New Website Graphics!

[AdamRave]

I'd love to hear some feedback about our new graphics!

Weve just changed it last night and there are still some minor changes that will be made within the next few days.

check it out, let me know if you like the look!

http://www.adamsgod.com

thanks guys!

[FinnArild]

Well - the graphics look great - but this is a website, not a gallery.

It is way too large - 1.67 megabytes - and takes me 29 seconds to load from Norway.

The navigation takes too long before it comes up, is non-standard in it's functionality, the image-texts on the links tell me nothing of what I should expect when clicking on them and has a cross mousepointer instead of the hand I expect on links.

In addition it does not validate, it contains no information about what you are on the front page, and contains little or no food for search engines.

So - to put it bluntly - while it looks great, considering usability your site is more or less totally useless.

Edit: Websites are my dayjob and has been so for a while. I have also studied usability and web for several years now.

Edited March 20, 2008 by FinnArild

[Steve]

Tokk 22 seconds to load in the UK. Too big man! Had this not been your site, I would have clicked through somewhere else before it got loaded.

Check out the Myspace page in my sig. I've made you a featured artist.

[typo]

i guess you didn't take my advice about your download speed or page content. believe me the issues i raised were far more critical than the actual graphics.

here's the speed report on this page:

speed report

"you can lead a horse to water..." lol

[FinnArild]

Listen to Typo - he told me a couple of things too ...

[AdamRave]

i guess you didn't take my advice about your download speed or page content. believe me the issues i raised were far more critical than the actual graphics.

here's the speed report on this page:

speed report

"you can lead a horse to water..." lol

I actually did take your advice on a ton of things.. this as well.

i did tell the graphics designer (my bass player) that the load time is way too long and that he needs to compress it tiny tiny to have it load quick.

will look further into it.

Thakns!

Thanks to everyone who comented so far, I will make the changes.

Rome was not built in a day

[AdamRave]

ok..

I just spoke to the graphics dept

hes saying all files are 72 DPI, not heavy at all..

could this be due to the streaming music on the site?

main page plays a bit of a song, then some other pages play some wierd shit..

could that be the problem?

Were unsure of what is making it so heavy.

anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

Also, for the main page.. what would you suggest to put on it to show that this is actualy a band?

perhaps a photo of us live?

the links are all going to change to, once you put the cursor on it, it will show you what it really is, eg: Lies = lyrics.. etc.

hope to hear back soon and thanks!!

[FinnArild]

Man - it's just too much graphics. If you really want to have that much graphic, at least make sure headers are set so it caches in the browser. Also, the plain usability problems should be addressed - how the heck should people know that pressing "prophecy" will give you a list of your gigs, for example. It should say "Gigs" - yes, it is actually that simple. Think of what the user wants out of your site, not of "making a cool site". Cool sites just aren't - well - maybe to mum & dad and some of the fans you've already got - but - if you go to the extent of having a webpage, I assume you want new fans? No? Well - new fans are gonna:

1: Find you - your search engine visibility is effectively 0.

2: Understand you - your front page doesn't even communicate that you are a band

3: Listen to you - by their own choice - have some links to streams of your songs available. Don't push it on people - see below.

As for the .mp3 that plays in the background - well, it doesn't do that for me, because I have turned it off - for a reason. You know - people often listen to music while browsing the web - imagine their irritation when something else plays over their favorite song! Not a way to make new fans, I tell ya!

Good luck, guys ...

[Nightwolf]

As for the .mp3 that plays in the background - well, it doesn't do that for me, because I have turned it off - for a reason. You know - people often listen to music while browsing the web - imagine their irritation when something else plays over their favorite song! Not a way to make new fans, I tell ya!

Good luck, guys ...

I HATE website that start Music without asking.

Site looks awesome, but I have to agree, not many folks will tolerate the load time. Ditch the mp3, maybe the load will speed up

[AdamRave]

okies..

so, more changes were made.

-all the music that plays automatically is gone.

-all the links now change when you point your mouse cursor on them.

within the next couple of weeks (i hope) we'll be having a photoshoot.

the main page will have a band photo to indicate that this is a band website.

other then that.. I think its all good.

Tho i do think that people DO want to see something interesting when they go to a website so I'll be keeping the graphics as they are, other then these responses here, 99% of people who go to my site actually enjoy it very much!

Thanks for all the help.

[FinnArild]

-all the music that plays automatically is gone.

That is very good

-all the links now change when you point your mouse cursor on them.

But it is still impossible to see what they link to before you click. If you don't follow our other advice, follow this one: give the link images texts that tell people where they want to go right away: "Music", "Lyrics", "News" ...

Anyway - Firebug tells me the site is down to 1.43 Meg (which is still HUGE!) and takes 13 megabytes to load.

If you still want that big image, you should optimize each image. I copied the biggest one - which is the logo and is at 80K - and easily managed to get it down to 17K

I can do this for all the images if you want - I'll only charge a link back to my site ...

Edited March 21, 2008 by FinnArild

[AdamRave]

That is very good

But it is still impossible to see what they link to before you click. If you don't follow our other advice, follow this one: give the link images texts that tell people where they want to go right away: "Music", "Lyrics", "News" ...

Anyway - Firebug tells me the site is down to 1.43 Meg (which is still HUGE!) and takes 13 megabytes to load.

If you still want that big image, you should optimize each image. I copied the biggest one - which is the logo and is at 80K - and easily managed to get it down to 17K

I can do this for all the images if you want - I'll only charge a link back to my site ...

sure, i can put your link up, let me know the description for it, and I'll put you up on my myspace!!! (gets way more hits then my website). when doing this, are the files goign to stay jpg? can you make sure they all have the same file name they do now?

let me know!

Thanks!!!!!

[AdamRave]

correction here..

We were actually going to start up a 'links page' linking some frinds etc. on the website, so once that page is up, youre link will go up there too, until then we'll use myspace for it.

Also, i can send to your email all the files that need to be downsized.

just let me know what the files are and where to send it to!

Thank you so much for all the help, it really does mean alot!

Edited March 21, 2008 by AdamRave

[FinnArild]

If possible, I would like to get the original, sliced Photoshop (I assume) file from you to work on. Also, I would like to change .jpg to .gif if it is possible for you to change the html. I could work on the images already on the site, but it would mean more quality loss than necessary since they already have some optimization done to it.

[AdamRave]

If possible, I would like to get the original, sliced Photoshop (I assume) file from you to work on. Also, I would like to change .jpg to .gif if it is possible for you to change the html. I could work on the images already on the site, but it would mean more quality loss than necessary since they already have some optimization done to it.

sure thing, i dont mind changing them all to gif. its annoying, but well worth it i'm sure.

i'm assuming i change anything that is jpg. to gif. and nothing more.

let me know your email address, I'll yousendit.com your way

or contact me: blahblah.com

your choice

Edited March 21, 2008 by Nightwolf
remove e mail

[FinnArild]

Got the email address ... now - remove it, before the mailgather-bots get it ...

[john]

Hey Adam

Can I chime in:

Front page. From a search engine perspective text is way more important than images. I completely agree that people like to see something good when they get there, but they have to get there first. Right now your traffic will be coming from direct promotion, but the true value in having links on sites doesn't come from direct traffic, but because of the benefit to your search engine listings. Right now your site will be throwing that benefit away.

You can have the most amazing site in the world, but if people can't find the site it's a bit of a wasted effort. You just need to look at your site from both user and search engine perspectives and try and get a better balance. Running a site isn't straightforward. Site owners have many things to consider... not all of them fun!

People don't give you this advice to make your site look crap but because they want your site to do well.

Cheers

John

[AdamRave]

Hey Adam

Can I chime in:

Front page. From a search engine perspective text is way more important than images. I completely agree that people like to see something good when they get there, but they have to get there first. Right now your traffic will be coming from direct promotion, but the true value in having links on sites doesn't come from direct traffic, but because of the benefit to your search engine listings. Right now your site will be throwing that benefit away.

You can have the most amazing site in the world, but if people can't find the site it's a bit of a wasted effort. You just need to look at your site from both user and search engine perspectives and try and get a better balance. Running a site isn't straightforward. Site owners have many things to consider... not all of them fun!

People don't give you this advice to make your site look crap but because they want your site to do well.

Cheers

John

I couldnt agree with you more!

thing is, i'm kinda feeling like theres a lot of words but no real direction.

what i mean is, i havent really gotten any advice as to what to actually put up on this front page to make the site visible in search engines.

tell me so i can learn and improve.

thanks!!!

[john]

Hi

Well looking at text you need to get it right from the perspective of the reader, and from the perspective of the search engines, Fortunately the key thing a search engine looks for is the same as a human... keywords.

When you scan something quickly you look for keywords related to your interest or to get an idea of the subject etc. So include words and phrases that represent you and your site and products and "popular" words and phrases related to them. There's a lot more to it than that to do it fully (google provides keyword research tools for free), but that's the basics.

Try and write a description for your site like you were telling someone about it as a starting point:

"This the official music site for the band Adam's God"

Keywords/phrase here are music site, band and Adam's God.

These phrases ideally should be repeated least 3-4 times each in your front page text. The same goes for other main keywords. Less important keywords can just be used once. "Official" is not a keyword as it is not a term you would want someone to find your site by typing "official" into a search engine. Apart from anything else someone typing that into a search engine is unlikely to be looking for a music site.

Now expand the description above to include some details on what the site provides:

"This the official music site for the band Adam's God. It provides mp3 recordings as song downloads, photos of Adam's God, interviews with band members and the latest news on gigs."

You can expand this and soften the edges to make it more your style, or completely write your own. In this we have added some more key phrases that potential visitors are likely to type into a search engine: mp3 recordings, song downloads, photos of Adam's God, interviews with band members , gigs.

You could argue that there are other keywords in there and that there are other ones that really should be.

You can see that there aren't many words NOT included. i.e few unnecessary words. This kind of text is called "keyword rich". The number of times a word or phrase occurs in the text expressed as a percentage is called "keyword density".

Ideally you want a high keyword density, but not too high, and your text to be very keyword rich.

As you can see from what I have typed the text needs to be expanded to allow for words like fans, radio etc and to include repetitions of your main keywords.

After this, think of making one occurance of a few keywords a bold typeface. Search engines interpret you as stressing the word and give it more weight, but don't overdo this.

Similarly links using the main keywords in text links also helps, but every text occurance of a keyword on your page will count towards your keyword count. So if you use it in a link, only use the main keyword 2 -3 times in the content text.

There's a lot more to this. I'll maybe pull together an article to help members improve the quality of their pages. The good thing is that when you do this it also improves the user experience of the site.

oh btw, if you are adding a photo to the front page, with all the other graphics going on, make it small! and remember to set the mouse over (alt) text on the images.

Cheers

John

[AdamRave]

Hi

Well looking at text you need to get it right from the perspective of the reader, and from the perspective of the search engines, Fortunately the key thing a search engine looks for is the same as a human... keywords.

When you scan something quickly you look for keywords related to your interest or to get an idea of the subject etc. So include words and phrases that represent you and your site and products and "popular" words and phrases related to them. There's a lot more to it than that to do it fully (google provides keyword research tools for free), but that's the basics.

Try and write a description for your site like you were telling someone about it as a starting point:

"This the official music site for the band Adam's God"

Keywords/phrase here are music site, band and Adam's God.

These phrases ideally should be repeated least 3-4 times each in your front page text. The same goes for other main keywords. Less important keywords can just be used once. "Official" is not a keyword as it is not a term you would want someone to find your site by typing "official" into a search engine. Apart from anything else someone typing that into a search engine is unlikely to be looking for a music site.

Now expand the description above to include some details on what the site provides:

"This the official music site for the band Adam's God. It provides mp3 recordings as song downloads, photos of Adam's God, interviews with band members and the latest news on gigs."

You can expand this and soften the edges to make it more your style, or completely write your own. In this we have added some more key phrases that potential visitors are likely to type into a search engine: mp3 recordings, song downloads, photos of Adam's God, interviews with band members , gigs.

You could argue that there are other keywords in there and that there are other ones that really should be.

You can see that there aren't many words NOT included. i.e few unnecessary words. This kind of text is called "keyword rich". The number of times a word or phrase occurs in the text expressed as a percentage is called "keyword density".

Ideally you want a high keyword density, but not too high, and your text to be very keyword rich.

As you can see from what I have typed the text needs to be expanded to allow for words like fans, radio etc and to include repetitions of your main keywords.

After this, think of making one occurance of a few keywords a bold typeface. Search engines interpret you as stressing the word and give it more weight, but don't overdo this.

Similarly links using the main keywords in text links also helps, but every text occurance of a keyword on your page will count towards your keyword count. So if you use it in a link, only use the main keyword 2 -3 times in the content text.

There's a lot more to this. I'll maybe pull together an article to help members improve the quality of their pages. The good thing is that when you do this it also improves the user experience of the site.

oh btw, if you are adding a photo to the front page, with all the other graphics going on, make it small! and remember to set the mouse over (alt) text on the images.

Cheers

John

Awesome advice!

I'll come up with something thats 'very like us' and put it on the main page.

This trully did help a lot!

by the way.. FinnArild has already provided me with the new graphics, reduced in size, how does it look?