What Would You Do To Improve This Website

Thanks Ken! You know I was actually contemplating that very idea. I guess I'll have to take the plunge and do some research.

I would Consider you spacing your text out more. it seems to work better.

I have an odd question, and I apologise if I am out of line here... But shouldn't you already have some experience in the bare basics of Internet Marketing before you try to break into that market?

Hear me out... When you first start planning a website, you need to decide what market you are going to enter. This usually includes what kind of product, service, or offer you are going to promote.

You could promote AdSense banners, create a sales funnel to an Affiliate product or your own product, or build a list and promote things that way. Whatever your choice, this is going to have a large effect on the layout of your website.

For example, if you promote a digital product (Affiliate or your own), you will want a sales funnel that leads your visitors to the sales page. This kind of site may have a static homepage, with keyword focused articles leading people to this sales page. An AdSense website would be set up very different. The homepage would most likely be the Blogroll, showing the newest posts on the site. Each post would have it's own page, rank for its own keywords, and have AdSense banners in key locations.

These things come to me before I even put content on my sites. It's like installing Wordpress, publishing 50 articles, and then going back to do all the On-Site SEO. If you set up the basics before hand, you wont have to work as hard in the end.

As for your site now... I would change the theme to something that is a little more eye appealing. I would also change the font. The letters are a bit close together which causes them to be a little difficult to read. Also, if you are getting traffic from search engines, you may want to add H1, H2, and H3 tags to your pages. This will help them rank, and the keywords should be in those headers. Also, a few images could make the place a little more pleasent.

I'd advice you to change the color scheme and definitely work your heading/font sizes. Personally I use K2 (great lightweight theme) and the readability is awesome.

Sometimes we get lost with all the bells and whistles... when all we need is a light, fast, and readable website.

Hi Steve,
Your website looks nice. If you can put an opt in box at the upper right corner of the sidebar and offer your visitors a free gift like an ebook or videos or a newsletter, after entering their name and email address, this will help in building your list which is very helpful in IM.
All the best.

I've never used Artisteer, but that is a pretty ugly, plain theme. I would get a good theme and replace that. Woo has some great themes and some of them are free and look better than that.

I bought Artisteer myself a few months back, and haven't even looked at it yet. I've seen a number of sites built with it that look really nice, so the capability is definitely in there.

I agree with everyone else to change the theme totally and definitely add an opt-in box. Gotta take care of that list from the start.

I like the 'news' themes, myself. And you have a good start on content.

I'm not real big on the 'plain' layouts, myself, although many people seem to prefer it. And I don't like the current color scheme. I've definitely seen a whole lot worse, though, and at least you're out in the trenches digging along with the rest of us instead of giving a lot of mouth service like some WF members seem to do.

Here's an excellent online color scheme tool with lots of great options that may be of help:

http://www.colorschemedesigner.com/

Carry on, my man, carry on. When you make your changes, bump this thread back up so we can all take a look again.

Hi Steve,

I think it looks fairly good for a first shot. Several of your images are missing, but i'm assuming you know that. Other than that, it's a bit more left justified than I find visually comfortable. This is simply my take on it and i'd widen the left content a bit or even lose one of the sidebars to open it up. The right sidebar is disproportionately large and it pulls my eye away from your main content. If, however, that if your intent, it works!

Ok, made the change with a basic magazine theme for now. Please give me your opinions. I think it looks much more professional and easier to read. Thanks!

I would suggest that you aim to have at least one small graphic per article.

It breaks up all the text and will also make the home page look better and easier to read.

Much nicer! Yes! Much easier to read. The graphics look good without being too much. Easy to find everything. Good content already. Kudos!