www.synotrex.com - site review

paulhiles · #1 (**permalink**) 05-02-2005, 08:35 PM

I've recently been working on a new site (Synotrex.com), and I'm now seeking further suggestions on how the site might be improved. The main purpose of the site is to promote a new joint pain remedy. I've added relevant RSS newsfeeds to the homepage, worked on internal page linking, and I'd love to know what else I could do to improve the site's optimisation.

I would appreciate your feedback and any constructive criticism would be gratefully received. As an added incentive, the site owner has pledged to give $100 in cash / vouchers to the person who gives the most useful suggestions. In addition, bottles of free product will be sent to anyone offering helpful suggestions as long as they provide their mailing address.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Paul

snowflakegirl · #2 (**permalink**) 05-03-2005, 12:53 AM

Your site is well designed and easy to navigate and read. I like the hexagon imagery and the blue navigation buttons.

It is also very informative. No popups, no new windows...ooops! These will make problems for some users.

When I searched several of your keywords, the results cae up with 3,270,000 entries. That's a lot of competition. I can only suggest you research your top competitors, count their keywords and optimize those keywords into paragraphs.

I suggest now you take on some accessibility improvements, especially since at least some of your customers will have mobility problems. I looked through your site with stylesheeting and images off.

These pages are a bit tough since there are images without alt tags:
http://www.synotrex.com/form-order.html
http://secure.ultracart.com/cgi-bin/...TRX&ADD=6MONTH, 1 month and 3 month

You might try tabbing through your pages to see how tiring it is to navigate with no mouse.
Skip Navigation is good to learn and apply to websites. (I'm just learning about this myself) but skip navigation allows disabled users to bypass repetitive navigation keys.

Here are a couple of ada links to get you started:

5 minute Quick check for accessibility on your web site:http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/accessib...evelopweb.html

http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/

Have fun!

paulhiles · #3 (**permalink**) 05-03-2005, 08:05 AM

Hi snowflakegirl, thanks for your excellent suggestions.

The links creating new windows are from the RSS feeds, and the rationale behind that decision was not wanting to lose any visitors to the site. I do realise there are accessibility issues here, I guess it's all checks and balances. Any other ideas for keeping the visitor on the site?

The MIT accessibility checklist looks very useful, and any improvements in this area will hopefully benefit the site's overall usability.

I do have some reservations on the "skip navigation" feature. I've seen it used on sites with horizontal menus and it works quite well.. I'm just not sure how it would work with this particular layout. We shall see! :o)

Those missing ALT descriptions will be fixed ASAP.

Thanks again!

Paul

Narasinha · #4 (**permalink**) 05-03-2005, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by paulhiles

I've recently been working on a new site (Synotrex.com), and I'm now seeking further suggestions on how the site might be improved. The main purpose of the site is to promote a new joint pain remedy. I've added relevant RSS newsfeeds to the homepage, worked on internal page linking, and I'd love to know what else I could do to improve the site's optimisation.

Hello Paul,
Looks wonderful (I expected no less). I guess I still have to work harder to talk you into table-less layout with XHTML, eh? *grin* The arthritis-relief.gif at the top-right corner makes the page scroll just a tiny bit on an 800x600 resolution in IE6, but not in Opera8. Fortunately, only the graphic scrolls off to the side, not the page content.

It looks a bit odd to me with the h1 in smaller text than h2:

h1 - Synotrex - Advanced Joint Pain Relief Formula
h2 - Synotrex

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it still looks "odd" to me.

Very clean professional design. I give it a thumbs up.

Best Regards,
Dan

pagetta · #5 (**permalink**) 05-03-2005, 11:26 AM

I agree its a great looking site and very easy to navigate - but again just a couple of other accessibility comments

If your text is in 'largest' it throws out the design a bit - a white line appears top left, and the text overlaps the bottom of the blue rectangle - a lot of older people may read it like this.

Also, the information on arthritis is extremely useful and interesting, but the links to it are at the bottom of the page. An older person using this may well have difficulty using a mouse and scrolling down - it might be nice to have them somewhere a bit more prominent.

In the same way, all the info on arthritis is quite long pages - I probably wouldn't be able to sit and read through it on screen - maybe a 'print' button for all the information would make it a little easier to go through.

My only other suggestion is that maybe at the head of the home page you could have some sort of 'feature' that takes you straight to products etc, so it is instantly there for you to clcik through to.

However these are quite picky - its a really well designed site - very proffessional and slick without being too 'over designed', in keeping with your audience. Good luck with it all!

paulhiles · #6 (**permalink**) 05-04-2005, 07:57 PM

Thanks Dan and pagetta! I really appreciate your feedback, I'm sure the site owner does too!
Dan, I have actually done a couple of sites recently in pure CSS/XHTML, so your efforts are not in vain, believe me! I didn't feel this particular build needed a particularly cutting edge layout, I was keen to make it appear solid and reliable, without looking outdated, which I hope comes across! :o)

Thanks again for all your feedback, and feel free to add any further comments.

Paul

Paul B · #7 (**permalink**) 05-05-2005, 09:50 AM

Some observations:

The site trips the hoizontal scroll bar at 816 pixels wdith. That could easy by rudeced to under 800 and let 30% of visitors off see the scroll abr.

The 'roll-over' effect in the menu is too weak for my taste. I'd make the change stronger.

This line is stopping validation:
Line 54, column 196: non SGML character number 146

As to your request for optimization:

You have empty meta tags on pages other than index.html

Page titles - probably one of the most important factors for google - don't maximize their potential:

"Synotrex :: About Synotrex :: Advanced Joint Formula"

Will people actually search for 'Synotrex' and 'joint formula'? Or will it more likely be someting like 'pain relief arthritis' or 'stop arthritis pain'

If you look at your keywords, you wil find that:
'joint' 'pain' & 'synotrex' are ahead of 'arthritis'

In 2 word phrase keywords, 'joint pain' 'advanced joint' 'synotrex advanced' 'pain relief' 'relief formula' 'formula synotrex'

It's the same with 3 word phrases too. My thinking is that 'arthitis' which show the following daily searches in Overture for March:
190725 arthritis
64850 rheumatoid arthritis
51950 arthritis pain
36111 arthritis pain relief
34810 arthritis treatment
9075 arthritis foundation
6328 arthritis symptom
6177 psoriatic arthritis
6114 arthritis doctor

'Arthritis' a far more targetted keyword than 'Joint pain' which has a far lower return anyway:
13679 joint pain
2792 joint pain relief

paulhiles · #8 (**permalink**) 05-07-2005, 07:57 AM

Terrific stuff Paul B! I do appreciate you taking the time to make some very pertinent observations. I'm particularly grateful for the comments on optimisation, I'll pass these on to the site owner who will be reviewing all the recommendations.

Thanks again!

Paul

PS. The validation error is created by links from an external newsfeed. Any ideas how I can get around this problem? The site validated perfectly prior to the introduction of the RSS feed.