The Webmistress — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 08:58:01 +0000

I don't really have much to say in addition to what the others have already mentioned but I would add that I too get a horizonatal scrollbar at 800*600 casued by your table width of 792px. The maximum you can hve with 0 margins is 770.

I would also do something with your logo as it looks hairy!

ToddPalumbo — Fri, 21 Nov 2003 17:18:33 +0000

Wow! You guys are awesome. I really appreciate the in-depth ideas that you have. I could not have dreamed that I would get this in-depth help.

We are still working on the whole parent child website relationship. The first site that was used for the template was the LearnSqlServer.com, and that is why it is still lingering around. Thanks for spotting that one

I have written a pretty good paragraph BIO about my qualifications, but we are still trying to decide where to stick it. This site still may have other Authors doing different things with Windows 2003 Server, so it is not the Todd Palumbo site. That is why the BIO still may not go directly on the About page, but we should have that up soon. Thanks for that input.

Trust of course is a big plus, and we are going to want to make sure that is a big priority. I guess when you start piecing this together, it makes sense to us. It is hard to see how others see it. That is why I really appreciate this feedback. It is invaluable to get the opinions of others to help noodle out the best way to accomplish your goals. We will have to figure out how to make that less confusing for the public. Thanks.

Thank you disaster-master for that link to the validator web site. I wonder if some of those error are because our site is written in asp.net? We'll have to look into that a little more. Thanks

Sorry about the slow dial up. I've had broadband for so long, I forget to check through dial up. Was is the flash part that came through slow? I'll have to go to my fathers house and try it through his dial up. How sad, but I don't even have a modem lying around anymore. Thanks

Thanks for all the great input, and I welcome anymore. The more opinions, the merrier. This is an awesome forum!

Barry Tedstone — Fri, 21 Nov 2003 15:50:58 +0000

Todd

Firstly I would say that your site is clean and professional looking and has good quality information relating to your video tutorial.

Layout
Couple of minor points relating to the layout, if using fixed width ensure that there is no scroll at 800x600, or use a liquid screen layout.

Also the text is difficult to read, this is a mixture of the font size and contrast (grey text on a white background). A way round this would be to use relative text size; this would allow users to increase the font on IE or make it a little darker.

Content
The content of the home page is good; it details the product, with testimonials. Even better is the product description page, the content is very clear and unambiguous. This gives your potential customer full details of what they are getting and installs confidence.

Only point of note on this is your description, Windows Guru. This would be backed up better with details of qualifications and/or experience. Final touches to adding confidence, “the author knows what he is on about”. This could be a short summary with full details on the “About Us” page.

About Us
The About Us page has a little cut and paste error “LearnSqlServer.com” rather than the site. This is also on the parent site.

Your “About Us” page should really explain who the parent company is, how long you have been established and then details of the sub site(s).

As this site has only one author, you, then you could provide specific details of your qualifications and experience. This would help install confidence, knowing that the training is from a qualified professional. This added to the excellent free download will further increase confidence.

Search Feature
The search feature does not search the site, whatever I typed I was taken to the products page. This will frustrate users at best and set up mistrust at worst.

A full search feature would be useful, especially on the corporate site. An Index of all site content including the forum posts would be useful. Else I would suggest remove it in the short term.

Site Structure
As Megan pointed out, the site has an identity crisis. This is always a problem with multiple domains. Especially when you cross link them the way you have. You appear to be using the domains as directories of products available one for each set of videos and tutorials.

This can be confusing for the user, especially when by chance you end up on a similar looking but different site.

Even worse is when you add an item to your shopping cart, you are transferred to the “Corporate” site “Technical Lead”.

Trust is the most important thing in acquiring purchases over the internet. When you transfer your customer to a shopping cart on another site this can confuse the user, are they buying from you or is your sub site an affiliate scheme? This damages the trust and could have a negative affect in your sales.

There is no easy answer to the above points without reviewing the structure to the architecture of your domains. I would suggest three options.

Put all products under the main domain and use the sub domains as Gateway Pages
Make all the domains completely standalone, own forums, shopping carts and only link back to the main site for details of the corporate company.
The third option would make it very clear to your visitors that Learn Windows Server is a part of the Technical Lead site. This I believe would be the hardest to achieve.

Either options 1 or 2 would work best, but obviously have cost and development impact. Option 3 would be the hardest to achieve, but if you can explain, wherever you have a link to the Corporate Site then it could work.

Summary
I found it very easy to sign up and download the video. It is an excellent way for you to encourage your visitors to become customers. Both the video quality and content are excellent.

I hope the issues raised above are of interest and I wish you every success with your venture. You seem to have a good product and very reasonably priced.

Regards

Barry

disaster-master — Fri, 21 Nov 2003 14:43:25 +0000

Nice work. However, on dial-up, it takes forever to load (at first). After the initial load it's a breeze though.

Have you considered making the main text a wee bit darker (#333333 or #444444 maybe) and bigger. I can read it fine but some may have trouble with its size and color.

If you don't want to part with the nav bar at the top, another option would be to add some plain text links at the bottom of your pages (secondary nav).

The logo at the very top looks like it may be optimized too much. I am seeing some distortion around the edges. Very faint though.

I got lost somewhere. When I clicked the home button, I ended up at the other sites home. This could be confusing for the user.

On 800 X 600 there is a small horizontal scroll. (about 13px)

Have you looked at the code with the validator yet? Not sure if you were concerned about that but it will help you catch any coding errors you may have. For example:
lwsbasictcpipsettingslogosmall.gif' align='left'> should be using quotes ( " ) around the image and align instead of using apostrophes ( ' ). I didn't count but there are several of those. Those errors don't seem to be causing any problems on IE but I would fix them.

This is a really nice site and the colors go good together.

ToddPalumbo — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 21:29:47 +0000

Thanks Megan and DU-Squid , The text size and color is a concern for me too. It's hard to fit everything in sometimes. The clutter thing is tough too. We just have too darn much and it's hard to decide what to cut. We are gonna have to brainstorm up ways to improve that. Darkening and resizing should help.

Technicallead.com is our parent site. That is kinda like the publishers website for which all of our child sites will come from. Technicallead will house the forums for all of the authors site. It is still work in progress.

I guess we have not really tested with Opera. Sorry to hear it crashed on our sit. I am gonna have to download Opera myself and give it a try to make an appropriate changes.

We have only been live for 3 weeks now, so we still have alot of kinks and quirks to figure. I really appreciate the feedback, and welcome anymore that people are willing to give. Thank you very much,

-Todd

DU-Squid — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:53:58 +0000

It seems that the colors and layout fit perfectly. Although I agree with Megan the text is pretty small and can be hard to read for some people.

Megan — Thu, 20 Nov 2003 20:32:54 +0000

Looks great! Reminds me a lot of the macromedia site. However, as with the macromedia site, you've got a few usability problems. First of all, there's a lot of text on here, and a lot of very small text. It's very hard to read and the clutter on the left side almost seems to get in the way. I also think that medium grey text on a white background isn't the most readable option. Go a little darker to make it more comfortable for the viewer.

I've had a few technical difficulties with Opera 7 - on first load the site crashed on me, and at one pont I lost the navigation menu. It might be a good idea to provide a text only option for the navigation.

There seems to be something wrong with the "about" page. There's a lot of empty looking boxes here and the layout seems off.

Now, somehow I ended up at a site called Technical Lead.com. How did I get here? I went ot the forums, which were connected to the windows server site, and didn't realize that I was entering another domain. clicked on the "home" l ink and didn't end up at the windows server home like I expected to.