Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

My name is Sean Kramer and I have created a website called ThrillSpeaking.com. I had a desire to give back to the Toastmaster community since it has helped me intensely in overcoming a deep fear of public speaking. Couple that with a burning desire to run my own business and you have my reason for creating this site.

This site is intended to be a free resource for those interested in public speaking. I was trying to give it a community feel which welcomes interactivity. The income to be generated by  the site would be strictly from advertising and affiliate programs.

The audience is intended to be people involved in Toastmasters International and others interested in improving their public speaking skills.

I created the site myself using mostly free tools. I am not a professional web designer and so I did the best with what I learned along the way. I also attempted to make it work in as many browsers as possible. I have tested it in IE 7, Firefox 3, and Opera 9.

I recently completed the design and coding of the site and have not yet started to advertise or solicit traffic except to a small group of users that I focused on as a beta test group.

I welcome any and all feedback and I appreciate any time and comments that you can provide.

Please view the site at http://www.thrillspeaking.com/

Thanking you in advance,

Sean Kramer



-------------------------

ThrillSpeaking.com
seankramer@thrillspeaking.com

I "get" it right away .... with the initial text and the images I can instantly see it`s about helping with public speaking .... well done getting your purpose across quickly.

As far as the advertising, I would caution about using too much ..... don`t work to get people to your site, then show a lot of offers that may take them off your site ....

Double check your Tooltips and alt tags .... make them more keyword rich in relation to your site .... as an example, the alt tag "Man with Microphone" isn`t beneficial for SEO for your site, as you aren`t really trying to attract the searchers that are searching for that term, or the term "microphone" ..... something like "Increase your public speaking confidence" would be better for this site and it`s topic .... alt tags don`t have to state exactly what the image is, but tie the image into your sites theme in this case ....

Try to implement h1 and h2 tags ( unless I missed them ) .... search engines like them and place importanceo n the words/keywords you put into them ....

Create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo and Google.

For a first site, and learning a dynamic language along the way, I think you did a great job.



-------------------------

M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

For a beta site it really is wonderful
I`d work on getting a functional and easy navigational bar
And a site map, like Webline suggested. this is extremely important
I`d also change the main heading picture, to be more dominant. Or add a colorful headline. The faster you get your point across (although it does happen quite fast) the faster you capture your visitors, and convert them to an audience/costumers

It really does look great, though. G`luck

Jmes



-------------------------

My LookupPage

Thank you both for the excellent feedback. That is exactly the type of suggestions that I was hoping for.

Thanks for taking the time.

Sean



-------------------------

ThrillSpeaking.com
seankramer@thrillspeaking.com

I like the site :-) I actually spent some time on it because it`s interesting, rather than just testing it out from a critique perspective. One thing to consider, that would help with some of the above comments, is to open up some of your links in a separate window.

For example, you have articles and references like the antidote to Death by PowerPoint. I use Firefox and routinely right click on links to have the option of a new window. But that`s because so often I`m taken off a site and don`t like using the "back" button.

The "target=_blank" tag (used judiciously) can work for you there.

Other than that, your biggest problem is going to be ongoing content. If you can keep that going, then the forums will gradually grow I think. Nice site :-)

Good job for a beginner. You`ve learned a lot. When you redesign in a few months, you`ll have experience on your side to create even more.