Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I don`t see anything about consulting on OSHA regulations. That`s a biggie, I`d think, isn`t it?

Yes, but OSHA`s a US agency. Bradders is in the UK. I wonder if there is a UK or EU equivalent that he should mention.

Darrin

ah HAH! I knew I could be wrong if I really set my mind to it!  Sorry, I didn`t notice this was a European company...

What I think I`d do, now going back and taking another look at the site, is put in more left-right white space. Instead of building it with percent-of-page-width, I`d narrow the left and right margins of the content.

When there`s too long a line of text, it`s harder to read and understand. I`m looking at this on a 19" LCD panel, and it`s a bit of a problem. Perhaps on a 17" CRT it would be easier, but I`d constrain the margins to keep the length of sentences somewhere around 8" long.

I`d also suggest using CSS formatting to improve the separation of headings and subheadings from their related content. Again, using more white space would likely make it easier to get across the various points and benefits of the company.

The training courses page is too sparse, for the above reasons, with the picture of the conference table so far to the right as to be almost meaningless. There`s an empty bullet, which looks unprofessional, and a sort of haphazard "feel" to the overall page.

So in a nutshell, the site needs better layout, stronger content, more organized formatting, and a more cohesive strategy.

Hi Peter,
I`m using Mozilla`s free open-source "Nvu" editor, to learn a bit about how to make pages in HTML. They`ve made it a lot easier to work with CSS by allowing right-clicking on tag indicators and using menus and choices. The problem isn`t getting there, it`s understanding what each option means.

So for example, to create margins one would set "box" widths and spacing, to be very general in terms. To better understand what the hell they were talking about, I had to use many of the online tutorials about HTML and CSS. If one was a bit too dense, I kept looking until I found some for absolute beginners.

It`s a trickbag, learning all this newfangled stuff, but worth it in the long run. Even there, all it gets you is a basic site that works `okay,` but not really well. For that, you need a professional. However; learning the basics and putting together an initial site that works on content and layout helps a great deal when you turn it over to a developer. They can then see where you want to go, your intentions, and the vision of what you`re trying to accomplish.

Hi Pete,
I am web marketer for Safety Media UK. Looks like we are in same industry. Although by advising you I`d run in the danger of revealing our optimising secrets, I`d give you some important pointers to better your sites in terms of SEs:

1. Find a set of keywords.You seem to be targeting `achieve safety` at the moment.Having done keyword research for the industry, I can tell you need better more relevant keywords. One example is `health and safety` and its variations.
2. Decide upon on your navigation: Training Courses, Safety and Food Safety pages sound similar to me. If you need to classify on the basis of course type then just classify under Training Courses page.
3. I spotted an Offer somewhere in the, but its not on your home page.
   
4. Being a consultant you are selling expertise, so you GOTTA flash it. Create some downloadable reports/PDFs and put a system in place to capture details on downloads.
5. I sinecerely hope you are using Google Analytics/Webmasters Tools.