What do you think?

hdinstallers · #1 (**permalink**) 11-28-2006, 08:10 PM

Very basic site. 72 pages. Just HTML and some light JS. Tell me what you think...

HD Installers : Home Theater Installation

Nobody I work with has an eye for design and I'm more of an IT guy than a web guru so any feedback would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks for your suggestions.

davebarnes · #2 (**permalink**) 11-28-2006, 11:34 PM

Tacky.
Low rent appearance.

Blackicicle · #3 (**permalink**) 11-29-2006, 12:14 AM

My suggestion is to learn to use html tables or css sheets and use it to copy a site that you think look good using tables or frames. And loose the stars all over the place. The gallery layout looks good, looks like a lot of work was put into it.

Dubbya · #4 (**permalink**) 11-29-2006, 02:39 AM

Your site is up and running. Good for you! Now sit back and evaluate how you'd improve it. Define a budget and timeline.

Look at your competition and see how they've done things. Don't just copy their website. Find a site layout and design you like and develop a site that transmits the message and corporate image you want to convey.

There are tons of website template sites out there that'll help you get started at a very low cost, most start at around $50US. The graphics and basic layouts are done and they'll probably come with the CSS stylesheets too.

You don't have to use templates but they're a great source of inspiration if you've decided to do it yourself and you're just starting out.

If you've got the budget, you might also consider getting a Graphic Artist or Web Developer to design a new site for you.

You've already got some great content and your domain name and hosting are set up so you're way ahead of the game.

ronchalice · #5 (**permalink**) 11-30-2006, 07:51 PM

The SiteBuilder tool provides a ton of templates (their features blurb states 380+ for Version 2.3.1) that you can start from. Your content is high quality and the gallery looks very impressive. The plethora of fonts is very distracting as are the 10-star logos. A good template will allow you to standardize the font face, and the various highlight and block colors. Another key consistency item is the photo-object of the van in the header, but several pages with a line drawing of a similar van. Perhaps stick with the photo-object througout. Reduce the use of the 10-star logo to 1 or 2 KEY places in the site. I would put up a separate page for the 10-Star warranty and use the logo once on that page.

These are simple changes that can be done in a few hours at most to present your quality content in a much more consistent and "corporate image" manner.

edhan · #6 (**permalink**) 11-30-2006, 11:02 PM

Your site is plain and fast loading. But if you can learn html to improve the outlook, it will be better.

getmea · #7 (**permalink**) 11-30-2006, 11:20 PM

Having a G--gle ranking of 3/10 is pretty good for a "plain" site (as a couple of people have mentioned above).

Be a little daring, but don't downgrade the content.

A little curious about one of your 76 pages...why is it defined as 1236 x 4800? I saw an awful lot of white space ... around 80% of the entire page.

Good luck!

xenu · #8 (**permalink**) 11-30-2006, 11:22 PM

I see nothing wrong with it. It is clean and simple and gets to the point.

ran_dizolph · #9 (**permalink**) 12-01-2006, 10:22 AM

it looks as if it was built by someone with limited/no design experience...just as you said.

@Blackicicle: don't suggest to new people to build websites using tables...if it makes no difference to them anyways, they should be using table-less design.

back to the site. it seems to serve it's purpose, but is quite unrefined. if you're not confident that you can do better, hire someone to do it for you. if you are interested in doing it yourself, there are loads of tutorial sites out there.

Pixel2life is one i like...lots of stuff.

best of luck!

Tony_V · #10 (**permalink**) 12-01-2006, 06:17 PM

I went from plain to getting as fancy as you can get, and I'm headed back to plain as the key to ranking well with the engines as well as the viewers. I have found that the fancier you make your site the more people think it to be commercialized, spammy. Not that this isn't a good thing sometimes, like maybe on a shoe site or some other ecommerce site.
I manage tons of sites, and the trend I am seeing, is more traffic on the plain, heavy text sites that provide a great service. and I am thinking this is likely due to heavy keyphrase through out the site.
Also, keeping your site trimline like this goes lighter on the code. Meaning that you do not have to wory about making sure you set up your links right, or images with alt text etc.. to capitilize on robot crawls and indexing.
I have also noticed more visitors book mark these types of sites over the more graphic intense fancy flashy nick nacks. ha-

anyway, hope this helps.

and, Yes, your site is great. Good Job for an IT person. lol

JohnX · #11 (**permalink**) 12-01-2006, 06:36 PM

Your site looks "non-corporate" - looks like a real person is going to come and set up my system.
You're getting really good advice about possibly tweaking the design - but to me - either go really high end and look expensive or leave it - no amount of tweaking is going to change the look really.
I might be tempted to call this site because I like working with small personal businesses.
Just my 2cents.

nseidm1 · #12 (**permalink**) 12-01-2006, 09:18 PM

I like it. The homepage is not tooo long, and the links are placed clearly at the top. Try centering the page to see how it looks, but its up to you in the end. Even when the page is centered, left justified text still looks good. Sitebuilder makes it easy to center, if you have any issues let us know.

richardhaigh · #13 (**permalink**) 12-02-2006, 07:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnX

Your site looks "non-corporate" - looks like a real person is going to come and set up my system.
You're getting really good advice about possibly tweaking the design - but to me - either go really high end and look expensive or leave it - no amount of tweaking is going to change the look really.
I might be tempted to call this site because I like working with small personal businesses.
Just my 2cents.

I must say I agree entirley with JohnX, and this is something i think the professional side of web design sometimes looses sight of. I like to think my site has a balance between looking good without looking like an international business that charges over the odds and doesent deliver! Too often sites are designed to impress rather than to reflect the business! And while it is very nice to have a very impressive site, some clients who prefer to use the local small guy who provides the service and response would be put off by an all singing all dancing site.

My little bit of advice on the site would be to define paragraphs and use more spacing. Make good use of titles for the paragraph so the end user can easily distinguish what content is relevant to them.

While it is important to rank well and have the search engines list you in a priorty place, if the end user cannont find quickly and easliy the content they require then they will not spend long on your site and you will loose potential business, which defeats the object of a web site.

Your site is quick, simple and to the point, just dont make it too intense, and dont be scared to reduce the font size a little bit, this will make it appear more manageable to the end user.

All in all, i see nothing wrong with it, if it brings you one new customer then its working, just becuase it isnt singing, flashing and sparkling doesent mean its a bad site!

ronchalice · #14 (**permalink**) 12-03-2006, 07:13 PM

Not to harp, but one more brief note on a "corporate" appearance. Your demographic is still in a rather limited high-end market, with less than 20% of the US population likely to buy HDTV in the next year, even less for full blown home theater. Of that 20%, nearly a third are in the 18-27 demographic, unlikely to purchase installation services... Your site needs to have a high end presentation to make the Boomers and Echo Boomers feel comfortable about writing checks with more than a couple of zeros.

Where do people that spend several grand at a pop on entertainment feel comfortable spending their money?
Dubbya's suggestion was a very good one. Look at your competition and see what they're doing.

nevboyle · #15 (**permalink**) 12-04-2006, 01:20 AM

Yes it looks a bit low tech, but I like it. It is easy to see what we the customers get. Most people who want home theatre etc are not techos and will relate to your site quite well. Good luck.

Scott Adie · #16 (**permalink**) 12-04-2006, 08:56 PM

Your site is fast loading and easy to navigate, that's imperative and you've done a good job.
You could use some graphic enhancements to what you already have on your site. Any decent graphic artist can correct your picture exposures and colors for a nominal fee which will make your Gallery more appealing to end users. It wouldn't be a bad idea to take the reflections off of monitor images that have them either. And for those shots that have a monitor not turned on, a photo image can be placed on them. Just make sure they are not over-the-top in image quality so they look fake. If you make the images look as they really would with the monitor on, there is nothing wrong with this representation.
You did well for an initial effort.

Tony_V · #17 (**permalink**) 12-05-2006, 02:00 AM

to further ad to my point, check out the pr at http://www.sbasmallbusinessloans.com/ which has only a background image, and heavy text.

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