Feedback on this design please

[ajkendall]

Hi guys,

Been a while since i've made a topic in here so i'll try and keep this short and sweet. Basically i'm looking at doing some freelance web design work with a friend in our spare time so we've brought our services together and come up with the following design. Let me know what you think:

Cheap Web Design UK

Please be honest in providing feedback, as i always say both negative and positive comments help build a stronger design.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Alan

 

[-NC-]

The design is very professional, in fact when I first saw the site, I was convinced that you had simply grabbed a template from one of the bigger template sites.

This is both a good thing ( professional design ) and a bad thing ( does not look original )

Personally speaking, any time I see background stripes I can't help but think "another web 2.0 template".

However, I think that none of the above will matter at all to your prospective clients ( which appears to be small businesses ), in fact I think your site will be attractive to small businesses, in particular:

- the design will impress them
- the price statement on the home page is reassuring
- the copy is high quality, excellent use of language
- excellent use of copy space to describe your services succinctly on the homepage

things which imho seriously need improvement:

- the left hand nav is slow and clunky
- clicking on the main headers on the left hand nav should take the user directly to the main page for that section. if i click on home, i expect and want to be taken immediately to the homepage for your site. i do not expect to have to watch a menu slowly unfold, and then click on "welcome".
- your server appears to be running very, very slowly
- your hosting is based in the US, but you are selling to the UK, i would recommend purchasing hosting with servers in the UK. page load time is important


things which imho are not critical but should be looked at:

- the text rendering in the homepage flash is of poor/medium quality which stands out next to the good quality in the logo
- the favicon is just a coloured square
- the "3" in the "1. 2. 3." in the flash does not line up with the 1. and the 2.
- somewhat inconsistent link text, e.g. lots of links with different text all go to /medium/ ( though I do realise this is for seo purposes )


everything is :imho hopefully there is some useful feedback for you in there somewhere amongst all the nasty things i said

 

[SEO Montreal]

"Cheap Web Design UK, Cheap UK Websites, Affordable Web Sites" - Naughty Naughty keyword spammer. And again ... you provide "cheap web design UK"? Is that cheap as in I can't construct a proper grammatical sentence cheap? Besides, do you really think those few words are doing a whole lot for your rankings? If I'm a potential client and know anything about search marketing (and I personally do) and see that on your site, I'm out in a flash, no pun intended. Sorry if I'm a bit harsh, but you're being silly with a good looking, clean and easy to use site when you don't need to.

Anyways, your copy makes it seem easy to get online, which is always a plus for small business. You might want to clarify what a "domain name" is ... some allusion to .com or .co.uk should suffice.

 

[Mike]

The design is solid, the marketing is not. It's pretty evident where your strengths are
Get a more educated and target group focused headline together. Your keyword approach doesn't mean anything to the customer. Remember, you're not here to satisfy Google, MSN, Ask and all the other multi billion dollar corps, you're here to serve the small to mid sized business. While cheap matters to them, if you rub it in their face, you're not going to convince them.
For one, cheap is a term that's a "no-no" from the get go. If you MUST use something like that already, for your own sake, go with "Affordable" or "Small Business Oriented", etc. Something where your target group can identify themselves with.
Furthermore, even if you use the hip tag line approach and word your content accordingly, you'll have to demo some results. Why, as a small business owner would i go through you? What's my benefit? Higher customer retention? More online sales? What's my success in handing you my potential online future.
Previews of existing projects is great, show me some success numbers, though.
If you don't have any, call your former/existing clients and get them. If i hear that my business may be picking up percent x, then i might be more inclined to pay you for your services.

Ok, enough rant, you know where i'm going with this. You're providing a service, thus Customer Service Excellence HAS to be the first thing on your mind.

IB

 

[sOliver]

Hi guys,

Been a while since i've made a topic in here so i'll try and keep this short and sweet. Basically i'm looking at doing some freelance web design work with a friend in our spare time so we've brought our services together and come up with the following design. Let me know what you think:

Cheap Web Design UK

Please be honest in providing feedback, as i always say both negative and positive comments help build a stronger design.

Thanks in advance for any comments.

Alan

Pretty slow loading for me (germany), but I like the clean design.
Personally I would add a real favicon and maybe a logo for "design oven". If people save your site as a bookmark it's important to have a favicon, people will remember your site immediately.

The stripe_background.jpg is not so great and I see it too many times nowadays, you could remove it or try to fill the whole background with it.

The javascript menu is working great for me, pretty neat and fast.

Maybe highlight your best offers (99$ is pretty cheap for a prof. design) .. just an idea.


Great work.

 

[freediver]

It took a while to load in my case not a good thing.

I like the design though, it is webbish 2.0 but I think you should point out better what you are selling.

 

[notlikeyou]

It took a while to load in my case not a good thing.

ditto, first thing I though was this better be the best design ever if it takes this long to fully load. Kill a bit of the "flash" and focus on quality.

 

[ajkendall]

thanks for the comments and feedback, some excellent pointers there, cheers