SITE REVIEW: Kitesurf Maniac

Kitesurfmaniac.com is a online community where kitesurfers share information around the world.

So you can find spots, accommodation, travel buddies, buy or sell section, forum and blog.

Please give me a feedback about design, usability and more...

Thank you
Jerome

http://www.kitesurfmaniac.com

I am not a kitesurfer myself, however once being on your site, my only criticism would probably be the layout. As a person perhaps interested in getting into the sport, it would confuse me.

You may be trying to involve too much on the homepage.
Apart from that, it's not looking too bad, i like the icons at the top.

Nice site. It didn't take me much time to figure it out. You have a very detailed description of what the site is all about right smack out in front. I knew in an instant where I had surfed.

The overall layout looks great. The homepage does look a little truncated at the bottom, though (and I'm on 1024 X 768). It looks a little crowded. You definitely have plenty of room to expand downwards. The forum had the standard unconfusing look. No problems there at all. I did have a little trouble finding my way back to the homepage from the forum, however. I found that if I go to "Spots" I can then link back to "Home." But from the forum page itself I didn't see an easy way to return home. Maybe I missed it? Speaking of "Spots," the map functionality is awesome. Once that gets filled in with more content it will attract visitors like kids to pancakes.

I have to admit I'm not crazy about the topmost rollover graphical menu. Don't get me wrong, it looks great. But what I found a little inconvenient was that I have to remember what icon stands for what page. I found myself rolling over them continuously to figure out where to go next. Of course I'm new to the page and I'll figure it out over time, but I'd rather not have to take the time to figure it out. The rollover seems to slow the navigation a little. And yes, you do correlate approproate symbols with the appropriate pages, but symbols mean different things to different people. Apart from that, it's a very nice looking menu.

Overall a nice site that seems ripe for visitors and bulging content. I don't windsurf so I didn't join your community, but I bet many who do will (I hope that made sense ).

Thank you very much for you superb feedback! You not the first person who is confused about the navigation.

I probably redesign the whole page and do the navi on the left hand side, have a bigger header with nice pictures...

Thank you very much
Jerome

Your site's concept is somewhat related to one of my sites (windsurfingmaps.com) 0 especially the map with the kitesurfing location.
The site looks very nice, works great on both Explorer and Firefox.
I also think you could use more of the space in the bottom of your homepage.
You will also need to do massive website promotion in kitesurfing forums, trying to exchange links with other kitesurfing related sites. You need a mass of surfers visiting your site as I understand you would want your visitors to add their own kitesurfing locations, equipment etc.
Your best source for visitors will probably be Google, so you need to target keywords visitors search for in Google. The word 'Kitesurfing' or 'Kitesurf' might be too difficult to target so I would choose something like 'kitesurfing resources' or 'kitesurfing equipment' or 'kitesurfing location' - I targeted 'windsurfing equipment' and I am the 11th result on Google for that word.
After you decide what your target keyword is, make sure to have that word as many times as possible, especially on your homepage (don't exgeerate,4-5 times is enough). Make sure you link from other pages in your site to your homepage with an alt and title tag around your target keyword.
And always remember to use alt tags in links, especially internal links.
To get more traffic, I would also invest more time in your blog. If you can update it every 2-3 days, within a couple of months Google will love you and bring you lots of traffic around kitesurfing related keywords (words that would appear in your posts).
Good luck,
Open Source ERP Guru - http://opensourceerpguru.com

Ok I dont like your navagation bar at the top of your website, becuase when the image turns to " white text " it is hard to read on the blue background.

So thank you for the feedback, many didn't like the menu so I decided to change the whole design, the base is now finish and the menu is much easier to understand.

Next two days also change the start page and forum design.

@osserpguru

Are you interested in link exchange in the footer?

Just an update on my last comment on your site, Now the site looks a lot better, and it is much more simple for people to use. And actually i like the design more than the last one.

Thank you

I updated now also the home page and the forum page! Flyers are in print and I start now with advertising.

Thanks for all

http://www.kitesurfmaniac.com

great homepage, I love the pictures they look great, Now as for your navagation bar, Could you make the text a little bolder then it would look great

Thank you I will try the bold and see how it looks!

Thanks for all, the new flyers arrive soon...

http://www.kitesurfmaniac.ch

I've got to hand it to you, the warm colours make me feel really at home so much so that I wish I had an interest in kitesurfing just so I could stare into your site's nice colours the whole day so you've got my vote on that.

The navigation is great for me, I like the font you've used on your buttons, your forum matches your website's theme perfectly so that's good and your site is even XHTML 1.0 compliant by W3C standards. Impressive.

There's nothing I can really help you with regarding improving your page except that the login boxes (to the left of all your pages) is *slightly* distorted in my Browser (Opera 9.26).

Here's a preview of what I mean

Thank you for the feedback, I changed the login box, so it should now look good in Opera and Safari...

Thanks for that!

Jerome

after almost one year, we complete redesigned the page.

looking forward for new feedback:

http://www.kitesurfmaniac.com

I think that a video on the front page would really fit nicely on this.