SITE REVIEW: HexHarryPotter

Okay, this is the second review of this site? Well, i guess we can do it, since i have rebuilt it all over again.

The site url is http://www.hexharrypotter.com

The reason i want it reviewed is because I think there is something wrong with the site, which has led to low traffic. Last year, i used to get more than 150 unique hits daily. Now i barely make it to 50 unique hits daily. I think this has to do with the long hiatus my site had gone through last year ( the school does get on your nerves! )

Any constructive criticism on how to regain the traffic and what is keeping away the visitors! I think my site loyalty has reduced

Thank You.

Flash headers are usually looked down upon, but I guess they're getting more popular.
However, scrolling ones like the you have up are distracting and a bit annoying.

Sidenote: something's up with your google ads (FireFox) 2 ads are shown, then one below the first one, which I can only see the title of. On the right side, all I can see is "Ads by Go.."

Design: it's a bit gray and gloomy for me. Harry Potter surely has some colors other than black and gray! If you're gonna go with this "color/design scheme", maybe add some of that brownish color on film strips? This image comes into mind: http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/ ... 423878.jpg

I'd work on making it take up more of the screen, about half the screen, horizontally, is whitespace (or blackspace in your case =p). Also, content is way down the page. I measured, on my screen, and there's 440px on top of the content (header + ads + content header). There's only 120px of actual text/content above the fold.

Rollovers on links i'd change. Get a color scheme or something, i'm not a huge fan of the links with a line on top and bottom.

Content headers are a bit big for my taste (as in, font size and height). They're 45 px tall. Maybe it's just me but i'd probably cuz that in half and use a bolder, thicker font to make them stand out more.

Some other things to consider:
-Have you noticed that it says "News and Updates" at the top of every single page?
-How do I get back to the home page without pressing F5?
-Iframes are looked down upon (I think that's what you're using.. but normal frames are, too.) Also, they are not spider-friendly. That is, maybe you're loosing visitors because Google doesn't know how to navigate your site through the frames and everything.
-Is your entire content just the main page with news articles?

Well, i don't know but i am a fan of flash headers. I really had to consider putting a flash banner since a lot of people were in support. But i guess you are right, they are distracting, i ll try putting up a better header next time.


Google ads come in 728 x 90 pixels and my banner was 700 so i had to adjust it there.


The network sites are part of the main site! And i am sure they have enough colors for the whole site!


Well, the main links are visible, but if people do complain about that more often, i ll shrunk the height of the header.



iframe problem


I ll add a link for that


Yes, i am using a combo of both iframes and frame. But there isnt any alternative? using separate pages would be mean that whole header and banner would have to reload again. (Correct me someone if i am wrong, cause i am not good at html) and with flash banner the reload time would increase!



Well, this is more like an opening page. The rest content is like networks! As in library network takes one to all the information and all. So, no it is not all the content

Thank You for the review! I really have to reconsider some stuff

Ok, that makes more sense. I thought network sites were just links you put up for the fun of it. I didn't realize it was a "web" of sorts.



Your page is about 200kb. The flash is about 50kb, which means 10 seconds to load on dial-up and under one on most other connections. Also, many web browsers cache files so that it's not loaded every single time. It just saves it and pulls it off the hard drive. Also--some people use a flash header for their home page, and a normal image for the others. If you did go with this idea, you could just take a screencap of your flash and just use that one "frame" for all the other pages.

Usually, i'd say that 200kb is morbidly obese, but with the way sites are getting these days, it's more of the norm. My old sites would have tons of content and my main goal would be to keep the pages under 10kb or so. Those days are long gone with today's expectations for flashy pages and nice graphics.

You still might want to cut down on the size--the page shouldn't be much more than your biggest file, but it's 4 times the size!

Let me cut to the point: reloading the page wouldn't be a huge deal if you need to. If you and other people are happy with frames, that's fine. For SEO (search engine optimization) you will get rid of all frames. Do you know PHP? It will make getting rid of frames a lot easier. Just make a header and footer file and attach them to each content page. Shouldn't take more than a few hours to convert your site from html/frames to html/php. But you don't have very many pages anyway so I guess converting wouldn't take that long anyway.

Whatever.. it's up to you. I'm gonna stop babbling now, haha. Good luck with your website. Let me know if I can help you at all.

hmm i dont quite like the header but the template is great! the back is cool

Very cool looking website. I like the layout and the colors (since black, white, grey is my style and u used them very well).

What I didn't like was news and updates being on every page, I couldn't get back to the home page, and whats up with all those links having to open up a new window. That's very annoying to me.

60 W3C Validation errors ... you can click here to see them in action now ... Please note that there isn't a DOCTYPE or Character encoding specified ...

there is a big gap on the "home" page between the text and the "extreme tracking" image ... On the "about" page the gap is even bigger ... well I see it on all the pages ...

I also see the google ads not showing properly ... half of the ads are halfway hidden ... and agree on the fact that there is no way to go to the "home" page ...

Then is there a way that you can disable the link of the page that a user is on, for example if a user is on the "about" page, then the "about" link is disabled and in another colour (or rollover state)

Then the "awards" page has a 'left-to-right' scrollbar for the frame which is not good at all ...

Then the form on the "affiliate" page doesn't check for errors, so when I enter nothing and click submit, I get no warnings ...

After the submittance of a form there is a message displayed, please replace the "and" with a "then", which would make the message clearer ...

That's about all I have to say ...

Is that a problem? Actually i was about to add some news, as soon as the news fills the space, it would look that bad.



Do they now? I have sorta fixed them, but i doubt if they look any better. As in i want the ads to integrate with the width of the rest of the site, but google ads, the leaderboard's size is 728.. any ideas?



I would fix that in the css. Thanks for the advice!



I am redoing it in php, once frames are gone, the problem would be fixed!



Hmm.. I ll recheck the script, although i know i can not figure out the problem, since i am bad at php.

p.s About the home, have a look at the navigation, i have added a button linking back to home

Don't loop the Flash, once is enough, anymore and its distracting whilst reading your content.

Try and get rid of the Tables for layout purposes
Use a Skip to Content link
Try and introduce a hierarchy of Headings

eg:
<h1>For all things Potter - Hex Harry Potter</h1>
<h2>News and Updates</h2>
<h3>Don't miss the "Today's Show"</h3>
<h3>Network Sites</h3>
etc.

Use W3C validator to validate your code, both HTML and CSS.

Yeah they seem fixed now ... All three are next to each other and displays fine ...


I like that you've done that, it's just that I looked for it in the top of the 2 menus (if you know what I mean?) ...

And there is still "News and updates" as every pages heading ...


That seems like a good idea to me aswell ... Maybe once or twice and then stop ...

You need to put some colors in header and center body is not looking good alos