Thread: Website Review

Your photography and images are attractive as is your layout.

In designing a web site, attractiveness is a big plus buy you also need to keep in mind how it will play with the search engines and the visitor experience. You should be aware of several drawbacks.

Image heavy sites take a long time to load for people using dial up
Images are invisible to search engines
Frames are not search engine friendly
Splash pages are not search engine friendly

You can keep much of your attractive layout by using text instead of text-images and eliminating the frames. There are many techniques on text layout which can use to keep the same look and feel you have. There was an article recently at http://alistapart.com on how to upload uncommon fonts and use them for text on your site.

i like the site in general. a couple of minor points though:

1) is the splash page really necessary? i was confused at first. i thought that was the actual site
2) the content on the main page is center-justified with a lot of space wasted around it. content on other pages seems left-justified. i'd make sure i am consistent
3) is it really necessary to use images to serve as text? you seem to be doing it a lot on pages other than the main page

hope these comments are helpful

james

I like the colors and the pictures you offer. If I could make one suggestion though, that would be to get rid of the frames. As a webmaster and consumer, I hate frames. I would also include on the homepage the communities or developments that your client wants to promote.

Most consumers going to real estate sites want to look at pictures, search for homes and developments. All in all though I think you have a very eye pleasing site. I also agree with the poster above, dump the splash page.

Thanks for the comments.

I had not noticed the text justification... bugs me when things aren't uniform, so thank you for pointing that out.

As far as the other comments made so far... I am hesitant to go without frames, because I want people to still see the content of that side frame while they do their MLS search. Make sense? I suppose I could create a frame set to use once they get through the main page.... any suggestions? Or, should I just create the links on the side of every page and screw the whole frames concept??

The entrance page was up while the rest was getting uploaded, and I left it once I got the main content going... I still like the look, but I see your point. Do you think that making it a timed link that advances to the site in a few seconds would fix the problem, or should I just get rid of it entirely?

As far as text with graphics, the reason is that I had chosen a specific set of fonts that I wanted to use as far as making it asthetically pleasing.... and it is impossible to use those fonts as text and have it readable by other browser who do not have those particular fonts installed, if I understand correctly.... up to this point I had been picking and choosing what I used as text as I went along. Is this a really bad idea?

Thanks for the help already! Any comments are appreciated....


Brett

frobn:

Thanks for the link about text....I will check that out and hopefully make adjustments when I understand what the hey is going on with that....

I personally dont like frames, you can still leave the MLS search in frames, but for overall navigation as a consumer sometimes you have trouble getting through and back to other areas of the site. Frames tend to lock or freeze up when trying to navigate. You can get stuck in a loop that you cant get out of as a consumer and when that happens to me on a site I just leave the site. Just food for thought.

Besides being unattractive and hindering navigation, there is a much more basic reason why frames should be avoided--frames and search engines are not on friendly terms. Several posts on here have talked about the high costs, in time and money, of search engine optimization (SEO). One of the least expensive things someone can do for SEO is to have a design structure that is search engine friendly.

Okay...I understand. No Frames.

Thanks for the help.

Yeh, this is where the search engine friendly content is http://www.houstondowntownliving.com...downtownb.html and at this time the content is buried too deep.

BTW welcome to the forum