Honest Critique for IWannaBeInABand.com

IWannaBeInABand.com · #1 (**permalink**) 09-16-2009, 06:17 PM

Just to let everyone know first, the site is not anywhere close to complete, most of my content I have been writing in documents before I am going to post it. My biggest concern when I started website building was getting the home page the way I wanted it to look, still trying to work out the kinks in the code.

I spent a lot of time in photoshop designed the sections on the left, but recently I have been getting a lot of critique about it, so I would like everyone's opinion on what I should do, should I stick with this site, start over?

which would really suck, or just get rid of my photoshop designed sections and keep moving on, thnx!
-Ryan

WindowsTalk · #2 (**permalink**) 09-16-2009, 06:45 PM

I'm not a coding expert by any stretch of the imagination, but here are my first impressions:
- I like the static background and the site header.
- the center post area could be a lot larger
- the column of buttons down the left side looks cheap and detracts from the site; a horizontal tab bar would look better, I think.

IWannaBeInABand.com · #3 (**permalink**) 09-16-2009, 07:49 PM

still waiting for more opinions before i change anything, just curious what would you recommend the width of my center post area be, the entire thing is 790x including the area with the sections.

Dee · #4 (**permalink**) 09-16-2009, 09:08 PM

Well, I hate criticizing, especially knowing how hard you've worked on this. However...I think there are too many colors. And I think the lettering on your side links looks a bit rough. I like the idea of your site though.

McKnight · #5 (**permalink**) 09-17-2009, 12:19 AM

http://www.iwannabeinaband.com/images/logo.gif

Now that's some fine piece of artwork right there ... hehehe

Site looks nice although you might have used too many colors, not sure. Keep up the good work and let us know when you fill out the links so we can check it out.

sgtmac66 · #6 (**permalink**) 09-17-2009, 10:20 AM

Site looks pretty cool, but one can get carried away with graphics. here's my take:

1. Like the header image, but here's two dislikes. One, I don't think you need to make the header height so large. You want to get your visitor down into the meat of your site. The header is sort of the teaser. Secondly the text in the header looks to have some sort of shadow effect, which makes this old man go google eyed, lol! I would use plain text without any highlights or shadows.

2. Your image based navigation menu on the left is impressive, but I think a bit overdone. Like your header, I would much rather use text based navigation, which will shorten it up to the top most portion of your page...or at least, make your buttons, smaller. An old and fast rule, is that most visitors will spend less than 5 seconds viewing your page to find something worth staying. You need to catch their attention quickly and get them to the meat of your page.

3. Your main title and subtitle are similar. Iwannabeinaband.com and Iwannabeinaband home page. You don't need both. Leave your header title as is and change your sub-title to tell your visitor what the site is about.

I got to head back to work, but that is what I see so far...Really a nice design.

Good luck with your site

IWannaBeInABand.com · #7 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 04:21 PM

I've been busy trying to create content for my website one section at a time, I've completed my getting started section (8 pages), about me, home page, and headlines section. As I've been writing I'm wondering now is my domain name going to be a problem, i'm trying to target the main keyword start a band which has over 90,000 searches monthly on google. Just wondering if the domain name being a little bit longer - Iwannabeinaband, is that going to destroy my chances of getting traffic? thnx

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