that I was concerned about.

A good way to check load times is to press control+F5 to refresh a page. That forces your browser to get new copies of everything. That way nothing saved on the local computer is used. Caching is great when you are surfing the site but not so good for testing :)

Hope this helps,
NV

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OK...I'm a little confused - going to investigate.

Cathy

Oh, and one more thing Null,

While no one else has wasted their time on me because obviously I am a newbie, I want to thank you personally. I know I have a lot to learn. I so enjoy doing web sites and want to provide the best to my friends and collegues. I threaten to get paid for my work some day. scary...

Well you know who to ask if you ever need a hand :)

Oh and the obligatory shameless plug, my company has some great deals on web hosting ;)

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I've made some changes with and against some of your advice. See what you think.

Cathy

Cathy,
Three things:
1. Which logo is the company logo? I see two different ones at the top and above the navigation. This isn't necessarily bad just a little confusing. I'd suggest the more unified look of using the same logo everywhere.

2. There's a menu at the bottom of the page but its blue on the blue background. You'd almost not even know it was there unless you were looking for it. CSS would help with this by letting your links in this area be a different color than the rest. Or you could move them so they are inside the table.

3. This page takes a bit too long to load still. It would take a 56k modem 25+ seconds to load. One of the problems is because of the background image you are using (http://www.firewaterwind.com/images/storm.gif). This image is pretty big but the problem I have is you can't see any of it. Its all behind the content. Consider shrinking it down and using JPG format for a smaller image. I do like the dark border effect that it gives! The biggest image on the page is this one: http://www.firewaterwind.com/images/fire_disaster.gif You could put it into JPG which would help a lot or consider using a different or smaller image. I like the way the image draws you into the site so I would suggest sticking with the same concept just optimizing for speed.

Congrats on a site that works well in all the major browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera). Also your site adjusts well to lower resolution screens (800x600) that's a great bonus!

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Actually, to begin with I had no logo. I was just dingin' around and needed something so the header is what I came up with. Later, my friend's partner and he decided to incorporate using Thunder Restoration logo, so that is an after thought. The site had a completely different scheme with fire instead of storm clouds (I liked it better). You'll see changes in the future as I do agree with you. As for the page links on the bottom of the page, I'm not sure how to change them without changing all links on the page. That's why they are the color they are. I originally tried to make them white.

Cathy

Hi cathy,
Just to let you know of a way to change the font color of the navigation at the bottom of the page.
If you put this code before each of the links in the navigation then it will be that colour.
<font color="white">nav

This is your current code

It needs to look like this
On all of the links and it will all be white!

Hope this helps!

Craig[/code]

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Shoot! I already made changes, but thanks a million.

Check it out, it's ok but would have liked the white links on the bottom better. Another day...

Cathy

just so you know...the <font> tag is deprecated, and should be replaced w/ styles.

Hope that helps!

I've made some suggested changes and than some (minor). What do you think? I see so many sites...mine seem so simple. Any suggestions on further resources?

Cathy

Cathy,
I good place to get a foundational understanding of web design would be your local community college. Most offer several web design courses that can help you be more familiar with the design process and understand the fundamental concepts that underlie a well designed website.

You could also hire a professional and see what they come up with. ;-)

Browse some template sites and check out any competitors to see what they are doing.

For some online "self help" reading try these sites:
http://w3schools.com
http://www.csszengarden.com/
http://glish.com/css/home.asp
http://www.oreillynet.com/

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School has definately been my thought for advancement...(4 kids at home, full time job, starting new business)in the future. Have you ever tried "web ceo" program? I down loaded it last night and it says that my site may be sited for spam of some keywords. I have added alt text to everything I can. It also says that I use the same color text as background (css text for the copyright at bottom of page).