Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Your home page is your most important "real estate" on your site.  In the first 10 seconds the user has to know what you do and why they should use your services.  If that interests them then you can spend time building credibility.

You spend, in my opinion, an inordinate amount of space talking about yourself.  I suggest spending more space describing the benifits the user will obtain from your services.  Are they going to save money? time? avoid some specific problem? Now talk about how that will happen.  Then talk about who you are.

Allocate more space at the top of your page, I think, to answering "why" clients should use your service and less on what you do and who you are.  You can push that further down the page.

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"You are not here merely to earn a living. You are here to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." -Woodrow Wilson

CraigL;
Thanks for clarifying this, however, being a novice, I would like to hear from some Mac users if they can let us know what font type they see when it was set for Trebuchet MS.

Winwin;
You`re making an excellent point here. If you take into consideration the many facets of our field, you would need a master writer to but that in just a few sentences.
Would you have any suggestions?

Hope to hear from you. 

The goal is to be customer oriented and to make optimal use of your web real estate.

For example your tag line is impressive:

It would be just as impressive in smaller print. Because of its position at the top of the page, it is going to be seen anyway.  Further, readers will get the point and will more likely finish reading your tag line if it was shorter.  Everthing from "inclucing among others" on is too long for a tag line (in my humble opinion). You can expand on your services elsewhere and in other ways.

 You obviously are an experienced pro.  You could make for yourself a list of your accomplishments and successes in the field of service you are offering.  Drawing on the anecdotal stories that this list brings to your mind you can develop a list of the benefits you offer and problems you solve. You can probably also obtain testimonials from satisfied customers.

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"You are not here merely to earn a living. You are here to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." -Woodrow Wilson

If you only specify Trebuchet? I`d see whatever the default on my browser is - Times, I think. If you specify "Trebuchet MS", Helvetica, sans serif ? I`d see Helvetica. If you specify "Trebuchet MS", sans serif ? I might see Arial, Verdana, or Helvetica - depending on Firefox`s mood?

As for the code, hold on .... let me go back to your site.

I am seeing Lucida Grande, apparently.

What generator are you using? I don`t know how to use most of them. But it`s making some code that looks like this:

font face="`Trebuchet MS`, `Lucida Grande`, sans-serif" size="3" color="#005500"

which works OK but I don`t know if everyone has all the fonts I do.

So basically you want that to say

font face="`Trebuchet MS`, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="3" color="#005500"

if you were using the examples we`re giving.

Here is what the page looks like, btw.

Nikole; This thread is becoming a bit too technical for me.  If generator means the site builder, I`m using the MS Office Live, simply typing and pasting templates, no tech stuff there. I didn`t write any codes.
Thanks for the screen shot. I see the font is Trebuchet MS or similar. ( Some errors to fix as well)
BTW: I appreciated the "How to launch your site with a (Google) bang! - Part 1"

winwin; I get your point, I hope to revise it soon. I have some testimonials on the "about us" page, I didn`t really expand on it.

benreich - The code, as stands, is fine ... I say just leave the fonts as they are. The generator is adding something for non-PC people, and that`s just fine.

And thanks! Part 2 and 3 are up now as well.

Note how we`ve gone from the actual content, which is going to sell your services, to the code.

Anyone who truly believes the developing a Web site is an easy, do-it-yourself operation, need only to see the direct and immediate connection between "vision" and "coding," as evidenced here on this topic.

If the discussion is getting too technical and we`re only talking about a FONT tag, I`d suggest it`s time to call in an expert.

I think we covered a lot of ground here. Would it be possible to post a "before and after" image of my website, for the benefit of all interested?

(I`m not done yet)

Absolutely, Ben :-)
"Feedback" is an excellent way to learn and develop. It`s one thing for "you" to get feedback here, and make changes. But the road goes both ways. It`s always interesting for community members (I know I enjoy it) to see the results of ideas, recommendations, and thoughts about a site. Particularly when someone actually applies some of those suggestions.

Looking forward to seeing the modifications. :-)