Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

• My business is to assist authors in designing their book for publishing, in addition to anyone who might want a company manual, brochure or newsletter. While I realize I need to add more keywords to my other pages, I do have some for the first page and am hoping to get hits from search engines.
• I designed it myself, with the goals of showcasing previous customers and the publications I assisted them with. It has taken me over 80 hours in total as I had to learn how to use the program (Office Live), I had several documents to upload (letters of recommendation), and am still working on putting together samples of the work I`ve done that will be added to my "Publication" page. 
• I realize I need to complete my "Frequently Asked Question" page so no need to look there at the moment, although I did put up a "currently under construction" there, and in my footer.
• I have utilized the "Ad Manager" aspect and created an ad, although I did not spend much money it for now but will do so later.

1. Are the "Testimonials" from clients too long? I took the letter of recommendation they wrote me (which is viewable when clicking on their name) and added their comments. I also added their photo, if available, and if not I added their logo.
2. On the "Publication" page, I have three sample publications that can be viewed as a PDF. Two of them I created a cover page and a description of the project. These two are: (1) under Carroll, F. Laverne INTERNATIONAL LIBRARIANSHIP -- Cooperation and Collaboration and (2) Chaplin, James Crossword and Word Search Puzzles. The third one, Die Kindsmorderin, I did not apply the cover page. I did add a watermark, however, and would like comment on that as well as to the proper verbiage.

Testimonials .... Not so much too long, but the small font is hard to read ..... if you increase it, then they may appear too long then.

In general .... there are some display issues I personally think you need to address.

1) You have different fonts and font colors/sizes on different pages, which has a loss of consistency, in my opinion .... I would keep your pages more in tune with each other.

2) On your main page, there are 2 images on the left side ..... if I have Firefox sized rather narrow, they line up correctly on the left, but it I expand/widen my browser, the lower image floats right and is totally out of place. I believe it happens on your testimonial page also.

Just my opinion .... Office Live is not a good site builder .... hiring a designer or using a premade template would end up performing much better.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I  am not an expert, on websites.  But I do go to sites a lot.  I Think your site is very good except for testimonial  page. The first page really got my attention and made me curious, to see what you could do for me.  The page about me is very good and if I needed that kind of service you would get my business.
Testimonial page is all over the place having to scroll back and forth to read it.

I tried the testimonials in italics on our site, and had the same problem. Although in print, they look great, they somehow don`t work as well online. What I ended up doing was using CSS to put the testimonials themselves onto a different background color, with a different margin. But I kept the same basic Arial font for readability. It seems the Arial italics work, but Times Roman would need at least 2 point-sizes larger.

I don`t think they`re too long---people want to hear what other customers have to say, and if that`s what they said...that`s what they said. You can have fewer testimonials that are longer, or more of them that are shorter. At least that`s how I see it.

I tried some of your links in the two pages, and they either didn`t go to a location that enhanced your content, or they weren`t all that interesting. Two of the PDF books really don`t at all show off your skills. There weren`t any covers, no TOC, and so forth. So take another look at the actual destination URL and ask yourself if it helps or hinders (or does nothing) the point of the content on your site, at that location.

I really like the changes you`ve made to the home page content. That really helps a lot. What I`d add would be that you also provide PDF format end-product. It may just be you forgot, but it`s important that people know. :-D

Also, if there`s any way at all for you to pick up a link to Amazon for one of your publications, that would offer some enhanced credibility and strength. If not, okay, but it`d be nice to send your visitors to a major online bookstore and say, "See? This is also some of my stuff." :-D

As far as the fonts, personally I would use the same font for the main text of each page, then a second/third font for headers, quotes, etc. 2-3 fonts are fine, it`s just in how you use them ( mostly my opinion here ).

The image alignment is a coding/css issue, more than likely. I`m not sure how much control you have over it with the program you used.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons