Website Critique needed for new Awards Site

[denisbaldwin]

After being in the awards and recognition business for many years, we've decided to take a big step in
creating a site that is more SEO friendly, easier to use and shows thousands of awards off.
Other than the "Custom Awards" section, which I'm still finishing, can I get some feedback on the rest of
this site? I'd like feedback on the graphics, ease of use, design issues and anything that you think
might be valuable to know. I'm looking for a critical eye and honest feedback.

The site:

http://www.awardsideas.com

Also, if you wouldn't mind checking out our other sites, that'd be wonderful too.

http://www.flexidisplay.com
http://www.awarenessideas.com

Any and all feedback is welcome!

Thanks,

Denis A. Baldwin
Marketing Manager
Flexi Display Marketing
denis@flexidisplay.com

[xplod_ldg]

On awardsideas.com :
Overall I like the website. What I don't like is the tabs you used. Why is there spacing between them? The use of colors on the tabs isn't all that appealing to me. And the logo text Awardsideas.com ... you could get more out of that.

On flexidisplay.com :
Don't like the use of colors.

On awarenessideas.com :
Like it. Like the use of colors. Nice animation, good navigation.

[DC1]

The question to ask is what are aesthetics trying to accomplish. The guess is you're trying for a more upscale image for the award product line. One way to do this is show the care which goes into the manufacturing of an award.

The next question is does the visual merchandising work. Why not show the award in a specific situation. What's the right award for an employee? (show a picture). What about an industry award presented at a ceremony? (great composition for a pic). How about some sporting event? (perfect -- photograph it)

Allow the user to put themselves into the story the picture shows.

[ecsyle]

Very 1999-esque to me. Not really award winning in itself.

You are going for SEO friendly, but its table heavy, uses image maps, and has no well formed outline. Your keywords are not well thought out, and you haven't taken advantage of the alt and title attributes of images and links. I am unable to actually validate the site as there are encoding issues. When designing for SEO it is wise to consider ADA as well, especially how the blind access your site, since google, yahoo, etc, are essentially blind themselves. You also have broken links on the site. Looking over in a bit more detail, you need a doctype, alternate text for images, the menu is non existant with javascript turned off, and I am pretty sure the spiders don't understand javascript.


This is all for awardsideas. I didnt check the other ones.