Hi Jason,

>http://www.jairlie.com/
>
>I'd especially like comment on the Free Stuff area, which is the only
part
>I ever expect people to visit my site for.

First impressions: the ad banners completely dominate your home page,
partly because they're large and ugly, and partly because your own content
is rather sparse. If you *must* use banners, consider the ratio of content
to advertising - 2 banners off-set against 4 links and a quote (wonderful
quote btw :) is a bit much.

Free stuff:

A bit busy and cluttered; again the banner doesn't help. A bit more white
space might help. I would put the banner right at the top (above the
JAirlie.com header) and leave some space, then start with your own stuff.
There's no point in trying to make the banner look as though it belongs
there.

The right-hand column really takes up a lot of space, more than it needs
to - I see you have made it 20% but I would just let it take whatever
space it needs.

"You may notice that most of the areas in this site have relatively few
links. This is intentional, I try to list only the best sites." I would
move this to the top, emphasise the fact that you've already done all the
hard work - this is really the main selling-point of your site after all.

Sub-sections: I like the fact that you've included descriptions of
everything. The layout is a bit odd in that the coloured navigation/ad
banner/etc blocks are centered and the actual content is not. On my
current window size it means the top bit is indented about 50 pixels.

Overall, nice colours, loads quickly.

(BTW, a suggestion for your list of freebies: http://www.mtnsms.com/)

HTH

Lynnsey


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