OPENING PAGE AND MAIN CONTENT – Upon entering the site, first impression is a personal home page due to the background, the animated gifs, and amount of scrolling and large text. My recommendation would be to create a standard template for all pages to follow.
a) This would have the logo in the header, textual navigation and contact information in the footer, and consistent left navigation. I would use a style sheet and if you need to learn how to use one, do a search they are fairly easy to setup. I would recommend possibly a 3 column page with navigation on the left, content in the center, and all your ads and freebie stuff in the right column. I would limit the freebies to times that you benefit from having on your site. Always remember the goal is to keep them interested in your site, not to have them link to another site and forget your site altogether.
b) Initial opening page should tell the user the purpose of the site and give them a reason to look through the site. I would suggest an opening paragraph to outline the items you sell and the secure transaction information along with a collage of the some of the items or the new stuff highlighted with images. This would entice viewers to look further and help your search engine indexing.
SUBPAGES – sub-pages currently do not have any navigation to view other pages without going Home’ or using the Back’ button. If you would like to link within the page due to the length of scrolling, I would recommend using the main left navigation and then under the page you are currently viewing adding sub-page links in smaller text to identify that it is indeed a sub-page. This will keep all the navigation in one central location for easier navigation through the site.
BACKGROUND IMAGE – If you want to use a background image, I would recommend adding black space to the background image on the right side to accommodate larger screen sizes so it does not tile vertical skulls and leaves only skulls in the left navigation area. Personal Preference.
ITEM IMAGES FULL VIEW – I would suggest having these popup a window and have a close link. This way you don’t have to keep using the back button while viewing the items for sale.
KEYWORDS, SEARCH ENGINES – I would first suggest searching for sites that carry the same content and viewing the script to analyze what keywords they are using, after all, you found them by searching the web. Second, I would add text to catalog pages on your site that currently have no text describing the items. My third suggestion is to not only use META Data but search for free directory listings as well as consider joining your local chamber of commerce.
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