It's bad.
Now that I've rocked the boat a little, let me see if I can put a smile on that face!
First, you built it for 800x600 resolution. That's the way of the past my man. You're losing tons of valuable screen space for content. TONS. In January 2009, 4% of people using the internet were still using 800x600.
Conversely, 93% of people are using resolutions equal to or higher than 1024x768, with 57% of people using a resolution higher than 1280x1024.
I personally use a 1440x900 resolution, but my girlfriend says I'm just compensating.
Anyways, that means that four in every one hundred people will thank you for optimizing it for them. Or 96 of those people are seeing what I call the toilet paper effect. Skinny little trail of content centered between two voids. And that number is decreasing every year. It makes for unnecessary vertical scrolling, and the more people have to work to get info, the quicker they bail.
Not a knock against the dark scheme at all, because people tend to "think" a dark page loads faster. I personally like dark color schemes, especially when it fits the personality of the business.
But the contrast here is awful. The light grey background makes the white text almost unreadable. Again, a website has to be mega easy for the user to use.
There a thousands of contractor websites out there that the visitor can check out for free, so why would they invest their time in something difficult to use and read?
Big chunk of wasted space above the header. Again, just a poor use of screen real estate. I do have to say though that your pictures look really high quality in the header, and if they were better used (larger and placed in a rotating header or a gallery) I think they could be big points for your site.
Don't use your business card as your website header. It looks chunky and amateurish, but find a way to incorporate the style and gist of it into your site. Keeping branding consistent with every customer "touch" (letterhead, email, website, truck lettering, business card, trailers, job signs) is a great way to build brand recognition and trust.
Your avigation isn't prominent. I know the site obviously isn't done, but keep dead links off of it anyway. Poor contrast on the "down" nav buttons.
I both agree and disagree with the fellers above me, that you are lacking in content.
For the agree part, you are definitely barren of content. Absolutely no on page SEO, no real hook, no reason for anyone to stay on the page for longer than two seconds.
However. Your homepage is not the place to put as much information on it as possible. A good homepage does three things well.
1. Immediately tells the visitor where they are, and what the site is about.
2. Immediately tells a repeat visitor what is new, and what a new visitor should check out.
3. Makes crystal clear what action you want the visitor to take. Whether it's read some articles, check out a gallery of work, fill out a contact form, or sign up for a newsletter your site needs a clear goal, and clear path to action. Or it's a dead duck.
Your contact button just opens a default mailer (outlook for some, gmail for me), and isn't the best way to do it. You would do well with a contact form that was super easy to use, stayed on your site, and they would get a follow up email right away so they "feel" that human touch.
Oh, and it would capture their contact details which you could use to start a marketing campaign, thusly keeping your company top of mind so when they are ready to take the plunge and pay for some work, you've already established a relationship and positioned yourself as an expert.
(sip of beer after that last sentence, can you tell I'm a huge fan of email marketing?)
If someone told you that having a keyword in the domain was key, you certainly took it to heart haha. You don't need such a long web address, and it's actually bad for your human viewers.
http://www.staggsconstruction.com/JAMES_STAGGS_CONSTRUCTION/staggsconstruction.com.html is a bit of a mouthful, no?
Think about what your page extensions are going to be if you go with a blog (which is great for SEO), or even just your other internal pages....
WAY TOO LONG. Shorten it up to staggsconstruction.com/index.html
or .php
but that's a wholllllllle nother discussion, and would involve much geek speak.
As far as SEO goes, it's not too hot either. Title Tag should contain the two keywords you want ranked the most separated by the pipe character ( | )
For the record, I know that looks like breasts or a butt, but the character you want is the cleave or crack, whatever you're into
Keyword tags don't mean anything to Big G, but that doesn't mean other sites don't or won't use them in the future. Basically just stick em in there for insurance, it's not gonna hurt.
Yeahhhh, other than that....you're good to go
As always I'm here to help, please respond with any questions or comments you have, and please don't throw any sharp objects haha
