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First impressions matter

  #1  
Sep 11th, 2005
My site is always in a constant state of change. Please let me know what your impressions are of my site. http://www.pctechbytes.com

We get a lot of traffic, but I want to make sure people are getting the most out of our site. Any recommendations will be appreciated.

Thanks
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Re: First impressions matter

  #2  
Sep 11th, 2005
pctechbytes,

Please don't be offended by anything I say. You have a nice site, no doubt. The things I will suggest I would have trouble doing myself, so don't take it the wrong way.

IMHO..(yeah yeah all that)

1. As soon as I see your page I notice 1 thing...look at all the text. You have a small novel on your homepage. You provide links and sometimes a small paragraph for explanation. What’s the point of having another page to link to if you write it all here?

2. The fact that I have to scroll 3 times to see everything on your 1st page. (see #1)

3. I love the welcome idea … especially the bookmark thing. However, you place it below the ads....why? This should be your main page...fine keep the ads, but put them somewhere else...of course visible, however just not above your welcome message.

4. Your tech favs section could be much much smaller. This also goes along with point #1.

5. Do you have a banner add for your own site below the tech favs? Interesting....make that banner into another link in a menu or something. (Explained at bottom)

6. The “Only at PCTechBytes� and “PCTechBytes Articles� need there own page; not section on the homepage.

7. The pic of the monitor is bothering me...what is that for? (like what bothers me matters..ahah)

8. Center your page in the browser…are you using FrontPage? Perhaps you might want to get a more capable program?

9. <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="600"> ? Why? Its going to take me 600 seconds to read the page…haha I’m a slow reader. Don’t go refreshing the page while I’m reading.

10. Seriously...not bad...

Honestly, your site is fine the way it is if you want to keep it that way. I just gave you my 1st impression of your homepage. You seem to have varying methods of linking users to other pages. Meaning you have the main menu at the top...good, you also have the tech favs section..which i also like...then we get to the two tall boxes which i don't think belong. The bottom menu and then green box is great...i think you should get rid of those two "tall boexs" and start from there.

But regarding the varying methods…you should have almost a theme of how you present material….a certain type of menu and/or way you display links…it should flow. Your main page is chopped up with various methods.

I guess the point i'm trying to make (perhaps i'm failing miserably) is that the homepage needs to look clean and provide the information in the most precise manner. I thought the point of the link was to link the user to the page you want them to see; not provide them an abstract of the linked page, which they are going to see anyway. (Understand?) Give the reader of your site the benefit of the doubt that they will click the link. So that makes a good point; you must provide reasonably good link names. (duh who doesn’t know that) because you won’t have the safety of the “abstract� to help the user know what they are being linked to.

Hell a cliché I know but look at microsoft.com. They may have more internet web pages that i've ever seen, however you don't have to scroll down their homepage to see all of the links...by the way.. you don't have to have users "see" everything.. you can employ some java menus or something.

I don’t think you need jazz. That’s not the point. You just need to clean it up. Hopefully I’ve explained what that means.

Good luck.

J_
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Re: First impressions matter

  #3  
Sep 12th, 2005
Thanks for the time you spent reviewing the page.

It does need to be shortened, but I am afraid to change anything because I am ranked either #1 or on the first page for several search terms on several different search engines.

I'll take your great advice into consideration. Thanks.
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Re: First impressions matter

  #4  
Jun 29th, 2006
all good ideas about (design, content) you can find on great sites( see download.com)
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