Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I want to thank a few of our local web gurus (Roland & Russ) for giving me some website tips throughout my time here at StartUp Nation.

Website: North Country Design

Here are some questions for the community to answer, please:

1) Does my front page grab you?
a) If yes, great!
b) If no - what could make it stand out more?

2) Is my portfolio okay? Too cumbersome? Not enough material?

3) Testimonials. Do they work for you? Are they too wordy? Do you not care because you don`t know them so what they say isn`t important?

4) Craigslist Ad page - does the "Slide" object irritate you? Is it cool? Thoughts?

5) As you are viewing the site - what is it`s strongest quality? What really needs work?

I appreciate the help! I`m not a very `savvy` web guy - but I`d love to make my site better and get more traffic!

Final Question: What would YOU do to improve traffic on this site?

Hey Shawn :-)

The two things that caught my eye are size, and non-changing content. But first, to answer you query about what sucks? Two things: gravity and vacuum cleaners. (badda-boom!)

On to the next. A fair amount of people I believe, still have a monitor resolving at around 1024x780. In that case, your site requires a scroll to the right, and that`s always annoying.

The second issue is that I got the idea right away from your home page. Then I clicked the first of your three main buttons at the top (Imagine, Design, Print).

I expected the content to change with each click. It didn`t. To me, that`s a waste of SEO opportunity, sales, and "attention" getting-ness. (To coin a word.)

Your home page says good things, works nicely, and has me interested. So, I click "Imagine." I assume I`m going to learn about how to imagine, how you guys help, and what we can do with that imaginatin` (as my niece likes to say).

Instead, nothing changes. No imagination. Y`know? So, like...fix it.
LOL! just givin` you a hard time. :-)

I did notice a weird problem with the portfolio, where the pages either turned twice, when I only clicked once, or where they just turned automatically. Seems a waste to have the "controls" when they either don`t apply or do whatever they feel like doing.

Even more bizarre, since I`m viewing this in tabs: I clicked back to here to make some comments, leaving my other tab on the Portfolio page. As the pages kept turning on their own, the "sound" continued from the other tab. I thought my PC was having a heart-attack.

As always, Mr. Craig - you inspire me to think and push myself forward. I`m fixing the banner as I write this. Check it out. :)

I want to change the portfolio eventually - but it`s a LOT of work to recreate all of my portfolio pieces into another presentation. Perhaps I`ll place all of the pieces into a thumbnail-style setting and allow them to be clicked there.

Do you think just losing the sound effects will help with your computers heart attack?

Thanks, Kathy!

I dropped my width to 900 pixels. That should cater to most monitors and resolutions. I myself use a 22" monitor to design on so I often forget that some people are still at 15, 17 and lower resolutions.

That`s why I love print design. 8.5 x 11 is 8.5 x 11 everywhere... unless you use centimeters ... then you`re just odd ;)

Gravity does not suck - a common minunderstanding.  Matter BENDS space, and thus PUSHES.

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

Mr. Lindon has a lot of free time to understand physics and patents. :)

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Hi, I think it looks pretty good, joomla 1.5 with a custom template? I can see you altered the banner size to 900x124 and looks fine on my "standard" monitor.
 Great idea using the flippingbook component for the portfolio which looks very good to me anyway.
 On first impression the front page looks good, I am using Firefox, but I dont know about other browsers, especially IE or some of the older version of IE.
CraigL had a slight problem with the portfolio and I seem to remember flippingbook being dependant on flash version, but I might be wrong or this may have been an older version? Again worked fine for me.
Testimonials, I dont know if anybody really reads them or takes them seriously these days, but then again why not it might add some credibility.
The slide show, again looks good but maybe drop the sound, "green day" is fine first time round but it might not be for everybody esp after a few viewings.  
As for improving traffic to the website, I wish I knew the answer to that one !
Overall it looks good and fits the "design" theme.

I`ll have to actually "purchase" the darn slide thingy if I want that music gone. I personally found the music distracting and decided to keep it because I liked what it did for my ads.

I`ll look into the purchase. It`s a decent little app.