Thanks for the feedback on the website. After some time, I was able to make some adjustments. If anyone is interested in taking a peek and letting me know what you think, I would be glad!

Thanks,
Leslie

Edited by Janeth rule #1

Hi,

Nice site...very interesting content. Easy to navigate.

Concern: Your banner at top of home page (as well as others) is very large, and your graphics look a little jagged around the edges. If you were to bring the size of it down, you probably could get all your home page to show on the screen, without having to scroll down. I think it would be better balanced with the remainder of your page, also. Just a suggestion.

Nanci
www.neckwares.com

Thanks for your ideas. Actually, I don't see jagged edges on my viewer. I know there are different resolutions that you can anticipate viewers using, but I thought I chose the most popular one, then set my computer to those standards. As I am surely not a professional, I wonder if you know what I can do! Anyway, thanks for even taking the time to look and give me feedback!

Leslie

viewed your site in 800x600... and although there was no need to scroll sideways, the header graphic was entirely too large... it seems to dominate about 1/3 the screen (lengthwise)...
approx. 50% of internet users are still viewing at 800X600... therefore, that should be the resolution of choice.
I noticed that you used two different fonts... you should try to be consistent and use the same font for every page.
I understand what Nanci meant about the jagged edges... although they are not really jagged, when you make a gif transparent, you don't get truly clean lines.

Otherwise, you have a good site...good luck with it.

__________________
Mary Ann
Affordable Websites Designed - www.m-goret.com

Leslie,

A nice and sound desgin site, there are a few
things I'd suggest:

• You do not have meta tag in your source code.
  These are useful for some search engines to index
  your site - and thus viewers to find it.
  
• RE: the "edges" on the header text. An italics
  text font can cause this problem. And as mentioned
  having a transparent background gif... also adds to
  this.
  A couple of suggestions: 1 - create the header as one
  image (text on colored background) rather than a
  transparent .gif on a background. Making sure you have
  the image set to antialias.
  2 - You could also create the header text as
  a "vector" graphic.
  
• Your Menu - viewers almost expect some sort of
  mouseover effect on menus... and it provides
  imediate feedback as to where the are on the
  menu.
  
  A nice CSS based menu would be great. In any case I
  would also eliminate the underline from the menu items.
  
• The first paragraph in you home page does not need
  to start with "REDWINEJAZZ, LLC is the home..."
  Redwine Jazz is already stated above that. Also "a
  variety of musical products catering to the
  discriminating professional clarinetist" is a repeat of the tag
  line under your header.
  
• You should consider having a simple process for
  people to purchase your products. I see you mntion paypal.
  If you have a paypal account there is some simple
  HTML code to add you your webpage(s) to add a "buy"
  button for each product.
  
• The company address and tel# at the bottom of the
  page are difficult to read. Considering that you
  do not have an order form or ordering process on your
  site, this (contact) information is importate for
  viewers to see clearly.
  
• Photos - the three photos on your home page are
  way to "heavy" (too large of a file size). Thus,
  they require longer time to load than needed. They are all
  ".gif" files. Photos usually have a smaller
  file size if saved as ".jpg or .jpeg" files. In either
  case you should compress the file size more.

~Roland

__________________
website design | Smith, Sullivan & Company, CPA | video golf lessons | my twitter

I'm glad Mary Ann and Roland gave you some valuable input. However, I am concerned about what Roland had to say about the use of Redwine Jazz in the first paragraph, in light of recent information that has come to light about Google.

I understand that it is important to use your title within the body text, and it's a good idea to have it in the first paragraph. With that said, I will add that the title should be surrounded by compelling, descriptive text about the site. The reason for this is that Google apparently picks up the text that surrounds the title in the body of the page to use as a description in search results. This surrounding descriptive text should attract searchers to click on this link.

If I am wrong, Roland, please tell me, as I am getting ready to revise my website accordingly.

To cite my own website as an example, Google picked up the text in the only place that Nanci's Necklaces was mentioned...at the bottom of the page. Thus my site's description contains the navigational links at the botom of the page and my web developer's information. It certainly is not an incentive to get people to click on the current description for designer necklaces. I was rather perturbed when I first saw it, but now I understand what I did wrong.

Najoba (Nanci)
www.neckwares.com

Good points Nanci...

Indeed, it is important to have a "Descrption"
which is one of the Meta tags that is missing from
this website's HTML code.

The web page already has (in the "body" section of the
HTML code) "makers of the GENNUSA "EXCELLENTE"
Clarinet Mouthpiece ...catering to the
discriminating professional clarinetist".

Another thing that could help is for them to add an Alt Image Tag
to the header .gif stating the site's description.

I'm not a search engine optimization expert, I
defer to the experts at web world geeks for more expert opinions. But,
I think as far as Google goes - incoming links are
very important the google ranking... and we have not
even touched on the strategies to get those - for Redwine Jazz.

For more SOE suggestions form WPW viewers, maybe
the site's owner could post that question in the SOE section of this forum .

Ther are so many components/factors to a "sucessful"
website - I tried to focus on some of the overt web
design omissions relavent to Redwine Jazz.

~Roland

__________________
website design | Smith, Sullivan & Company, CPA | video golf lessons | my twitter

Wow! What responses. I am at work - my students are taking an exam, so I am here finding out what to do to my website.

First of all, I appreciate all the helpful responses. The only problem with some of them is that I will have to do some research into what you are advising me to do. I am not a programmer and I taught myself how to build this website with no advise, except from this site, so I really don't know if I am understanding the advise.

Case in point: I was advised that my pages did not have titles. I thought by having darkened buttons on the side bar menu was sufficient. So, I methodically added a line of title to each page. It seemed redundant to me, but since I am a newbie, I did it anyway. Much to my surprise, I was later advised that I was supposed to title the pages so the computer could, say, bookmark the pages! Needless to say, I removed all my "titles" and put in the page properties that I should have originally. This is all to show you I really mean it when I say I am a novice.

Thanks again and I will get to work learning about your advise and making changes.

Leslie

Advice and suggestions from forums can be confusing
and conflicting indeed.

Each of your pages should have a title
Example: <title>your webpage title</title> in the
"head" section of the HTML code.

The darkened menu button is ok... a mouseover effect
is better (more user friendly). Something like
the one on this page for example.

~Roland

__________________
website design | Smith, Sullivan & Company, CPA | video golf lessons | my twitter

I am really happy to be getting advise - so keep it coming! It just may be some time before I can decode it for my brain! Also, it seems as though most of you are describing changes that occur through the insertion of html code. I actually created the site using Dreamweaver, so I don't know much about code. I did view the html code on my pages, so that I could begin to learn about it, but I suspect for some things, like the hover over, I may need to upgrade to a newer version of Dreamweaver. Mine is more than 2 versions old! In fact, I don't qualify for tech support now either!

Thanks again and I look forward to more discussions!