The VBMedia family

[MazY]

Hey guys.

Feel free to slate, praise, etc. on our newsest member of the VBMedia family of sites: -

http://www.vbmedia-web-services.co.uk

99% complete. Just a couple of bugs to iron out. Sorry, Doug - no photo on this one. :D

[ihelpyou]

Very nice site!

Would be better with a pic though.

[MazY]

I'll send you a signed poster instead. ;)

[ihelpyou]

Cool. Then I can resell it for a profit. :cool:

[Blue]

VERY nice looking site MazY.

Your choice of colors, background, etc. are very pleasing to the eye. Everything is VERY legible with no fluff, just the facts, thank you. Loads fast, looks highly professional!

Considering your views on flash, I was a bit surprised to see the use of it on your site. BUT, it is a very NICE and subtle use of it. I might have made the fully faded-in images last just an eensy bit longer.

One small item I noticed: when viewed at 800x600, the nav menu at the bottom wraps on the last menu item.

Great Job!!!:cheers:

[MazY]

Thanks for the kind words, Blue.

First the Flash issue. :D I don't detest Flash per se but rather the over-indulgence of it. More so the waiting ages for it to load only to find that it has absolutely no relevancy to the site content. Totally pointless for the end user I am sure we all agree.

You were not the only person to mention that the animations could be made a bit longer so it is now done. I agree on reflection - it was a bit short. Much improved now.

The nav menu at the bottom - an evil that I am going to have to suffer I'm afraid. Unless I think of rewording the other site items.

I've just added an ASP news section too. All rather sexy and cuts down on my HTML writing! That is the important thing for me. I'm trying to hand over the maintenance of the sites (there is a third one being designed as we speak, read, write, etc...) and so I don't want all my time being consumed with coding.

Again, many thanks for the candid critique.

[Mel]

Very nice Mazy

[JuniorHarris]

Hey don't forget I still have that full-size cut-out photo of Maz!~ :eyes:

Very nice site, I especially like the Did you know captions along the bottom. Nice!~ And yes the bottom nav also wrapped for me...I would say maybe change the size or possibly change the verbiage slightly. Our Promotion Site -> Promotion Site (is this the new site?) and Our Web Services Site -> Web Services. This might shorten it enough to prevent the wrapping...

[Blue]

Or you could but a <br> after the "Design Portfolio" link, center all data in that table, resulting in two centered lines of links with no wrapping?

[JuniorHarris]

The centering would also be "compatible" with any future additions!~ :up:

[MazY]

Nice one, Blue. Amazing how the simplest solutions often don't even occur to me!

Thanks again. Popped it in and it works a treat!

[Blue]

My pleasure kind sir!

I really like the changes you made to the front page. Really grabs ya!!! Very clean and professional.

And is that your shoe?

[MazY]

:D What can I say? I'm always putting my "foot" in it?

I've now finally finished the home page. Is it just me that is never happy with his own work?

Interesting you say that it "grabs ya" as that is exactly the desired effect I was after, a bit of high sales advice taken from a client earlier today got me to rethinking my strategy.

I can be a little less worried about search engine rankings on this site as the parent site has enough high positions to last me for some time to come. Though that is not to say that I won't be chasing the number ones! :)

Thanks again for the help, critiques, advice etc. Always welcomed.

[MazY]

OK. Let the critique dogs out, it's finished.

Even more bizzare - I've even made it Netscrape 4 compatible. You have no idea how much it pains me to be seen to be supporting that useless browser! :D

[ihelpyou]

Real good Maz!

I particularly love the content. Good selling text. I viewed it using Netscape 6.1 and it was perfect!

[JuniorHarris]

Looks good in Nutscape 4.76!~ :thumb:

The past few weeks our number of Netscape browsers has jumped from 10% up to 15%, so including Netscape may not be a bad thing!~ ;)

[MazY]

The second sibling is up and open to critique. Though if ya like the last one then you must like this one as they are both based upo the same layout.

http://www.vbmedia-web-promotion.co.uk

Don't try the News section yet as I'm still waiting for the ODBC connection to be setup. Hosts huh? Can't live with 'em - can't legally drown 'em!

[Web Witch]

MazY "Is it just me that is never happy with his own work?", sounds like me. Nice site, I like the coloring, everything's cool. Good luck and :cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

[ihelpyou]

Hey Maz, looks great! but are you kind of worried that they look to much the same? What if they both come up on a search term in the top ten? Your competitors may not be too happy. Just playing the other side here. :)

[MazY]

Hey, Doug. I'm always open to critique, good or bad.

I did ponder the implications of the look and feel before plunging in.

I don't think it unreasonable to maintain a same look and feel throughout each site so long as the content is significantly different.

I am happy that in this case it is. The concept is that a user, when landing on either site, will be comfortable with the navigation as it will be %100 consistent throughout each of the three sites.

As you can see, the focus is:

web-services = focus on web design
web-promotion = focus upon web site promotion
the old (parent) site vbmedia.co.uk now needs a major overhaul and will, as it does now, encompass the entire range. That is the one that I will have to be careful with so as not to duplicate content.

The reason for all this? Stats showed that whilst we had over 90 pages on the parent site, less than one third was actually read to any significant degree. My marketing experience tells me to break things up a little and give the user smaller more manageable chunks of information to absorb.

Course, the biggest worry is losing the rankings from my parent site. Time will tell once I've overhauled it.

Once again, thanks for the comment. Always appreciated.

[ihelpyou]

Seems like your the man with a plan. :)

Sounds like a great one to me!

[MazY]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
Seems like your the man with a plan. :)

All part of the VBMedia World Domination Plan. :D

Actually, the other big bonus is that it allows me to experiment a little more with regards to page titles, word count, density and so forth.

For example, the word count per page on the two new sites is rather low so I am interested to see how they will rank.

Of course, me ol' mate, Inktomi will help things out as usual. :D

I'm an out 'n' out Inki fan now!

[highman]

Mazy, you have a sound plan, its one we are implementing with our site, we have chopped it up into 6 bits and produced these 6 sites under the portal umbrella of our main site, this allows us to 'focus' each area of our business...... and of course get rankings and directory listings for each site :D

[MazY]

Phew - it's not just me that is growing a tad quicker than anticipated then!

Keep us posted on how successful the "chopping up" turns out. I have high-hopes for it. In fact, I'm pretty much staking our company future on it!

[highman]

Ditto that Mazy...

It has to be the way to go, as your company expands so the services evolve and become more in depth. We could not possibly cover all our areas of business in one site (not without diluting the theme of the site)
So micro sites are the way to go, each site can clearly focus on its theme. Each site has its own URL and its own look and feel (although they all carry the company branding). These are then all linked together from the Company Portal which carries all 6 themes from the micro sites.
The big test will come from the big 3 directories, if they accept them as individual sites, Im banking on them doing that

[MazY]

Will sure be interesting to see the combined results then, Highman.

I've now finalised the look and feel of each one and completed them all. More content will be added as and when.

http://www.vbmedia.co.uk (The parent site.)
http://www.vbmedia-web-promotion.co.uk (Self explanatory.)
http://www.vbmedia-web-services.co.uk (The web design site.)

As you say, the interesting thing will be to see how well the directories swallow it. Though I don't really rely on directoroes too much so no great hardship for me if they cough and splutter a little.

I'll keep ya posted on findings.

[JuniorHarris]

Sounds like solid strategy, and if falls in line with the Forrester research (http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,537,00.html) which predicts portals will thrive. Makes since, as each are custom tailored to a specific need or market segment. This can help target and get the user to the appropriate information and resources much faster.

We should get plenty of feedback since both of you are implementing a similar strategy. I support the concept and see numerous advantages, so keep us posted and keep up the great work.

[MazY]

As a brief and very unscientific follow-up.

If AOL (UK) is anything to go by and for my stats at least it is, then the splitting the sites up has been a good move.

Firstly it has allowed to focus on a broader range of terms and subsequently give me a higher number of matches per search term. So far so good. Will keep you posted.

[glengara]

I notice you went for *web promotion* instead of the usual suspects, and have VBmedia at the start of the url.

In theory would it not have been better to use SEO/SEP and not have the company name at the start of the Url?

[MazY]

I see what you are saying but I really don't subscribe that heavily to the domain name containing keywords. The fact that they do in this case is a bonus. My own company name is far more important to me than my domain name. That is, after all, my brand.

The reason I went for web-promotion however, is that one has to remember we do web design as well as promotion (call it what you will) so I'm kind of future-proffing myself so that I have greater flexibility with what I do in each site. For those search engines that douse keywords in the domain then if I use search engine promotion, web marketing, etc. I still get a keyword in there. Make sense? Hope so! :)

[MazY]

Have you ever had a small problem with your design. Sat down to fix it and then 1.5 days later, created an entirely new site look and feel? Well, I just did. :D

There was a problem with the previous Javascript based menu, evident in Opera. Anyway, see the changes at VBMedia Promotion (http://www.vbmedia-web-promotion.co.uk)

Not for those that hate the huge code which tables produce, or the Macromedia Flash challenged.

<Pushing that envelope a little more to see how far one can go without sacrifing rankings.> It's becoming my speciality!

This is about the most compatible site I've ever developed. Works as it should in NS4.08 and upwards, Opera and IE. Though there is a slight ZOrder problem with the menu and the Flash movie in IE6. (Working on it. I can always move the Flash animation down a row if I really have to.) Other than that, I think it all works. It should do as I've been flicking between browsers after almost every line of code!

There is also a known issue with the horizontal scroll bar. This is because the alternative is a menu that reloads every time the browser is resized. That takes time and NS 4.08 doesn't seem to like it much. So the solution, at least for now, is to make the menu fixed width. Personally I don't think it affects the browsing experience too much at all. In fact, damn it, I'll do the Microsoft thing and call it a "feature". :D

Comments on a postcard to.....

[ihelpyou]

Even better Maz! Impressive.

I will be very interested to know how you make out in Google after these changes.

[MazY]

From a code perspective, I have had much more bloated code than this new site. (Remember my pre CSS days for example?) They still achieved high rankings without a problem. I've never been a great believer in the "lean and mean" theory. Comes from being a programmer. I just find the concept that a spider couldn't whip its way through even some of the most bloated pages without coughing and choking somewhat nonsensical.

I don't think that it will be too much of an issue with Google. Time will tell.