OK, I give: I’m obsessed with valid HTML. I like to be able to visit fully accessible sites without having to change my browser.

When you see a site like discountsafetygear.com, although you probably don’t need stuff like hard hats or safety goggles (but you certainly need first aid kits in your house, car or at work) and you think that the topic is lame, you still understand that safety is important and you understand the need of safety products.

So the site answers a real need and the owners managed to become members of the Better Business Bureau and even won the Yahoo! Top Service award. This is a women owned business, which says a lot about the customer care and quality of the services too.

But when the site doesn’t validate, when the copyright is outdated, something is missing. And you wonder what. A professional Webmaster to take care of these details? Because we cannot accuse the owners of lack of understanding of the online realities.

The site has a very good structure, way better than the other two sites owned by OnlineStores.com (find my reviews here and here).

This site doesn’t even have so many design problems either (just a small one at the search box, and it takes a skilled designer to notice that).

Well, since I’m paid to give my honest opinion and to give a full critique of the site, I’d also like to add that the web copy is not too brilliant either.

And there’s something else I’d like to see on the site: as safety is an important topic, I’d like to see an “advice” category, where to read expert articles on different professions and the safety measures which need to be taken to ensure proper working conditions.

I have no other crititcal observations to make. I like the choice of colors and the centered layout. I’d say that the landing page is too cluttered, but I see no other way to include all the necessary information on that page. I’d also like to emphasize the importance of keeping a standard all the way through the site by displaying images with the same style and quality.

But this doesn’t raise too many problems and it’s something that could be easily corrected.