Review my site

[speediecomputers]

I have had a successful computer business for many years and have decided to go online and explore this growing area. I'm not great at website design its an area I haven't really delved into as I feel others can do it so much better. However to fully compete in such a vast business I needed to take the plunge. One big question I have about my site is whether to keep the flash page or ditch it, I'm undecided and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.speediecomputers.com.au

[bear]

The following are just suggestions, and not meant to "tear apart" the site being reviewed. This is offered with the hope that you'll consider the opinions in the way they were meant, to provide guidance based on my experience of the last 10 years in the business.

I'd lose the flash intro, to be honest. You're actually hurting your SEO rankings by using it, and it serves no purpose that I could see. And speaking of SEO, you might consider using meaningful page names like "products.html" or "service.html" instead of numbers (page1, page2). This will help you quite a bit in being found by the search engines.

Next, I'd shorten the header graphic, as it's quite a bit too tall (300+ pixels just for the header?). I'd also consider making the entire thing either float to fit the window of the visitor, or at least make it a bit less wide overall. Looks as though it's your scrolling products graphic on the main page that's pushing things out.

Fonts:
Blue against blue doesn't have enough contrast. I'd suggest changing the link colors as well as the blue text to something that will stand out a bit more, and I'd also suggest making the font sizes more consistent. As it is, the lower half of the text on the opening page (Q&A) goes from fairly readable to way smaller and italicized.

The "affordable and reliable" button at the bottom. Does that have a purpose? Seems out of place. I'd also consider hiding or removing the hit counter. Use a back end statistics program instead since they offer loads more useful information than a simple count of how many times that page has been loaded into a browser. I'd suggest Google analytics if your host doesn't provide any stats.

Navigation:
You have some links on the left side as well as the top of the page, but they aren't the same links. Once you move off the main page, these links on the left are missing (from the product page only, it seems), forcing the user to go back to the main page to find them. You should never "strand" the user, offering them a way to get everywhere from any page on the site, without back tracking, if possible.

The site performs sort of slow overall, maybe just the distance or connection to Oz from here in NY state (US). Probably not an issue if most of your intended audience is near you, but if you're interested in selling globally, you might consider a different host?

Hope this helps somewhat. Holler if you need anything, and welcome to WBHelp.

[speediecomputers]

Thanks a heap you have pointed out some really valid points this is a whole new area to me so I really appreciate the advice.
Going to get started on making changes that I hope improve the general overall layout and appearance, my host keeps sending me error messages so I have to now wait on them to fix their end so I can fix my end including the links that are now going somewhere not anticipated
Heres hoping I get it all done in the not too distant future