Templates Resource

She has: 9 posts

Joined: Nov 2006

Greetings and salutations!

I'm looking for some reviews from anyone and everyone for my website. Some things in question would be design, products, what could we add or do to make you want to come back? Do you find the site navigation process easy or difficult to understand? SEO suggestions would also be greatly appreciated.

Anything and everything you have to say, please do!
Templates Resource

Thank you!

Megan's picture

She has: 11,421 posts

Joined: Jun 1999

This looks pretty good overall. Kind of a typical templates site. From an SEO perspective it would be good to have more normal text on the home page. Most of the good text is in a grahpic so work on converting that to normal text and CSS. That includes the intro block in the middle and maybe the top tabbed navigation.

One thing I find to be a problem on the rest of the site is the small font size. It's hard to read, and there is a lot of text in places. Sometimes too much text. Remember that people don't like to read stuff on the web, so you might as well cut it down to a minimum and make your points clear. The more text there is the less likely people are to actually read it (especially when the font size is so smal). Take all that suff under "Welcome to Templates Resources" about mid-way down on the home page for example. Nobody is going to read that, so you might as well get rid of it or move it to an "about us" page or something.

There are a couple of usability problems I'm finding here. Firstly, I'm not sure what the difference is between begginner, intermediate and advanced. I'm guessing it means the difficulty of assembling the templates but I'm not really sure. It would be good to find a way of explaining that on the home page.

There should be full size previes of the templates available. If you're asking people to pay you have to give them as much information as possible. Just stamp a big watermark across it if you're worried about people stealing them.

I had problems browsing the graphics section because when I clicked on the navigation links it sometimes seemed like no content was showing. The google ads are too prominent on these pages. It would be best to have the content show up right away and provide page links at the bottom. The main graphics link just has a page about the site specials, which looks like it's the wrong page. A lot of these graphics aren't very good quality anyway.

This specials/membership page is essentially a long page sales letter. It might be best to display that with no navigation menus. Then people are forced to concentrate on the text and have to make more of an effort to move back to the other parts of the site.

I also have a problem with the way the left navigation changes as I move around the site. I expected that to stay the same. I wonder if even changing the background colour there for each section would be helpful. Then you've got more of a visual cue that the menu is changing for different sections of the site.

It would be nice to see categories for standards compliant and/or CSS layouts. That's something that could set you apart from the competition. It might also be helpful to offer a few templates for free just to draw people in. I imagine there is a lot of competition in this field, especially from sites that offer all free or open source templates.

They have: 23 posts

Joined: Nov 2006

great layout- very pro. nice color scheme also.

They have: 60 posts

Joined: Feb 2006

I want to know if a template is fixed width or not and I want to see a full screen demo. Apart from that I found the site easy to navigate and plenty to look round Laughing out loud

mag's

Newbie webmaster
Remember - Google is your friend!

mik-crap's picture

He has: 30 posts

Joined: Jan 2007

Magnolia;212851 wrote: I want to know if a template is fixed width or not and I want to see a full screen demo. Apart from that I found the site easy to navigate and plenty to look round Laughing out loud

Can you not resize your browser window?

@threadstarter:
Your site's genre is template resources right? Go for that. Currently, you have a billion and one things going on which don't help you any. Focus on what your site is really about and attribute content to it. As Megan said, you need to cut down on your text. People don't usually view a templates resource to read pages of text or a blog, they go for the resources.

Your site is inaccessible to people who use Firefox and have the font-size increased by 2-3 font sizes. This is because elements overlap and push everything out of place.

You're currently applying tables to your site. Being a webmaster (I too hate that word) you should know better than this. Most people with half a sense of the internet industry now look for Standards compliant sites. And with competitors like Opensource Web Design offering free standardised templates, you're offers are in the dark-ages.

Currently you have nothing wanting me to come back. Organise and focus your intentions and don't try to offer everything at once.

They have: 60 posts

Joined: Feb 2006

mik-crap;213320 wrote: Can you not resize your browser window?

Resizing the browser will still not tell me if the sample templates are fixed width or not - you cannot view a full size demo:rolleyes:

mag's

Newbie webmaster
Remember - Google is your friend!

mik-crap's picture

He has: 30 posts

Joined: Jan 2007

Magnolia;213473 wrote: Resizing the browser will still not tell me if the sample templates are fixed width or not - you cannot view a full size demo:rolleyes:

Ahhh, I see. I apologise then.

They have: 34 posts

Joined: Dec 2006

I have a couple questions for you:
Did you do it yourself?
Why do you use like vBulletin board design?

He has: 4 posts

Joined: Jan 2007

That's a VERY professional looking site. Good job. I really can't find anything to complain about. To me it looks like it has been up forever and whoever built it is an expert in the field...

I wish I had that kind of talent;)

Good luck!!

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