New Movie Poster Site. Feedback Please?

[Moviemonstermuseum]

Hi all

I am finishing a movie poster and collectible website for Chuck's Memory Lane in Houston TX. I am still working on the shopping carts but would like some feedback from collectors here. Do you like the font, colors, layout, are the photos loading fast enough, etc.

Thanks

http://www.chucksmemorylane.com/

[stewart boyle]

I have 5mbps broadband and it loaded within seconds,great site!!

Stew(UK)

[Moviemonstermuseum]

Thanks Stew
Dennis

[brude]

Nice-lookin' site, Dennis.  You do awesome work! 

[50s]

Hi MMM,

It is a huge undertaking building a new site. Good on you, it is looking very good.

I am assuming you want practical feedback. I understand the site is under construction so please ignore any of my suggestions that are premature.

My feedback:
- aesthetically the site is very nice.
- image file sizes(MB) is too big. Try to halve what you have eg:
  your pic1 (300kB), modified pic1 (150kB)
  your pic2 (1.5MB), modified pic2 (0.75MB)
- Your main menu (the tabs) should be search engine friendly. Currently they are simply images that get swapped with no other fallback text. The words on the tabs need to be able to be read by search engines. There are a number of ways of doing this in CSS & HTML
- The banner/logo is far to big on the homepage. The menu sits half way down my screen and I cant see any much content - the content is effictively all 'below the fold' for me.
- Is your product in a database? If so, adding extra search functionality eg for genres would be great.
- Background image obsures the text, menu tabs wrap on smaller width browser. homepage
- Id stick some meta keywords and description on your page headers as they can still be useful using
- Need alt tags on your images so search engines can index your images so people can find your site and product much easier



Sorry, currently working on my own website at the mo and I best get back to that... Keep up the great work!

[stewart boyle]

50`s,thats prety cool your example of pic sizes,there is no quality loss,display difference or loading time..

Wish i had your knowledge...

Stew

[50s]

Hi Stew, image reprocessing was pretty easy: in Fireworks used Save Wizard and specified a desired filesize

[stewart boyle]

Hi Stew, image reprocessing was pretty easy: in Fireworks used Save Wizard and specified a desired filesize

Thanks 50`s,, so im guessing that there is a minimum filesize/dpi for files to be displayed perfectly,and anything above that is really a waste of bandwidth?

Stew

[Moviemonstermuseum]

Thanks for the tips 50's. I am currently using an old version of paintshop pro to resize my pics. The Meta and alt tags may come later.

Dennis

[50s]

Thanks 50`s,, so im guessing that there is a minimum filesize/dpi for files to be displayed perfectly,and anything above that is really a waste of bandwidth?

Stew

Yep. I can still just see a very slight difference in the pics, but it is worth it for the large savings in filesize/bandwidth.

Fireworks is good software as it optimises images for the web as I believe it strips out information from images that would only be useful if the images were used for high quality printing on paper. Photoshop has a similar function 'Export for Web' but I think Fireworks is easier to use for this.

[Dread_Pirate_Mel]

Thanks 50`s,, so im guessing that there is a minimum filesize/dpi for files to be displayed perfectly,and anything above that is really a waste of bandwidth?

Stew

By the way DPI (dots per inch) is relevant only for printing purposes, not for computer display purposes.  Only pixel size is relevant for computer display purposes.  I usually reduce all my images to 1150 pixels vertical for portrait images and set the JPEG quality to 9 (12 is max).  That produces a very good but reasonable file size image (about 0.2mb).

Photoshop Elements has an excellent "SAVE FOR WEB" function that drastically reduces file size without compromising quality.

[50s]

Thanks for the tips 50's. I am currently using an old version of paintshop pro to resize my pics. The Meta and alt tags may come later.

Dennis

Hi Dennis, the image alt tags are really important, the page meta tags are much less so. My main search tool is Googles image search function, however it helps greatly with normal Google search results too. That would be for me, a fundamental must do for any business site, adding alt tags to images.

[50s]

By the way DPI (dots per inch) is relevant only for printing purposes, not for computer display purposes.  Only pixel size is relevant for computer display purposes.  I usually reduce all my images to 1150 pixels vertical for portrait images and set the JPEG quality to 9 (12 is max).  That produces a very good but reasonable file size image (about 0.2mb).

Photoshop Elements has an excellent "SAVE FOR WEB" function that drastically reduces file size without compromising quality.

Mel, as per my 2nd last post, in Photoshop dont use 'Save As' (where you adjust the quality down from 12 to 9 when saving), but use 'Export To Web'. By doing Save As you are saying the image will be used for print purposes and adjusting from 12 to 9 sure reduces file size, but is still bloated with unnecessary data (file size) used for printing purposes. That is what Export for Web is there for, it optimises the image for use on the web (and benefits are not just in the reduced file size).