Hi Dean,
I have to say THANK YOU for your informative post. I just recently launched
www.TheWiserHomeBuyer.com which I wanted to make the home buying process easy to understand and how to make a wise investment. I have emailed friends and colleagues about it, which I did state my goal, but all the responses I`ve been getting are more along the design and simple replies such as "the site seems kind of plain" or "the header logo and color looks boring".
I had not consider going into more detail such as, what do you think of the content and navigation, organization of information, suggestions on how I can do effective marketing or search engine optimization, etc. I will send a follow up email to everyone and be as specific as I can because you hit the mark when you pointed out that the goal is to get people to spend at least 15 minutes, rather than quickly browsing through the site which has been my case so far.
So thanks again for your extremely useful post, I really appreciate it!
-Paul