Web Site Review & FREE Advice From Experts

KraftMaster

I recently had a firm redesign our web site and I wasn’t happy with all of the function, navigation of it etc.. So I asked for some help from a previous colleague of mine – currently VP marketing for Vonage for a recommendation for a critique panel and she recommended this site. We are now taking some of the feedback and reengineering our site based on some of the input.

http://www.webproworld.com

There are sections on there that talk about SEO, Website Review, logo review, and all types of awesome information about getting your site to perform better.

Its FREE and the feedback you get is amazing – be ready for people that are “Experts” to give you advice and be open to the help. Some of the comments I got were brutal but its what I needed, I cant fix what I dont know is broken right ?

Besides I'm not a web expert and I'm open to all the help I can get !

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KraftMaster Renovations
Kitchen Remodeling

MattCoops

That's a forum with web design as a topic.
There is no expert panel there. Anyone can register to be a user.
There are far better web design forums out there.

You can judge a web design site by the look of their own site.
That is a cluttered mess of a site, how can they "judge" other sites?

Besides, there are a number of users on this forum that are skilled in web design and give excellent feedback.

If you really want some sound advice, hire an online marketing agent to do a competitive analysis on your site, conduct usability testing, and strategize a new design by understanding customer personas and creating a site hierarchy with flow charts and a site map. Then create content that is "sticky" enough for people to want to link to it without having to ask for links or aquiring them.

good luck

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

KraftMaster

Yes thats a "Web forum" - just like this is a forum of people in the construction trade sharing best practices in our field of expertice.

Nope there are no more "experts" there than there are here. Just people that make a living at it web design, SEO and such.

If I wanted medical advice I'd hit a medical forum not post a question here on a contractor site seeking medical opinions any more than I would post a thread seeking web site design, SEO, etc. advice from contractors. If we were web design experts we would be remodeling peoples homes we'd be getting paid to build websites, not tiling bathrooms.


Slam ideas without offering anything of value... Hmmm?


You say there are "Far better web design forums out there"

It'd be great if you share those...I'll be looking forward to seeing them.

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KraftMaster Renovations
Kitchen Remodeling

cbscreative

I tend to prefer the "mixed" approach. Web people like myself can offer design help and plenty of expertise. Those who earn their living doing web sites have to know a lot to build an effective site. However, the person who knows nothing about web design has something valuable to offer too. If they can understand everything on your site, then you or your designer have succeeded.

Matt mentioned usablity testing. This is probably one of the biggest downfalls of most sites. What might be obvious to the designer, and even the client, could confuse someone else. Find a few people who know only enough to browse the web and send email, then have them test your site. You might be very surprised by what you find out.

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Steve Chittenden
Web/SEO Geek • Graphic Artist • Writer • Marketing Guy
One reason I know so much about the web and marketing is that I don't have to know as much about construction.

MattCoops

iRise is great software for usability testing

No project is complete without user testing
Wouldn't you rather use a construction material that had been tested first? or would you trust the guy selling it to you?


p.s. THE best web design forum out there is http://www.webmaster-talk.com

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

zookies

I agree that webmaster-talk.com is one of the best web design forums out there, but I also got an interesting email (which I deleted after reading) that reaffirmed a lot of my philosophy, and relates to the post that started this thread.

They discouraged the use of flash (flashy moving graphics) because the search engines (yahoo, google, MSN search) don't really see the visual stuff. And chances are that they may not see the navigation the same way people do.

So we have kept our web design simple in terms of technology and buttons, we have lots of pictures, but also have a real lot of written content in plain old english and plain old html. We have also paid attention to things like google analytics, robots.txt, site maps, and links with other trades in our area. Our links page is actually a collection of trades that a group of us have collaborated on.

Even though we only have a page rank of three, we seem to have some of the top traffic rankings of out market, even though two of our compeititors have larger operations. It is paying off, in that traffic from google, which is free advertising, will give us 1/2 a mil in business this year. And since our business usually takes off this time of year, we are seeing strong results despite the economy.

I also recommend putting a little effort in google local, yahoo local, and MSN local. It really requires yo9u are large enough to have an office address (commercial location) although if the zoning allows, you can use your homestead, where a lot of guys work out of. You just don't need to get caught with a zoning or business license problem through the local (maps) section of google or yahoo when you are (by their terms of service) supposed to be using a commercial address.

So keep your website design simple, and one more thing, a friend of mine in the irrigation sprinkler repair business added a blog to his website and thinks that is responsible for a lot of free google search results.

KraftMaster

Thats super feedback and we are rethinking the amount of flash we have on our site.

Not real happy with the results to date off the site.

__________________
KraftMaster Renovations
Kitchen Remodeling