Hi folks, I'd like a real "gloves off" review of is4profit - Free Small Business Information & Advice please.

I have some very strong views of the site myself but I'd really appreciate some peer reviews in order that the next design of is4profit.com gets some excellent input.

Feel free to constructively criticise and offer any suggestions for improvement; tell me your likes and dislikes, what's missing, what features would you like to see improved, added etc?

Many kind thanks in advance.

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go green | opel manta | national minimum wage

Paulo,

I see lots of empty white spaces.

I think the URL should be .co.uk as this site is only useful for those residing in the UK.

The look is fine.
Your content appears to be original.

,dave

P.S. What is the point of an Opel Manta site that doesn't have the Manta jokes?

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com

Hi Dave,

Thank you for your input.

Empty spaces? Hmm... we run a number of ads, so either the adserver isn't delivering or there's ad-blocking going on. Or is that the space on the RHS of the page? The site was designed for 800px resolutions and we're considering upping this to cater for the common 1024px desktop.

Interesting that you've picked up on the .com issue. We've got a UK IP address and a UK audience plus in Google's webmaster tools we've made sure the geographic target is UK too, just to make sure. What do you think the improvement might be for us if we were using our .co.uk address instead? There's 7 years of indexing at the .com so what might the issue be with using .co.uk instead?

The content is original, so no problems there.

As for the Manta jokes... you're right maybe I should The big joke is that mine needs a starter motor and has done for the last 5 years!

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go green | opel manta | national minimum wage

Me love AdBlock Plus addon to Firefox.

Seven years with the .com. I would then change words on homepage to emphasize UK focus.

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com

Ah, AdBlock Plus for Firefox... I saw you mention that in another post just after I asked

The vast majority of our visitors are UK, well over 90%, do you think that mentioning UK more often will increase that percentage?

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go green | opel manta | national minimum wage

I turned off all ad blocking before I visited your site and yes it looks like you have an issue with the ads being displayed as all of them came up 'server not found'.

I also think the page would look a lot better centered then align left. The big white space on the right does not look right.

I took two screen shots of your site so you can see how they appeared on my end.
picture 1 picture 2
Pictures are full size as I did not shrink them, so they may take a while to load.

I also noticed your site loaded slowly. I believe it was because of the ad-servers timing out.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | HitmanSEO

Thanks, amxfan, I much appreciate your feedback too.

I'll look into the adserving issue, where are you viewing from?

I agree with you on the left/centre issue. It was always my preference to centre the design and create a wider header to address the whitespace issue... do you think a 1024px design would better suit being left-aligned or again should that be centred?

Thanks for the screengrabs, good to see you're using Firefox. Yeah, the ads timing out makes it look a little less pretty - I'm wondering if there's a graceful solution to this? Hmm...

Speed is an issue too, again I'm wondering if there's a solution to loading the ads last on the page... I think some clever css might help out in this department...

Thanks again all for your contributions.

Anyone else have anything to point out? Your input could help in making this site really useful for the users...

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go green | opel manta | national minimum wage

I'm on a 10MB line deep in the woods of North West TN. "we have cable but no cell phone service at or close to the house"

My personal preference is center the page no matter what the width is. If you set your page to 1024px you may also come into a issue. Some people still do run 800x600res. Now yes they are few and mainly tend to be your older, over 50 generation and younger people who are not that computer savvy and are using older boxes with small monitors due to their lack of computer / internet knowledge and also their financial standing. Unless your page autosizes, I would not change the width, but I do not know your visitors as well as you do. Looking at your page I could see you getting hits from people running 800 x 600, but is it enough to worry about?

If you come up with one, please let me know but I have found once you rely on somebody else's server but the one you are paying for, you start getting into issues.

As far as using Firefox, is there another browser? Even if some people do think that IE is better, I wouldn't use it just because it is Microsoft. "Microsoft: use it if you have to, Ditch it if you can."

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | HitmanSEO

I notice that the hover background color for your links on the left side doesn't behave consistently; the background for some links darkena s you hover, doesn't for others.

Have a look in firefox with firefly installed and on. I'm seeing lots of javascript errors (could be because I'm behind a firewall and somethings not downloading properly)

I think you have both types of Googles analytics in your page (which they don't recommend).

I'm getting acres of white space on the right too (prob because the javascript isn't working).

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Markgreat
Homes by Speyside
Tickets!

I'd design the site for 1024 and center align it. Seems to have a lot of flash banners that make it hard to read anything on the site.

Left menu seems small a and a little hard to read. The site seems to be banner ad heavy to me and small.

Just my two cents.

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Custom Website Designs | Rubber Bracelets | Silicone Bracelets

The content is good, but the format makes me feel "boxed in."

What looks like wasted space on the right-hand side does need to be addressed.

I am not keen on the positioning of the adverts. They are intrusive, IMO.

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http://www.thatsnews.org.ukhttp://thatsnews.blogspot.com
http://thats-business.blogspot.com/

Oops, I got distracted for a few months.

I totally agree.

I have deliberated over this for a long time... fixed width designs allow for prefect planning whereas the 800-1024px option adds a degree of uncertainty but does quite literally present a graceful approach to the issue. I know 5% of users on 800x600 isn't a big percentage overall but when that accounts for many thousands of users you realise that there's a lot of people to consider!

LOL I have to admit to a certain fondness for Safari, old versions of Opera (6.4) and Flock... they all serve different purposes as Firefox feels like it's starting to get a little bloaty now, or is that all the amazing add-ons that I have plugged into it that are slowing it down?

Well spotted - I don't know why that is but I shall look into it for the next version...

Hmm, I'll look into that, thanks. I am indeed running 2x sets of stats packages for now.

[quote=janeth;370345]I'd design the site for 1024 and center align it./QUOTE]Hi Janeth, LTNS. I'd certainly like to optimise for 1024 and centre, so that's good.

If there's a trick to make them work but be less intrusive I think it'll be the 1024px layout which will make the ads less intrusive.

Points, noted. Thanks Janeth.

Agreed. The site was once line-skips, gradients and rounded edges before they became "the norm". A definite softening is required.

A centred page and a subtle background might help in this department.

Is there any place on the page they would be better suited?

Thanks all so far and any more input is greatly appreciated.

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go green | opel manta | national minimum wage