Hometown Business Showcase

I guess I never sent this here to have it evaluated. This is the second design and I made it in about 2 and 1/2 hours from a drawing on a piece of paper. Tell me what you think about it on different screen sizes etc. The top flash banner changes every hour, there are 12 or 13 different ones (I forget). The side picture changes every hour, there are 24 different ones. And finally, there is scripting at work that changes the colors on the side bar depending on what month it is.

There is flash on the News "Main Page" also

http://www.15656.com

Thanks

Every hour?!? How long do you expect us too look at this site for? Make that time much, much smaller to let it have any affect.

I think putting a one or two pixel gap around the pictures would make the main page look much neater.

Which pictures?

Also, the hour effect is just so that when people visit the site during different times of the day, it's not always the same. It's not a flash effect, it's a javascript effect.

"What's New!" and "Local News" pictures.

I doubt people are going to keep coming back again and again through out the day. I would put it so it changes every 2 and half minutes (150 seconds). This will allow the user to see it change all 24 times in one hour.

They only change if the page is reloaded. The change is only so the person does not see the same old boring image. Now if they happen to always visit at say 5 at night, then the effect does not work.

Perhaps I'll consider the change. I need to figure out how to run the if statement using minutes instead of hours.

hello,

like your saying same old boring pic.
the site looks like its developed in the year 1983 when bill gates just started windows.

if you want to make the site more exiting chainge the look to the 21st century. this is not to brake you design, its just so you can come with us to 21st century.

Good lock

Maybe that is true, but would you also agree that many of these sites are "over designed"? I can not count how many sites are over designed or stuffed with so much advertising that it is hard to determine what is a real link and what is fake?

My approach to this project was to make as much information as possible avilable to the user without overwhelming them with design.

I think seeing those blue underlined links can be reassuring to the user. They don't have to guess at what is a link and what is not. Now that is not to discourage all picture links, many people do it right.

A picture may be worth a 1000 words, but not a 1000 pieces of information.

You say you don't want to overwhelm the user with design but what about overwhelming them with text? The endless column style that you have going seems a bit overwhelming to me and it will only get worse as you add more information. When I see so many columns of text I get into trouble because it is difficult to quickly find what you are looking for. It's the exact same thing as opening up your book the night before your final. Too much information at one time can make you go crazy and close it.

I guess my whole point is that a couple nicely colored boxes or some kind of appealing design would make the massive amount of text a lot less intimidating.

Yes I agree. Do you mean to color in the backgrounds of the columns or add something additional? I used to have the columns colored, then I went for a plain look, but you are right, I prefered the color better.

Ok, I changed it and added color, is that any bit better?

Yes. For me, that does wonders. It looks nice. I hope it all works for you once the site gets packed.

Good job!

There are just over 300 small businesses in town. I am charging 10 a month to host the page, and 30 to design and do the initial work. To anyone who has done web work and to those who see what my work is like, is that a fair price?

Ok, lets revisit this again. What can anyone find wrong about my site?

http://www.15656.com

I solved the rotation thing, it's now completly random.

Its very hard on the eyes nothing really takes precedence, the headings are visible easily but the content melts together. There are a lot of rather non descriptive links all over the place, this site looks like a directory site that people use to spam Google. I dont see any flash did you test this in Firefox?

Um it needs work lots of it…

Compared to what you said on a previous post, I think there's too much text and not enough design. I agree that it is a bit too hard on the eye. You don't need to overwhelm the page with some crazy flashy design, you can keep it simple, clearer and smarter.

Regarding the Flash header, I find the movement too slow, too stop-and-go, not fluid enough.