You all were of enormous assistance a few years ago when I designed my former site. Times have changed, and now we are on a new, independent venture but alas, it's not as easy as it used to be!
Comments and suggestions greatly appreciated - I've looked so long at it that I am hypnotized. Southern Cross Blue Cruising Gulet Charter Home Page - Bodrum, Turkey - describing and selling gulet charter/blue cruises in Turkey

Known issues: gif/jpg sizes for the logos and banners I link to will be resized to be completey aligned.

Thank you in advance! Dina

Hi,
On first glance the site looks good, I would get rid of the flash animations on the right hand side they distract the browser from reading the main content. The one on the header is alright this doesnt really distract and give the user a different view if they glance up at it.

Also the codings a bit of a mess!! I would redesign to latest standards using a strict doctype in xhtml 1.0 and CSS for display and layout, this will help you page load quickly on slow connection speeds which many of you potential customers may have, as they will be browsing from different locations as they travel.

I run a diving holiday website with some similar clientele, I'm also in Jordan so in the same neck of the woods.

Rod

There are a couple of key issues you might want to address:

You've restricted the page width to 765 pixels. I'd strongly recommend that you consider changing it to 960 pixels as the vast majority of displays are set at 1024x768 or greater. You'd appreciate all the extra space, move more content "above the fold" and the content would be easier to read.

I'd also recommend that you take your sexy logo and incorporate it into the banner. Doing this would free up some vertical space and move some more page content above the fold.

Javascripts should be linked to externally in order to reduce page load times.

You'd do well to consider better implementing CSS styles on your text. As it stands, you're bloating your page code with repetitive and redundant HTML. A properly applied CSS class would help maintain standardized formatting across the site and reduce page load times as well.

The head of your page code is a bit of a mess. You could really do yourself a favour by cleaning it up. The page title should not include your company name unless it's extremely relevant to your targeted keywords and keyphrases. Keep it around 66 characters to avoid having it trimmed by the SE's.

In addition, you'll need to trim your meta description and keywords tags. They're much to long to be extremely effective. Try to use around 4-8 keywords/keyphrases and around 160 but no more than 200 characters in the description.

Remember to target your keywords, not just for search results you hope to place well in, but according to their relevance in your site theme and content.

I'd say that your home page has what I'd consider too many <h1> headings. To be most effective, a single <h1> heading should be comprised of your most targeted keywords/keyphrase to focus on the site's main theme. Use <h2> headings for sections, <h3> for section subheadings, etc.

Make the headings stand out with a different colour than the body text. Most users expect black (or nearly black) text. It's much easier to read than navy blue.

I see that you've bolded your links but you might also want to ensure that they stand out in a different colour as well.

Try to limit the size of each paragraph to 2 sentences each so that readers can quickly scan through them.

Given the great many photos, which I'd agree are important, you'd do well to remove some of the less relevant text and reduce the clutter on the pages.

I'd say that because your logo appears at the top left corner, it's completly redundant at the bottom right. I'd suggest you remove it.

Why, oh why would you have placed your contact link at the bottom of the page? It should be right at the top where users would expect to see it. Here again, I'd change the primary navigation links to a different colour so that they stand out more.

Regarding the horizontal menus, they don't seem to be grouped very well. While I understand the reasoning behind placing links to relevant content at the very top of the page, I'd suggest designing the page with users in mind. About, FAQ and Contact links should be grouped together at the top right.

I'd then group your product/services links together under the banner.

You don't need a "Home" link if you're on the home page.

Try this: Load the page and squint enough to blur your vision so that nothing is easily read. You'll quickly notice that it's all just a big bunch of blue on white. Other than the right column which is animated and a little distracting, nothing stands out to draw the eye across the page.

Your Links, Privacy Policy and Sitemap links are right where they should be at the bottom of the page.

Pages linked to the Practical Info page should be formatted to similar to the rest of the site and should not open in new windows unless they lead off site.


Good Luck

.02

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Nice color scheme and design that reflects the subject matter very well.

Dubbya has a good point about the site size thgough. We are in the age of widescreen high res monitors. Don't let that valuable real estate go to waste. It will also bring more of your presentation above the fold.

Keep u the good work.

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Thank you Rod, mtheory and especially Dubbya. These are very valid points. I have now rearranged the grouping of the horizontal menu and reduced meta tag lengths and am in the process of breaking up the longer paragraphs (and even deleting entire sentences which are not directly relevant) throughout the site.
Interesting about switching to the black text with different colors for the links, Practical Info pop-ups and about logo removal at the bottom right and am mulling these over carefully.
Why oh why did I not put the Contact up where it is more visible? Because I'm blonde. Done now - thank you.
Still remaining are reassigning the correct H1/H2/H3 headings to finish today.
I will need to get some outside help for the screen resolution, wasted space, CSS and java/HEAD mess as these are not in my technical capability.
Once again, THANK YOU.