http://www.languagestore.co.uk/index.shtml

dch · #1 (**permalink**) 02-02-2004, 05:12 AM

Hello folks,

This is a new site I began on Saturday.

http://www.languagestore.co.uk/index.shtml

It's sparse at present, but I wanted a little feedback on the design.

Be sure to visit:

http://www.languagestore.co.uk/index.shtml

as
http://www.languagestore.co.uk/ points to my girlfriend's older version.

Best regards,
David

MUTTLEY · #2 (**permalink**) 02-02-2004, 06:54 AM

Love it, looks great ! Nice colors, nice graphics, clean and easy to navigate. Not much else to say really, kudos !

- Ray

nickc · #3 (**permalink**) 02-02-2004, 03:48 PM

Tested in IE6 56k modem 800x600. Loads nice and fast. Slightly too wide for 800x600. Clour scheme is very bold but looks good. A nice design. Good luck with it.

Nick

dch · #4 (**permalink**) 02-02-2004, 04:47 PM

Thanks nick and muttley for your reviews.

Glad the site looks ok. I fixed the width problem - the masthead graphic was 800 pixels wide(thought I'd made it 750), even though the table width was 768 (the optimum 'just narrower than 800' value, I've found). Should be ok now.

With my web design, I've been trying to get closer to how I design for print, or illustrate. I'm not a natural 'web' designer, and I feel my work looks more individual when I 'forget its the web'.

I'm happy enough with the initial layout for half an afternoon's work. The first concern is to get it ready for next week's local paper when the URL will feature in a small print ad.

Going forward, we might like to make our own Spanish course and sell this online, perhaps with supporting online tests, excercises and reference. This is why we went for a 'flexible' domain name.

David

indigoaus · #5 (**permalink**) 02-04-2004, 06:35 AM

David, I love this site. The colours and graphics are clean and groovy and original without being gimmicky. Well done. I noticed that you have not used any meta tags for key words and descriptions. Check out www.wordtracker.com (its free) to make sure you use the most competitive keywords so you don't waste your time optimising for keywords that thousands of other sites are using.
cheers
Janet

dch · #6 (**permalink**) 02-04-2004, 07:21 AM

Thanks Janet,
No, I've not look to closely at SEO just yet - but this will be important. Plus, the pages still need a few tweaks. I'm not sure if I need the bit of Java-script to pre-load images - probably not that important for this design. Plus, there's a bit too much bumpf from DW in the code that can be trimmed back.

I'm optimistic about ending up with a good rating on Google, as I'm trying to combine popular keywords like 'spanish tuition', 'learn Spanish' with very local geographical keywords.

An older version of this site on our 'Free ISP' space was on the first page of Google before the last update (it's now on page 2), and we had our first couple of responses purely through someone finding the site via Google, so there's big potential there.

David