New home page; needs review

[rocketrak]

Hello,

I recently updated my home page, at http://www.krevtek.net. The main changes are the promotions (hit Refresh to cycle through them, there are four of them), and the layout of the home page.

The News section and the Features section are boxed, giving the site a stramlined appearance.

Any comments, feedback, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[paulzon]

Dear Rakesh,

The site looks very good. I won't do any of that "wow! you're only twelve" stuff as I remember how patronizing that can sound!

As far as feedback and suggestions go just a few things ... I feel that you could use your title tags in a better way, utilizing phrases such as "American Photography, images of the USA by Rakesh Patel. kravtek.net" then, as your move to deeper pages within the site, be more precise, using phrases such as "Photo's of Pinnacle Peak Park, Arizona. Images by Rakesh Patel", trying to use up your 70(ish) character limit with well chosen keyphrases that will bring people in. I am sure that this will be more effective than "Krevtek.net presents Rakesh Patel's Photo Album". As you probably know already, using an intelligent titling strategy can be THE most important thing with regard to the metatags of your site.

Another more subjective thing, your site is very well designed, but it kind of has the "look and feel" of a corporate site, which sells tyres, or motherboards, or something like that. However, your site is mostly fun (the games, politcal animations etc), and "arty" (your photography). Perhaps the overall look of the site could embrace this more and be a little less "formal" if you know what I mean!

As you are using gif images, instead of text for your main site navigation, it may be a good idea to either ...

Make a sitemap which is only one link away from the index page, and full of TEXT links, so that search engine robots can crawl your site more easily or

put some text links at the bottom of each page. You could do both of course, although some may see this as "overkill".

A small image or two, which isn't too many Kb's may brighten the appearence of some of the pages, making them look more interesting to the casual browser.

Finally, a tiny little thing. Some of the borders for your navigation on the internal pages of the site are a pixel or two out of alignment.

Overall though, I think that the site is thouroughly excellent, and I would love to know how you get on with it!

regards from Paul www.zonicweb.net

ps your link to "thermotec.com" on the "About Rakesh Patel" page didn't work, you need to take out the "%20" .

[rocketrak]

Dear Paul,

Thanks for the tips . I've never received such a thourough review before, and it's great to receive tips from a visitor.

Here's my response to your tips:

I definitely believe that it sounds a bit patronizing to claim that I am only twelve. I'll mention that, but won't emphasize on it, in my About Rakesh section.

I've gotten a bit lazy with my "description" meta tag, I'm just copying the title and pasting it into the tag. But I do agree that both are major concerns if one is to boost search engine ranks. I found out that I am #4 and #5 If you search for Rakesh Patel on Google, and even higher if you search for "Rakesh Patel" in quotes. But since photography is the main section of my site, I had better adjust the title like you said. I'll change it to "Photography of Scenic Arizona by Rakesh Patel, presented by Krevtek.net." That is about 68 characters, so that is a good title. We can change it around to maximize search engine rankings.

I agree that the site is too formal for what its purpose is, but I am just learning about web design and want to experiment with site design. I have redesigned the site five times, and the final design will be the ultimate one. I am still researching effective web design and will wait at least six months before releasing it. I am coming closer each time the site is redesigned, and in the interest of visitors like you, I will add a sample page from my previous designs in the About Krevtek section.

I plan to start a web design firm with a friend next year, and have already started to make sites for others. My school wanted me to create a small site for them, with the purpose of being an all purpose site for students in grade 7 and 8 (I am an eighth grader myself), with games, links to search engines, reference sites, and online directories. You can see it at http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/, and you will see the homepage. Go to:

http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/games.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/directories.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/reference.html
http://www.krevtek.net/sunrise/search.html

To see the other pages.

I will be done by the 10th at the latest. The navigation bar is table-driven text layout, not images, which saves download times, and may only look correct when viewed on IE for Mac. There should be a border completely around the text, but on other browsers, it looks like there is only a left/right border. That is the only browser that I am worried about, and my target audience is the school, so I can use Javascript, up to 1000 pixels wide, and other stuff, but I wish not to so not to overcomplicate a simple task. It is great practice for the future of my web designing days.

Anyway, back to the site:

I do use GIFs, not text, on my main site, so the site map link is a good idea. It is at the bottom, but I agree that it should be nearer to the top. I abandoned putting text links to every section at the bottom, but it quickly cluttered it up. I have ALT text on the navigation GIFs, so that shouldn't be a problem.

On IE 6 (my browser), the right border is either correct, or "caving in" or "caving out" a few pixels, depending on the page. I am going to make horizontal navigation in a few weeks or so, so I won't worry about that at the present moment. The last time I tried to correct that, it made it worse on some pages, and corrected it on other pages. Horizontal navigation is what I want on the site, so I will change the site to that in the near future.

About the small image that will add brightness to the pages, do you mean a simple image like this:



(It is too tall, I'll only make it about 20px high if I use it)

If not, could you please specify that in more detail? I am catching on to your idea, but need more specifics to implement the idea.

I'll change that Themotec.com link also. Thanks.

I will gain access to my computer on Thursday, so I will make all the changes you suggested Thursday.

Thanks for the suggestions!!

I really appreciate it.

[paulzon]

Originally Posted by rocketrak

Thanks for the tips .

No problem Rakesh!

Originally Posted by rocketrak

I've gotten a bit lazy with my "description" meta tag, I'm just copying the title and pasting it into the tag. But I do agree that both are major concerns if one is to boost search engine ranks.

But carefully titled pages are definitely THE most important, Google just ignores descriptions, relying on page copy instead, and it places a HUGE importance on relevent titles for good position in the listings, so get these sorted out before you worry about the descriptions!

Originally Posted by rocketrak

But since photography is the main section of my site, I had better adjust the title like you said. I'll change it to "Photography of Scenic Arizona by Rakesh Patel, presented by Krevtek.net." That is about 68 characters, so that is a good title. We can change it around to maximize search engine rankings.

Sounds good! ... I was trying to emphasize the importance of "hierarchy" here, with the main "index" page, navigating to a main photography page with a title that includes keywords such as "Photography" "America" and/or "USA", then with the titles of the subsections being more specific, with keywords such as "Photography" "Arizona" "Pinnacle Peak Park" etc ... people seldom read page titles, but the S.Engines (esp Google) love this kind of thing, and will reward you accordingly.

Originally Posted by rocketrak

I abandoned putting text links to every section at the bottom, but it quickly cluttered it up. I have ALT text on the navigation GIFs, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Using "real" text is much more effective than relying on "ALT" text. It can be useful to read the Google guidelines on this sort of thing as well, if you haven't already! having said this though search engines are making progress on reading non text based data for instance "Google" have been working intensively on their robot's ability to read "Flash" based websites etc.

The School site looks good so far! and despite my previous comments about the "sober" "businesslike" look of your sites, it is very refreshing to see this when so many peoples early efforts have stuff like purple backgrounds, orange text, lots of flashing gif animations etc (I'm sure that you know the sort of thing I am writing about!). I am sure that you will make a VERY good web designer as well.

Originally Posted by rocketrak

do you mean a simple image like this:

I meant more of a small "icon" type image (that would only use about 40bytes - 2Kb) to break up the monotony of the more text based pages rather than a "background" type image, or perhaps one or two very small thumbs of your photo's on the "Photo Albums" page... heres an example, it doesn't look very good on this page as it was intended for a darker background, but you get the idea! ... It is only 1Kb, and I use it for music technology dictionary that I have written for one of my own sites (hence the keyboard and question mark!)

Better go now, as I have some real work to do, but please don't hesitate to get back in touch if you want some more feedback ... and keep up the (very) good work!

regards from Paulwww.zonicweb.net

ps good to see you including "Teoma" on your list of search engines!

[rocketrak]

Paul,

I made a new title for my Photos page. All of my photos are taken in Arizona as of now. However, I will soon be taking photos of my vacations in other states and around the world. For now, the title doesn't include "America", just "Arizona".

I re-titled my photography section with the hierarchy concept, also.

I made some text links at the bottom of my photos page. I only made the change on the photos page as I don't want to make the change site-wide yet without some feedback. I'd appreciate it if you tell me how they look, and what changes nede to be made.

My sitemap is already full of text links, and I added a link to it on my homepage now.

I changed the bottom of my homepage around, but the changes are very minor.

I fixed the Themotec.com link on my About Rakesh Patel page, and also changed some of the "potentially patronizing" stuff on that page.

Over the weekend, I'll make sample pages of my previous designs. My first was a total disaster! It was designed in layers, and was 1100 pixels wide. The background image was over a megabyte in size. Completely horrible. After the third redesign, it was evident that I was focusing more on design than site content.

I'll also get a head start on thumbnail-like images for some pages. Thanks.

[paulzon]

Originally Posted by rocketrak

Paul,

I made a new title for my Photos page. All of my photos are taken in Arizona as of now. However, I will soon be taking photos of my vacations in other states and around the world. For now, the title doesn't include "America", just "Arizona".

Hi Rakesh!
Yes, I know what you mean, but I was also trying to make a point about good site structure and good keyword rich titles which start general, then gradually become more specific eg a page "photography" then "USA" "India" whatever, then "Arizona" "Phoenix" "Mumbai" and also give the image files a relevent title as well eg "phoenixarizona.jpg" rather than dsc14525874.jpg then trust me, more people will come into your site via web searches, image searches, video searches and that sort of thing. Other than that, the improvements are all great (especially the sitemap)!

keep it up!

Paul

As for your first website, don't be so hard on yourself, it wasn't that bad!

[rocketrak]

Believe me, it was bad. Javascript, Java Applets, annoying bg music, and DHTML scrolling text was everywhere. It was like a toxic spill. You'll see it on Saturday.

I gave the 6.29.2004 photo album pictures names that describe the pictures, for example, a picture with a 24" telescope in it was named 24_inch_telescope.jpg.

I use a program called Picasa for my images.

Instead of something like image231.jpg, I named, for example, the Sedona photo album pictures sedona_1.jpg, then sedona_2.jpg. The name of the pictures described the album that the image was in, instead of the image itself. Do you think this is sufficient enough, or should I rename the images to something more relevant?

I didn't change my site map at all, by the way. But I'm glad you liked the text links at the bottom of the page. I will make the change site-wide this weekend.

Thanks for everything. I really appreciate it.

[paulzon]

Dear Rakesh,

I think that I have seen it! ... isn't there a link to it from your site? ... as first efforts go, I've seen worse!

As for the titles thing, I would even put even more info in the titles eg "arizonasedona.jpg" or "usaarizonasedona.jpg" and give the HTML files similar titles, but thats up to you! ... If you don't believe me, go into Google and search for "bad album covers" "ninjatune free download", "music technology dictionary" "big dada free download", or do a Google image search on "Manowar", and you will find a "zonicweb" page / image either on top, or near the top of the listings there are many other keyphrases I could choose, but I think you get the idea. The site is has a very low page ranking ("4") as it is just an old hobby site which I haven't bothered with very much recently due to other commitments. Most of this was due to structuring the site correctly, titling the pages and files relevently, and submitting one of the pages to dmoz, also I made a few initial link exchanges (just in case!). It would have been pointless to try and become number one for something like "mp3" or "mp3 download", so I took this approach. I had almost 17,371 unique visitors making 200,347 page loads in a four hour period recently, and on average it has around 1800 "unique visitors" a day. I am not "bragging" about this or anything, as it is actually rather modest, and could be much more in the hands of a better designer who put more effort into it. Another designer I know, Mike Slocombe has a site called "Urban75" gets millions of "hits" and is an excellent example to follow in terms of good design practice (much better than mine!). Also he has written a very good book on web design too, which is well worth a look. It can be found on the "tech reviews / features / project" section of the site, which also has lots of other good stuff on web design as well!

Finally for now, have you ever tried "4images" for your photo's? ... it's a nice PHP / MySQL image management system that's quite good for the sort of thing that you are doing. The site is in German but you can have it translated if you don't know any, and it is well worth a try, especially as it is free!

Let me know how you get on!

regards from Paul.

[rocketrak]

The link you are talking about is the one in the About Rakesh Patel section. That was the one that I made in September 2002 and never updated.

I am talking about my first version of Krevtek.net, which started May 27th. The site was online four days later, on the 31st.

If you go back to my About Krevtek section, I have a small Java applet that shows how long the site has been up.

Thanks for the title tips. I'll redo the photo albums in the next few weeks.

About your hits, WOW!!!!! Is that Statcounter stats? With Statcounter, I average about 50 a day. I recently got 190 hits, which is my all time record. According to the Webalizer, which is on my server, I have over 40,000 hits a month, but only because each image also counts as a hit.

I saw your site, great job! Is your logo done in a font called "Rational Integer"? My logo is, and your logo text looks similar.

I see that you are in London. My dad is from Ilford Essex.

I saw the urban 75 site, and it is very good. I am going to read some of his web design tips this weekend.

I don't think I will be using 4images. I don't really need many of the features in it.

I'll be adding sample pages of my previous designs to my About Krevtek section this weekend.

[DSL Guy]

KREVTEC - interesting site. Well done. Already some page rank.

I browsed your link exchange but somehow don't see info on how my link gets displayed. Did I miss it? Also, is there option to link thru text only or would I need to display your graphics?