Dear Google Researcher,   
  
http://www.midwestrummage.com is a free classifieds site serving the
midwestern states.  It is primarily for listing rummage sale and other
related classified ads, and is entirely a free website which I made to
learn the cgi programming language.  I am looking for a web site
review.  I need an expert
Researcher, preferably one who… 
 
1) has usability analysis experience and  
2) who can put themselves into the shoes of a potential customer 
 
…to perform a usability test on my site. 
 
My potential customers are anyone who owns a computer, lives in the
midwest, and is having or looking for rummage sales and other related
events
 
I'm looking for impressions/feedback/opinions, and suggestions for 
improvement.  What did you like/not like? Please help me understand 
the reasoning behind your opinions. 
  
I'm not after books, or services, or links as to how to design a  
website, or who can do this. 
  
My aspiration for the web site is to intrigue the potential customer 
enough to stay and look around the site, and hopefully contribute to
the site by posting their own ads or even by telling others about the
site.
 
If there are HTML flaws that you see, please state your OS & version 
and browser & version. 
  
Thanks in advance for your assistance! 
 
Note: I thank the Taloma.com questioner for giving me the idea of 
posting this question

Hi antigone,

Thanks for using Google Answers.

I used IE 5.5 on Win NT system to perform this testing. Here are my
comments for your site.

1. I'm compelled to say that the first look of the site is really very
catchy and attractive. It has bright colors to attract someone's
attention and all the colors are very nicely picked up.

2. The best part of the site was the Games section. Believe me, I've
bookmarked this page. My wife liked it very much.

3. All the links are working perfectly. So no dead links. 

4. All the front-end tests are working nicely and I was not able to
get any error on the “Send Ad To Friend” page.

5. One thing that may confuse a user and that is on the View Ads page.
When I click on any category like “Men Seeking Women” or any other, it
takes me to a page where it shows a list of several states. Now just
next to any state, there is a number written. e.g. For Illinois its 1,
for Indiana its 2 and so on. Now what is this number? If I go by
what's written over there, it says "Num", which I assume stands for
"Number". Now is this the serial number or the number of ads available
for that place. The second thing that confuses is that if its a serial
number than the "Show all ads in this category" number should be the
number next to the last number and not 0 or 1 or 2. If I assume that
this number is the number of available ads, then there is no ad for
Illinois but it still says 1. You need to make a slight change over
here to remove the confusion.

6. When I complete the registration, the next page says "Thank you
.... An email has been sent to you at with instructions on how to
complete you user registration. You may not use registered user
features until you have completed the activation process."
The text here is grammatically incorrect and it seems that something
is missing in both the sentences. Please correct this.

7. During the registration process, I tried to give incorrect data in
all the fields to make sure that the data check is done. The name, zip
and the phone number fields are accepting the special characters which
it should not. Please correct this.

8. The links on the main page are placed differently from the links
placed on the other pages. I mean that when I click on the Free
Registration link, the page that comes next have a link "Register" on
the place where "Free Registration" was there. In addition, the
location of Services and Help link is different.  One more thing, the
font size is different than the main page. It is smaller than the main
page.

9. The main page is quite different from the rest of the site in terms
of the background and font size. The background is blue on the main
page while its white on the other pages. This confused me. May be you
can check this too.

Overall, the site is really very interesting and will definitely hold
a user. The ads are also neat and don’t have those pop-up type ads.

I hope my suggestions will help you in making your site much better.
Feel free to ask for any clarifications and if you are satisfied then
don't forget to rate this answer.

My best wishes for your lovely site.

Regards,
netcrazy

Thank you for the time you took to view my site and give me feedback.
I will keep everything you said in mind as I edit the site this week. 
It really helps to have someone look at the site who hasn't
seen it before because I've been looking at it for so long that I
wasn't really an objective viewer anymore.  I'm also very glad you
liked it!  ;)