Please review my site, I'm new to all of this.

danfrrr13 · #1 (**permalink**) 07-16-2008, 10:35 PM

I would appreciate it if you guys would take a look at this website. And tell me anything I did wrong in the design, or code. I am new to all of this, and still very young. But I am hoping to be able to open a web design business soon.

Real Estate Perks and More!

btw, the perks page requires authentication, so just look through the rest of the pages.

oh, and I wrote it all out on Notepad++.. idk if that's good or if using a program like "dreamweaver" is better?

Thank you

chiron · #2 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 12:14 AM

There's nothing wrong with using Notepad.exe, many very skilled designer-devs still use simple programs to avoid any chance at a WYSIWYG-capable device "taking over" and fiddling with their work.

The logo, on an LCD at least, is rather dark, the blue house outline sinks into the background. Overall "darkness" in sites seems to be a bit passé for the 2.0 world, and while I disagree at times, in this case a lighter palette, or more varied dark one, might be worth considering.

Flash getting cozy with Google or not, I'd recommend making sure you repeat the primary navigation links as text in the footer - and as for the Flash, the buttons bounce a little more frantically than I personally would want.

On an SEO/search note, changing the Title tags on a per-page basis will do you or your client in good stead over time.

davebarnes · #3 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 01:07 AM

Click on link and get blank page.

The tool you use to create your website is NOT important. The website design and its underlying structure are important.

andrewkeet · #4 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 02:22 AM

My two cents, for what’s its worth, make sure you have a good description in the alt=”” for all your images. A <meta name="description" tag for all your pages could not hurt.

aidsntcg · #5 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 12:00 PM

The location of your agency is not prominent. Visitors have to read the text to find out what part of the world you are in. I think the background color is too gloomy. Makes me think of hurricane season in Florida instead of fun in the sun, lush green foilage, blue water and sandy beaches. I don't care for the scrolling format presentation of the photo show. The load time for the home page and relocation page were very slow.

lspence · #6 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 01:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewkeet

I would also add <meta name="keywords"> for all pages

and

your <title>Real Estate Perks and More!</title> is the same on every page, a little variety is a good thing

danfrrr13 · #7 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 03:10 PM

Thank you guys for your comments. I will make all of those changes.

The colors were chosen out by the people who paid me to design it. I'm no professional. I'm still a high school student, that loves web design. But would you guys say that this is a good start?

I will get started on the descriptions, and meta tags soon.

Thanks Again,

Daniel Ferrer

davebarnes · #8 (**permalink**) 07-17-2008, 04:10 PM

Just because you can does not mean you should.
Simplify the menu. Way too much going on with it and it is distracting and not useful.

MikeinFlorida · #9 (**permalink**) 07-23-2008, 04:48 PM

Hi Dan: Looks like you have a pretty good start on things by now with all the comments from folks have provided here. The one thing I would strongly recommend is to change the background color to a much lighter color-- preferably white so it can be read by even older visitors without squniting. That's why you see white pages all over the web. Good luck with the project!

mtheory · #10 (**permalink**) 07-24-2008, 08:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davebarnes

Just because you can does not mean you should.
Simplify the menu. Way too much going on with it and it is distracting and not useful.

Yes simplify the menu, make it smaller and use your "Real Estate" more effectively.

Add a rollover stop to the image scroller.

tombstoneweb · #11 (**permalink**) 07-28-2008, 10:29 AM

Hi,
It's a good start. I would definately change the color scheme. Too gloomy, especially dealing with real estate in a slow market. Go look at other real estate type pages and see what they are doing.

I would heed some of the others suggestions as well, ie: navigation is way too big.

I would change the text link to the home page from: http://www.realestateperksandmore.com/index.html to http://www.realestateperksandmore.com/

I would also try to create your own 401 error page. When I go to the perks page and don't enter the password info I get a search/link page and a popup which only gives people a chance to leave your website. Why send your potential clients elsewhere?

Overall not a bad start! I use notepad mainly for coding using dreamweaver to preview the site as I go.

Good luck!

janeth · #12 (**permalink**) 07-28-2008, 03:38 PM

Not a bad design. Although the scrolling pictures get old pretty fast and there is no phone number in the header.

Mouse over affect is a lot more than it needs to be. And the colors are a bit boring.

srblogger · #13 (**permalink**) 08-05-2008, 11:58 PM

The navigation is annoying and the colors are drab. Sorry.

Plus the navigation was created using Flash which does not benefit you much with search engine optimization.

I would get rid of the flash navigation and use css text instead. Also, use css "position: absolute;" so that the code of the repetitive items such as navigation can be placed at the very bottom of the page. This way when google crawls your site it will see your (original) content at the top of the page near the <body> tag and the duplicate items (such as navigation) at the bottom of the code. No point in building a site that does not get ranked well in search engines because of easy-to-fix design flaws.

danfrrr13 · #14 (**permalink**) 08-11-2008, 09:27 PM

Thank you all again. I have submitted all of these changes to my client, to see if they would be okay with me changing the design so drastically. I am going to go ahead and change the navigation to CSS text links tho.

They aren't too worried about SEO. Which I am glad for, because I'm not too sure on what I would have to do in order to "optimize" it for search engines. The only thing I have is some program called "IBP 9" or something like that, which I doubt really does much.

Thank you for all of the great feed back. It will help me for future web site designs.

God Bless,
Daniel Ferrer