Be gentle!

[Rick]

Well, I've had my website up a few weeks now. Trying to get the curage to have you guys and dolls take a look at it. Remember though, it's still under construction.

www.datasave-usa.com

[LeafWind]

Hey Rick,

Your basic look/design is great.
Your load time was a little slow, and when we checked your source code, it looks like you have a lot of table codes that may not be strictly necessary. If you cleaned those up by hand, it might decrease your load time.

Other than that, looks good!


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www.LeafWind.com
Growing web sites that thrive in the winds of change.

Hi,

I have some suggestions for further development of your site.

I note them in the order of time they came to my mind
a) Do you really like these pop-up ads? For me they are bound to geocities and hypermart. Usually freely hosting horrible sites (or course there are also some good sites). These popups not only drive attention away, they also drive focus away (e.g. the mouse-wheel does not any more scroll the page). I find this extremely distrubing. Do you made good experience with these popup ads? Do many people come from other sites to your site? If many people are coming, please tell me and I'll consider placing these ads on my own page.

b) Main Page (index.html)
I'm using a 800x600 display which is more or less the screen resolution used by most people. At this resolution in full screen, I can just see a few images. Once I made an experience with a friend who never scrolled down (I had to teach him). I think that most people just don't notice the scrollbars and if they don't see something in the first page of view, they don't see it at all.
If you look at nearly all large sites on the web, they have a lot of important things on the main page of view. They transfer the message, they have the master navigation there etc. A very good example of this is www.msnbc.com where each news you can read is interrupted at around pixel 600 with some ads and another naviagion. Only if you continue to scroll down, you can read the whole news article. But everyone sees the few main lines. They also placed a link called "Complete Story" on that page, just to move the browser down to the start of the story. It seems that most large sites find that web surfers are extremely stupid.

For my own pages, I never make it that strong. I'm just looking that the main message and contact information is visible in the first page of view (and of course the ordering possiblity). Many info is only available while scrolling down on my site, but I hope that everyone can find what he needs even if he does not scroll.

I only found that problem with your main page and your pricelist page. On the main page, I would ensure that one could navigate to the pricelist without scrolling. And on the pricelist I would ensure that contact information and that nice "CALL ME" field is visible. Everyone should be capable of getting in touch with you then.

On some pages, you have a small dark-blue table with white text. Maybe you can place one of these small tables in the top left of all your pages with a short tagline and the "CALL ME" button and your email address.

I don't know much about your business, so I'm not sure how to write a short tagline, but I'm sure you can do so

c)
I really like your idea of having different contact possibilities on most pages. One reads "Send me mail" one is "Call me" one is "Send me a fax". I feel that while browsing your site, everyone finds "his" way of getting in touch with you. That's very easy to understand and good made. Unfortunately, I don't want to call all visitors to my site or even send them a fax. So it's nothing I could do on my own page. Great idea.

I like your colors and find the page easy to read (that's very important, ever tried to read a page with dark blue letters on black background ???)

Greetings from Bonn, Germany
  Meikel Weber
http://www.meikel.com

[Jacob Stetser]

Two short notes:

The pop up box for the LE ad is too small.. parts of the ad get cut off.

And your page is very big. I have a 19" monitor and keep it running at 1152x870 most of the time, and my web browser is open to about 700x800 usually. Your page still required horizontal scrolling to completely view.

But both of those things are easy to fix Just make your tables tighter and increase the size of the LE popup

[auteur]

Rick,
I agree with Meikel, LeafWind and Jacob and would like to add a few of my own views ...hoping not to send you running under a rock to hide

I'd definitely get rid of the pop up window. We do that on the CBS SportsLine site and it annoys me tremendously...I never read them before 'X'ing out of them.

Second, from a marketer's standpoint, I'd get rid of the picture of the girl behind the counter. That will also help with your download time and it doesn't really help your site [[[If it's a relative, friend or co-worker...she's very pretty and a great picture but is more for a company brochure than the internet]]] Many people try to put their brochures online and it doesn't always work because the internet is a whole new market.

I had to read into the text to figure out what you were selling...It's always best to highlight the benefits of your product even moreso than having graphics on the web! People want benefits!!! Your company's name doesn't say it all, which is fine but you want to capture your audience 'above the fold' which is the first screen shot when the page loads [approx. 468pixels from the top of your page].

In this top space, you currently have 3 graphics...another tip that is search engine related ... Lycos is known for not creating a description for you if you start with a graphic....

Back to the topic at hand again...
A good rule of thumb is to have the most important information above the fold and have benefits of your product there too.

For example you can cut your paragraphs down to benefits that capture the eye with such statements as:

Save Time Get Access to Over 2.5 Billion Database Records.

Hiring New Employees - Get Background Checks in Half the Time

Our Databases Will Save Your Company Time and Money with Fast, Accurate Research Data.

Sell the benefits and capture your audience quickly...cause on the internet you only get 3.2 seconds to do that in...less time than a television commercial. If you want, I can give you a name and email addy of a great script editor...actually, I know of several ...including a Future Quest client that is a wonderful editor, too.

Okay, I'm hoping not to write a book here.. I hope this has been helpful and not so horrible of an experience...You've got a great product and one that can be very useful to many online businesses. I would definitely keep with it and learn as much as you can from these forums and other online tutorials.

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Elizabeth M. Miller
Getting You the Attention You Deserve!
www.123marketing.com