Please review my site

barclayliving

Hello! Please take a look a our site and let us know what works and what doesn`t. The site is set up to look like the coffeehouse publication we print monthly. All of the advertisers from our printed publication are also being put on-line. Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated!
www.javajournal.org</A>

OregonCoastFSBO

Hi...I really like your layout, especially with the contest and trivia right down the middle which grabs attention.  Is there a way to sharpen the text in the ads? Several of them are hard to read.  Maybe a mouseover for a larger display of the ad.  Good job. 
Ryan
 OregonCoastFSBO2007-1-19 16:52:24

stonesledge

Hello, The only issue i see is the scrolling down to read the pages, you have to scroll way down. Could you set up text at top and the advertisements at botton or lay out tables so that it was even w/ ads to avod so much scrolling. It is funny I am actually in the middle of updating my clients web site which is a CoffeeNews Franchise here in Va. It seems like a very similar offering. They have really grown and you can too! Good Luck! You definately can be one heck of a Success with this! The one other little thing is that you may want to consider having the advertisers links open in a new window, so that they don`t leave your site. also ask your advertsisers to link to you, to help with your search engine ranking. stonesledge2007-1-19 17:53:53

advancepayday

This is just my opinion but on first looking at the site my immediate thought is you are trying to sell me something and I more then likely came there because of one of your fine articles.  Here are a couple things I would do:1. Lose the business card columns altogether.  If you are creating a journal make that be the focus because thats why I (your users) would come.2. I find business cards quite uninspiring in general and especially in black and white.  The reason they are the first thing you notice is the quantity and the fact that it literally takes 1/2 the "real estate" of the site.  I would put relevant text or even image ads at the very start maybe a
small one at the mid point and a link to the article writer`s site w/
credentials.  3. I would put all ads that are not relevant to the article in a advertisers section much like you would see at the end of a magazine.4. I would limit the amount of scrolling needed by writing shorter more concise articles or by using pagination.5. If you decide to remove the business cards, which I highly recommend, I would implement PHPAdsNew which is a free open source utility for managing advertising (text/images).  Your advertisers can log in at any minute and see exactly where they stand in terms of impressions etc...6. Navigation needs to be reworked.  I click journal articles and see a page about contributing.  I think the links "Interesting Facts..." are broken as they do not show as part of the main page (FF 1.5.09).Good luck!

stonesledge

Are you selling the ads on the site as part of your package price?

barclayliving

Yes, the on-line ads are part of the advertising price. The website is set up just like the newsletter we put out monthly. The titles of the tabs are from the article sections of our paper. Our paper, Since our paper is called "Java Journal", we have kept a coffee theme throughout. 
One of the reasons we are asking for critiques is that we are considering moving to a different web site host that will allow us to use different software. The one we are using now is very limited on how we can lay out everything and how and what we can link. Many of the problems mentioned above are because of the limitation of the software we have to use to work with our current company.
 I am working on the clarity of the business cards. We have only been on-line since November, so we are really craming to get everything done, and done well.

efoozle

I agree with advancepayday. If I wasn`t going to the site just because of this thread and had found it on the net I would have immediately moved on to another site. I would start of with the advice of advancepayday and then repost for more ideas.