Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I am in the process of upgrading and redesigning my website. Any ideas, comments or criticism welcome.

 

www.hitechwireless.com

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A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Looks like you have a decent grasp of search engine optimization. Congrats!

Things I would look into:

Your site is flagged by one of my browsers as containing "old" security - 512 bits, I believe. Tip - You should test using several browsers.

The main content section is displaying rather low on the page. In Netscape, your "Order Online..." is actually displaying below the fold, which is not good. One thing to try is changing the font setting to other than "paragraph". Another is to have the table align to the Top. Another is to only use a table for the page headings, with other content positioned via CSS.

Tables load first, from top to bottom. So, having your header in a table at the top will quickly provide your visitors with something to read, while the remainder of the page is loading.

Why do you have a link to your email/feedback form... on your email/feedback form?

Your Flash object in the upper-left corner is 380KB! That`s not going to make your 56kbps dial-up vistors happy, and they may decide to leave before the page loads.  I`ll bet it could be reduced quite a bit through some optimization.

Not much time for me to evaluate more. Oh... I don`t like the pebbled background, but that`s just personal preference.  And the font size of the links down the left side could stand to be larger - not everyone has good eyesight.

Have fun!


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Enjoy seeing the web and computer languages and methodologies evolve, or rather, revolve, for over 20 years! Revolve = rename and repackage the same old features and processes, and claim that the old is actually new!

The "big blank" occurs in Firefox mac and Camino (sister of Firefox)
but does not occur Safari or Opera

I didn`t get the Flash show at all. And I`m using the latest version Firefox on a cable Internet connection.

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Design & Consulting | | Water Harvesting

IE 6 works fine, with the "order online" at the top. The flash shows, and so forth. I don`t usually use IE, preferring FireFox, so I`d surely consider the above commentary!

I do agree, though, that text in boxes (table cells) should be top-aligned. That`s the currently accepted standard, and it just looks better.

I would suggest moving away from tables-based design. Reason: It adds way too much code to a page, and it`s code that isn`t necessary.

Instead, I advocate using Web Standards-based design, which doesn`t use tables on web pages. The only exception to this rule is when you are displaying tabular data like a price list or a flight schedule.

I`ve written an article about the advantages of Web Standards, and hope it is useful to you.

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Design & Consulting | | Water Harvesting

Interesting problem with standards....there are so many of them! :-) We found out that although it`d be nice to use CSS and even modify a body tag, some of the sites where it`d also be nice to use HTML won`t allow it.

For example, eBay allows anything below the body tag, but pre-empts things like page colors and I think (maybe?) external style sheets. Craig`s list doesn`t even allow the body tag and unless you use tables, you can`t even set any colors at all.

As an erstwhile word-processor and desktop publishing person, HTML is so primitive as to be ridiculous in today`s technology. But as a computer kinda guy, I also understand that the miserable lack of any standardization within the computer industry has done more harm than anything else. (Comparison based on MIDI in the music world and other music-industry standards.)

Uh-oh. Looks like I didn`t make myself clear.

Among the web design crowd, "Web Standards" is shorthand for World Wide Web Consortium Standards. You`ll sometimes see this abbreviated as "W3C Standards."

Why the move toward Web Standards?

Well, get ready for an Internet where the computer-based web browser is nonexistent, or in very rare use.

What`s knocking the computer and browser off their throne? The culprits are all around us. They`re devices that we`re already using. For example, any web-enabled cell phone or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) can access the Internet and call up a public site, just like a computer-based browser.

These trends are having a profound effect on the still-young field of web design. Barely a decade old, web design has entered the "not just for computers" phase.

Web designers are now using techniques that adapt web page content to any device, be it large or small. The goal is to create websites that are available to a wider audience, and to enable website visitors to accomplish tasks faster.

Ideally, Web Standards-based sites should be designed to be viewed with computers, cell phones, PDAs and any other Internet-enabled device. They should also be accessible to text-to-speech readers used by the blind. In addition, there is no need to waste time hunting for one of those tiny "printer-friendly" icons. Every page automatically prints out as a printer-friendly page.

Hope this helps clear things up!


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Design & Consulting | | Water Harvesting

Being very old (my mom thought she was 50 years older than me, the other day, so she`d be 104, or I`d be 100?), I remember back when the PC began.

At the time, after the PC Jr. had faded into the desktop we mostly recognize today, every year had a mass of articles across the journals about the end of the PC Desktop. It would all go away, and we`d use dumb terminals, or kiosks, or laptops. notebooks, or some other smaller device.

I heard someone say the other day that we have no analog for today`s terrorists. It was in context with how to handle prisoners down in Git-Mo. The fact is today`s terrorists aren`t any different than the pirates of 100 years ago. So too, we can look at history to see how successful these coming new gadgets will all become.

If handhelds and Web-enabled phones are going to replace computer-based browsers, then "small and portable" is presumably the ideal, and everyone always moves in that direction. At the level of the absurd, but only to illustrate one aspect, how come we don`t get rid of table lamps in favor of flashlights?

Why has public transportation failed to wipe out personally owned automobiles? Why didn`t bikes take over from cars? What ever happened to that gyro-scopic scooter that everyone would be using by now? How can a handheld cellphone with a 2" screen possibly be attractive to anyone who`d like to see what they`re reading without scrolling every 1 second?

No, I strongly doubt that handhelds, PDAs, and Web-enabled cellphones will be the downfall of PC-based browsers. They`re too small, don`t provide enough information at a glance, and take up too much space in someone`s hip pocket or bikini.

There`s a time and a place for them, and they`ll increase as a way to connect "on the go," but a desk-type computer will always continue, until we get machines that we can talk with, interactively, and a wall-screen to show us data (or a holographic dynamic image). A 19" screen offers room to run multiple apps at once, moving between them, and quickly looking up information on the Web in yet another window. That`s near to impossible on a handheld.

Thanks for the comments. I will work on incorporating your ideas and get back to with a newer version. Thanks for the help.

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A goal without a plan is just a wish.