critique request

[Cynthia Turcotte]

Hi all --

A client has hired me to, among other things, optimize her web site
for search engine submission. So being the dutiful SEO geek that I
am, I went through and optimized each and every page of the site,
including a complete recoding of the homepage which she botched.

Now after all of this work, she tells me that she wants to keep the
home page as it is. I've gone on record telling her that I feel that
she won't get the results she is expecting if she keeps the page as
is, to no avail.

So I am seeking outside opinions. The site is geared toward women so
I would like to get as many female opinions as possible -- but men are
welcome to respond too.

Please note that I am NOT asking for a critique of the core layout.

All I want to know is which page is a. better optimized and b. more
visually appealing.

http://www.b-tone.com
http://www.b-tone.com/indexa.html
http://www.b-tone.com/indexb.html

Please reply either here or via email at (e-mail address removed)

Thanks!

Cynthia Turcotte

 

[PeterL]

Hi all --

A client has hired me to, among other things, optimize her web site
for search engine submission. So being the dutiful SEO geek that I
am, I went through and optimized each and every page of the site,
including a complete recoding of the homepage which she botched.

Now after all of this work, she tells me that she wants to keep the
home page as it is. I've gone on record telling her that I feel that
she won't get the results she is expecting if she keeps the page as
is, to no avail.

So I am seeking outside opinions. The site is geared toward women so
I would like to get as many female opinions as possible -- but men are
welcome to respond too.

Please note that I am NOT asking for a critique of the core layout.

All I want to know is which page is a. better optimized and b. more
visually appealing.

http://www.b-tone.com
http://www.b-tone.com/indexa.html
http://www.b-tone.com/indexb.html

Please reply either here or via email at (e-mail address removed)

Thanks!

Cynthia Turcotte

Both are ok except I find it difficult reading white text on a light blue
background.

By the way expect trouble with the "Right click disabled" feature!!! It is
not appreciated in this .. and other ... NGs!


PeterL
========================================

Petes Page
http://leach01.co.uk

Jordanstown Schools website
http://jord.org.uk

 

[Cynthia Turcotte]

Both are ok except I find it difficult reading white text on a light blue
background.

By the way expect trouble with the "Right click disabled" feature!!! It is
not appreciated in this .. and other ... NGs!


PeterL
========================================

Petes Page
http://leach01.co.uk

Jordanstown Schools website
http://jord.org.uk

I had no control over the no right click. I recommended against it.

Of the 3, if you had to pick *one*, which is better?

Cheers,

Cynthia

 

[rf]

I had no control over the no right click. I recommended against it.

Then tell your client these three things:

No right click does NOT prevent somebody from stealing the source. There are
so many ways around it that it has become a game in the newsgroups to find
the easiest/quickest one. Yours seems to be effective, it even disables my
context menu button so you must be disabling that and not just a right
click. The workaround in your case is to simply drop down view>source

Lets say 25% of the people out there use the context menu to bookmark a
site. Yours prohibits this. Does your client really wish to prevent 25% of
her potential customers from revisiting her site? That is, does she wish to
throw away 25% of her customers?

No right click screams AMATEUR to anybody who knows anything about web
design.

Of the 3, if you had to pick *one*, which is better?

None of them. All have flaws. All of them have hard coded pixel sizes so
users of the most common browser can not resize the text to their favourite
size without exercising their accessibility options. You are discriminating
against the partially sighted.

All of them are a fixed width, obvously designed for your clients 800x600
monitor. In the real world you should design for any width.

Sorry to be harsh but that is my first opinion

Cheers
Richard.

 

[Andrew Cameron]

Hi all --

Please note that I am NOT asking for a critique of the core layout.

All I want to know is which page is a. better optimized and b. more
visually appealing.

http://www.b-tone.com
http://www.b-tone.com/indexa.html
http://www.b-tone.com/indexb.html

To me, none of them look any different - for the amount of time I spent
there, that is (which I'm guessing will be the average amount of time any
man spends there). They all look nice enough and certainly have that QVC
feel to them that your client is obviously wanting, but the following let
the site down big-time:

1. No doctype.
2. No encoding declaration.
3. No compliance to any kind of web standards whatsoever.
4. Between 166 and 426 errors, depending on what version of HTML/XHTML you
are actually trying to write.
5. Unnecessary and rude Javascript usage.
6. Horrible mail-sending script that tries to use the viewer's own email
client. Ick.
7. Bloated code that does nothing worthwhile other than make the page take
an age to download.
8. Too much talk of breasts and not enough pictures (disclaimer: male bias
could be a factor in this point).

It's more than possible to get your site to look how you want, but with code
that validates and less-to-no scripting. Hell, even 4 or 5 errors isn't
that bad...

 

[Els]

Hi all --

A client has hired me to, among other things, optimize her web site
for search engine submission. So being the dutiful SEO geek that I
am, I went through and optimized each and every page of the site,
including a complete recoding of the homepage which she botched.

Now after all of this work, she tells me that she wants to keep the
home page as it is. I've gone on record telling her that I feel that
she won't get the results she is expecting if she keeps the page as
is, to no avail.

So I am seeking outside opinions. The site is geared toward women so
I would like to get as many female opinions as possible -- but men are
welcome to respond too.

Please note that I am NOT asking for a critique of the core layout.

All I want to know is which page is a. better optimized and b. more
visually appealing.

http://www.b-tone.com
http://www.b-tone.com/indexa.html
http://www.b-tone.com/indexb.html

Please reply either here or via email at (e-mail address removed)

As for visually appealing: I prefer the a/b version
(couldn't find the difference between a and b :-/).

 

[Denise Enck]

Hi all --

A client has hired me to, among other things, optimize her web site
for search engine submission. So being the dutiful SEO geek that I
am, I went through and optimized each and every page of the site,
including a complete recoding of the homepage which she botched.

Now after all of this work, she tells me that she wants to keep the
home page as it is. I've gone on record telling her that I feel that
she won't get the results she is expecting if she keeps the page as
is, to no avail.

So I am seeking outside opinions. The site is geared toward women so
I would like to get as many female opinions as possible -- but men are
welcome to respond too.

Please note that I am NOT asking for a critique of the core layout.

All I want to know is which page is a. better optimized and b. more
visually appealing.

http://www.b-tone.com
http://www.b-tone.com/indexa.html
http://www.b-tone.com/indexb.html

Please reply either here or via email at (e-mail address removed)

Thanks!

Cynthia Turcotte

What changes did you make to optimize the page? Optimization usually
involves the site's text (among other things), but I see no difference
between the pages in that regard.

The site is okay - someone else mentioned it was QVC-like - I'd agree. The
text seems kinda cheesy & promotional. I don't like to be "sold to" - just
give me the facts without all the exclamation points & hype. It wouldn't
persuade me to make a purchase - I'd be swayed by something more of a
professional tone.

All the purple is overkill - how about losing the varying shades of purple
text, keeping black for the text, with perhaps some color in the headings?
Introduction of a third color would be a good design decision. Keep the
design clean.

cheers ~
Denise

 

[Chris Leonard]

indexa or indexb are the best - can't see a difference between the two.

The right click feature is annoying and totally usless - it took me less
than 5 seconds to zoom to the top menu and press view/source. Did you write
the scroller ? if so it's quite nice, if not why are you attempting to stop
others from seeing code you've taken from elsewhere .......... I realy
dislike this stupid feature!!

Other things:

You're making use of tables alot - divs are better and quicker (although to
be fair I've still got loads of tables on my site ......... yeah yeah yeah,
pot, kettle black ........ I know)

Also I don't like the fixed width text, short sighted people can't resize
it.

And, as one other reader said ...... too much text not enough picture )

Chris