First Draft of A Muse - Please Critique

[GAtkins]

Greetings friends:

Great Book and great site - all that stuff.

I am in the early stages of creating/testing a muse located here:

www.marketscholar.com

It is a site that will provide comprehensive stock market, market history and retirement education in multiple media.

Please take a look if you have time. All constructive comments, critiques, and ideas are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance for any ideas or observations.

Glenn

[wildsoul]

Hi Glenn,

I think you've got a million dollar-sounding domain name!
Your credentials look good.

The website needs a little polishing though. The navigation really confused me, generally you see index buttons on the left, or at the top, but not both. Also, don't underline text unless it's a link.

If you can make your site look as high-level as your idea, and I believe you CAN without hiring an expensive designer, then I think you've got a muse that could be very nice to you.

[MuseMojo]

Congratulations Glen!

Your text content confirms your credentials and experience very well. Your choice of color is restrained and reassuring. Exactly what I'd want from a financial advisor.

I have a graphic designer background and a smidgin of html layout experience, so any one, please feel free to correct my woeful ignorance. Then again, it could just be my screen settings.

My apologies being said in advance...

Headline Banner/rectangle: I suspect that you need a 'hard' or 'forced' line break between "Market Scholar" and "The Best In Investor Education". This will force "The Best in Investor Education" onto its own line. Right now I'm seeing "Education" sitting alone on the second line.

Wildsoul's right. You don't need both sets of index/navigation buttons.

Also, your horizonal "Introduction" thru "Purchase" buttons extend outside the overall table boundaries when my windows screens are in 'nested' format. Just leave them off and just use the vertical ones. It beats trying to create adjustable gif button sizes to your horizontal table measurement. If you want to keep the horizontal ones, why don't you just make the background color the same as the background color within your text area?

Also, the order should probably be

Home
Quick Start (put your links to your dvd, cd, ebook etc here)
Bio
FAQ
Links
Contact
Purchase (put links to dvd, cd, ebooks, etc on this page also)
Paypal 'bug'
Secure transaction 'bug'

Just my 2cents.

[MuseMojo]

Congratulations Glen!

Your text content confirms your credentials and experience very well. Your choice of color is restrained and reassuring. Exactly what I'd want from a financial advisor.

I have a graphic designer background and a smidgin of html layout experience, so any one, please feel free to correct my woeful ignorance. Then again, it could just be my screen settings.

My apologies being said in advance...

Headline Banner/rectangle: I suspect that you need a 'hard' or 'forced' line break between "Market Scholar" and "The Best In Investor Education". This will force "The Best in Investor Education" onto its own line. Right now I'm seeing "Education" sitting alone on the second line.

Wildsoul's right. You don't need both sets of index/navigation buttons.

Also, your horizonal "Introduction" thru "Purchase" buttons extend outside the overall table boundaries when my windows screens are in 'nested' format. Just leave them off and just use the vertical ones. It beats trying to create adjustable gif button sizes to your horizontal table measurement. If you want to keep the horizontal ones, why don't you just make the background color the same as the background color within your text area?

Also, the order should probably be

Home
Quick Start (put your links to your dvd, cd, ebook etc here)
Bio
FAQ
Links
Contact
Purchase (put links to dvd, cd, ebooks, etc on this page also)
Paypal 'bug'
Secure transaction 'bug'

Just my 2cents.

[MarkRoX]

Going along with some of what MuseMojo posted earlier...

As far as the look of your site, you should probably pull elements of presentation from other investment/financial based websites. I'd say aim for a 'clean' and focused appearance, especially with the color palette you choose.

To get some ideas of possible 'looks', you may want to just scroll through some premium website templates and get color ideas. Depending on the complexity of the template, you may even be able to just purchase the template (anywhere between $10-$65) and just cut and paste your text, links, and photos into it. So the graphical layout will already done for you, now you just need to add your content to it.

Also... the colors of your text vs the back ground... light colors on a dark background takes more effort to read than dark on light. I feel that yours take even more effort because they're not completely contrasting colors. The offwhite on top of the marbled background, and then the maroon on top of that in particular, get tiresome on the eyes.

Especially considering how much text content you have for people to read. It's almost a battle compared to other websites who have true contrasting colors between light and dark.

Luckily the content isn't your problem at this point... for many people that's the hardest part.

Good luck!

M.

[GAtkins]

Great suggestions everyone. Thank you very much. Please keep them coming.

MarkRox, any specific ideas about where to get premade templates and do you have specific suggestions on color or other sites to model?

Please keep the comments coming. They are very helpful.

Glenn

[Vagabond]

i will agree that the domain name is great!!

i think the information on the site is really good but I dont like the colors and design layout at all.

also, i would expand on exactly what theyre getting as the descriptions are a bit bare bones in my opinion.

however, i think with the right site you could probably charge a decent amount more. to me once you get over the $40-$50 impulse purchase price point, you just have to use sales copy to justify higher prices and I feel like you could probably charge in the low $100's.. obviously this isnt based on anything but if its selling well at $79 you could always try raising the price and see what happens...

[Marcie]

I think the design could be greatly improved simply by having a professional "logo" and tagline done in a banner that would take up the top part of the page...probably could be done cheaply by someone at elance.com

HTH!

[atiff]

hey Glenn

Great job , i like the whole thing, and i think you will do great. I was wondering what tools you used to create your DVD, any advice would be highly appreciated. Thanks and keep it up

[GAtkins]

Thanks. I use a Pro-sumer version of an Panasonic 3CCD (forget the model as I am not at home) camera and Adobe Premeire Elements for non-linear editing.

Initially I will burn the first-run myself using my computer and print covers and directly on the DVD using an Epson printer specifically made to print directly on the printable surfaces of the DVD, which most of them will do. This is slow but effective for small-batch stuff.

I have looked into outsourcing the DVD duplication and have discovered from multiple sources that "retail-ready" production packages can be had for in the range of $3.20 to $3.50 per DVD in quantities of as little as 100, for duplication only, no fulfillment. I may go this route in the future, depending on the success of the venture.

Glenn