| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | How can I evaluate my website's appeal? Thread poster: Alessandro Marchesello
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| No italics, no boldface, uniform colour | Oct 10, 2005 |
Hi Alessandro,
I think you're almost there. Here's three points I'd definitely advise you to do to make that final step from just a website to a professional website:
- Lose the italics and the bold face texts. Both italics and bold face are used to emphasize a few key words - if you're whole text is like this, people will feel you want to pressure them into finding the information important. Let them decide if they want to.
I'd personally even suggest that you d... See more Hi Alessandro,
I think you're almost there. Here's three points I'd definitely advise you to do to make that final step from just a website to a professional website:
- Lose the italics and the bold face texts. Both italics and bold face are used to emphasize a few key words - if you're whole text is like this, people will feel you want to pressure them into finding the information important. Let them decide if they want to.
I'd personally even suggest that you drop the orange fonts for your name. This might be a question of taste - I always feel coloured words like these disturb me rather than attract my positive attention.
- Choose one colour for all of your pages. One very typical feature of amateur sites is that they want to use too many colours. Choose one simple but effective colour scheme and use it throughout.
- Let a (near-)native English speaker check your texts. Even though you don't translate into English, your website is your business card, and you want to do business with English-speaking people. Although I'm not a native speaker of English myself, I feel your text is not smooth enough for your purposes.
I hope I haven't repeated too much of what was said before, although even then: these points are worth repeating. I followed them all for my site, and I got my first compliment from a business contact within a week after it was launched.
Good luck!
Zsanett ▲ Collapse
| | | | | The front page tells me almost nothing | Oct 11, 2005 |
Alessandro Marchesello wrote:
This is my first website ever so I would love you to visit it and give me suggestions and tips in order to improve its effectiveness. Every single advice would be highly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Worry about the CONTENT of the front page, not the looks. For several years I ran a very high-ranked literature site, and never got beyond black text and white backgrounds. But it was loaded with content that people craved.
1 - get rid of the hit counter. It's the hallmark of an insecure amateur. Learn to use the server logs.
2 - Look at Jacob Nielsen's site about web design at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
Do what he says.
3 - "style='font-family:"Eurostar Black Extended" .... I don't have that font on my system. It's really ugly at my end, because Firefox substituted something it thought might work, but didn't. Never put critical information into a fancy text effect.
Consider the front page to be the shop window ... put some tempting links there to convince me to click and learn more. Give me an OBVIOUS place to click, like an underlined word ... the traditional link.
Because the text is all run together and a fuzzy grey, I have to look at the flags, figure out which country they represent (Mexican flag without eagle and cactus = ?Spain?) and decide which to click on ... too much work.
| | | | Alaa Zeineldine 
Egypt
Local time: 07:31
Member (2002)
English to Arabic
+ ...
| Align your text | Oct 11, 2005 |
Left-align or justify your text, otherwise, the text looks like all titles and no content, or the page just becomes an online flyer. Centering all text also leaves it without structure and reduces readability. Lists in particular are no longer lists without aligning the numbers and offsetting the text.
Keep centering only for main titles, although left-aligned titles do not hurt.
Be more generous with your margin space on both sides. Expanding a line across the whole p... See more Left-align or justify your text, otherwise, the text looks like all titles and no content, or the page just becomes an online flyer. Centering all text also leaves it without structure and reduces readability. Lists in particular are no longer lists without aligning the numbers and offsetting the text.
Keep centering only for main titles, although left-aligned titles do not hurt.
Be more generous with your margin space on both sides. Expanding a line across the whole page makes it tedious to read. Seasoned readers instinctively measure up the text before considering to read. An actual paragraph with shorter lines looks more manageable and less intimidating than a couple of wide lines that cannot be measured up by a single glance, even if the latter contains less text.
Reserved margin space can also be used in future to insert useful links, testimonial quotations, pictures, etc., but without crowding the textual content out of prominence. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Sorry if my opinion... | Oct 12, 2005 |
...is not polite
But it is not professional.
Why don't you buy a template for 50 € and make only the necessary changes?
there are very good sites to buy in internet.
I mean the presentation, also the design, is not good enough.
And be careful what you say.
AM TRANSLATIONS is a dynamic and reliable one-man agency that provides professional translation and proofreading services for a vast range of purposes.
one-man agency (1 man agency?) providing translations AND proofreading in a VASTE range of purpose and cheap.
Why not freelancer, specialist in certain branches?
Or you want to compete with the 0,001 agencies?
Well...
Just trying to help
Rgds
Toledo
[Edited at 2005-10-12 19:52]
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