RE: NEW WEBSITE

Dave,

1.  The gradient text is a little tough to read for me.

2.  Comic Sans is not a great font for large blocks of text.  Serif fonts
(like Times New Roman) tend to be easier to read when you are reading larger
amounts of text.

3.  Text that stretches all the way across a screen tends to be more
difficult to follow (the eye gets lost).
Take a look at sites like

http://www.winmag.com
http://www.zdnet.com
http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey

to check out their layout.  If you run your monitor at less than 1024x768,
bump it up their for a second and check out those sites.  They tend to use
tables to keep the text constrained to a space of about three or four
inches, no matter what resolution you run.  It's kind of like newspapers and
magazines using columns.  The less the eye tracks across, the easier it is
to read.

4.  Throw in some graphics to break things up.  Not too many, one of the
best things about your site is the speed at which it downloads (I'm using a
56K modem).

5.  Keep the navigation in front of the user at all times.  Try a nav bar
across the top and bottom of each page, or one down the side, or a creative
combination of the two.  I know that all sites are tending to look this way,
but all users are beginning to expect this, and won't tolerate sites that
don't give them this.  See Jakob Nielsen's article concerning this at

http://www.sun.com/980113/sunonnet/concepts.html

I'd suggest that everyone read Jakob's columns at http://www.devhead.com ,
he's really on the ball when it comes to usability issues.

6.  Don't worry about being a newby.  We all were once.

Hope this helps,
Mike Eovino
Webmaster
Estes Express Lines

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