Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi Everyone,

I am really excited about this feature. My website is www.sequoiapayroll.com I made the site myself, and it took me a few days to get it where it is. This was the first site I have ever made. I'm an accountant who just started out on my own, and I realize I probably should have paid someone to make it, but funds are tight, so hopefully you guys can help me. My intention for the site is to bring business to my payroll company. My goal is that people look at the site, see what we offer, and contact us either by e-mail, fax, or phone to talk further about using our services.  The site is pretty simplistic, as it was intended for informational use. However, my conversion rate is low and I want to see what I need to do to lower my bounce rate, and increase phone/e-mail traffic.  Please be totally honest about the site, and what you think we need to do to improve it.

Oh, where should I start? I'll try to be nice because I'm a professional.

Well, you did it yourself and it is at least organized, so I command you on that. Change your "Where we are" to "Contact Us", people are use to that and will gloss over "where we are", I did.

You have a lot of information on all your pages with different font sizes (it's great for search engines to have lots of text, but you have to think about the user first). Online users don't have that much attention span to read all that information.

I should have mentioned this first, you need to bring the level of professionalism up. Having different background images taking up the entire page is not professional. The text is hard to read, plus it takes up loading time. Looking at your website the way it is now people won't take you seriously, so that's one of the reasons why your conversion rate is low.

It's great you have a blog, but it looks like a book. Add some images to break up the text.

Here are a few articles that you might want to read to understand what I'm talking about:

What is your Business Image Worth?

Let a Professional Design your Business Logo

Why Authentic Customer Testimonials are Important for Your Small Business

Adding Images to Your Website

Hope this is the type of feedback that you were looking for.

This is exactly what I am looking for! I appreciate the information.  I take it all very seriously. I will read the articles you have provided.  Like I said, I am pretty much clueless about web design.  All my friends say it looks great, but you know how friends can be.  It is nice to have someone look at the site and give an honest answer.  Thanks again!

Anyone else have any further comments?  I am all ears!

I have made the changes that you had mentioned.  I would like for you to take a look at the site again and tell me what you think.  Does it look better than before?

Much, much better, it's so much easier to read now.

Some more suggestions/things I noticed:

• GUARANTEE page, the hand shake image is overlapping the text above.You might also want to remove that small picture in the background.

• It's a good idea to create some kind of a symbol or seal that shows you have a guarantee (display that seal on all the pages)

• Compare page, I strongly recommend you to make that chart image into "live text," search engines can't read the text when it's an image.

Good that you added images to your blog too. The main concern about your blog is that there's no link back to your main site (or I just don't notice it). You need to create a link back to your site because that's where you have your services, the blog is just basically to give advice and attract people via search engines.

Overall, good on the improvements. The design could be improved, but you would have to hand that over to professionals (there's more to it than people think).

- Yiana

Yiana,

I appreciate your help very much.  I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.  I will link back to the main pages in my blog, and I have since moved the picture on the guarantee page.

Again, I appreciate all your help!

Yiana,

I appreciate your help very much.  I apologize for not getting back to you sooner.  I will link back to the main pages in my blog, and I have since moved the picture on the guarantee page.

Again, I appreciate all your help!

Hello there,

Let me add some of my feedback.

First of all, kudos to you on making this website up and running with professional look and feel on your own. Go ahead and pat your back but at the same time there are few things which many web builder softwares don't do it for you which is important to get traffic.

1. I don't see meta keywords in your websites with all the important keywords needed for the search engine to find you. I would recommend you to start adding keywords by analyzing your business with good keyword combinations.

2. Logo would add value to your website and might help with the users to identify your company whenthey visit blog as well. It might act as a unique identifier

3. Blog is setup to popup. DOn't popup because many users disable popups because of spywares. Try to avoid popups.

4. Link is not working. Fix it. DOn't leave any links unreachable in your website

5. Your header or current logo is non-clickable. Make it clickable.

6. You can change "Guarantee" to "our Guarantee"

7. COmparison image is a bmp file and it takes forever to load even with my high speed connnection. Change to jpg and compress for faster load

8. May be add contact us form with Captcha in your contact form instead of email address. That helps to contact you immediately instead of finding a mail client to send email.

9. Pricing is very detail. May be you can add tabular format for simplicty and friendly sake.

10. FInally, your is a payroll service and you are accountant. You might already have few customers. Add their testimonials to make sure the new customers are comfortable using your service when they decide to deal with you on their finances.

 

Hope this helps.

I just want to tell everyone how much we appreciate Josh Appling from Sequoia Payroll.  He does our payroll and book keeping and are very happy with his service.  I highly recommend him. Joyce@MountainAirOrganicBeds.com

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Mountain Air Organic Beds 1108 N College Fayetteville, AR 72703 479-966-4350 "Healthy Sleep For The Entire Family"

I agree with this post.

1. I don't see meta keywords in your websites with all the important keywords needed for the search engine to find you. I would recommend you to start adding keywords by analyzing your business with good keyword combinations.

2. Logo would add value to your website and might help with the users to identify your company whenthey visit blog as well. It might act as a unique identifier

3. Blog is setup to popup. DOn't popup because many users disable popups because of spywares. Try to avoid popups.

4. Link is not working. Fix it. DOn't leave any links unreachable in your website

5. Your header or current logo is non-clickable. Make it clickable.

6. You can change "Guarantee" to "our Guarantee"

7. COmparison image is a bmp file and it takes forever to load even with my high speed connnection. Change to jpg and compress for faster load

8. May be add contact us form with Captcha in your contact form instead of email address. That helps to contact you immediately instead of finding a mail client to send email.

9. Pricing is very detail. May be you can add tabular format for simplicty and friendly sake.

10. FInally, your is a payroll service and you are accountant. You might already have few customers. Add their testimonials to make sure the new customers are comfortable using your service when they decide to deal with you on their finances.