My first website. Tell me what you think.

[CntrlEng1]

http://www.lookn4.com

Not a PowWeb hosted site. I haven't heard of PowWeb until today.

I am trying to teach myself how to build a website. Any constructive criticism is appreciated.

[YvetteKuhns]

Since you are new, I will warn you that I am very honest. I will say what I really think. This is to help you, because most Internet users will decide in moments whether they will stay or leave your site.

A website must be attractive, easy to read and navigate and provide information or entertainment to its target audience. The site purpose must be clear, especially on the home page. Let's take a look...

The logo is appropriate. The left side has a list of categories. The center of the page has recent listings of items for which people are looking, followed by the category list. The right side has room for advertisements. Simple, common layout.

The main page contents scrolls under the header/logo area and so do the left (category links) and right (advertisements) contents! Okay, the login and FAQ is still in screen view. I was wondering why the left and right columns didn't stay still, too. But those sides may fill up and go beyond the first screen view. If that happens, those contents are less likely to be seen, though.

Do the same advertisements appear on EVERY page? Or will the advertisements match or complement the category on which it appears? If Google ads go there, that won't be a problem since they will automatically match.

The About/FAQ page opens in a new window and does NOT show the logo. That was weird. The JavaScript wasn't necessary to open in a new window. You can simply use A HREF target="_blank" instead. There is a mailto link instead of a contact page. A page would be better and even a form to send to the mail address. You can prevent spam by putting email addresses in the form processing scripts. Of course, some spammers are looking for forms, too.

The overall appearance is bland, but busy. The fonts are small (to fit more on a page) and there are too many colors in the color scheme. There is white, blue, different shades of gray and yellow in the background colors. The text appears in default black with blue text links. The visited links stay default purple. There are different shades of blue links, red links and even yellow links! It is a bit overwhelming and will be worse as more items are added. Try to narrow down the color choices.

Now you need to think about how people will find your website. Search engines? Incoming links from directories or other websites? Other forms of advertising? And when they find your site, will they stay? Why or why not? Why should someone use THIS website instead of another? Many people post on craigslist.org for free.

What is so special or unique about this website? Look at the website from the point of view of someone who just happened to find it while searching Google. Again, I will mention a target audience. Is this for your country or worldwide? Must you be a specific age to post? What are the terms of service and privacy policies?

Look at a "competitor" website to see what it has or doesn't have. Compare with your website and make changes. I will let someone else comment on the DOCTYPE and validation errors in the source code. ;)

After all that nitpicking, it still looks like an interesting website. You have auto parts but you didn't list cars, boats, motorcycles and other popular search terms. Oh, darn. I just got the 500 Internal Server Error while visiting your website.

[CntrlEng1]

I am hoping the left and right sides eventually fill up- ads, etc. I don't have an answer as to whether same ads will be appearing on every page. Guess that depends on the page and the ad.

I will take your advice about href link to "About" page, and adding a contact page with a form. These sound like good ideas to me.

Picking colors, graphic layout, stuff like that I feel quite deficient. I know when something looks good, but I don't why. I agree with you about the visual appeal, and have been experimenting, but I'm just not good at this. I will keep on trying.

I already do some Google Adwords advertising. That is getting some traffic to me. My home page bounce rate is about %60, and average pages/visit is around 1.5. I don't know if these numbers are good or bad, though.

I am still open to adding more categories, and do so from time to time. Perhaps I should add one for cars, boats,....

You can easily validate my home page with the link provided at the bottom. It validates HTML 4.01 strict. I check it occasionally, myself.


PLEASE. What does the 500 internal server error mean? I have never seen this.
Many Thanks for Your Help!

[YvetteKuhns]

Picking colors, graphic layout, stuff like that I feel quite deficient. I know when something looks good, but I don't why. I agree with you about the visual appeal, and have been experimenting, but I'm just not good at this. I will keep on trying.

You should pick a few colors that look good together and just use them. Use bold colors sparingly. Lose the red lines. My eyes go to the bright lines and away from the small text.

My first client is color blind and cannot distinguish yellow from red or orange. He would not be able to see the yellow outline around the letters in the logo and may not be able to read the logo! Another form of color blindness is when people cannot distinguish blue from green.

I already do some Google Adwords advertising.

I was referring to you possibly placing Google Ads on your website to advertise other websites and to make money with the Google Adsense program. That could appear on each page.

Oh, yeah. I did ask how you were trying to get traffic to your site. Okay. You are using that but you are not seeing ROI (return on investment) yet.

You can easily validate my home page with the link provided at the bottom. It validates HTML 4.01 strict. I check it occasionally, myself.


I used Firefox add-on Web Developer Tools and it showed errors. If you changed from strict to traditional, you may get less errors. Believe it or not, the Firefox validator finds more than the w3c validator! I tried both on a few websites.

PLEASE. What does the 500 internal server error mean? I have never seen this.

This error occurs when there is a problem with CGI or your web server. Your web server may have been busy at that exact moment. You can check your CGI error logs to see what it reports (if you have that with your web host). You may also have an error in one of your php scripts (which is processed on the CGI server). Just watch to see if it happens again.

[phlembol]

Here (http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/) (http://www.colorjack.com/sphere/) is a color tool I find helpful some times.

[YvetteKuhns]

If you can match your clothes to make a nice outfit, you can pick colors for a website. Of course, some of you may depend on your spouse or your mommy to do that for you.

I worked with person who wore socks with patterns on them, so he would find the matching pairs. He couldn't see the colors well enough. That is why you should use colors with enough contrast.

I have seen sites with red text on black background, white text on gray or other combinations where I had to highlight the text to read it. If the site used Flash, I couldn't highlight the text or resize it!

See this web developer site (http://www.alvit.de/handbook/) that used different shades of the same color together. People who are visually impaired will not be able to read tiny text with colors that blend together.

Neutral combinations look nice, but people fall into the trap I described about blending. Bright colors are overwhelming when used for backgrounds. Dark text on light backgrounds are easiest to read.

[CntrlEng1]

OK. I will get some time in the next couple days to make some changes. Hopefully for the better.

I see what you mean about the Firefox add-on validater. I'll work on that, too. Until now I only worried about the home page validating. Now the browser automatically checks every load. I have some work to do.

I tried the colorjack site. Not sure exactly what it is telling me.

I want to thank everyone for your help and suggestions.

PS: My wife buys all my clothes. She says I'm getting better at matching. :)