daveheinzel

Thanks, everyone. I agree. I had to step back and see it from another perspective. Sometimes you get so involved in a project and the details that you overlook the obvious. Thanks again.

I wouldn't say you're going about it the wrong way if that's your concern. But I generally believe that a well-designed site, with appropriate content in the appropriate places, will take care of SEO most effectively. Putting a bunch of links or text in any particular place just for SEO can have (and in your case, I believe this was the case) a negative impact on your site's simplicity, both actual and perceived. Any piece of content is noise. Your visitors will sift through this noise unconsciously in an attempt to find what matters to them. A footer is also noise. I might be taking this to an extreme. There's nothing inherently wrong with what you are attempting. I just feel that if those words are important to you for search engine purposes, use them on the pages in important places (headers, for example). The search engines will take care of the rest.

I strongly second Fran's entire response. One thing I would add is to include height and width tags on your images so that when they're loading, they don't keep moving everything else around on the page. My internet is slow today, so as they loaded in (in your portfolio sections), the page was dancing like crazy. Your photographs are wonderful though. Very clear and colorful. I'd make a new footer from scratch. I'm attaching a very simple layout that I put together to give you an idea of what I think would work better with your site. Note that I've changed some content too, but this could be modified to include all of your additional links if desired. The footer is a good place to use ample white space.

Firstly, it's easy from a quick view of your site what your service is and what the benefit is. The photo and thought bubbles drive it home. The organization of your site is clear, and the information is not bad. The issues I have are with the design and layout. For starters, Helvetica seems to be the dominant font, although there are others mixed in (too many others in my opinion). Helvetica can work in many situations, but it is very dry and sterile. That's NOT to say you need a "playful" font. It just is something you're up against. But your implementation of Helvetica makes it even worse. With wide-span centered text and a lack of ample margins (and line height that is too tight), it feels amateur, cold and stuffy. It would help to use more whitespace around design elements. 20 or 30 pixels of white space between text and bordering elements would work wonders. Make the font a little smaller even. Double the line height. Left-align paragraphs unless there's a very good reason not to. Another issue I have is with the giant tabs at the top of the page. They are so big that they stack up to two rows of tabs. Rows of tabs are almost always problematic, and in this case, they look very unfinished. Make all of the text smaller (and the same size), and keep the tabs in a single horizontal row. Bump them down underneath the top-left logo if you need more horizontal room. The three What would you like to do "CLICK HERE" boxes near the bottom of the home page are unnecessary. But if you keep them, the design needs to be reworked. They gray background, purple shadows (on mouseover) and very rounded corners all seem very dated. On a side note, anytime you have to put "click here" on something like that should be a sign that the design is off. A good link will obviously be clickable. Hope that helps. Again, the design feels like it needs some work, but that seems to be the only problem, which is a GOOD thing. Many sites have poor design, poor content and poor organization. In that case, I don't even know where to start!

I would hazard a guess that you're trying to appeal to potential clients who are looking for cheap web design. With that in mind, I don't think it's necessary to mention right away that your code is valid HTML / CSS. Many people don't even know what that means. They want to know if you have experience and can give them the website they have in mind for a reasonable price. That said, you don't list your prices. I wouldn't advertise being cheap without giving a specific idea of what I mean by that. I don't think it's wise to advertise your skills using the progress bar comparison. List them if you'd like, but don't rate them. The overall layout of your site is fine. I think that's the strongest thing it has going for it. The font choices turn me off, and I'd recommend something less offensive, especially with the headline font. I'd go with something that you don't have to render in images. The contact form is fighting to survive against that gradient behind it, and I don't know if you can design your way around that without moving it somewhere else. Keep going, keep revising, and post back with some updates.

Hi all - first post here. I'm working on a new file layout for a website and can't decide which layout works best - grid or list. If you were looking for a file, which layout lets you find it best? And as developers, are there any implementation or expandability issues you can foresee with either? The content is coming from a custom CMS that users can use to upload files or web links. They currently upload mostly PDFs. Thanks for the feedback. -Dave