Some design issues
Dear John,
I didn't really take much time to find out if the content of your website is of any interest whatsoever - because I believe that's not the point.
Since - as you say - visiters only spend a few seconds on your site, I'd agree with for2kids, you have to find ways to:
- use the few seconds you have the user's attention to show them immediately what you have to offer
- once you have it, make them stay by making your contents easy to view.
The most important thing: The width of your website's content equals the width of the window. Are you using tables?
If not, you should. Using tables isn't hard to master, there's lots of online resources about that.
If you are, set the width to something user-friendly:
As Statcounter user, you know the screen resolutions of your users (keep in mind: screen size does not nessesarily equal window size). So, if most visitors to your site have a 800x600 resolution, you should make your content-"collumn" about 650 pixels wide. There's another benefit from that: Your texts are far easier to read. Stick to about 60-80 characters per line.
Take a look at your fonts. You might have heard that serif typefaces (the ones with the little "feet", like Times in contrast to Arial) are better to read. That is true on paper, but not on the screen. Use Times and the like for headlines, if they're big enough in size, if at all. Stick to Arial, or better Verdana for texts longer than a few words.
Set the font sizes in pixel. This ensures sites to look alike on different systems. Try 10-12 pixels. Try changing the line-height
(<p style="font-size 11px; line-height:15px">)* - if there's some space between the lines, texts are easier to read.
*Play a little with these numbers to find the combination you like best.
Be consistent in the design of your site. Set one text style (face, size and colour), set one headline style, stick to the same background/ foreground-appearance throughout your site. This applies to the "Flag Pin" story especially.
For the home page, try the following:
- set the links in two or three collumns (using tables), add images, if possible, and differenciate better between the headline and the descriptive text.
Try to find out on other websites what you'd want to click on if you'd follow a link - the headline? the text? or a "more..." link? Maybe one or two of them, maybe all. Change your links' system to that.
Try to find categories for your links to better sort them (maybe "Watercolours", "Writings", "Misc." or something (English is not my mother tongue, so maybe you can find better words)) so your visitors can get an idea of what kind of site they're at.
In my browser (IE 5.1 under Mac OS 9), the first link overlaps the image. I'd recommend against that. The other links are better readable.
So much for now - these are some basic things I experienced when dealing with webdesign (and there's a lot I still have to learn as well) - if you work on these issues, I guess some of your visitors might stay quite some time longer. Other's won't, of course, since they'll find out even sooner your site isn't for them...
I hope I could help you a little.
regards, Per
