Hi Mike,
I normally don't critique other sites simply because I am so critical of my own and am feel hardly qualified to tell anyone else how to build their site. There are the obviously hideous sites out there of course, but yours is definitely not one of them.
It's simple, clean and to the point. It does seem to be missing something, though. Others put it as "drab and missing the "Call To Action", and I think they are on the same page.
You inspired me to write an article for my Rick Rants blog on the topic, so I wrote one. Rather than link over to it I will simply post part of it here:
There are billions of web pages out there, and there are countless sites that fall in the category of computer products and services. I visit a lot of them. Some are interesting, some hideous and a few very compelling but many of them suffer from the same thing that millions of other web sites do: they all look like electronic billboards or full page business cards.
I read a lot of articles and blogs from so-called SEO experts about improving page ranking and all that other stuff and there is something to be said for that. However, I found from personal experience that the best SEO isn't about tricks and gimmicks, its simply giving folks a reason to go there, stay there awhile and then come back.
Your site can easily stand out from all the other computer service web sites by making it into more than just a billboard. You need to turn it into a living, breathing virtual destination.
When I ran the web site for my store, Savoia Computer, it had (before I closed the site in 2007) a Google Page Rank of 7. I set it up as a full retail site, selling customer built computers, software and peripherals. All of those products were accessible within two clicks from the front page. I wasn't out to compete with Advantage Computers across town (I lived in Orlando), I built the site to compete directly with Dell. Of course, that sounds rather laughable, it did get results, and my page rank was higher than my local competitors.
I also was the only local system builder in Central Florida (and possibly the entire state) That had an active tech support section built into my site - including a Knowledge Base for the computers I built. In addition, my customers could download device drivers for their computers and post post potential issues specific to their model computer (I assigned model and serial numbers to the computers I built and they could reference the model numbers on the site).
The most laughable part of this - I did it with Microsoft FrontPage.
I did all of this in a crude way, but as a marketing tool, it worked. Today we have Joomla, and the things you can do with it can take you a lot farther than I went with my FrontPage site and a lot more easily. You can set up your site to do anything Dell or HP or any other company can do with their sites - at a very low cost and it would look just as good as your imagination will let it.
Joomla isn't perfect; it does have its issues. If you take a look at
The Force Field, you will notice that it isn't a typical CMS web site. For instance, it doesn't offer the features I need for the podcast, so I use WordPress for that. I limit the components so I use traditional forum software for the forums. Joomla isn't a total solution. But the price is right and it does the job.
If you went to my site you probably noticed that the portal, podcast page and forums all look much the same. This is because I didn't use a pre-existing template for those areas (except for the forums). I created my own.
At the moment you are under utilizing Joomla. It can do so much more than just hold up a virtual billboard. Don't waste its potential, or yours. Use your imagination and make your site stand out, not with flashy animation or other cheap, overused web gimmicks, but with real content about who you are and what you do, the services you offer and the products you sell. Make your site a destination, and your customers will go there.
