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The Toymaker of Williamsburg
BEING A KID AT HEART, I thought I would visit the Toymaker of Williamsburg and enjoy toys for the season while putting together this month's web site review.
__ The Toymaker of Williamsburg is a specialty store with lots of great toys with a slant toward history, education and safety. It's not your typical Toys-R-Us and doesn't pretend to be. The fact that they invite your calls, and openly display their email address suggests that this toystore is owned by someone who cares about your children't playthings. Unlike the web toy malls this is a 'hands-on' site. (Just try to get anyone to respond at the Toys.com, or other toy malls on the web. The only thing they care about is selling something to you... anything... and then selling your personal data to the spam kings. That's it.)

__ What a wonderful surprise to find Toymaker set in Garamond! Now, I use Garamond Condensed on my computer so the page loaded with all the fonts perfectly in place! What a thrill. Garamond is a perfect choice for body copy, and Caslon Antique would be my choice for the headlines, and subs. (Which by the way, I'll have to chase down. Haven't seen Caslon Antique in ages.)
__ While the Toymaker of Williamsburg is a calm and inviting site, it has a number of areas where their message and results could be enhanced.
__ The opening page comes up fast enough, however we thought the first window was all there is! (Boy, I'm in trouble... how to get a column out of this???) But we snooped a little further and found the page does, indeed, scroll to open the offerings of the store. Here's where the site needs a little navigation up in the top third of the page to suggest to visitors that there is more to be found.
Since we didn't have too much interest in Civil War figures, we went for the "Hot Items" link. (again, this most-important link should have been up top: remember to guide your readers where you want them to go!)

NOW let's take a look at the "Hot Items" page. . .

(and be sure to see the &Type review of Caslon Antique)

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