Hey Guys, and Girls, and Lab Chimps! Ok, this here is my site, Alchemy in Green, it’s not great but I think it has some real potential. Frankly, this month’s issue was slapped together and kinda sucks. I have to say to say that I did a damned fine job for someone who knows nothing about HTML. Anyway, we’re having our first editorial meeting on sunday, and I could really use some ideas or suggestions on how to better it. Arigato! http://hometown.aol.com/alchemyingreen/open.html
Hope that works! and P.S. I’m fully aware that I misspelled Brief in my Web 14 advisory. Again, thanks so much! I look forward to your smart ass remarks!
Get rid of the background. It makes the text hard to read and is very distracting.
Get rid of any animation you may have on the site.
If you can, reduce the number of menus people have to go through to get places. You need to work out a better navigation structure. A good design principle is to never make people go through more than one click to get to major content on your web site. Lots of studies have shown that if people have to go through more than one or two menus you’ll lose them.
You might want to check out this site for some good information on general web design practices:
Thanks! Ive been thinking about getting rid of the background, or using a different system for it. I dont know about the different menus I tried to reduce it to only two menus per area, but Ill look into lessening it. Thanks again!
Congratulations on taking it on! I’m much wimpier and less informed than the other posters, so I can’t even suggest techincal fixes. But, FWIW, I like individual sites. They’re like little mini-magazines or stumbling across someone’s diary.
Hopelessly nontechnical comments:
initial screen was too dark. W/ my laptop, I couldn’t read anything. If I hadn’t had your link, I would have missed it!
The “AIG” background was distracting; like the idea, but could it be lightened up or something to aid readability?
the articles, etc. were interesting and well written. Kudos! Minor suggestions: using breaks between paragraphs to space out the bulk of the text.
this is probably stupid, but…could you put little “back to main page” thingys at the bottom like Opal does on her’s? It’d just be a convenience.
some teasers/descriptions on the main page would be nice. If you’d give a little more info on what you review, your article content, etc. it’d “personalize” the page more and encourage further exploration. It’s nice to get a quickie intro and sense of the author right up front.
THANKS VEB!!! Personally, it’s a constant dissapointment to me, but there’s always next month, and I’m definitely getting rid of the background till I can figure something better out. Again, THANKS!
How could you think that about dear Ophy? He is a perfect gentleman and would never post anything lewd, rude, crude, or obscene. I have only been here a week, and I’ve already figured THAT out. Sheesh.
I am so sorry… I didnt know bowing and backing away once again my bastardness has gotten the best of me… and I never said I thought that of him PERSONALLY… just that, that was what I could come up with regarding the sig (but I have a dirty mind so…)
Cover pages that are nothing but an image and a button to “enter”. You have one. Get rid of it. These are useless, increase load times, and require the user to hit another button and spend more download time to get to useful information.
Autoloading music: glad you don’t have it. Again, it greatly increases load times and gets annoying very quickly - immediately unless the music is really good, and then it’s not annoying until it cycles once. After that, people hate you. If music is important for the page, make a button to turn it on (default off). (Sorry for going off on you like that - big pet peeve.)
Lots of boxes. Whenever I load a page that has a stack of tightly packed graphic elements, I think “oh shit”. See www.cocacola.com for an example. (You didn’t do it yet.)
Animations - moving images, flashing lights, blinking text, color changing, scrolling text, etc. Anything with movement is distracting and therefore annoying. I want to read the text, not get my sight diverted. (Repeating from the above link, but worth repeating.)
Anything that looks like an ad. Okay, actual ads are allowed since they pay for your site, but don’t make any of the site content look like an ad or it won’t be read.
Frames - they just aren’t as useful as you would think. There are inherent problems, that while getting better, still make them annoying.
Bad background contrast. You have this. Backgrounds are okay if they are subtle and do not distract from the content. Yours is too close to text to work. Maybe make the AiG in green, and lighter. Very pale would work.
Strings of Web-ring links and Awards, especially on the home page. If you have them, put them toward the bottom, maybe in a section titled “Related Web Pages”. Awards should be on a separate page if you must post them.
Flashy images and boxes for each link to another page in your hierarchy are bad. They fill up your page space, take longer to load, and aren’t worthwhile. Making links between your pages (showing hierarchy and helping navigate) is good, but use text. Text is the most easily understood “graphic”. Don’t make someone learn the house symbol is the main page, the wheel symbol is your search engine, the wrench is for reporting problems, etc.
The number one priority is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to obtain the content they want. As a humor page talking on gaming and such, you have a little more leeway for visual stimulation - but not much.
Also, can you explain the name somewhere?
All of this is not from the perspective of a web designer - I have never had a web page. All of this is from a user’s standpoint. Take that for what it’s worth.
