Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello!  Thank you in advance for looking at my website http://www.smallbizexcel.com

Purpose:  to educate users on using Excel tools for marketing/business analysis focused on small businesses.  Immediate goal is to provide useful content to this target group and gradually add income-producing items of value (still TBD).  I got the idea for this from helping a good friend who started a business and needed help thinking through how to price & position his products.

Design:  I designed this myself.  Originally in Web Easy Professional 7 but then I switched to Dreamweaver and worked through the night to get it converted.  If anyone wants to know I`ll be glad to get more into why I switched.  I`ve only invested 1 day & night getting this knocked out in Dreamweaver so I won`t take it too personally if there are some significant suggestions.

So, I would appreciate your advice on the style, approach and what you think would be helpful to small businesses.  I will of course be adding more content (actual lessons) - I`m looking for feedback to get a direction on what is useful.  My USP (unique selling proposition) is that this is focused on using Excel as a tool for small businesses, not just another generic training website.

You can look directly at a training lesson with embedded spreadsheet and video at the following link: http://www.smallbizexcel.com/fvcostpart1.html

Regards,
jeff@smallbizexcel.com

Thanks to Craig, Bryan and again Webline for your comments.  FYI Bryan (Bankpig.com) I`ll respond to your website feedback question in a separate note.

 

On http://www.smallbizexcel.com:

I agree to make the site look more professional, cleaning up the fonts and improving the color scheme.  This is my first real website and first 2 days of experience with Dreamweaver so I need a couple of weeks on this.  If after a month my appearance is hurting hits I`ll investigate getting an upgrade at least to the main template + landing page.  Right now I really want to learn how to do this well as I have alot more ideas of what to do with online websites/businesses.

 

Particular things I`ll go after are:

   - getting items spaced more closely together especially on the landing page so you see more of it at once (not too compressed but more close)

  - more consistent use of fonts

  - reduce the size of the big taglines and focus them more so it gives more hints of what the site is about, but move the red button up a bit so it is right there to pull them in

  - improve the look of the solutions pages so the user isn`t disappointed when they hit the solutions button

  - add in more SEO but alot of that comes from adding good content right?

 

Craig- how to make money - Excellent Question - the key one I think!  My thought and coaching right now is to work hard on a decent looking (but not spectacular) site with really useful content for small business owners.  I agree Excel experts (such as myself actually) would not find this site useful.  I`m targeting those hard-working people who know their business but don`t happen to be excel whizzes (and don`t want to turn all of their thinking over to an accountant).  I want to help them think strategically and analytically about where they make money so they don`t become a statistic.

 

As far as making money, my ideas vary from more advanced videos, advanced topics/lessons, prebuilt templates for customized calculations, e-book with training material, etc.  However, right now my focus is to improve the site and add lessons, seeing where the interest goes based on the market. (and quite frankly learn how to get a business set up on the internet)

 

Any suggestions on the content people would like to see would be great!  What are the key things small business owners need help with (fyi I`m an experienced business / marketing manager in a large corporation).

 

Regards,

Jeff

Bryan (Bankpig.com):

 

Here are my amateur thoughts on your Bankpig.com (my background is business/marketing, not websites):

 

> the brown section in the middle looks nice, but the dark ground surrounding looks ominous to me - makes me think more of a dungeons & dragons video game site vs. a financial institution

 

> your navigation bar at the top is too small, hard to see especially for the bifocals crowd who makes up alot of small business owners and have alot of the money to save/spend these days (retiring baby boomer demographics)

 

> you put ads by Google right up top - almost made me turn away from your page as it looks like your first emphasis is just to make money off of add clicks vs. providing value to me

 

> you expressed surprise on your chat page that I ended up there.  not a big deal but struck me as funny.

 

> Most important to me is why would I work with and trust you vs. the many other financial institution options out there.  What are you really going to do for me to help me with my money as a small business owner?  And, why should I trust you - looks like this could be a fly-by-night operation...??

 

> you may want to trademark BANKPIG.com

 

Easier to give advice than to receive it, but well-intended critique is a valuable gift to the receiver (ref Prov. 12:15)

 

Regards,

Jeff

Thanks Craig for the advice and encouragement.  Your ideas helped me form some thoughts on what to offer for free and what to provide for a fee.  Also yes, I use Snag-It all of the time, for this and for other day job activities all of the time - it`s great.  My challenge now is to investigate good video capture tools as well.

 

Regards,

Jeff