Hi,

I have released the beta version of the location specific portal.

I am looking for inputs more on the portal's content validation. (e.g.) I have a menu item named 'Community classified ads'. What I am expecting feed back is if this is a feature that you would like to use for any of your classified ads? Are the search parameters enough to get a more narrowed results? etc.

Like this there are many features and I would like to have as much comments as I can.


Thanks in advance for all your time and I look forward to reading your comments.

Vijaya

This is very amateurish website. Images far too big, slow loading, once you leave the home page no comeback. Need to have back links on all pages. Change images to JPG instead bitmap. Colours are not the best either. Why tulips on home page? Does it have any relevance to what the site is all about? Lots of work.
In Title should be what you have in Keywords. Title displays what you see on top of your browser. In keywords you need to put individual words divided by semi column.

I agree with previous comments. You imply some pretty hi-tech capabilities (knowing your visitors location via GPS?) but the site doesn't have anything about it's appearance to convey that kind of capability. You use the word amateurs frequently. Amateur what?

I didn't see any reference to the Community Classifieds on the two pages that are visible without registration. Since you are in "Beta" and are requesting evaluations of your site, you might make those pages visible without registration.

I doubt too many people here would register for a site (with the requisite disclosure of personal contact information) for the purpose of providing the content evaluation you request.

Regards,

__________________
Ron http://www.chalicemedia.com Distributed Creative Content Architecture

Ambitious project? Yes. Polished and refined, not yet.

Could it be the tools (Microsoft Word or FrontPage?) you are using are not cooperating with your layout intentions? I would strip the content and wrap it manually in lightweight XHTML tags with CSS, and move away from the 1997 code you're presently using. It's actually a lot easier to manually markup content than folks think. Put the content in the page, and start tagging from the inside out. Any effort you make in this area will have a big payoff for you down the road.

I wouldn't go so far as call this BETA, more like ALPHA in early draft form. Not just the presentation lacks refinement (multiple font faces, weights and colors, slow loading BMP images, &c.) but the copy lacks polish, as well. A grade school teacher would leave a lot of red pencil on this paper. Write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite...

Keep a list handy of all the points you wish to cover, and write several paragraphs for each idea. Draft and redraft. Have a reader proof read, and have a writer do the editing for grammar and meaning. This is the hardest part--the writing. Repetitious, monotonous, laborious, pain filled, frustrating, hair pulling... did I include difficult?

It's your mission, and the clearer you can make it in your mind and on paper, the more likely others are to understand and take hold of it. Just remember, until you have something to present, it doesn't matter how nice the pages look.

On a technical note:

1) Internal links should not open in new windows. This will really throw people off in a big way.
2) As mentioned 100+ KB images are a killer. The second page weighs in at a whopping 529KB. The home page is much lighter, but still, at 121 KB it could afford to lose about 40 to 60 KB.
3) Choose a font for all paragraph text, a font for headings, a font for sub headings, a font for footer and boiler plate, and go with these. Keep things magazine like and let the user take care of scaling. Use scalable font sizes (not pixels, and not font tags).
4) Graphically I know nothing, but I like your flowers. You could work a theme together that will subdue them graphically (take them out of main focus) and provide a uniform look and feel for the whole site.

Hi,

Thanks very much for all your very valuable comments. I know my front end, back end and business layers are working correctly technically. As my efforts were very much on the meta data, search criteria etc, I did not concentrate much on screen designs and navigation. First I wanted to validate with users if a portal of this kind (with many features bundled) will be welcomed by users.

I will most certainly concentrate on screen designs now on and give a total professional look very soon before putting in all the possible features.

weegillis, ronchalice, and alphaomega thanks very much for your time and I appreciate very much. I was wondering why users are not going beyond my first page and now I got the crystal clear picture. Instead of only concentrating on the technical aspects, I will spend my resources now in layout design also.

Once again thanks very much for the valuable time.

Regards,
Vijaya

Meta keywords? Forget about them. If you use them, do it correct: No phrases, maximum 10 KWs.



Which features? You hide them behind a login, if there are any.



I can't see much effort there.

Two examples:
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.eservicebazaar.com/ - W3C Markup Validator

Why don't you use your stylesheet for assigning a bg-color to the body?

__________________
Swedish Knäckebrottanz