I am looking for an impartial, critical review of my website.
www.premieretheaters.com  I am concerned about the fixed resolution,
e-commerce, and overall customer experience when visiting the site.

Furthermore, I have been considering adding a public forum to the
site.  The forum would allow customers to share their thoughts about
my theater or the movies. Currently, it is only being used for
employee communication and can be glanced at by visiting
www.premieretheaters.com/forums. Would a public forum such as this
help or hurt my business?  Would it require a tremedous amount of work
to manage?  Would it help build my average visits?  Currently, the
average visits by unique users per day is approximately 150.

Hello, n2film:
  You are requesting a critical and impartial review of your website,
well, let's go!.
  
I know you don't request it, but I think it's very important to make
first a technical analysis of your site:

W3C Compliance
I couldn't check your website for Markup compliance in the W3C Markup
Validation Service due it doesn't include a DOCTYPE tag, see below:

MarkUp Validation Service
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.premieretheaters.com

"Fatal Error: No DOCTYPE specified!
I could not parse this document, because it does not include a DOCTYPE
Declaration. A DOCTYPE Declaration is mandatory for most current
markup languages and without such a declaration it is impossible to
validate this document."
 
Browser compatibility
I have also checked your website with IE 6.0, Mozilla 1.4 and Opera 7,
all of them running in Windows XP.

-With IE 6.0 there are no problems at all.

-With Mozilla 1.4 almost everything works fine, but I have found some
problems you can see on these images:

http://www.xpde.com/review1.jpg
In the gifts page, the font used for that text it's too big in this
browser, in IE looks good, but not in Mozilla

http://www.xpde.com/review2.jpg
In the survey page, the calendar is not compatible with Mozilla, you
should consider to use a compatible one, there is a lot here:

Hotscripts
http://www.hotscripts.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?bool=AND&query=calendar&catid=26

-With Opera 7 looks better than with Mozilla, but there is a little
problem with the calendar, when the user choose a date, for example
08/08/2003, this is what the calendar places on the date field:

08/08/-1797

Page size and load time
I think, until the user has cached your website, it takes a lot of
time to navigate through it, the problem is that most users don't wait
if the website takes too much time to load, take a look at this data:

http://www.webdevstore.com/tools/page_size/report.php?url=http://www.premieretheaters.com
Your home page is really big, not because the code, but for the
images, check out this report:

Total webpage size   14088 (bytes)  
Visible text size    1036 (bytes)  
Size of html tags    13052 (bytes)  
Text to html ratio   7.94 %  
Number of images     69   
Unique images        34   
largest image size   17001 (bytes)  
Size of all images   104940 (bytes)  

Grand total: images+html=  119028 (bytes)  

And this doesn't include the flash objects, the main one weights 173
Kb, so enter for the first time in your page could be really painful
with a modem. Of course, browsers will cache the content, but a 28.8
modem user will hardly navigate through your website due the high size
of all the pages:

Size analysis of your Comments page
http://www.webdevstore.com/tools/page_size/report.php?url=http://www.premieretheaters.com/comments.html

Load Time of your Home Page (not including flash)

28.8 Kbps             29,15 '
33.6 Kbps             24,98571429 '
56   Kbps             14,99142857 '
ISDN                  6,55875 '
T1                    0,583 '

Take a look at this article

Optimal Web Page Sizes
http://www.allaboutyourownwebsite.com/bestpagesize.shtml

Link checker
I have also checked your site for dead links and it's ok, no problems
at all

http://validator.w3.org/checklink/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.premieretheaters.com&hide_type=all&depth=&check=Check

Metatag compatibility

http://www.webdevstore.com/tools/meta_analyzer/meta.php?url=http://www.premieretheaters.com

Website Information  
Webpage Title:  Welcome to Premiere Theaters  
Webpage URL:    http://www.premieretheaters.com 


Description & Keywords  
META Description:  Not Found  
META Keywords:     Not Found  
 
Sizes and Lengths 
Title: 28 of 100 characters used -- 28% Utilization 
Description: 0 of 255 characters used -- 0% Utilization 
Keywords: 0 of 255 characters used -- 0% Utilization
 
Other META Tags (Optional) 
Other META Tags:                  Robots Tag Not Found 
(These META Tags are optional)    Abstract Tag Not Found 
                                  Revisit-After Tag Not Found  
 
Recommendations 
Warnings & Recommendations: No Description Found -- Many search
engines use your description to help increase your positioning. It is
highly suggested you make use of the Description META Tag.
No Keywords Found -- Many search engines use keywords to help increase
your positioning.


First impression
Good: 
-The first impression it's nice, it looks professional, a well choosen
color scheme and the distribution of the space it's very good. In few
words, it's a good web site for your purpose.

Bad: 
-At 800x600 resolution your site graphics look really, really big and
the contact information, including the phone it's at the bottom of the
page. Althought right now, 1027x768 is the most common screen
resolution, 800x600 is still very used, and maybe you should consider
reorganize your site to display the most important information at the
top.
-As said before, the load time was too much for a home page, you
should consider reduce the size/colors of the graphics

Most popular screen resolutions
http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox22.html

Layout and navigation
Regarding the fixed resolution, I think it's ok for this site, there
is not too much information to show, so don't worry about it, it's
enough to show what you want to show.

Good:
-The navigation it's very easy for novice users, most used options are
always available on the top
-I like very much the images you use, are very appropiate for this
site
-I like the hoover images at the bottom, although in disabled
state...., I think they should be darker, not so blurred

Bad:
-There is nothing new or exciting in your navigation system, there are
millions of websites that looks like yours. I think a website aimed to
cinema should be exciting and attractive to the user. You can read
this like the design is too conventional.

-In the comments page, the survey it's too long, I don't think any
visitor would fill that survey, try to make it shorter or if you need
so much data because it's important for your business, you can offer
free tickets or discounts, think about it.

http://www.premieretheaters.com/comments.html

-In the comming soon page, it would be great to see a date on each
movie to know when the user will be able to see it on your cinemas.
And also, if it's possible to buy tickets before the release date.

http://www.premieretheaters.com/soon.html

Really bad:
-In pages like:

http://www.premieretheaters.com/find_us.html
http://www.premieretheaters.com/comments.html
http://www.premieretheaters.com/contact.html

You are wasting almost 200 vertical pixels to simply display a text,
and this text just tells the user the page is in. In web design, the
vertical space should be saved whenever it's possible. For example, in
the Find us page, in my current resolution, 1152x864, I need to scroll
down to the bottom of the page to see the map!. Also I suggest you to
put the address "Premiere Theaters - Oaks 10 - 1800 W. Hibiscus Blvd.
- Melbourne - Florida - 32901" in the top of the map, not at the
bottom of the page.

-In the home page, the options to sign up to receive showtimes and
join the Art Film Club are almost invisible. The text is black and
small and the font you have used it's not the right one, you even used
italic. This kind of font is not readable at all. The font color
should be red/orange or light blue and the font type should be arial,
tahoma, verdana or something similar, and not italic because makes the
text more readable.

Why? A website must be targeted to get more and more visitors, this is
the purpose of most web sites, those services you offer are very nice
and you must promote them to ensure your visitors will return back.
Until I started digging into your site, I didn't realize those
services were there.

-In the survey you are gathering personal data and even you marked it
as optional, there is no Privacy Policy page or Usage Policy page, I
recommend you to include one to protect yourself.

e-Commerce experience
-The only e-Commerce I see on the website is the option to buy Gift
certificates and using paypal it's perfectly correct for such purpose,
the user doesn't expect a full featured online shop just to buy gift
certificates and also it's very easy for a novice user and ensures
that all transfers are made in a secure environment.
-As a recommendation, I would place some message on the page telling
the process is 100% secure and it's processed using PayPal
-Also, I would put the View Cart link in the top of the page, instead
on the bottom.

The review is finished, so I'm going to start talking about the
forums:

In my personal experience, a forum is, in most cases, the most visited
page of all the web, I have one website running that 80% of traffic is
due forums. A movies forum could boost your visits a lot, everyone
wants to talk about the movie has just seen. You ask if it can hurt
your business, well, if you think about it, there could be a side
effect on the forum if people talk bad about movies or even about your
theaters, but there is a lot of movie forums out there, so you
decide...

Regarding manage the forum, I think you shouldn't worry if you have 10
free minutes each day, with 150 unique visitors each day I don't think
you need more time to manage it. The tasks of manage it are:
  -Moderate messages (delete offensive ones, ban some users, etc)
  -Create/Delete forums depending on the movies you want
  
Well, I think this is my longest answer ever since I subscribed in
Google Answers ;-)

I hope this is the information you were looking for, and if not, or
you want more specific details, please, don't hesitate to request for
any clarification, I'm here to help you until you get what you want.

Regards.

Hello:

Gifts. You really don't sell gifts on your website, you sell "gift
certificates."  I would just call it that.  Also, the $6.50 you charge
for UPS seems very expensive for mailing just paper.  Can't you stick
a regular stamp on it and mail it like you would a letter and offer
free shipping?  The chances of USPS non-delivery are small (i.e. you
don't need to pay a premium for UPS tracking information). You might
want to try to experiment with it and see how that affects your gift
certificate sales.

Also on the bottom of your shopping page,
 http://www.premieretheaters.com/shopping.html

you may want to consider removing your logo (where it appears right
next to the credit card logos).  While I can understand your desire
for branding, it seemed confusing to me (like you can pay with a
Premier Theaters credit card).


For these links at the bottom of your page, 
home | find us | comments | movie ratings | contact us | Gifts | movie
times | coming soon

"Gifts" should be lower case, for consistency.

Comments. You might want consider replacing "comments" with "leave
feedback" Or "leave comments."  When I first clicked on that link, I
was expecting to see comments (feedback) other people had left about
their experience while visiting your theatre (not to leave feedback).

Admission Prices:  How much does it does to visit your theatre? You
may want to consider posting your admission prices.  Perhaps posting
'bargain matinee' prices on your home page will help fill seats during
slow periods.

Upper graphics.  I think you have devoted way too much space for your
upper graphics.  There's a general rule that all the important
information should go 'above the fold.'  Basically, you're trying to
force your visitors to 'avoid' scrolling down to see other content on
the page.  It makes for a much more pleasurable surfing experience if
you don't have to scroll so much.  On my computer monitor (1024 x 768)
which displays content fairly small, your graphics take up half of the
page.  User come to websites to find information, not to look at
pretty graphics.

I hope this information helps and is taken in the spirit in which it
was intended, constructive criticism.

Good luck.