Please have a look at Build It Solar

**GaryGary** · 12-05-2007, 09:12 PM

Hi,
The site is www.BuildItSolar.com

It been up nearly 2 years, and doing pretty well -- about 5000 visitors a day. Alexa rating is 145000.

Issues:
- I'm very interested in any comments or suggestions -- anything that would help reach a wider audience, or just improve the usefulness of the site.

- There is a ton of content on the site -- but people tell me that this is not obvious, and I need a way to make it clear there is a lot of material.
To this end I just added the new (bolder) nav bar with the drop down menus. This seems to help, at the expense of slowing things down a bit.
Does this seem effective? Any other thoughts along the line of making the content more obvious?

- I've tried to make the home page kind colorful and attention grabbing. Not sure if a) this is really working? and b) whether its the most effective strategy for a home page?
An alternative that appeals to me would be to put a sort of outline of the site on the home page so people could get a quick sense of whats there, and get to what they are interested in?

Looking forward to hearing some comments -- this forum looks like a great resource.

Gary

**ccrazy** · 12-06-2007, 04:12 AM

nice site. very interesting. liked the drop down menu but it does seem sort of big but this made it easy to see what you had because the homepage had alot of content that could confuse someone

**AlienFarmer** · 12-09-2007, 07:24 AM

Great site Gary! Loads and loads of excellent content. Your layout sorta makes my head want to explode though. I don't quite know where to focus my eyes when I first look at your homepage. I would suggest you look into a good content management software like wordpress (its free). Right now your homepage has too much information on it and is presented in a very unorganized manor. Your logo and header are not bad, but their not that good either. I use firefox with noscript and adblock plugins so your drop down menu didn't show up. Your website name is awesome and your content is top notch so you got a lot going for you. It looks like you update often so why not turn your site into a blog?

As a side note...SELL ADS ON YOUR WEBSITE!!!!! Greed is good, greed works! I see so many solar websites that don't sell ads and claim "we are non-commercial or non-profit" but why? People wonder why solar is not main stream yet? If you sell ads you would have money to get a decent looking logo, a better website and have some money to advertise your site to get more visitors so you can sell ads for more money and have more money to get an even bigger audience and so on....

**netridge** · 12-09-2007, 04:25 PM

Gary,

Your main page is overwhelming. You have loads of content and I mean loads... so much that when I hit your main page I was confused as to were or what exactly to read. This will run off users, I would suggest you make your main page a little more simpler. 3 or 4 main categories with a about the site on the main page would work out fine. Hey contact me I could re-design your site.

You could also use a different logo, a picture of the sun doesn't seem to fit with your theme.

**gamer99** · 07:45 AM

I like the site and the content is great but as soon as the page loads, the user is hit with too much info. If you ask me its a little hard to digest at the start but once you focus its ok.

By the way there is a mistake in the tittle of the book "Build Your Won Electric Vehicle, Bob Brant, TAB Books, 1994". It should be Build Your 'Own' Electric Vehicle. The error is located on this page: http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...lectric%20Cars

**nickreynolds** · 12-11-2007, 05:39 PM

So slow to load that i couldn't wait any longer!!!

**GaryGary** · 12-12-2007, 10:24 AM

Thanks all -- good and helpful comments.

I've started working on a simpler home page design with areas for each of the main sections of the site, and one or two featured projects in each area.

So much stuff, its just hard not to try to cram everything on the home page

Gary