Well, Kurt I've looked at the Joni section of your new site. To be honest
(since you asked for opinions) I'd have to give you mixed reviews.
(Just so you know, I'm an award winning technical writer, editor, and Web
site designer. I'm speaking here as a professional - not so much as someone
who likes Joni's music.)
The writing:
You could use an editor. Although sentences in your style could work fine on
a printed page, shorter sentences and paragraphs work well on a Web site.
You're also missing a slew of commas - but that's just the editor in me :-)
The layout:
Good layout and interesting color scheme. You haven't attempted anything too
technically tricky, but what you've done works well. I'm from the 'make lots
of short pages' school, so that's what I'd recommend. However, I do
recognize there's equal support for longer and fewer pages.
The content:
I'm not going to focus on what you say and whether I agree with it. Some I
do; some I don't. I was hoping to find something new and different, however.
I didn't. From that point of view, I have to wonder what the 'value-added'
is. If you want to generate traffic, you have to offer something to make
people want to return. The jonimitchell.com site does that quite nicely,
with news updated regularly, for example. [Even a site like amazon.com does
this with its recommendations.] One of the hard truths of the Web is that
people won't keep coming back solely for your opinion. You need something to
make it worth their while.
One final comment:
Get rid of the 'click here to enter' page. It's my personal pet peeve. And
in all the Web design classes and usability seminars I've taken it's
strongly discouraged.
You might want to check out "Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to
Web Site Usability" by Steve Krug. It's very readable and offers lots of
good info about creating usable Web sites.
Hope this helps.
Anne
