Website Design Critique, for my client

[Choppie]

Hello gang,
I have absoutley zero formal training on putting together websites. I have however, been playing around with them for many years on the side, not a real deep focus on the overall proper way to implant templates and edit them very well. This is one of my clients and good friends that I decided to help them free in my spare time by getting them on the internet. To make things worse, I just changed hosting companys, (a freaking nightmare in EVERY ASPECT), story for another thread, another time.

I would like some critique and advice and help in cleaning up this website, and maybe some advice on maybe using a better template. The website works well, and they are paying big bucks for google add words, to the tune of 100 bucks a day at different times.

I won't get too surgical with any questions on areas I think need work, so I'll just ask this...

What am I doing wrong, and how can I improve.

Oh.... are the legal disclaimers and privacy statements good enough...yeah i know....that's a loaded question...

Don't go easy on me... be a Steve Jobs.... brutally honest...haha...

https://thesearchenders.com/

This is an awesome forum...thanks everyone!

Choppie

 

[Markverhyden]

Off the bat I'll comment that the Links hyperlink, at least to me, means links external to the subject website. Client login is usually a separate item and I'd have it on every page. Legal stuff usually falls into About Us unless there is a ton of that info.

Do some searching on here. There's been a number of posts about SEO and related items. I think @callthatgirl has a free guide or two discussing that.

 

[Choppie]

Off the bat I'll comment that the Links hyperlink, at least to me, means links external to the subject website. Client login is usually a separate item and I'd have it on every page. Legal stuff usually falls into About Us unless there is a ton of that info.

Do some searching on here. There's been a number of posts about SEO and related items. I think @callthatgirl has a free guide or two discussing that.

Thank you! I'm having a hard time thinking of a replacement word for Links, and I do agree with you on that. "Other" seems like it may work. On the SEO, yep, I'm going to commit to making some time to learn it, and I will check out what Callthatgirl has, thanks!

Choppie

 

[glennd]

Hello gang,
I have absoutley zero formal training on putting together websites. I have however, been playing around with them for many years on the side, not a real deep focus on the overall proper way to implant templates and edit them very well. This is one of my clients and good friends that I decided to help them free in my spare time by getting them on the internet. To make things worse, I just changed hosting companys, (a freaking nightmare in EVERY ASPECT), story for another thread, another time.

I would like some critique and advice and help in cleaning up this website, and maybe some advice on maybe using a better template. The website works well, and they are paying big bucks for google add words, to the tune of 100 bucks a day at different times.

I won't get too surgical with any questions on areas I think need work, so I'll just ask this...

What am I doing wrong, and how can I improve.

Oh.... are the legal disclaimers and privacy statements good enough...yeah i know....that's a loaded question...

Don't go easy on me... be a Steve Jobs.... brutally honest...haha...

https://thesearchenders.com/

This is an awesome forum...thanks everyone!

Choppie

Well, in the spirit of being "brutally honest", the grammar on the first 2 pages is not good, the punctuation is all wrong. Words are capitalised that shouldn't be, the choice of words is questionable. It comes across as rather amateurish. You should consider hiring a professional writer. I understand grammar is always controversial due to "evolving language" but I think this goes beyond that. If this is a professional service, they should be prepared to hire a professional writer.

Some examples:

Page 1: First sentence is missing full stop. Birth Mother, Siblings etc. Why are these capitalised? They are not proper nouns. "WE offer a <NO FIND>< NO FEE> Service." Some words are all capital. If you want to emphasize some words, consider using the <strong> tag or bold or italics and don't do it too much lest the whole text turn into a mess of crazy styles. Commas are inserted where they don't belong. For example, "we will spend our time, and our expenses ". There are more examples in the next few sentences. Don't discuss fee specifics on the first page. The whole first page is about "what we can do for you!". 'No find, no fee' is a selling point but leave it at that. Keep the specifics for elsewhere. "It means if we decide that we will take your case, " just "If we take your case" is fine.

Page 2: "and have tons of success in our history". That's pretty juvenile language, perhaps something like "with a high degree of success". " reach a point in our lives were we really " should be "where". " If your searching for " should be "you're". "WE offer these services " Why is that upper case?

And the comma diarrhea! I know people love to overuse commas these days and will attack me for being old and out of touch but they don't understand how it changes the meaning and flow of a sentence. It sounds alright in their head when they write it but it sounds like nonsense when I read it.
[/rant]

That's just picking on a few specific grammar instances. The bigger picture is that sentence construction could be better and the overall construction of the "big sell" could be better.

Anyway, my point is if you want to advertise a professional service I suggest you hire a professional copy writer.

ps. Nick looks an awful lot like Julia!

 

[GTP]

Some constructive criticism.
For someone with poor/failing eyesight the pink text on black background is very difficult to focus on, as is the blue on dark grey boxes with black text and the blue text on dark grey elsewhere on the blog page.
Made me dizzy trying to focus on it!

I agree with the comment about the grammar and sentence structure.

 

[Choppie]

All valid points, all make sense. I'm passing this on to them to give them some idea on how to get the these areas improved, my job is to LEARN how to dig in and edit these templates in the CSS code without breaking things. Yes the text should be a few notches lighter for better contrast...

Grateful for the comments, no comment is too brutal, keep em coming.... it gets me motivated...HA!

Choppie.

 

[Choppie]

On the grammar, just an explanation, I wasn't about to spend time going back and forth 200 times with them on what and how to write up their content, so I simply left it to them, give me what you want up there and I'll plop it in... but you guys are right, I shouldn't be this lazy...

Choppie

 

[Markverhyden]

On the grammar, just an explanation, I wasn't about to spend time going back and forth 200 times with them on what and how to write up their content, so I simply left it to them, give me what you want up there and I'll plop it in... but you guys are right, I shouldn't be this lazy...

Choppie

To be honest I've had horrible luck with some customer's and getting them to write up their own copy that was even passable. If the first pass is a fail I'll tell them that, politely of course, and give them a price to do it myself or some leads on professional copywriters.

 

[Your PCMD]

Ok, here I go.

Get rid of the More links. Everything in that is in the footer, where it should be.

Colors. Not a fan. Use #3f474b instead of #000 (black). The purple, replace with I dont know, #e7b315 would be better. Or in the neighborhood of it. Also that font. Use something other that Open Sans. Of which, you have it listed twice in the source. My recommendations would be the following.

For the body and all p (for paragraph) use either Raleway or Roboto and for all headers (h1,h2,h3, etc.) use Lato at 200 font weight.

You used a template it seems from wrapbootstrap.com which is fine, but there are better ones on there. The image in the header is pixelated. It appears to be New York? If so, I can provide you with better images as I just returned from vacation today from New York.

The site has a lot of dead space. For a site like that, in the way it designed should be on a boxed template and not full width.

 

[nerd2u]

I don't like the links > more links section to me it screams we didn't know what to put on our website so we just started adding junk

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[Your PCMD]

I don't like the links > more links section to me it screams we didn't know what to put on our website so we just started adding junk

Then you already know what you have to do. You as the designer should create a concept in the way it should look (modern and updated) and then a second in the way the client would want it to look. You should decide this in the initial consultation.

Don't go easy on me... be a Steve Jobs.... brutally honest...haha...

You got it....

paying big bucks for google add words

Why? They have Google analytics, they have a Twitter and a Facebook. But they have no SEO. If you just do a basic SEO and utilize those 2 social media platforms, there would be no need to spend (waste) money on adwords. Learn to use headers (H1, H2, H3, etc) because thats where Google and Bing pull keywords from for search engines, not from the meta keywords.

Ditch the sitemap html page and any links to it. The html version does nothing for you. Just use the XML generated one for use with web crawlers.

That Terms of Use needs major work and formatting while the Privacy page is OK, it lacks formatting.

Use a robots.txt and disallow everything from the clients section (same for the sitemap) and also disallow any folders from being crawled. You only want the main pages being crawled as this will generate a faster response for search engines.

As far as links go. Change Our Services to just Services. Client Login should be on the main bar and changed to Members and should NOT open in a separate window. (remove target="_blank").

Do they use Facebook ads? If not, remove the Facebook Pixel Code.

 

[master_tech]

Then you already know what you have to do. You as the designer should create a concept in the way it should look (modern and updated) and then a second in the way the client would want it to look. You should decide this in the initial consultation.


You got it....


Why? They have Google analytics, they have a Twitter and a Facebook. But they have no SEO. If you just do a basic SEO and utilize those 2 social media platforms, there would be no need to spend (waste) money on adwords. Learn to use headers (H1, H2, H3, etc) because thats where Google and Bing pull keywords from for search engines, not from the meta keywords.

Ditch the sitemap html page and any links to it. The html version does nothing for you. Just use the XML generated one for use with web crawlers.

That Terms of Use needs major work and formatting while the Privacy page is OK, it lacks formatting.

Use a robots.txt and disallow everything from the clients section (same for the sitemap) and also disallow any folders from being crawled. You only want the main pages being crawled as this will generate a faster response for search engines.

As far as links go. Change Our Services to just Services. Client Login should be on the main bar and changed to Members and should NOT open in a separate window. (remove target="_blank").

Do they use Facebook ads? If not, remove the Facebook Pixel Code.

I second this [emoji1474]


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