[thelist] Site Review - http://wizardev.ca/

[M. Seyon]

Message from Michele Foster - WizarDev (6/1/2005 02:37 PM)

>Hi all ..
>
>My goal was for this site to be a comprehensive reflection of the work I've
>done, and can do.  I wanted to have something that I'd be proud to share
>with others.  :)
>
>So, here it is ... http://wizardev.ca/

A bit more indepth from me now.

First off, the compliments, that it's a lovely site, great use of colour. 
Purples really are unusual, so it does stand out. And the flowers in the 
header are a wonderful touch. I like how you carried the concept through 
with the little four-coloured flower icon in your headers too.

I think some people may wonder why the flower image at the top wasn't put 
into the background instead. I'm rather indifferent to the implementation.

As others have said, the site is clearly very well thought out so most of 
the comments I can make are more suggestions than blatant errors or 
inadequacies.

The biggest issue for me, which is largely a personal one, is that I think 
there's just too much text. Maybe you are a naturally verbose person, and 
you want that to come across, but especially on the front page I think 
there's just too much to read. You call it the "Introduction" but it's more 
of a detailed executive summary. That said, I can't immediately see how it 
can be trimmed down without losing the details. On some of the inner pages 
though, especially the ones describing your projects, you could probably 
tighten up the language and throw in some bullet points or something if you 
wanted to.

I wonder whether you'd want to drop "Web Development" from the title of the 
sidebar box. There may come a time when you want to highlight a non-web 
solution. Visually, the padding at the sides should match the padding at 
the bottom of the box. Right now it's slightly narrower below.

Also a small caption on the screenshots might not hurt. Without that 
they're pretty meaningless.

In the footer, it wasn't immediately apparent (read "didn't notice it tell 
your privacy statement mentioned 'restricted areas' and i went looking for 
links to such") that "Web Resources", "Personal and Archived Sites" and 
"Privacy Statement" were links.

I agree with others about the 'Resume' thing. But I see no harm in keeping 
it handy for inquiring minds.

Not being a fan of spam, I think having an email address posted out in the 
open on a website, like yours is on the contact page, is just a plain bad 
idea. I'd just stick with the form. I'd probably put the form up top too, 
since it is a *web page* and you probably want people contacting you via 
the web rather than by phone or post.

I wonder whether the Site Map link doesn't belong in the footer, rather 
than the header. It's not actually a main section of your site. More of a 
meta agglomeration of links.

On the Resume page it's odd that the security clearance line isn't indented 
as everything else is. And this is a real nitpick, but those little purple 
triangles you use a bullet points sit just fractionally higher than the 
line of text (in Opera 7.5). Not a biggie really but most noticeable on the 
Resume page.

On the SEO page (web-marketing.asp) I don't like the use of code samples. I 
can see businesspeople's eyes glazing over. Rather than showing what should 
be done, or perhaps in addition to that, say how it helps. "Alt tags give 
the reader/robot/blind person something else to work with rather than a 
collection of pretty pixels.", for example.

Also your grammar slides around in those bullet points. If you start with 
"proper use of..." then your next points should probably be "providing..." 
and "using the...". And the last one is just totally different.

Hmm... how come your title says "Search Engine Marketing and Optimization" 
but you address the topics in reverse order?

And that's about all I can think of.

regards.
-marc

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