Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

All,

We are asking a few simple questions regarding our new site. www.homeprohub.com

• Does our message land quickly and correctly?
• About how long did it take for you to figure out exactly what we are all about?
  

• Is it clear that our new model is completely different than the old way of finding contractors to hire to perform home improvement projects? (we are starting with windows)
• Is the timing of the flash on the homepage right?

Our web design firm just posted our site to our public domain today. We are currently in development on the back-end software that will handle the postings, RFP's (Request for Proposal) and all transactions.....should be done in about 45 days. We are currently recruiting contractors for our Trusted Contractor Network. Once we reach ten contractors we will start contacting homeowners who sign up in the Greater Bay Area of N. California. All window replacement projects we spec will get posted to our site for contractors to bid on. We are predicting Jan. 2010 to be when we start to actually generate revenue. After we locate and fix all the bugs.

Thank you for your time!

Anybody?

Anything?

The home page is - confusing.  There's no clear path to follow until after the opening flash.  It seemed a bit too wordy with too many palaces to look for why I am there.  The rest of the pages were pretty good.

The site doesn't really emphasize how you are different from the other referral services.

P.S. We moved to the Boston area from San Jose recently.

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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Hi,

While your flash is nice there are of course issues using flash on a site. If the viewer watches the left side of your flash animation he/she has a while to wiat and view before the "learn more"/end occurs. They may not want to wait.

The right side of your flash animation has a good graphic of the cycle.

In general, it might be more effective to reduce the size of the flash section, make the cycle graphic more prominent, and leave room on your home page for sections for homeowners and contractors to click.

Your about page is interesting in that your graphics are ligthbox images (so viewers can see an enlarged image).  Not sure that's needed... but what would be better are links for the homeowner or contractors.

Services page - again have a link directly from the content viewers read in addition to or in place of the FAQ menu on the left. It's more user friendly AND you then actively direct the viewer to what you want them to do next.

Interestingly, there are no text links back to your home page (your logo does link back to your home page). So, maybe your home page is really just a splash/landing page and you do not think it is of much value to communicate your message.

SEO - "HomeProHub" is the first words for every web page title. As the first words, it affects search results more than later words. However, this approach is redundent and does not add much value because homeprohub is also your domain.

I did not see how your service differs from other sites that connect contractors and homeowners.

~Roland

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Thank you....thank you....thank you!

Very productive feedback! You guys really know your stuff!

I'm sure you have helped many members here. Very generous of you.