Needing advice on improving my site..

Hi everyone. :)

So quite recently I renewed our site, (http://www.daqua.co.uk) yet me being me, I'm still not happy with it. I am in no way advanced at website building but I do know a few things. I'm hugely aware that our site has quite a few unappealing features so I'm wanting to sort this out and would really appreciate it if someone could help me out on it.

Things I want to sort out are:

1. The top navigation. Whenever I zoom in or out, it looks terrible. Is there anything I can do to keep the links in place with the background image?

2. We've now gained more products so on pages such as http://daqua.co.uk/pumps_controllers.htm you have to scroll down quite a bit to find what you're looking for. This to me seems really unappealing. My boss isn't too keen on giving each product a separate page so what I'd like is to have them listed in twos. So in that pumps and controllers page, the products would be listed like so:

Pump Box --- Varistream and Shurflo pump package
4l Pump --- 5l Pump
Dial Waterflow Regulator --- Digital Waterflow Regulator
Pressure Switch --- Inline Strainer

Does that make sense? How can I go about doing this? Would tables be best to use, or just separate div's and classes? My guess is that I'll probably have to make the site wider in order to fit them in side by side.

3. I really feel like the site is lacking of something but I just don't know what. What are your views on it? What am I missing? Please be harsh, I need to be told what I'm doing wrong. :P

Your help will be appreciated so much! I'm getting rather tired of being unhappy with this website, haha.

1. The top navigation. Whenever I zoom in or out, it looks terrible. Is there anything I can do to keep the links in place with the background image?

Yes, set the background image on the individual elements rather than the #nav div - then the background will shrink or expand with the text. Have a look at this sliding doors technique (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/slidingdoors/) (it's an oldy but goody) which would work well for your tabs.

.....How can I go about doing this? Would tables be best to use, or just separate div's and classes? My guess is that I'll probably have to make the site wider in order to fit them in side by side

Don't even think about using tables - it's inflexible and unnecessary!!! Divs would be fine, float the divs and they'll then just stack up next to each other.

Other options - have a set of quicklinks at the top to facilitate quick navigation, if you want to get a bit more flash have the details of the products in an expanding/collpasing div so the page isn't so long (have a look at using jQuery for this maybe .slideDown() - you've already got it on the page).

3. I really feel like the site is lacking of something but I just don't know what.

Seen a lot worse to be honest.

Not keen on the scrollbar in the news div - have less, or maybe scroll it automatically?

Not madly keen on the two blue squares on the side nav, combined with the font in use.

Also, it took me some time to realise that the two menus are (almost?) the same - I think this is potentially confusing. It made me think - and that's usually bad for websites (see the classic Don't Make Me Think (http://www.sensible.com/dmmt.html) by Steve Krug - another oldy but essential reading in my opinion.

Design wise, blue background is a little dull but I can't get worked up. I like the top image. Having the whole page wider would have more of an impact - but I have a widescreen and it's fine

Picky picky picky but your favicon looks a bit pixellated.

Text on the images "Ion Exchange Resins" doesn't look very smooth either - you could just overlay real text on the image rather than including it in the image.

Hope that's helpful....

Thank you very, very much SB65! That's exactly the information that I was seeking. Yeah, on my other site I have expanding and collapsing DIV's so I will just use them again. Certainly makes things a lot neater. I agree also on the side nav. I don't know what it is but I ALWAYS struggle with side bars! I can just never seem to get them looking 'smart.' Back to the drawing board me thinks and see what I can do to tidy it up.
Thank you.

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