Ok changes have been made pls look at site

[Tonyaer]

Ok I have made several changes to the web pls review and let me know

www.westerncutterheads.com

[MandyJay]

Hi,
You certainly have made a lot of changes and worked very hard on it - well done!

Okay I have three main comments:


home page ..... much better .... only drawback is the wmv file, it is over 2mb ... even on broadband I had to wait ages for it to load ....

dial ups will just click a link or close the window ......

your home page is really the most important page of your site... it is the Door to what you are offering and if that puts people off ...... also the music, an on off button is good, I had Michael Smith singing through my puter speakers and he was totally wiped out by your music .....I always work on my puter with my music playing and not having a choice to turn off someone elses is somewhat annoying ..... the thing to ask yourself is ..... does the music benefit the website?? if it does, then fine but try to find a way to switch it off, if it doesnt benefit .... then you could be driving people away. - Remember ... your website is in competition with your competitors .....

The navigation.
On this page http://www.westerncutterheads.com/tooling.htm you have the main left hand links, and at top of page "back and next" links although they are so pale in color I did not see them to begin with.

This page though
http://www.westerncutterheads.com/railing.htm
no back and next links but you have links at the bottom of the page which cant be seen becuase the text is same color as the blue background - all I can see are pale aqua dots, only by accident my mouse went over them that I saw they were links. Other pages had no secondary links only the main ones on the left. Having found links at top or bottom of a page people will look for them on other pages and they wont be there ... confusing

Finally page backgrounds .... having different page backgrounds is confusing .... especially if a page is called up from a SE listing, people like to be able to remember a website, and images and background colors get remembered, but with a different color/image on each page .... it breaks the website up - the content doesnt flow well, the website does not become "familiar" to people .. each page is a "stranger" .....

You have laid the pages out much better as far as using tables etc ..... but maybe consider the above points as well ...

you have worked hard .... I can tell that ....

MJ
:clap:

[Tonyaer]

Do you mind if I ask what you view the web with, it is hard for me to imagine because on my PC and others in the office here the web looks ok as far as buttons and what not.

Good points on the pages, I shall review and see what I can do.
The video on the front page, I am not real sure what to do there the Owner wants the video displayed but I will explain to him again.

I will keep changing, but would like to know a way to view the website from different aspect other then I.E. 6.0

[MandyJay]

I viewed your pages with IE6, although I do also have firefox installed.

What is it that you think I am not seeing the same as you??

MJ
:woohoo:

[Tonyaer]

On the railing.htm page you said
"This page though
http://www.westerncutterheads.com/railing.htm
no back and next links but you have links at the bottom of the page which cant be seen becuase the text is same color as the blue background - all I can see are pale aqua dots, only by accident my mouse went over them that I saw they were links. Other pages had no secondary links only the main ones on the left. Having found links at top or bottom of a page people will look for them on other pages and they wont be there ... confusing"

The part were you are talking about the links that cant be seen because the text is the same color, but I mine they are very clear.
just wondering....
I totally understand the music thing though....gets old quick.
And the colors need to be consistant more..

[MandyJay]

give me a couple of minutes and I have taken a screenshot I will upload and link, then you can see what I see.

Re music, not a matter of getting old, so much, as your bosses taste in music certainly isnt mine (!!) and I object to what I am listening to being taken over, as your site music cuts out my CD ......

it will drive customers away more than attract them .....and at over 2mb, some people wont even be able to open the page ....

anyway .... give me couple minutes and I will post again

MJ
:groovie:

[Tonyaer]

Well sure no problem its time for me to go home, so I will look again in the morning, thanks again for all your help
:roll:

[MandyJay]

http://www.Template-Layouts.com/railings.jpg

I cant see any text links at the bottom, they are virtually same color as background, they would of course show up on the theme background.

All that really stands out are a few small aqua dots.

Anyway it is gone 10pm here and is late too, so I will be back in the morning as well.
Take care now


MJ

[Tonyaer]

Well morning,
I have been making changes to the pages again this morning, but one important question would be how to make the player for the home page available for the viewer to choose to start the video, stop it play music or not to play music.

[MandyJay]

I am not sure as you have already made the 2.14MB movie - I have a website that is only 2mb in total let alone one page .. anyway ... as it is already made I am not sure. You may have to embed a player in the page with controls on it ..... otherwise people usually have the music as page background sound where you can easily have on off button ..... but that would mean taking the sound of the movie. You know you can always make that movie into a Flash movie and would be so much more friendly if your boss still insists on turning visitors away ... hahahah ..... (you see you can show him/her this post so they can see how bad it is to have that on home page ...)
MJ
:groovie:

[Tonyaer]

Well it is not a problem to redo the movie, I am not very familiar with flash so I dont have a clue how to create a flash player movie, but I guess its time to learn.

I will show him these messages though!

[MandyJay]

Ideally you do not want your home page to be more than about 40k .....in total. Your page is 2.54MB ...... I am not sure how many potential clients your boss will lose .... but ...

personally music is not very professional on a website (unless of course a music related website). Content is King is a saying that is still true today. And the main content is unrelated music that can drive people nuts, and a movie that could be replaced with static images, - all of which detract from the text on the page - which is the real content .....

Anyway ......

MJ
:hoola: