[route609]

Hello

I think the header of the site is good; it could be strengthened however at the minute, for your sites needs I think it will do a great job. The top horizontal navigation is also good; this would look really nice if the button graphic changed for a darker colour on the mouse over. The hot news is also in a good position and can be drawn to by the viewer’s eye within the 8 second period.

It is vital that the items you class as important on your site can be noted by the viewer within 8 seconds, otherwise their click percentage will not be very high.

In terms of the content I think you could do a lot of work to improve it. The orange, blue and black text at the bottom of the site make difficult reading. The red bullet capitals are always classed as a ‘no go’ in web design and development. Anything that’s in capitals normally represents an error message or warning.

I think that if you were to add a background colour to the site, the content would stand out a lot more to the visitor. White on white never normally works unless it’s a web 2.0 site or a three column blog.

In general i would say the site can be split into two parts. The header of the site is quite strong and with a bit of work can become very good. The content and footer of the site is weak. I would definitely recommend a background colour for the site (not content area) and to remove the orange text at the bottom for black.

Nearly all websites use the colour #333333. This is a standard colour that the very first websites use and therefore is easily recognisable by all readers.

Good luck