Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

OK, I took the alphabet search bar off. Some of the other stuff I will have to have somebody do for me. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I am curious to know what browsers you all are using. I use Firefox and Safari and I have never experienced the tabs `jumping`. However, you have convinced me that this is a real problem because a couple of you have mentioned it. I am wondering if it your browser? Just a thought. I need to make sure my site works with all browsers. 

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Sharon Murphy
Owner
Northwoods State of Mind, Inc.
NorthWoods

I have Firefox 2.0 for Mac OS.

The special being "below the fold" is because the page is long and my monitor small. You`d have to alter the entire front page to bring it up.

I agree that the overall look of the site is nice. :-)

I`m using FireFox 1.x on Win98SE. I too noticed the tabs at the top "bounce" to the right when I hover over them. Probably just the location of one of the underlying graphics...but it`s no big deal. It is noticeable, though.

I have a 19" LCD panel, set to 1280 resolution and the right side of the page went off MY screen! Hokey Spoons! I wonder what it looks like on a 17" tube-type monitor! :-)

I wandered around, looked at stuff. I like fishing, so went into that area. Oddly, when I clicked on the coasters and "coaster options" dialog box, nothing happened. So I don`t get why they`re on the page?

What mostly bothered me is the table along the left side of the page. I wanted to see typical navigation buttons. At the top, the tab for "Products" is way over in the middle of the right-hand side, kind of lost. But I go to these kinds of places to see what they`re selling. That "Products" button should be at least the second in from the left....in my opinion.

I want to very quickly "Browse" the store. I didn`t really care to see the whole list of all the categories along the left. That, I figured out very quickly from the Products page. Instead, I would have liked bigger buttons, only a few of them, one of which would be a "Browse" navigation button.

In other words, I`m not used to navigating the whole site from the tabs along the top.

To me, left-side navigation buttons are the "main headings." Top-row tabs are the "subheadings" of the site. The main buttons are "home," "shop," "browse," "search," and that sort of action-oriented stuff. The tabs along the top are the extras for "about us," "contact," "shopping cart," "account," and so forth. They`re more maintenance-oriented.

Maybe it`s just me, but that`s what I expect to see. I just was bored looking at the left side of the pages, over and over again when I already knew I could click "Proucts" for the same info.

I tend to think that nothing on a Web site should be "redundant." Put something there once, and that`s it.

Here are the changes I have made so far: I removed the alphabet search bar, I deleted the `products`` tab along the top of the navigation tabs, and I redirected the `home` tab to the landing page instead of the random products page. I cannot figure out how to redirect any other links to the `home` page though, they will still take you to the random products page...uugghh! Hopefully the site will get resized today....as for the jumping tabs and the unreadable font, I will have to have someone more experienced help me with that. Thanks to everyone for helping me polish the site!



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Sharon Murphy
Owner
Northwoods State of Mind, Inc.
NorthWoods

I changed the number of vertical columns from two to one and I am wondering if the site is now fitting entirely on your monitor without having to scroll left.
I need to figure out how to make my `request information tab larger and more eye catching. Perhaps I should change the name to `newletter` and start an e-zine as was suggested.


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Sharon Murphy
Owner
Northwoods State of Mind, Inc.
NorthWoods

Like Craig I use Fx 2.0.0.2 with no plug-ins and a 19" monitor, I went to the site today and the scrolling issue is gone.

Would something like this work?


Maybe buttonize it?  like I said, I`m no designer ;-)

Cheers,

:-) Okay, I took another look.
This time, the page is right to the edge of my monitor, no hanging off to the side. That`s fixed (at least on my monitor). The tabs at the top don`t bounce anymore, so that`s a good thing.

I wouldn`t have *removed* the Products tab....just moved it over as the second from the left, next to Home. Otherwise, replace the entire left-vertical "menu" with a single button called "Products."

Here are some details I see, now that the bigger things are changed:

• The text size across the site is too small, particularly on the tabs and on the left-hand vertical navigation. It`s hard to read. It`s also a "serif" font (Times Roman?), which ordinarily makes it even more difficult to read in small sizes.
• The tabs could look nicer, maybe with some 3D buttonized effects like Eli mentioned?
• Although I like the beige backgrounds for the buttons, the white text is even harder to read than the small size, over on the left-hand menu. There should be much more contrast in the titles like, "Categories," "Top Sellers," "Information," and so forth.
• I`d expect to click on the Northwoods logo to alway return to the home page.

It really is a nice-looking site. :-) These comments relate to small stuff. Keep in mind that with limited content, you don`t have much of an advantage with search engine optimization (SEO). So for example on the "Resources" page, you could have 200-300 words of content that not only explains why there are resources, but that use SEO phrases to increase the site`s visibility.

That applies to the Alt Text for every picture. It seems to be missing in the ones I looked at, and there`s another great opportunity for optimization. For your page titles, instead of, for example, "Cabin Rug Collection," you could have "Northwoods Lodge Decor - Cabin Rug Collection."

Page titles are an important part of that search engine analysis.

I`m going to try to figure out how to change the font size and color for the navigation tabs. That could be awhile before I figure that one out. Your point about the SEO copy and the product descriptions is right on target. I have started to change the copy on the products to include more keywords. I never thought about adding copy to the resources page, I really like that suggestion. Here is an example of my status as a `noob` ...I just found out today that my shopping cart automatically generates meta tags if the `keyword` field has been used. Needless to say, mine are empty...I didn`t know what that field was for at the time I was building my site! I`ve got so much to learn.......

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Sharon Murphy
Owner
Northwoods State of Mind, Inc.
NorthWoods