My site redesign was put off for years, and it looked very 1990's for a long time..

(I am firmly of the belief that it makes very little difference to most potential clients what your own web design web site looks like - and you are better of spending the time actually contacting potential clients... ).

But anyway - here is the new web design site:-

Web Design, Newtownards, County Down, Northern Ireland - JMCWD.com

All comments welcome - but please note I am only willing to spend about one more hour on it!

Thanks...

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

A little boring.

I like:
1. Testimonials on homepage.
2. Your face with the Google logo. Excellent.
3. Everything of value is above the fold.
4. Clean, easy-to-use navigation.

I don't like:
1. photos link as I don't see how it relates to your web design BUSINESS.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Thanks for the feedback Dave....

You know - I agree with you about the photo link.

I am just scared to remove it as it is this site that brings in 95% of my passive income (from Adsense)...

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

Wow! So if you were choosing between contractors to say build an addition to your house, would you choose the one with the 1980's pickup that looks like a POS or would you choose the one with the conservative but nearly new truck? Obviously your market will determine some aspects of your look but I've never seen a situation where looking like the early 90's on the web was a boost to business. Since your market is web design, I can't imagine how many potential customers may have been turned off by a dated design. Of course I didn't see the old design so can't really make a judgment about it just your statement above. That said glad you updated!

The navigation for your site is great, very simple and makes it easy for me to get where I am going. You may want to check your CSS markup (W3C CSS Validator results for http://www.jmcwd.com/ (CSS level 2.1)) as there are a couple of errors in it. Personally I don't dig the picture on the right of the index page, first its in flash which I hate for all but the most difficult multimedia work, second it feels very washed out to me (I like your avatar here much much better).

The changing backgrounds are great but I think additional direct visual indicators (stock photos related to content inline with the content) would be much more powerful in communicating a sales pitch to your clients. I would really boost the content of the home page, first impressions are everything! A great in person sales pitch needs to be backed up online. What makes you different from the competition? Is your main draw that you are a local designer? If so I think that some facts about why a local designer is better would help a lot.

Overall I like the look and feel, if your site was truly early 90sish this is an excellent step forward!

Sidenote, track your links using server side log analysis or something like Google Analytics to see how much traffic the Photos link is directing from your webmaster site to the photo site. If its very low, removing one link will not significantly impact your search ratings. Also consider that a potential client may click on the photo link and get lost and forget to come back...

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Blog | Web Consulting

For the photo link, I think that would probably be more appropriate on the Portfolio page rather than a direct link. If you do want to keep it on the home page, perhaps create a list of some of the other sites you have done, list two others with the photos link.

I also agree that the home page content needs to be fleshed out. Reading that page, I get that you are local (not sure how many other design firms are in your area, but there are likely a few), that having you build me a web site is affordable (which every designer I talk to will tell me) and that your pricing is competitive (competitive = priced similar to everyone else). I don't read anything that tells me what you have to offer that your competitors don't, and as the content is sparse, I am likely to move on to another designer.

Also, the picture next to the Google Adwords seal is a nice touch, makes the site feel a little bit more personal. However, I would suggest trying a picture that is reversed (where you are facing slightly left, rather than right). People use visual cues to direct their eyes. One of the strongest cues is facial positioning, and the direction of a face in a photo near text can help guide the eye to the text. Generally, if the photo shows someone "looking" toward the text, it helps the user focus on that text. Otherwise, visitors get a subtle urge to look off to the side.

And of course, I wouldn't be myself if I didn't mention: Apache/2.0.52 is a rather old version and should probably be upgraded if possible. Also, the form mail system you have (Jack's Formmail.php 5.0) has what Secunia considers as critical vulnerability, where users can request arbitrary files on your server through the script. I would check to ensure you have patched the vulnerability (the script is no longer supported by the developer, the patch must be applied manually, as far as I know). The script also does not do much for maintaining the customer experience on your web site - the user is taken to a plain text page with no links back to your site. In addition, the script can be easily exploited to send spam. And I mean, really easily.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

All good points above and I agree as well... my only criticism is the background image justifies to the right when the site is opened full-screen... you should expand the width of your image to about 1500 or 1600 pixels, that way on the larger screens with windowbox shape, the background image will continue all the way across the page, and justify it to the left.
Otherwise, looks great
-puamana

I firmly beieve the exact opposite, clients will take a look at your website and your portfolio to see if they want their website to look like that.
It gives a clear indication of your level of skill and ability.

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Essex & London Website Design & Ecommerce Solutions UK
Bespoke shopping cart sites built to your requirements

Whao - thanks everyone for the comprehensive feedback...

I will move the photo link (although it opens in a new window so people are less likely to get lost and forget to come back to the main site) (and not many people visit my site never mind click on the photo link), check my css, and make sure the background centres on screen (not sure I will make it any bigger though as it already slows things down a lot for modem users)....

Re flash - I hate it as well - but more and more people have been asking for this type of thing - so at least it shows I can do it (I Guess)?

Very interesting about the direction of the face - I'll follow your advice and flip it round...

I'll speak to my hosts about getting the formmail updated (I actually find that a lot of people use this form rather than email and don't want to exclude people who use web mail and dont have their email clients set up correctly. I will try and change the confirmation screen also..

I'll put a bit more spiel in about local touch etc (not many designers in my area)..

Re clients looking at web sites - *most* people in my experience want to know what you have done for others locally rather than what your own web site looks like - although I admit that does not apply to everyone, I just think that it is easy to spend hours, and hours (and hours) making your web site look 1% better when 90% of your potential clients don't even know it exists and are more likely to act on a personal recommendation rather than start searching the internet for when they have very little knowledge in this area. NB - this doesn't apply so much if you are targeting national / international clients rather than just your local area (and is only in my experience in my wee area of Northern Ireland)...

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

Hi Jordan,

I think the site is very appealing-.

There's only one little nag that I need to add: on the "Prices" page the Pound Sterling sign (on line 34) is not entered as a special character ( £ ), hence in my FireFox 3.0 browser it renders as a little square with a question mark in it.
In IE 7.0.6100 and Safari 3.1.2 on Windows, the sign displays as intended.

In my editor (archaic Allaire HomeSite 4.5) there is a menu item Search | Replace Extended Characters; in Dutch and French texts I need to use special characters all the time.

Kind regards,
Stany

I'm going to stand out here but to be honest the site itself is okay. The pic of your face was cool but the fading in and out was kind of distracting to me.

A few other notes.

1. Your 'Home' button points to jmcwd.com/index.html. This should be changed as it can lead to duplicate content issues. I also checked the pages in your portfolio and they all link back this way.

2. Meta keyword missing. I know most SE's do not use them but it is said that MSN does and compares them to your page.

3. Meta name robots index follow can be removed as it does no good.

4. Your links page links your site to unrelated sites.

5. I agree with Dave. The photo link needs to go as it is not relevant to your site.

6. I did not find a sitemap.xml. You may want to make one and submit it to Google and Yahoo.

7. I noticed your page displays a status 200 and a 404 error. "It redirects back to the main page" Google does not like this.

8. Your page is not displaying correctly if a visitor tries to hit a page that is not in the root. Example:
jmcwd.com/images/ - it looks like the path to the style.css cannot be found.


What I did not see that I would have like to.

1. What schooling you have had in web design.
2. How long have you been doing it?
3. Can you do pages in php, asp, coldfusion or just html?
4. Can you build a page that: uses a CMS, is database driven, is dynamic?
5. Do you have any experience with e-commerce sites?
6. Do you design Yahoo stores, wordpress blogs?
ETC.

I personally would not use you if I were looking for a site designer due to those items listed and from looking at your page I feel you are a photographer first and web designer second.

I like many things about your page but I feel your page paints a picture about you and it is not a picture of a professional web designer.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

Stany, thanks I should have noticed the pound sign - fixed. Thanks.

amxfan -

Re home button - it does not point to an absolute link - here is the source:-

Re keywords meta tag - I recently removed this as the only thing this helps is your competition (apparently) - (I get about one MSN user every 15 years).

Re links not being relevant - a fair point - although I ahve tried to make them relevent on a local (geographic) level..

Re Photo - link - I will move this..

Re meta robots - Fair point - I did not even realise it was there (and it has been there for 3 years)..

Re sitemap.xml - I am with the guys who think this is a waste of time unless your site is *huge*.

Re 7. "I noticed your page displays a status 200 and a 404 error. "It redirects back to the main page" Google does not like this." - this is something that happens by default with my host - why is this a problem? (I thought it was a neat touch in that at least a user would see your home page instead of an error message?). Although I am sure it can be changed if necessary.

Re needing more techy jargon - I disagree unless your are trying to sell services to technically literate people (whic I'm not 99% of the time)..

But I do take your point about being a photographer first to a large extent....

Thanks gain to all who put forward points - I will bear them all in mind and sorry if I didn't mention your contribution directly...

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

I saw the source code. The point I was making was the link in your site review request lands you on http://www.jmcwd.com/ But once there if you hit the 'Home' button you goto http://www.jmcwd.com/index.html. SE's tend to see this as two URL's having the same content.

If you log into Google webmaster tools it is impossible to get your site to verify if your site reports a status 200 instead of a status 404. You would be better off to have a custom 404 error page that looks like the home page as long as it has 404 error in the header and report back as such.

That is a fair point, but another reason besides Google and Yahoo to have a sitemap is you can add it to your robots.txt file as stated on http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.php. This will help less intelligent spiders in crawling your site.

You know your clients better than I ever will. I was just pointing out that with the economy the way it is and with all the commercials on T.V. about working from home, and people are also looking at ways to make extra money, you could expand your horizons if you had this info. Maybe you do not deal with savvy people due to savvy do not give you a second look?

I do not mean to sound harsh nor am I trying to offend anyone, but I do try and be a little meticulous with sites that are advertising themselves as web designers as I feel these sites should be the epitome of what web design should be.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

I like the site. Your site is set up to invite people to call you, e-mail you or to fill out a form.

The only thing I would change would be "We aim to get back to you within 24 hours"

Change 'aim' to 'will'

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You should definitely have a KEYWORDS meta tag.
One never knows when Google/Yahoo will pay attention to it.
It can only help, not hurt.

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

amxfan - thanks - I will ruminate on these points... (No offence taken at any point..)

cw - thanks.

davebarns - this is something I cant make my mind up on, my inclination was to leave the keywords tag there - but apparently MSN is the only one that pays attention to it (other than your competitors) - and as they improve, they will probably drop it as well... ?

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

Regarding the homepage link, I agree with amxfan that this should be changed (from href="index.html" to href="/") and the index.html should be 301 redirected to the / form of the url.

As far as errors, the server does seem to respond with a 404 header when displaying the homepage content. However, Yahoo can sometimes be unpredictable with sites which serve the index page as the default error page. About six months ago, I saw Yahoo's Slurp spider barraging my site with made up URLs. When I researched this, I found out that Yahoo tries to index your average error page, and may remove pages that are similar, assuming that the page is giving the wrong error code. You may be able to create a custom error page by adding an ErrorDocument directive to your .htaccess file though.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

OK - many thanks!

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

I did not see the 404 response. But yes you are correct. It is there.

As far as Yahoo and it's trying to index your average error page. I see some interesting reading in my near future.

Thank you.
Nice catch.

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The Sensual Touch Lingerie | High Heels | High Heel Blog

I agree with DesignsO you are selling yourself first and foremost. Many folks won't even click to a portfolio if they are turned off by the homepage.

I agree that the clients that find your website, should not be turned off by it.

But this analogy is wrong. A company's quality of work and the vehicle they drive are different things.

A more appropriate analogy would be, if you were choosing a fashion designer to create a new line of clothes and two walked in.

First: Dresses like they just came off the set of Beverly Hillbillies
Second: Dresses wearing modern fashions and looks like they are up on the current trends.

*This was just the first analogy that I came up, as it has more to do with the subject at hand.

I agree with imvain2..

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional

Thanks again to everyone.

I am getting towards having implemented most suggestions.

There is one more thing I want to mention for future reference that I just noticed...

When using Safari 3.1.1 on Windows XP and typing in the domain name without the www. prefix, the screen formating was messed up - it looked like it was failing to read the css file - I have no idea why this would be, but rather than spend ages trying to work it out - I did another thing that I had been putting off for a while..

I added the following to my .htaccess file:-

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.jmcwd\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.jmcwd.com/$1 [R=301,L]

So the 'www.' version will always be used...

Thanks to 301 Redirects and www/non-www Canonical Problems for the code...

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Irish Wallpaper/Photos/Desktop Backgrounds|PPC NI| Google Advertising Professional