Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Peter - this site is appealing to me.  I like the layout of it and obviously I liked the design or I wouldn`t have put it up.

Please expand on what you feel is wrong with the design.  You have made generic comments that the design does not look professional but this was based on a template that I found on a professional website design site.

Other than the graphics, that I agree need to be cleaned up - but I am not a graphic developer and it takes time to get custom graphics done.  And the fact that people don`t like the font.  But LMC is correct that my target audience is VA customers and not necessarily web design customers - so that is why I am hesitant to go for all the flash.

Please elaborate on what about the layout is too shabby and less about the fact that you don`t like the font or the pictures.

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John Hoover Little Man Consulting

Hi John,

My ratings will go down for this but I hope you`re taking my comments as constructive criticism.

My comments were meant to be vague because most of what I wanted to say was already said by other postings and from your site`s content you provide web solutions and database solutions consulting.  I assume you already know what the comments would already be. 

I just wanted to stress not the obviousness of the design but the hidden worth of doing a site right.  Whether you`ve created the site for a local or national market, you need to bring it up to current design standards.  If you`re wondering what this is (because it`s ever changing), look at your competitors sites.  You don`t have to keep up but atleast start right.  You may be very knowledgable and good at what you do but if you`re consulting about web and database solutions but with your current site, you will not get many clients.  Again, FIRST IMPRESSION... They don`t know your skill level and knowledge yet. 

Flash, html, css, php, asp, .net, whatever.. it`s all the preference of the site owner.  Whatever would work best for what their purpose of the site.

My advice... scrap the site and start over.  If you can`t get a refund for the professional template that you`ve purchase... better to consider it a lost than to use the template and deter potential business.

My apologies for being straight forward and I hope that you see the sincereness behind my comments.

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Peter Nguyen Founder 2Keene Ventures, LLC. www.premiersaver.com "Even heaven has a rainy day"

JHoover,
here is what`s wrong with your web site. It`s tooooo simple. Your Logo looks like picture that was scanned. Instead of using Jpeg`s for your titles such as Web solutions, Database Solutions, and Instructional headers, try using true-type font, meaning write it in. Use a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to change the face of the font. This eliminates the blurriness in your pictures.

Secondly, you are offering MSACCESS? as your database of choice? JHoover, anyone in their right mind would have never offered MSAccess as their choice of DATABASE to offer their clients. MS ACCESS is just an EXCEL SPREADSHEET on steroids, you know what happens to an MS ACCESS database after 6,000 records? From my personal experience, it becomes unstable, Slow access to the database, you get alot of "ms access not responding" issues. So why would you offer this as your first choice?

Why not use something like MYSQL with and build a front end application in Visual Basics? or create an intranet for your customers? something more reliable that you know even after 6,000 records the database still holds up.

Secondly, If you are a web programmer/developer? don`t you think you could have put more work into your web site?
Purchase a template if you feel like you need a more sophisticated web site. But then again, be sure that if you do get a client, that you will be able to define the needs for your customer and be able to deliver them a well though out web site.

My assumption as this point is; and please forgive me if I`m being rude. You learned about web design by copying and pasting code from other pages to make your MYSPACE page look good. If that is what you did, trust me on th is one, there is more to web development and design than copying and pasting.

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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net