SITE REVIEW: MusicMastersOnline.com

Hello all! As my status bar probably indicates...I am a newbie around here. But I gotta tell ya'...I'm THRILLED to have this forum to be able to get constructive and knowlegable feedback concerning the build of our website. Asking friends and family to "check it out" only goes so far. LOL

Well...I'm just gonna throw it out there and see what happens. I'd love your feedback on visual appeal, navigation, usability, etc. etc. What I'm MOST interested in is critique of my intent to optimize my site for better search rankings. We're doing pretty good now with our keywords...but always striving to be #1...but at least remaining in the top 3.

Thank you for your time and review - I anxiously await your comments.

http://musicmastersonline.com

The site was quite quick to load for me. I think that the home page has got to much on it. When i visit a site if there is too much info on the first page i normally think i can not be assed.

I would have snippets of the information followed by "... Click here to read more" This will encourage people to look at other pages on your site and will break up the large amount of text on the home page.

The design of the site nice and clean and it advertises what you do well. The rollovers on the buttons take a while for the to work, this might be my computer?

The flash at the top is nice but the colors used do not fit in with the rest of the site.

If you are interested in exchanging links then let me know as my site is wedding related and i think it ties in pretty well.
PM and let me know if you would like to.

Overall the site is good

Is funky and good use of flash. Good use of fonts and general layout is clear.

I am not at all sure about...



or



Becuase these push the navigation down below the 800x600 fold.

The only thing I would have done s the colours. I would have done a white site with lots of colours.

Buttons and text - your site is a prime example of why I hate this. If I run my mouse over the links, nothing changes. If I hover on a link, there is a <b>noticeable</b> delay before the link changes. I'm ok with it if it happens on the first link and then none of the rest - but every single link? Each image @ 1.5 k gives you 60Kb total images just for the links. Thats without the rest of the images as well. Total page size nearly 200kB

in my book 30kB = an entire page layout with all images and some content too. Thats the figure I try to work to. But then I am a pseudo-facist when it comes to efficiency and fileize

I'm not keen on the flash animation, it seems unnecessary, and a little distracting in that is constant - I dont like constant movement on websites. you might as well use:

(thankfully that doesn't work in IE)

There is also a positioning problem with the flash in Mozilla, the right hand side covers that right border of the flash.

I like the way you have achieved a semi-transparent effect on the nav/title, it's something a little different.

I like the overall layout, it achieves a nice balance between graphical and basic, giving a result that is pleasant to look at but not "in your face".

Content wise it's good, it's all quite convincing and there isn't too much on the pages.

Overall 8/10, but you won't be getting any visitors on dialup methinks.

PS, I <b>always</b> review harshly and I have a pretty bad headache

Even though you are correct you are a little m8 . I don’t think we have to worry about making tiny websites unless we have many thousands of visitors. Lets not forget the file size of the msn home page but they can afford the bandwidth! Sure speed is essential but nowadays people are getting broadband and the goal posts have moved to bandwidth limitations and server side coding execution times.

I say a homepage can be upto 80k though less is better

cmon rtm223 when do we get to review your site

30kB = target
50kB = fine

for a layout with 5 paragraphs of lorem ipsum

Bear in mind I don't use any fancy flash stuffs.

Also it's not the actual filesize that bothers me, it's <b>wasteful</b> filesize. I see nothing wrong with a 200kB webpage (or even 500kB) if the size is justifiable. It's only when the size is not worth it.

I think that sites should be as small as possible. If the size can be significantly reduced, then do so, rather than a quick-loading page on broadband, have an instantly loading page!

I am a compulsive perfectionist, plain and simple.

[quote="Johan007"]Is funky and good use of flash. Good use of fonts and general layout is clear.

I am not at all sure about...



or



Becuase these push the navigation down below the 800x600 fold.


Not sure what you're meaning by this. Is it out of alignment? What do you mean push the navigation down below the 800x600 fold? I really do appreciate your feedback and time to help me understand.

Thanks

Is there a way that I can reduce the file size of the graphics on my site without compromising on the quality? Not sure why the rollovers would take so long to load...simple (well, Frontpage 2002 simple) DHTML code.

I will go for smaller pages too.
20-30k for me

there are still alot of 56k modem users out there.
Have to consider that.

800x600 fold is when you set the monitor resolution to 800x600 and make sure that all the important stuff is visible without having to scroll. Its a newspaper concept and that’s where the word comes from:


O'Reilly - Designing "Above the Fold"

D-Zine - Screen Resolution

I don`t like the gray...you should try something more colorfull...that`s my opinion!