Critique my site please

Originally Posted by aandersen

We'll assume our reader got past that atrocious header area and made it to the content. Now what? You don't have a headline. You've given me absolutely no reason to go any further, and you need to change that ASAP. If you only listen to 1 thing I say, it should be this.

Picture yourself holding a copy of the Sunday paper. Are you going to read every page, from start to finish? Of course not! there are probably a couple hundred articles in there. Your going to flip through until a headline catches your eye, then you read that page... websites are no different.

You need something that makes them want to keep reading. Make a promise, nail the strongest benefit, lead into a story, etc. This is your one and only chance to "sell the article." This is where they decide if they're going to bother reading the first paragraph or not.

You also need to make your headline stand out a little more.

Make it bigger, change the color, underline it, do whatever you have to do, to get it read. Don't let it blend in to the theme. You want the headline to say, "HEY LOOK AT ME, I'M IMPORTANT."

Ditch the call to action under the headline

It's not time for that yet, you haven't warmed them up at all. If it was that easy to sell, why would you even bother with the review. You might as well just make a page with a headline and a call to action. At this point, you have 1 goal only... make them keep reading... you can call to action later.

I do, however, believe in having at least one strong, noticeable, call to action above the fold... Unfortunately, your current theme/layout makes this damn near impossible without disrupting the flow of the page. Once you change your layout, you can re-think your strategy on this.

Originally Posted by aandersen

We'll assume our reader got past that atrocious header area and made it to the content. Now what? You don't have a headline. You've given me absolutely no reason to go any further, and you need to change that ASAP. If you only listen to 1 thing I say, it should be this.