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Take a look at my business's website and tell me what you think? You can be as harsh as you want as I am looking for any sort of outside perspective, good and bad. As designers we often tend to make things we personally like, but someone else may disagree with the look of it completely.
If you take a look it would be much appreciated.
https://affordablemarketingguy.com/
Thanks,
Mitch Affordable Marketing GuyWhat differentiates you from every other web designer out there? I don't see a unique value proposition anywhere above the fold.
Regards,
Victor
https://victorfont.com/
Call us toll free: 844-VIC-FONT (842-3668)
Have you requested your free website audit yet?Mitch,
https://affordablemarketingguy.com/
That looks really good. You just showed me how far I have to go to make a really cool site. If you do not mind me asking what theme did you use?Thanks
Hey Mitch,
IMO it looks a bit dated. The graphics seem a little older-style and the top section of the home page is quite busy. Also (using Chrome) your navigation links are the same color as the backgrounds, so they are invisible until you hover over the links. I notice the same issue in the footer.
You've got some good content overall and a nice layout on the Genesis Themes page. The blog layout is simple and to the point, so that is good.
I may suggest changing the button styles a bit. I'm not 100% sure blue links on green background is good for accessibility.
All-in-all I think it is a solid start - some tweaking could certainly help improve!
All the best!
Matt
Matt Whiteley – WhiteleyDesigns, GitHub
Designing, Developing & Creating with WordPressHey everyone Thanks for the feedback!
Victor - The main target audience I am aiming for is people searching for affordable web design. Compared to my top competitors, I would have to say that I use a much simpler approach to creating the designs, no technical jargon, and a fairly affordable pricing point that offers everything a company would need at the start of any website.
Magnet - It's taken me quite a lot of time to get to where I am as I only just started the concept of my business a year ago and began learning WordPress and creating websites, and even now i'm making more and more adjustments. The theme I chose is called Hello Pro by Genesis.
Whiteley Designs - Could you describe what you mean by dated? The invisible links was just a problem with a plugin that has been fixed. Also, I agree with the buttons and am working on a better solution. As for the home page being busy, most of the text below the fold is more for SEO purposes than to actually grab people attention. The main points of interest for people should be the nav bar and three featured sections on the top half of the page.
Thanks again,
Mitch-
Consider increasing the image size of the five icons placed at the bottom of the page.
- When the display is on a single column, the five icons at the bottom of the page still placed on a single row. Instead they should be placed on five separate rows.
Hi Mitch,
Are you still looking for feedback? If so, my first impressions for what it's worth.
To begin with I reconsider focusing on being cheep the the main proposition. In general I would propose to aim for other qualities beside being cheep (or affordable) since in the end it's just a sideshow to what a customer is looking for and you yourself are not looking for people without budget, obviously. IMO price is only a discussion one needs to have when the value of a service is out of sync with the pricing, but in the end no-one will hire you for primarily the price. Price is only a condition, but not the main value of the proposition. So what's the real proposition? What people do you want to connect with and what are they looking for except affordability? What do they really need and what makes them tick? I miss the value proposition in your main presentation and I'm sure there is a better proposition in there somewhere.
Perhaps something like "We build professional websites for small businesses and start-ups" or "We focus on your website, so you don't have to" or "We'll design your website, so you can focus on your business" or "Fast professional websites, that earn their due" or "Professional websites for almost any budget" or "Professional websites that build your business", or whatever is your value proposition. If you work within a budget-range, you can specify that so you pre-select the right audience.
I remember older versions of Bill Erickson stating that his project size started with 5000 dollar and design + build tended to be a minimum of 12000 dollar. By stating that sort of thing, you don't get people that don't have that kind of budget or don't want to spend that much. "Fully functioning professional websites from 500 dollars" could also be a guideline that pre-selects customers and shows them that you can do it for that kind of budgets. The frontpage can be used somewhat like a landing page and might be a primary sales page on your website. Landing pages tend to be focused and use lots of lists and small texts in combination with icons and pictures and even video's.
To me the current design looks a bit outdated and that affects my expectation of you as a website designer. So what do you communicate and what do you want to communicate? Most modern websites I know use more whitespace, larger font-size and a menu-color the spans the entire width. An excellent example IMO is the current website of Bill Erickson, but also the StudioPress website is an excellent website to learn from. Remember that your own website implicitly communicates what your customers can expect and if it communicates excellence than they might want to explore if you can do it for them too. Otherwise, they may not trust on that and not look any further. They see your website before any other part of your portfolio, so it's design can WOW them from the start or make them leave depending on what they are looking for.
I would try adding more WhiteSpace and consider if a less busy Frontpage image would make the text on top of it more readable. The width of the content area in combination with the font-size, makes a less appetizing read. Having 124 letters on each line (excl. spaces) is not optimal for readability, probably between 70-80 would be more appealing.
An excerpt doesn't need to be that long. It's just an invitation to lure the interested reader in the article, so more focus and less text might work better than more text. Building interest or curiosity could work well. Try to focus the text a bit more and reduce it to the essentials.
Also it looks a bit strange to me that the paragraph text in "How we make your website better from the start" is larger than the other paragraphs. Consider using the same font-size for all paragraphs.
I would seperate the icons on the end more from the text above it. Perhaps differentiate the bg-color perhaps, or something.
Also you could add a contact-form on the bottom. I remember a previous version of Bill Ericksons website that ended with a "Let's Talk" form. The visitor knows immediately what is meant by the page if you add something like that.
Since one of your focus-points is the use of the genesis framework, I would consider the qualities of that framework and communicate them in your design. Most genesis themes are setup with lots of whitespace, larger font-sizes and tend to be rather minimalistic instead of offering all kinds of js-attractions. Genesis themes are focused on speed and readability before anything else. In stead of offering lots of moving parts, they tend to focus on simple and appealing content-presentation, professionalism, speed of delivery and effectiveness in serving the goal of the website. If your theme reflects all that, it would be fitting within the business you choose.
Well, I hope there is something of use in the above. Off course it's only my impression and perhaps your preference is totally different and I respect that. I hope your business will flourish.
Cheers, Hans
Your web site looks good. But I think Hans has very good points. Simply adding more white space between sections will make the design appears modern and more attractive.
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