My review of United-States-Flag.com

I want to preface this review with the fact that I am a developer working in PHP, and .NET. I will probably focus on more of the technical side of the site

Lets start with the Outdoor Flagpoles page.

My first thought is that it is overall a very clean page.

However, I feel that the color choices for the left side navigation menu do not seem to work with the rest of the page. Also I would probably add some JavaScript Animation to the menu to give it more of a rollout effect when it is moused over. Also, on the second level menus I would be sure that the fly-out at the same height location as their parent to be sure that the user understands where they are in the navigation. I would also probably choose a slighly different color for the child menu to represent that it is a child.

I also feel that some other things should be moved around in that left hand column:

1. I would move the Email List to the Top of the column to try and get more people to join the mailing list
2. I would also change it from "Join Email List" to "Subscribe to our Newsletter", or something to that effect. People do not want to be added to lists, but they like to subscribe to newsletters
3. On my screen it appears that there is enough room for a right hand column as well, as I have lots of white space. I would move everything that is under the Email List to that right column

In the main content area, the only thing that I really see that I would change is to use a common appearance for the links, such as how they appear in the "Other Store Links" Section. It will provide more of a continuity feeling for the site, plus leaving them as the default for the browser makes that part of the site look a bit more generic.

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Now we'll look at the American Flags page.

The first thing I see here is a problem with the breadcrumbs. I suppose it is possible that I am having problems because I linked directly to it, but there should only be one breadcrumb path displayed. Also, because the page is for American flags, I do not feel that the page should be buried so deep under state flags, but rather a top level page for the site.

All my comments for the left hand navigation apply to this page as well.

In the main content area, again I would be sure to use a different display style for the links (a global css rule would work great for this). Also, there is too much information above the fold. I should see more products on the page. I would take all the content at the top after the third paragraph and make a single page that links out to the other informational areas and make a single link to that new page.

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Finally, we'll look at the US Flags homepage.

All my comments for the left hand navigation apply to this page as well, but I would add a best sellers/hot items section to the new right hand column, and list maybe 3 to 5 products, with very small thumbnails of them displayed.

In the main content area the only thinkg I see in the display that jumps out at me is that the links need to be styled differently. The site should use the same sort of display for all links across the site that is not the default.

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Now some general comments about how the site is coded:

1. Move all CSS into another file and reference it in the HTML, this will make the code cleaner, easier to change everything across the site, and make for smaller downloads
2. Move all JavaScript into another file and reference it in the HTML, this will make the code cleaner, easier to change everything across the site, and make for smaller downloads
3. Stop using tables for layout. When you use CSS for layout you get a much smaller page that can be downloaded by browsers faster. Also, when a browser sees a table it must wait until it downloads that table completly before it can start rendering it. When you use just DIVs and CSS to position them the browser can start displaying it much faster. Also a developer can get lost in tables when adjustments need to be made later, a DIV and CSS based layout is much easier to follow.

Also, you should create a favicon.ico. Getting the standard Yahoo! image makes the site look less reputable.