Looking for feedback!

[derekwit]

I have a site that has been in Google for about 4 months looking for some constructive feedback.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums derickwit! :hi:

Please answer the questions so we can help you:
http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=6632

Thanks! :)

[derekwit]

Is this site completed or under construction?
Site completed

Who is your target audience?
Used equipment dealers as well as large industry corporations.

How important is it for your site to rank well?
Ranking is what supplies search engines. Very important.

How important is usability?
Needs to be user friendly
What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)
Both to inform and to sell

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
If there are errors in code any help would be great.

Do you want design suggestions?
I am looking for ways to improve any way I can.

[derekwit]

Does anybody have any suggestions for me? I am looking for some constructive opinions.

[french dread]

Hum...sorry to say that, dont take it bad.. mavpac.com dont look very professional, u should spend some time making a nicer layout, harmonizing polices imho, organizing info in a nice and esthetic way.
A website must reflect the company image and serious. As a visitor i am not confident when the website look unfinished or have a poor design

[derekwit]

Thanks for you opinion.

[scottiecl]

Hi Derek! :hi:

I have some comments for you but am in a hurry right now. I will post some thoughts for you to consider shortly.

The page could be organized better so that it is easier to read- more details a bit later...

[derekwit]

Thanks for any help you can offer!!

[jacobskl]

A couple of simple things:
1) You have too much that you are trying to say on your front page. Some of that would be hidden if the writing were done in a more active style. For example, try changing:
MAVPAC is a Full Service Equipment Company that buys and sells new and used equipment. MAVPAC Specializes in new and used Packaging equipment, Baking equipment, Food processing equipment, Chemical industry equipment as well as custom fabrication for all of your plant needs.
To this:

Who is MAVPAC?
We are a full service equipment company from Atlanta Georgia. Founded in ????, we buy and sell a variety of industrial equipment pacages.
Do you have any specialties?
Our specialties include:

Packaging equipment
Baking equipment
Food processing equipment
Chemical industry equipment

Need something else? Let us know! We can custom fabricate equipment to meet your plant's needs!

2) I found the navigation bar/table at the top to be crowded and hard to follow. Could you make it lists or something similar instead of just flat text?

3) The pictures are nice to have in the inventory lists. However, on the front page, they just seem to hang there. Can you integrate that into the page a little more? All it really would take is a header telling the viewer why those pictures are listed.

All of this is just my two cents. Take it or leave it as you wish...

[amica_webmaster]

Hi, Derek,

My field is engineering, and I have experience in sales to manufacturers and purchasing of equipment and services, so I am fairly familiar with your audience. You have many ideas packed in your home page, and I think that may pose some problems for you. First, your audience may not be motivated to read enough of a complex page to discover that you have something they need. Second, this way of organizing your site may not do much for you in terms of ranking in online searches.

Consider using a home page which lists the major things that you offer, with links to pages with more details on those specific topics. The idea is to let visitors quickly spot a relevant heading, then click to go to that topic, excluding details of other offerings which may not interest them.

Perhaps more important is designing the site so that potential customers will find you when searching the web. Organizing the site with smaller, more specific (in terms of content) pages will also help with search engine placement. If someone using Google types in a specific brand and model of equipment, and you have a page devoted to that specific piece of equipment, that page is probably going to rank higher than one which mentions a dozen different types of offerings that you have.

[sytemaker]

I think it's better to use more descriptive names on a site map rather than just file names.

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

sytemaker
sytemaker.com , web development (http://www.sytemaker.com/)

[Daminc]

On your 'Used-Packaging-Equipment' page why have you got buttons with names on them linking to your Index page :confused:

If you can get a continuous page layout thought the site it would look a lot better.

In terms of useability you want to play test these pages to allow a potential client the best chance of finding what he/she wants as soon as possible

[derekwit]

I thought that Google was interested in content. That is why my home page was so wordy. I am confused a little bit. Should I take out some of the content and just be short and sweet with links using keywords to other pages in my site?


Thanks for all of the suggestions!!

[scottiecl]

Always design with the user in mind- things that are good for users are good for SE's, typically.

On your home page, pick one or two phrases that you want to optimize for. Then link to other pages that are optimized for their own key phrases. If you try and optimize for all your phrases on one page, you will confuse users and SE's!

Your home page should focus on the "big picture" of what you do. Include about 250 words of copy emphasizing that theme. Break it up into headings and bulleted lists so it is easy to scan for a user who is looking for something specific.

[Blue]

Hi Derek,



I thought that Google was interested in content. She is.Should I take out some of the content.... What everybody has been trying to say is twofold:

You're on the right track with the amount of content you have on the front page, but you probably need a bit more (as scottie said, a good place to start is 250 words).

The way in which you're presenting the content is where you really need work.

--> Use short paragraphs preceded by a header that explains the paragraph in a nutshell.

--> Bulleted lists are good.

--> Present the information in such a way as to make it easy for your visitors to find what they need.

Some specific suggestions I have are:

Use a single "template" for all your pages that incorporates your header, navigation, body and footer. I like to see a navigation bar in the same location on every page. It just makes it easier to get around in your site.

Make your page header a bit more attractive - it's a bit bland. I would reduce it in height slightly, move the logo over to the upper left corner (making it a clickable link back to the home page), and put the sitemap link in the right corner. As well, I might "pretty" it up by using a background image of some sort. AND, I might put your contact info here as well.

I would incorporate a single sitewide navbar placed prominently just below the header in a right column, centered, or in the left column.

I would make the nav menu just below the header the same width as the header. I would convert it into buttons and search boxes.

Present the body content as mentioned above.

I would add a text nav menu in the footer for ease of use (and in case the top navbar is in javascript).

I would ensure that the inner pages use the same template as the home page, with just the body content changing.

If your inner pages are at 100% width, I would make the home page that width as well (or make the inner pages a fixed width like the home page).

Rather than using the default borders for your tables (those uglu grey 3D borders), I would give them a color that compliments the whole sites color scheme.

Consider using a font other than Times New Roman (which is a great print font but doesn't read as easy onscreen). Possibly Verdana or Arial.

****

Well, that's been a mouthful, and I hope it helps!

[derekwit]

I would add a text nav menu in the footer for ease of use (and in case the top navbar is in javascript).

Can you give me an example? text nav menu

[Blue]

Can you give me an example? text nav menu

You see them at the bottom of many websites, this one included. The generally look like this:

Home | Page One | Page Two

[derekwit]

Brain fart!!!! I have some I will work on some more. I just was not thinking...

[derekwit]

I have started with some of the suggestions made here. How do things look so far?



http://www.mavpac.com/home.cfm

[WebSavvy]

It's looking better! :)

Up in the top where you have the image buttons for navigation, they're sort of just hanging there in all that white space.

A splash of color helps the look. I'd suggest using a black bgcolor behind the red navigation buttons, and then add a yellow/**** border at the bottom of the black header.

Then maybe carry the same color red from the navigation buttons into the color for the bullets in your list.

Use a table with cellpadding set to 8 to adjust the content layout.

I'll pop in some more suggestions later, I have been so busy lately with another project, that I have just not had the time to do very many site reviews lately.

Yours is looking much better now over what I saw just a few days ago. :)

Good luck with it! :)

[derekwit]

I am still trying to work my top out. I have just finished the page and can't seem to come up with a good border w/ logo...

[jacobskl]

The front page is looking much better. The red buttons on the black background look good, but maybe some kind of defining punch between the colors would help the buttons stand out better. (Though, I will admit that could just be my eyes.)

I like the new wording. It is much cleaner and to the point.

[WebSavvy]

OK, the black does look better. :) But, what I meant by border at the bottom was not meant as a table border around the whole table.

Try this out as an example and see if it's something you like:

<div align="center">
<center>
<table width="100%" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" border="0">
<tr>
<td colspan="7" valign="top">
<img src="but1.gif"> &nbsp; <img src="img2.gif"> &nbsp; <img src="img3.gif">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="1" bgcolor="#FFCC66"> &nbsp; </td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
</div>


Now, you can play with that any way you like, changing the td height and color to achieve the border look you want. Then say you might like to have it set at "20" instead of "1" you can add a thin solid black line separator at the bottom of the yellow/**** by simply adding this afterwards:

<tr>
<td height="1" bgcolor="#000000"> &nbsp; </td>
</tr>


For logo colors you could use the font called Impact in #ffffff for the word MAV and then use the red or **** and another font to make the word pac right next to it ...

Again, play with it and see what you come up with. Mind you, doing logo's is not one of my best talents. There are others here though like Blue, and Futura, who make absolutely beautiful logos. Maybe ask their opinions? :)

[derekwit]

How does that look? Still working with our logo. It is attached if anybody has any suggestions..


Thanks for all the help given.

[jacobskl]

Looking better. Can you put a little space between the left border of the table and the text? Also, you have a double border at the bottom of the table and a single everywhere else.

(Though I still find the buttons hard to see on some of my monitors....:D )

[derekwit]

I am on the road to getting my site looking appealing. I would like to thank all of you here for your suggestions and comments. I am still not quite ready to go live yet. I am also running into some problems with validation through a HTML validator. Here are the errors I am getting:

This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!
Below are the results of attempting to parse this document with an SGML parser.

Line 43, column 474: there is no attribute "ONLOAD" (explain...).
...height="22" border="0" alt="" onload="MM_nbGroup('init','navbar1', 'Contact_U



Any suggestions or help would be great. I am thinking of dumping the logo and just do something with text. I guess, still not sure.

[derekwit]

I fixed the code. The page now validates. Please any advice you have please input. Thanks for all the help so far.

[derekwit]

I would like to that eveybody here for all the input of my site design. I am going live today. If anybody who was apart of helping me would like to take a look. I would greatly appreciate it. Any more advice will not be overlooked!!

Once again thanks for this forum and for all the help I received!!!:hi:

[jacobskl]

WOW! This is so much clearer, cleaner and better designed. I really like the new layout.

The new logo is a vast improvement over the old one, as is the new text layout. I also really like the way the new buttons bring up the menus on hover. That came out really nice.

All in all, I would say the improvements are really worth the effort you put into them.

[amica_webmaster]

I second that WOW. The home page is excellent!

[Daminc]

A LOT better. Is coming on nice.

Just a couple of points

1) In your internal pages (Maybe the home page as well) have a look at at putting that logo to the left of the nav bar and the 'site map' to the right of it. That will give you better use of your screen real-estate.

2) In 'www.mavpac.com/used-packaging-equipment.cfm', when viewing your 'Enire Inventory' you 125 images of your products. You may want to reconsider whether the advantages of having those pictures on screen outway the disadvantages of a slow page download