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24whiskers
24whiskers
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Professionally designed website?

Jul 22, 2011 5:44 PM

http://boom-merchant.co.uk/

 

This is a website of a tech-house music producer and a dj - Boom Merchant.

It is my first fully designed & developed website and although I am quite happy with the result, I still feel it doesn't look professional.

Something is missing and I am not sure what.

 

I would really appreciate any advice, tips, opinions and most certainly ALL the criticism you can give regarding the design (ignore the content, it will be edited).

The logo and the beatport player must remain as the main feature.

 

Photoshop is like my third hand, so I started off by creating the layout there, the rest was done with the help of Dreamweaver (and The Missing Manual ).

I am looking for any improvements that can be done to make this website look ideal, nothing is too advanced for me, I will tackle it and learn .

 

 

Thanks

455 Views   3 Replies   Latest reply: 24whiskers, Aug 2, 2011 9:33 AM
 
Replies
  • Nancy O.
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    1. Nancy O.,
    Jul 28, 2011 4:21 PM   in reply to 24whiskers
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    Overall, it's not a bad first effort. But you've made several newbie mistakes:

     

    #1 Making the domain name home page into a Splash/Intro page is pure poison for search engine ranking and accessibility. There is no real text for search engines, language translators or screen readers to find.  A waste of prime real estate.  That's why modern web designers don't use Splash pages anymore.

     

    #2 No document type declaration.  This puts pages into Quirks Mode which will cause unexpected results in many browsers/web devices.  See the list of code validation errors below (from home page only):

    http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fboom-merchant .co.uk%2F

     

    #3 No meta descriptions.  Meta descriptions appear on search engine results pages.  Often this is the first impression people have of a web site so these are important.  Meta descriptions should be brief, relevant & unique to each page.

     

    #4 Using Photoshop to generate HTML tables for you.  This is for RAPID PROTOTYPING only and should not be used on real web sites.  The table code is messy and typically unstable (see code errors in #2).  Best to use graphics apps for images only.  Use DW to build the HTML & CSS code.  For more on that, see this 3 part tutorial:

     

    Taking a Fireworks (or Photoshop) comp to a CSS Layout in DW

     

    Part 1 - Initial Design
    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/dw_fw_css_pt1.html

     

    Part 2 - Markup preparation
    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/dw_fw_css_pt2.html

     

    Part 3 - Layout and CSS
    http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/dw_fw_css_pt3.html

     

    Keep working on it.  It takes time to learn all this stuff.  You're heading in the right direction.

     

     

    Nancy O.
    Alt-Web Design & Publishing
    Web | Graphics | Print | Media  Specialists 
    http://alt-web.com/
    http://twitter.com/altweb

     
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  • Vikas Arora
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    2. Vikas Arora,
    Aug 2, 2011 3:37 AM   in reply to 24whiskers
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    Your first projects look nice in designing perspective and also you got right suggestion to make your site search engine friendly. You should add alt tag description tag and if possible then content also.

     
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  • 24whiskers
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    3. 24whiskers,
    Aug 2, 2011 9:33 AM   in reply to Nancy O.
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    Thank you very much for the advice, I will try and clean all of that up

     
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