Please review http://www.shorelinesurf.com

EDIT: First of all, can someone please tell me why my "envelope icon" has a black dot in the middle of it? I seem to be the only one with the dot. The "envelope icon key" at the bottom of the page does not show any icon with this DOT. Thank you.

Hi Folks,
http://www.shorelinesurf.com - commercial - Surf Shop - Online Catalog

I have been visiting WW for some time, but I just found this site, and noticed the "site review" forum, which WW does not offer. I would love to get some new perspective. Sometimes, I suspect that I get so bound up doing the same things over and over, thinking I am doing the right thing, that I fail to spot what may be obvious to a knowledgeable SEO person.

SERPs:
I have been doing pretty well in the SERPs, yet somehow I feel that I could be higher for my #1 search term - "surf shop" (currently #10 @ Google). "Reef sandals" is my #2 targeted search term. Any suggestions?

Also, anything that strikes you regarding design, layout, functionality, navigability, etc. The more critical you are, the more I would like it.
Sooo, anyone, please fire away.
Thank you very much in advance.

Respectfully,
Surf-Dude:grin:

Hey Surf-dude,

First thing...black dots on the envelope indicate that you have posted on that thread (bl~~~y useful).

See, I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand I would recommend changes, on the other, you seem to be doing well and why fix something that works, true?

I don't know what your sales are. Do you analyse your sites performance? Where people click, conversions rates etc? This would help identify any weak areas of the site.

As for design and useability? This is a personal preference thing depending on the market. BUT, there's a time and place for anchors and you don't really need them here. You have enough content to create more pages, each with a specific topic on it.

Set up a global navigation that would take a person to an area of choice. News, products, info, etc

Categorise and organise as they say , pick any subject or product that you have on your site and ask someone who hasn't been on your site to find it. This will give an indication of your useability. If each section is marked out clearly with a global nav it's easier for a person to find it and thus buy it :grin:

Your colour code doesn't say anything. If you are going to use lots of primary colours use them. Perhaps stuff for women in pink and men in blue? Information in black? I don't know. But when you find a combination that you like make sure the potencial customer knows the code. One thing I have noticed is the people hate to guess. It takes time. When they want something, they want it straight away. If they can't find it they'll go somewhere else.

Well, that's it for now. I hope that some of this rambling will be of some help.

Regards

Daminc

Hi Daminc,
Many thanks for your time. It appears that you have taken a "good look".
"Rambling"? No way. Thsi is great stuff, just what I want to see.

Black dot - Excellent, thank you. I wonder why it isn't shown in the "key" at the bottom? How good is a "key" if it has omissions?

Site Analysis - I read my weblog summary frequently, particularly the Referral Report to find out what people are typing in, and act accordingly. Great stuff.

Conversion Rates - These tend to be more related to the product than anything else. For instance, I get more hits on my "surfboards page" than my index page, but precious few sales! Everyone wants to look, but no one wants to buy. They are our most high-priced item, and cost a fortune to ship. On the other hand, if a serious buyer visits wanting Rainbow or Reef Sandals, we usually get an order.

Anchors - "Don't need them here". Having operated in a vacuum for so long (lots of reading, but no outside analysis), there are many simple things that escape me. Would you please explain a little about what you mean? Such as, which anchors? And, "don't need them here"?

"More pages" - Yes, I can do that. I will be looking to see what I can split up.

Navigation - I'm not sure just exactly what you mean by "Global" navigation, Do you mean a Google-type site map? I recently dropped an alphabetical index, because I thought that it was rather redundant, confusing, and a nightmare to keep updated. I thought that my "Shopping Menu" was closely akin to a site map, so why bother (as suggested on a WW thread). I do provide a "Site Organization" link in my "Info Menu", but no one looks at it. I was hoping that it would be intuitive anyway.

The first thing I try to do, is point my visitor to one-of-two main categories - Local Surfer or Internet Shopper. Both are equally valuable, since we do a lot of rentals and lessons. Also, some non-locals want to read about Santa Cruz as well, and locals also want to buy stuff.
I now have "Local Surfers Menu - Shopping Menu - Info Menu - News" at the top of the index page, which I think covers everything. Is there a better way to do this? I try to avoid too much rambling at the top, which devalues my many valuable keywords by pushing them down.

"Categorize and Organize" - I thought that I had done a fairly good job of this, if folks are reading my Column Headings. Then, in the column, I try to be alphabetical, but as you can see, not completely. Alphabetical by product type, or by Brand name? I need to struggle more with this. "Global nav" ... once again, do you mean a site map?

Colors - Although I thought that I was using a fixed color scheme, I can see now that I have not been very consistent. I will be working on this.
Red - All Brand Names (maybe it is time to lose the red - kinda harsh?)
Blue - Products for both sexes
Pink - Products for women
Brown - Products for men
I am not a big fan of black text - I think that it can appear harsh (too contrasty) on the eyes. Of course, what about all those "primary colors" that I smack people with? Yeah. Gotta think about that!

Once again, thanks for your valuable input. You have given me a lot to think about.
Surf-Dude

Hi, back again :smile:

I'm going to go through some of my stuff to see if I can find some good examples. I might drop some other stuff in as well that I've read...

http://www.devwebpro.com/articles/0207b.html
Nice article. Not much use to you at the moment but I think it's worth reading anyway as it deals with some navigation issues.

Here's a very good site for some info: http://www.jessett.com/

Still haven't found a decent example of global navigation though...

Ah, here we are...

http://www.seasky.org/cosmic/sky7a01.html
This shows an example of global navigation on the left-hand side of the page. Notice when you clink on any of those links they don't seem to change place. This is what is meant by 'Global' navigation (it doesn't change page by page) as apposed to 'Secondary' navigation which does change page by page depending on what the topic is (in this example the secondary nav is situated top-right on the page)


Anchors:
In Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), an anchor is the establishing of a term, phrase, image, or other information object as being either:

The target of a hypertext link within a document, or
A reference (a link you can select) to such a target

Note that any HTML file name is automatically an anchor or target that can be linked to. An anchor WITHIN a file to which you can link directly is identified by the # sign followed by the name.

That's a technical definition. In laymans terms it defines a place you can jump to when you press a hyperlink.


IMHO, the word menu is a bit misleading (I think of restaurants, price lists etc). The 'local surfers' can be seen in two ways, does it mean for people who want to surf in the local area or is it for anybody who is 'surfing the net' for information in your local area? 'Info menu'? What kind of info? What news?

I'll be back later when I catch up on the rest of my work.

GLOBAL NAVIGATION - "An unchanging menu or "choices list" on every page."
Is that right? Historically, here is why I haven't done that :
- I have over 100 pages, with more to come. This would force a visitor to scroll, maybe 3 times to see all the choices, unless
- Mouseover - I am not a fan of mouseovers - I hate things jumping around.
- If subcategorized, I would be forcing another "click".
- The online shopping portion of the site is "flat" , which guarantees 100% spidering when the spider only goes 1-level deep.
- Mandatory Frames - Doesn't the "left-side-every-page-menu" require frames? I have tried to avoid frames, because I have been told not to use them a million times for various reasons, the biggest being that they confuse search engines. Although the spiders have gotten much better with them, there are STILL many who advocate not using them - most notably, Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Watch) and Jakob Neilsen, the minimalist, less is better (Use It).
If I use a table, I can't put anything to the right of it, with my current html editor.
Does DreamWeaver allow this? Through javascript?
Once again, over and over again - "don't use Java" - from many sources - it is inconsistent across platforms, and frequently doesn't work.
I can't count the number of times that I have seen "javascript error".

Seasky - Awesomely beautiful and informative. I am an astronomy fan - I am going to link to it from my Vaughn's 1-Pagers site. However, as an example, it may not be the best for my case, since it has only 11 pages, whereas shoreline has about 110.

ANCHORS - I think I understand the anchor concept, but I am confused by "anchor text". The anchors I use are for navigation purposes, and I don't think that they have any "anchor text", just an anchor name. Is that the same thing? I still don't understand why I "don't need them here".

Jesset Site - Excellent commentary, but the color combos used actually physically hurt my eyeballs, which immediately makes anything he says subject to greater scrutiny. Particularly the light yellow on the dark grey - what is he thinking? - the readability is extremely poor. Also, the display is not consistent across browsers.

LOCAL SURF MENU - I see what you mean - gotta do something about that.
There are surfers, and then there are surfers.

I just added the "Onsite Free Google Site Search Tool Bar" yesterday. It is fantastic!
Suddenly, it kinda makes all these navigation discussions less important.
I can live with the ads, since they are fairly unobtrusive.

Thank you once again for your all your time.
I also suddenly have gotten VERY busy recently!

The company I work with developed a site called www.bemrosebooth.com/default.asp. There are a number of issues I don't like but that's just personal taste. The point is that it's got about 300 pages and at the top is the Global nav, to the right is the secondary nav.


Not at all. It's just a matter of exactly the same design on different pages. If you have lots of pages then it would be best if you design a template to use.

I'm not sure. This is a design issue. There are lot's of different ways of getting the same results using different methods. So just experiment a bit

True, javascript can be a problem, however it depends what you're doing with it. My glossary site has loads of java in it which would make the search engines go cross-eyed. But then, I designed it for the users not search engines. It's different if your site is commercial, you'd have to be a bit more careful.

That's it for now...

Glad you're busy

It explains it here: http://forums.seochat.com/t5954/s.html