First impressions
The home page loaded quickly on a dial up connection – good. It is also good to have an example of what is on offer on the homepage. You are listed well on Google for “karate books” and “karate videos”. The initial impression is gaudy – very yellow, red and blue! The discount videos page almost hurts the eyes.
Design and Colours
It seems odd using blue for headings (which are not clickable) and red for unvisited links. Conventions may seem limiting but there is no point in possibly confusing customers and putting difficulties in their way.
The shopping pages have a pale green header which is much calmer than on other pages. I would suggest adopting this colour scheme for the whole site incorporating your heading information and links on the green background. I would put your phone number and an email link here too – it gives confidence and makes it easy for you to be contacted.
There are not that many books so I would list each author followed by their book titles all as links on one page rather than requiring an extra click to discover the titles.
I like the use of quotes by each item but maybe a bit of information as well would help – suitable for beginners, or tips for karate experts, etc.
In the shopping section it seems as if shipping is free for the rest of the world until one notices the small print! It would be good if shipping prices were generated for groups of countries. People will tend to leave the site if they can not get immediate information.
Graphics
Some of the images of book covers are very large 40k plus and slow loading. They could be reduced in size and still be quite adequate or if you wish linked to the full size pictures. You have already done this with some of the videos.
Coding
The title should come nearer the top of the head section.
Karate is repeated a lot of times in the keywords (although Google doesn’t seem to be penalising you).
I hope that some of this is useful and wish you luck with your site.
Martin Dowling
www.spectrumwellbeing.co.uk
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