CRITIQUE OF THIS WEB SITE

In a recent phone conversation, Gary asked for an opinion of his Web site from Dennis Affholter, a program evaluator by profession.  Gary expected Dennis to respond verbally but, instead, Dennis took the time to write this thoughtful evaluation.  Gary has known Dennis for at least 20 years but they are not close friends so there is unlikely to be any personal bias in Dennis' opinion.  Gary's explanatory comments and responses are enclosed in brackets.  Otherwise, the following critique is verbatim.

Your site is pleasing to the eye (subjective, but I cannot tell you how annoying it is to see something aesthetically displeasing on a home page when you get there--a sure turnoff).  [An example of a really annoying site that Gary visited has a black background with red text - very difficult to read - so Gary quickly left it.]  It also is easy to navigate--the links work and they take one where the links say they will (turnoff numbers 2 and 3, in no particular order--links that don't connect to anything and links that take one to something not what was advertised in the text or label to which the link is attached).  And the site is informative, that is, the information that one needs or presumably wants (by following an advertised link) is readily obtained where one expects it.  Your material is intriguing, too, especially the articles (for me; I imagine other people being intrigued by other features, such as the galleries).  Your motto (slogan? tag line?) is reinforced sufficiently for one to get the idea--[good] timing and location are keys to success!--without overwhelming the content or useful info.  (Reinforcing it effectively without overdoing it is not easy; kudos!)

I have three small--very small--criticisms, which leave me with (as I said yesterday) a judgment of yours as a very good site.  None detracts from the site's utility, ease of use, or aesthetics.

First, I think you have too much information on the home page, all that text I mean.  It seems to contain two types of info--some about Gary the person, some about Gary the astrologer.  (Can't blame you for maybe thinking they are the same, or integrated/interwoven!)  If I've come to your page via astrology search or for astrology services, which I assume is the way most people get there, I am not so much interested (although others might be) in Gary the person, or (for example) where you live or lived, when and why, as I am about Gary the astrologer.  If somehow you could do either of the following, then I think your home page would be a little more attractive (I wonder, for example, how many people actually scroll down to read it all):  (a) sort out the two types of content, leave the astrologer info on the home page and create a new link to "about Gary" or something like that for Gary-the-person info, or (b) edit the content down, highlighting or emphasizing the astrologer and leaving in a little of Gary the person insofar as it might relate to Gary the astrologer, keeping say 60% of the volume there.  [The reason for this much content about Gary and where he lives on the home page is quite simple - search engine optimization.  In order for his home page to be in the top 10 Google or other search engine results for search phrases like "Gary astrologer" or "Tallahassee astrology" or "Gary Brand," he had to repeat these keywords in context a number of times in the text on that page.  When Dennis wrote his critique, he didn't realize that this was the reason for so much seemingly irrelevant text on the home page but, after Gary explained why, it made sense to Dennis.]

Second, you have your menu links (across the top) embedded in delineated boxes, each also with a picture/icon itself linked to something.  For some, there are more than one link; others, one link per box.  This is a little confusing at first, but with a trial or two, one gets the idea.  But it is a little out of the ordinary (for my simple brain and eye) to have multiple links grouped in some with only single links in another.  [Gary did this in a pattern - the middle three navigation or menu boxes have only one link, while the others have multiple links on different lines and, in three instances, are separated by the "or" conjunction.  This was done to avoid the use of invisible drop-down menus, which Gary doesn't like.]  I can readily see that you might have a problem fitting that many links separately.....so what you have works just fine, it is just a little disconcerting at first.  [Gary used seven boxes in his navagation or menu bar to reflect the number of the original seven planets of antiquity.]  Without actually breaking these up into separate individual links, I don't really know what to suggest.  You might, though, think about putting "Gary's Services" link into the same box as the "Put Gary to Work for You" link.  [This is a good suggestion that Gary thought of too, but it is impratical because the words don't fit into the available space.]  And you might think about putting the site map link elsewhere--but I am not sure where.

Third, the links behind some of the pictures/icons are the same as those for the linked label (or one of them) in the box and not for others.  (I belatedly saw the parenthetical click-on-the-pictures-too hint.)  This, too, is a little confusing, disconcerting.  (I don't know why it should be, and perhaps it is not for others; not sure what this might say about me!)  But this feature ultimately (and it took a while for me) adds to interest in the site, piquing my curiousity.  [This is a primary reason that Gary designed his navigation bar this way!]  Maybe you could make all of the picture links different from the text links in the boxes?  And make the click-pictures-too hint just a little more prominent somehow?  [Before Dennis wrote this critique, Gary had begun to remove the "click on images too" hint from the navagation bar on his pages because he doesn't want visitors to focus on the images at the expense of the content.  Visitors who just want to look at images can navigate to the photo gallery and/or art gallery.  As a result of Dennis' observation, to avoid confusion, and to provide consistency, the image links were changed so that they go to the same page as the text link below them.]