Please review design- small town offline consulting website

First impressions the site is clean and fresh looking, HOWEVER it's not clear what the site is about at first glance.

I personally think people won't know whether the site is a "marketing consultants" or "something to do with kid's fancy dress parties!"

The two things that take my eye are "FOCUS LOCAL" and the picture of superhero kids. Nothing suggests a marketing consultants until you actually read the text.

I think you need to change it, the site should jump out "Get more customers" or "make more sales" or "drive down marketing costs and get better results" at the moment it doesn't and that's ultimately what businesses want.


Just my opinion
Alex

Hi there FennFenn. I love the 'Birchport' logo and the fresh, clean, white and blue with red accent points. Very stylish.

But I do feel that you need to add in a good deal more information and visual hints to make your initial message absolutely clear. Something that will let your visitors know exactly what service/product is being offered, and how it will be benefit them.

Your home page image has been used a lot online already. I've seen that image all over the place over the last year, so it's a little tired now. Plus it doesn't really tell us anything about what the site is offering.

The titles stand out quite nicely (though I would consider using a heavier font), but again, they do not explain what the site is about. Take a look:

"Your Local Experts" - experts in what? What kind of expertise, and how can it help me, the customer?
"Recent Posts" - presumably for a blog... but why should I read it? What will I gain from visiting it? What info does it contain?
"You Have The Power - We show you how to use it" - what power exactly? The power to do marketing? Writing? Sales? How will you show me, the customer, how to use it? Have you experience in this area? Do you have any case studies in whatever it is you say you can do for me?

Your potential customers will all subconsciously be asking these questions as they scan your home page. Answering them will make the difference between them staying and simply clicking on the back button to go and check out the other 25 million options Google offered them...

You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of surfers who land at your home page. Here's a portion from an old blog post I wrote a while ago that illustrates these points. It's a bit lengthy, but I think it will help you...

Best wishes with the development of the site and the business!


Andrea, The English Webmistress

Let me tell you a few basic points to consider when it comes to structuring and laying out your website's home page text.

1. Start With an Attention-Grabbing Headline and Key Information Think carefully about exactly what the key message is for your website. As soon as your visitor arrives she must be able to work out *exactly* what you are offering her - the products, professional services and/or free gifts that will entice her to explore your site further need to be clearly understood. Try to create a quick-to-read and understand summary of this near the top of the page. The best way to do this is to work on an attention-grabbing headline that appeals your typical client.

2. Get the Message Across Before Suzy Surfer Starts to Scroll Pay particular attention to the pictures and text that will be immediately visible at the top part of the screen when your visitors arrive. We computer geeks call this top bit of the page – the part you see before you have to start scrolling down - the ‘first fold’. The text in the first fold needs to capture the interest of the visitor as quickly and as confidently as possible. Why? Well, research shows that most surfers make a decision whether to stay and explore a site within 7 seconds. Seven seconds! That’s about how long it takes to read the first two paragraphs of this section, and it’s about how much time you’ve got before Suzy Surfer makes up her mind about you and what you have to offer her. You can be pretty certain that if it’s not captured her attention in that time then... click! She’ll be gone. Presumably to one of the other 1,785,952 other search options Google.com offered her.

3. Keep It Interesting and To-The-Point Another fact the research tells us is that once you’ve captured your surfer’s interest, you’ll probably have their attention for about 3 minutes on average. So your other pages will have to offer them something deeper and more interesting to keep them on your site. Think about the last time you searched for a station you liked on the radio. Did you ‘surf’ from station to station, changing the dial every few seconds until you found something you liked the sound of? Did you perhaps change your mind about the station you chose after you'd listened to the first song? Keep that experience in mind as you prepare the text for your website. Visitors to your website will respond in much the same way. Most will make a quick 7 second check of the home page to decide if they’ll stay. If they do, they’ll spend about as long as it takes to play an average pop song to decide if they like the website.

Thanks Andrea! Very good points - straight talk, here we come.

the most i like from your site is the simpleness, and it's lacking of graphic. Hey, i didn't mean to offense but i like the style much. Very simple and clean.

but maybe you consider about placing a jQuery for image slider than that static images.

I think it's quite a nice site, by the time you can improve the layout. but at this time the important one is the content!

I think it's quite nice a nice website, by the time you can improve the layout. but at this time the important one is the content!