Can I Get a Review?

[cdp103188]

I first created this website about 6 months ago, it is my very first website and it has evolved alot since it's intial construction.

It's still not perfect and I would appreciate some feedback.

The aim of the website is to collect leads for our membership salesmen here at the office.

www.Hunt-Private-Land.com

[kierhon]

From a designer standpoint: the site is very pixelly. I would suggest cleaning up your images, functionality isn't <em>terrible</em> but it could be a lot better

[dtm32236]

were you the one that said you created all the graphics in MS Paint? Kierhon is right, the images are way to pixelated.

and I think that your contact form is way too long. no one wants to spend 15 mins filling out a form.

also, to many things pop up and change colors. I can't move the mouse anywhere without things changing everywhere. Every time i move the mouse, either an image pops up, or a menu bar does, or a random button changes color. It's awfully distracting and confusing. there's just way too much going on. it's kinda crazy. and i think that your buttons (links) are too big.

you have a good design sense, and your html/css/js skills are very good. you just need to work on 'calming the site down'. and maybe invest in illustrator/photoshop (if you're the one that was using ms paint)

[cdp103188]

were you the one that said you created all the graphics in MS Paint? Kierhon is right, the images are way to pixilated.
Yeah, I am the one who uses MSPaint. I would like to get Photoshop but I am a college student, and if I'm not mistaken, Photoshop is kind of pricey, and my boss won't spend the money to buy it I’m sure. I could have saved the images as a JPEG or a BMP to help smooth the images, but I saved in GIF so the images would load more quickly, plus JPEG to me makes stuff look pixilated as well.

and I think that your contact form is way too long. no one wants to spend 15 mins filling out a form.

I would like to trim it down as well, but my boss thinks those fields NEED to be there, I disagree, but I like my paychecks. I will work on cutting a few of those fields out to shorten it up a little bit.

also, to many things pop up and change colors. I can't move the mouse anywhere without things changing everywhere. Every time i move the mouse, either an image pops up, or a menu bar does, or a random button changes color. It's awfully distracting and confusing. there's just way too much going on. it's kinda crazy.
As far as the flashing and pop-up stuff; I thought I would make the buttons flash so that people would know they were "click-able", but maybe I will just make a more subtle change, like a thicker border on mouseover instead of inverting the colors, do you think that would help? I can also make the image strips only enlarge when clicked instead of on mouseover. If I make these two changes do you think I should still do something with the drop down nav, or can it stay the same?

and i think that your buttons (links) are too big.
You are probably right, I was just trying to make sure an older audience could clearly see the options.

functionality isn't terrible but it could be a lot better
What would you recommend? I'm not sure I know what you mean.

[kierhon]

functionality isn't terrible but it could be a lot better

- Take for example your hover images. When you click on them they stay open, but how does the user know how to close it again?

- Why do you need the same menu at the top and bottom?

- How fast does your page load on dial-up?

If you want better images without an expensive (but worth it) program like Adobe offers, download The Gimp. It's an open source software available for free. http://www.gimp.org/

[dtm32236]

i did this real quick - but just for an idea of how you can clean it up, i've attached a screenshot.

first - the top left link (request info) should always be a HOME link. I'd pull the request info on near Sample Maps, or get rid of it and put the info in the Contact Page. The drop down menu on these links is fine.

Now, instead of having the 5 thumbs pop up in the middle of nowhere, why not use them to pop up in the middle where your "2007 Member Photos" is. You can make the thumbs smaller, and include EVERY image there (including the ones on the bottom). Now, you can get rid of the bottom navigation as well as the extra pics down there.

That should be a decent starting point. This is going to clean up a lot of space, but it's always good to have white space. Don't try to fill the site with things, it just adds to confusion. People like breathing room on a website. It keeps things simple.

[dtm32236]

sorry - forgot the image:

[cdp103188]

- Why do you need the same menu at the top and bottom?
I guess I don't really need the nav on the top and bottom, I was just putting it there for convenience, but I can see how it is unnecessary and a little bit confusing.

- How fast does your page load on dial-up?
Probably very slowly, but my Google analytics indicates that only about 7% of my audience uses dial-up and I didn't want to penalize the other 93% by taking away graphics just to appease the dial-up users.

first - the top left link (request info) should always be a HOME link. I'd pull the request info on near Sample Maps, or get rid of it and put the info in the Contact Page. The drop down menu on these links is fine.
That makes sense; I will go ahead and add a Home Page link on the left.

Now, instead of having the 5 thumbs pop up in the middle of nowhere, why not use them to pop up in the middle where your "2007 Member Photos" is. You can make the thumbs smaller, and include EVERY image there (including the ones on the bottom). Now, you can get rid of the bottom navigation as well as the extra pics down there.
Well the thing about that is that these photos are on every page of the website, the code is inserted in the header and the footer, so while that would work for the home page it would not be a solution for any other pages. I would also never be able to include "EVERY" image here because those images are random, they change every time you re-visit the page, I used PHP to generate random images that are pulled from my photo gallery, therefore, I'm not really concerned about displaying all of the images, I was just trying to fit alot on there because hunters like pictures.

-----

I want to thank you guys for taking the time to check out my website. I'm going to make some changes now, will probably take me a couple of days (seeing as I'm a part time college student and I'm studying for semester finals right now), but I will post again when they are done and I would like a little bit of feedback after they changes are complete.

Thanks again,
Cameron D. Peebles

[dtm32236]

no problem.

good luck with it...

[cdp103188]

OK, I have made some (most) of the changes suggested and I think the website looks alot better. Some of it is still kinda pixelated, but I think it's an improvement. Let me know what you think.

www.hunt-private-land.com

[kierhon]

Looks better

[cdp103188]

Thanks alot, you know, I really appreciate everything you guys do here. I've had so many problems that have all been resolved in this community, and if I ever get to a point where I feel like I actually know how to do stuff I will start helping others as well.

Thanks again,
-Cameron Peebles

[FrugalWebGuy]

you have some very cool ideas here.

Here are my suggestions:

Resize your images through GIMP. It does a good job. When you simply resize the image through the HTML, it's never going to look very good. You will notice that once you resize your images.
The title of your website isn't very obvious. You might want to figure out a way to provide some way to contrast it from your other background elements.


Keep it up.

FrugalWebGuy