Web site critique

Hi Brad
I get the honor of being the first! I tend to be merciless, so I apologize ahead of time!So here goes:

First impression
page too dark, looks kind of cheap and thrown together
cant read the logo, logo is very poor quality.
You need to do a spell check on some text
graphics
bad logo
get rid of all the drop shadows on the text graphics, difficult to read.
change main page color (text area) to white. use uniform fonts and colors.

it seems you have a lure theme going on, build a brand/design around that using appropriate graphics

what is the website for?
if you are selling something, everything needs to point to that book,
the personal accounts you put on there are great, but too scattered, again I don't know what the site is for?
there is a phrase to say click the button, but there is no button and no obvious product.

I don't understand the use of flash all over the site, no keywords will be read being there aren't any in the body of the site.

Anything that requires a user to download something before they can view your content, is bad. I leave before I bother. Flash though in some instances are nice (not this one) are a roadblock to those who land and want to 'fish' quickly. make it easy as possible for them to stay and read and ultimately buy something.

good points
the content you have written is good
the site resizes nicely with different resolution browsers


critically yours..
Linda

ok im on graphics.....
well one thing i see at first are the colors, they are like everywhere... you should have a color theme or something that match, the logo does not look good either.... you could make a simple graphics but yet looks a bit professional kinda

The SEO impact of flash has already been mentioned, so I'll skip that one.

I spent a good 60+ seconds on your homepage. That's more than a lot of people would give. In that period of time I never did find out what you wanted me to do. Are you trying to get me to register or sign up for a newsletter? Do you want me to buy something? I left the page without ever discovering what you were offering. That's a bad thing.

I'd start out with a better headline that explains or at least hints at how I will benefit.

So I did not bother to read through all of your copy as you have a lot of it and it is far more text than most people will sift through to get your message. Tighten it up a lot and really try to capture vistors attention. As it is now they will move on because they feel like they are reading War and Peace. The colors are ok, although brown and blue don't go well in my opinion. You are off to a decent start.

I don't think you have to make it in flash. I could understand if you wanted a lot of animation and stuff but it looks kind of too simple to be done in flash. It takes a long time to load on my computer in flash.

I don't think you need to have that big brown bar on the left for just three links. For those three links you should try using the same width image beside them so the text links up with each other.

The logo looks kind of cheap to me too. Try getting a professional to do it if you want to have your website be a business.

I don't like the clicking noises when you click the menu bar. Turn those off please.

I do like the black top and the light blue bottom for the backgrounds. I would keep that.

That's all I can think of right now.

I'm new to all this stuff, so I don't really know what works and what doesn't, I don't even know how to make a flash site like yours, so if it works and looks fine to you then keep it as it is.

Hello Brad,
I just took a look at your website and wanted to say first off that I think you've done a great job getting the site together and making it work. Below are some observations. I know you've gotten a lot of feedback already, so I hope this helps.

- concerning the decision to run the site entirely in Flash, I have a feeling you are doing this to give the visitor a consistent experience no matter what browser they use to reach your site

- this is a noble reason but it becomes too expensive in terms of making the visitor wait so long to load the .swf file

- what are you doing in Flash that cannot be done with regular HTML, PHP, CSS and Javascript?

- unless you can justify forcing the visitor to use Flash as a "second web browser" (for example video, animated content, technical drawings or illustrations, etc.) I would recommend at least providing an alternative non-Flash version of the exact same website content

- I did a quick search and actually found some of your text ads on Google and Myspace, unfortunately your destination URL goes to a specific part of your Flash presentation, so any impatient visitor will likely abandon the site before you ever get a chance to show them your message

- consider creating an incredibly fast loading page that is specially designed to greet visitors from your ad campaigns, this unique landing page should not have any excessive elements like Flash that will slow down the visitor's experience, should make it easier to track the visitors going to your special URL instead of embedded in the .swf file

- if at all possible you should preload images, I already waited for a long time for the chance to even see your website appear once Flash finished loading, but then to see your image gallery of 57 objects it took forever, and all the visitor can see is the count down of how many images have been loaded so far, there is no other interaction

- consider intersertial pages that capture the visitor's attention while your website is attempting to do other things in the background

There's more to say, but I need to get some sleep. The main issue is balance. There seems to be too much emphasis on dressing up the website with restrictive and limiting technologies. The content looks great, no doubt about that, but so much dependence on Flash is overkill.

Before I stop, that brings up another point: why did you use a regular HTML/PHP page for your contact form? That is completely incongruent with the rest of the site since it is practically the only thing not done with Flash. Is it because the Flash presentation is difficult to edit and recompile for tiny modifications? What about a modular format to add new pages or replace outdated sales copy, such as a content management system? Not even sure if that is possible with Flash, but it is easy enough for PHP with Smarty.net or Wordpress or a homegrown solution.

Thanks for listening. Very interested to see how the site evolves over the next few months. Best wishes to your success.