Please give me your feedback on my Website design.

Good evening everyone! I am an amateur, to say the least, when it comes to website design, however, I have tried my best to design a website to the best of my ability. I am interested in getting your opinion of the website. Specifically, I would like to know the answers to the following questions.

When you view my website...

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered?
2. ...is the website attractive to you?
3. ...is the website offer interesting to you?
4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others?
5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website?
6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better?

The website address is: www.storyclub111.com. Thank you for viewing my website!

 

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered? Yes
2. ...is the website attractive to you? NO
3. ...is the website offer interesting to you? NO
4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others? Possibily
5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website? no
6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better? change the design it's shocking, sorry I know your an amateur but there are better templates out there that you can get for free. Also lose the effects on the cursor it's annoying.

 

I feel sad to view your website, your site looks really sad. I believe you need a pro designer.

 

Hello Mark, Thank you for your honest opinion. I appreciated it enough to tone my website down. Please take another look and let me know if it is better or worse

Hello WordPressThemes! Thank you as well for your comment. I would like to know if the website you viewed is the one I 'chunked' or the one I just 'uploaded' within the last 30 minutes. Could you please take a look at my website again and let me know if this is the same one you viewed in regards to your comment above?

 

10 times better, but still amaturish I'm affraid.

If your wanting people to upload their stories, and then for people to buy them, your going to need something more professional.

 

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered? Yes
2. ...is the website attractive to you? no
3. ...is the website offer interesting to you? no
4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others? maybe
5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website? didnt read anymore about it, lost interest that quickly
6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better?

Maybe some sort of shopping cart layout, with better graphics and a professional logo of some sorts. and remove those animated gifs that are turning pages that looks like 90's web design.

The whole idea is why would i buy something from a site that doesnt look legitimate or is just poorly maintained. Would you buy from your own site? Honestly?

 

I think its a good start to the website. Website doesnt attract me that much though.

 

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered?
Yes, but have you researched what other similar websites are offering in exchanged for stories? I'm not saying that your offer is too low, just make sure you're competitive.

2. ...is the website attractive to you? Not really.
I'm not going to slam your website, and say it's terrible like others have done, but it definitely needs some refinement. See #6

3. ...is the website offer interesting to you?
Yes. Anyone who writes stories will be interested in the chance to get paid for what they love to do anyway. I write stories from time to time, but would be leery to sign up with your site, because it looks new and too home-made.

4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others?
Yes. Like I said the concept is good. You just need better presentation.

5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website?
no

6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better?

The overall look and feel of the website is not appealing for what you are selling. It looks like a cheap dungeons and dragons type website from the early 90's. Your content and side nav doesn't jive with your main header and main nav buttons. Your different areas need to be separated more clearly. You have only one background color and no way to differentiate one section of your site from the other. The "current page" background image does not match, is not centered, and seems to close to the content area. Overall the formatting of your text is sometimes confusing. Like on your submit page; the first half is decent, but once you get down by the form, things start to run together and just seem too cluttered. It's not the worst I've seen, but you can do better I'm sure. It's also hard to tell if you've even gone to a new page when you click on one of tabs, because everything is so similar. You should add some pictures to help with presentation and to break things up. The nav bar on the right side of the home page is the only place I saw it. When I'm on your site, I feel like I'm in limbo. Like I've stumbled upon a website that was lost and forgotten in the earliest days of the internet.

Find a site that you like (and perhaps a few other people like) and copy its layout. Don't be ridiculous and make it exactly like it, but similar. That's probably the best advice I can give you, because it's the overall feel of your site that is wrong, and it's hard to say exactly why. I mean, your header/logo will probably work fine once you get everything polished up, but it makes it feel like dungeons & dragons with the way everything is right now.

Hope I've helped and not just rambled on for no reason??

 

I can not access your site. I get error: Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage.
I tried several times and on several pc's. I am in France at the moment

 

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered? A small yes.
2. ...is the website attractive to you? No
3. ...is the website offer interesting to you? No
4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others? Yes
5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website? No

6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better?

Yes.
1) Too much jabbering in the paragraphs. Get to the point and make it short.
2) Get rid of the turning pages. What is the purpose of that? All it does is distract.
3) The text on the buttons is somewhat difficult to read.
4) If this is about selling books, why are there videos?
5) You have somewhat obvious buttons at the top but the text does not look like links, which they are.

Non-design related:
1) Your markup is in quirks mode cause you have no doctype.
2) You have a couple html errors.
3) You are using a table for no known reason.

 

For your first time designing a website, it's not terrible, but it can be improved greatly. I'm going to assume you don't have Photoshop, so you might want to try looking for tutorials on "how to design within a browser". Just google it and you'll find hundreds of articles written about it. I think it could really help you learn web design.

 

i m agree with
jonnybravo

 

i m also agree with
jonnybravo

 

One thing I must say first: I would remove the animated gif. turning page books, it would look less 90's and cleaner...
1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered? Yes
2. ...is the website attractive to you? No. Sorry.
3. ...is the website offer interesting to you? No.
4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others? Yes, potentially, hobby writers
5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website? i don't get whether you would pay for any later chapter they write or if there is any quality control or...
6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better? Use a more professional website template.

 

People seem a bit harsh on this one =P I think if this is one of your first sites, it looks pretty good. At least you have an idea of how to set things up. However, if you are trying to make money off this, you'll probably have to sharpen it up a bit. When I first started, it was very helpful to grab a really clean, basic, free template and mess with it until I made it look how I wanted it to. This helps you understand how html works and you can usually get a pretty decent site!

 

I never like to knock anyone especially when it's their first web site, as it appears to be, but I agree it doesn't look professional. If you can't hire a pro designer then I would look at using a template.

Best of luck

 

1. ...is it easy/simple to understand what is being offered?

No, the fancy images for links use an effectively illegible script, the page is almost impossible to read with the crappy four words per line... though I suspect that's from the use of dynamic fonts inside an absurdly narrow fixed width container... and the elements just seen thrown in there any old way with inconsistent alignment, padding... much less the overly tall header/menu area pushing the content clear off the screen at lower resolutions. You've got the width to be 800 friendly, but nobody is going to bother scrolling down to even FIND the text.

2. ...is the website attractive to you?

No. The illegible script buttons, "crappy little stripe" fixed width, and inconsistent paddings... it's a train wreck. It looks like a five minute quicky tossed together in frontpage. The distracting animated .gif's, lack of hover states, plain grey border - it all screams "What is this, 1997?"

3. ...is the website offer interesting to you?

Yes - I find the idea interesting, but I'm a fanfiction.net user so...

4. ...do you think the website offer would be interesting to others?

Only with a heck of a lot more work and clearer wording. A good start would be to take an axe to that 'welcome' text and get down to actually explaining WHAT the site is a heck of a lot sooner.

5. ...do you have lingering questions about the offer, which you did not readily see on the website?

What are you using to secure the stories to prevent open distribution? What formats are the stories going to be distributed in? Is that $1 per view or $1 per time you post a chapter (the latter being a total ripoff for real writers). Is there going to be a character minimum for what qualifies as a chapter? Do you have any plans on offering an editorial process? What content control plans are you planning on to make sure people don't post slasher pron in the children's section?

6. ...do you have any advice as to how to make it better?

Switch to semi-fluid layout, lose the stupid illegibly styled buttons, make the padding around elements consistent, decrease the font size and/or fix the 120dpi layout issues, shrink the header area with menu to less than 256px total height, and spend more time explaining distribution formats and terms of ownership on the main page.

It might also help to use valid markup since with 28 validation errors it's not HTML, it's gibberish... and to use modern markup since HTML 3.2, tables for layout, non-breaking spaces to do padding's job, no images-off graceful degradation on the menu, inlined STYLE attributes, FONT tag and a dozen other outdated markup methods beg the question "What is this, 1997?"

Though I imagine MOST of that can be blamed on one line:

<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18882"></HEAD>

Here's a tip, hire a real web designer or learn HTML/CSS instead of exporting from Microsoft Office 2001.

 

Better you add some colors, it is really too plain and dull.

 

Uhm..it's now better, however I myself don't like images of 2 books, it makes your site look amateur. You need to remove it I recommend

 

Get a designer go to scriptlance for a designer if your on a budget