reply to post by Time=Now
I take it your website is
Critical Unity
Well the first thing I noticed was it seems like a blog. That brown dotted thing just turns me off right away. It also appears to be very jumbled and
unorganised and I hate websites like that, therefore unless there was something urgent/really important I needed to find in there I would go
elsewhere.
Sorry it may sound 'brutal'
but I'm just tryiung to be honest to help you out a bit.
The way I'd organise it is links/archives on the right
then new stories on the left and in another small right colum maybe your login and bookmarks etc.
Page width:
[ main stories ][bookmarks][links]
Even consider getting rid of your bookmarks and just having two columns
[ Flash Player and links ]
[ Flash Player and links ]
[ Flash Player and links ]
[ Flash Player and links ]
[ Flash Player and links ]
[ Breaking Headlines ][2008 Jan]
[ Breaking Headlines ][ Feb ]
[ Breaking Headlines ][ Mar]
[ New News ][ etc ]
[ New News ][2007 Jan]
[ New News ][ Feb]
[ New News ][ 2006 Jan]
[ Latest Videos ][weeks poll]
[ Latest Videos ][advertising]
[ Latest Videos ][advertising]
Also people these days hate waiting for things, like the flash player, as cool as it is opening fully vertically and then the text appearing left to
right, it takes time, just make it simple and appear straight away like it does vertically, the text should also be there without waiting for
effects.
Also with the falsh you may want to incorporate the old links like archives Jan-Dec 2008, 2007 and so on into a link in the flash, Basically you want
to declutter your website. Decide if you want a flash design or a simple design that still works really well like xbox360achievements.org. Even though
their homepage is really long it works because anyone looking for anything like a specific game can navigate to it easily from the top of the page,
nav bar on the left. Where as your site it feels the more I scroll down the more interesting the articles get and the simpler the page becomes. A win
win situatiuon, yet if you decide to go with the flash design then I suggest condensing it right down and have 2 columns, no more. One for new
articles and so on and the other for advertising and changing lanuguage donations and all that. I'd also stick the login up the top, near the go
search bar or to the very right of the flash bar, leave some space between the last subject and the login so people can find it easy/straight away.
I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the KISS method, but Keep It Simple Stupid always works wonders, people like things that are easy to pick up
and find straight away.
I don't know how good your stats are but I was on the site on 10 December GMT+8 and there were 11 visitors, so I take it your getting better.
Sorry for the randomness, was just flicking back and forth between your site and this and jotting down things as they came to mind. Hope this helps
and I hope you get a chance to read it, any more queries I'm happy for you to contact me man.
Goodluck with the site.