I need Input From a Person With Sight!

[reina]

I am so glad there is a forum like this. I wasn't sure where I should go to ask about my site. Everyone I ask says it's great, and I'm wondering if they are saying that just because they know me and don't want to hurt my feelings. However, I've come here for honesty. Tear me apart if you wish.

I am a blind web master. I designed my site using pictures from microsoft clip art. It is my newest release. Can anyone of you please check it out to see if it is appealing to the eyes? Is it attention capturing? Does it have a good delivery? And, could you tell me what needs fixing? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks.

My site is found at www.grandniches.com.

[Teli]

First of all Reina, I love the color scheme. It is soothing and the graphic selection is great, especially for Microsoft clip art (I think they really stepped their game up).

However, there are a number of things you can do to improve the quality of the site.

Hosting

It's obvious you're hosting free with GoDaddy because they place a large banner with contextual adverts, similar to AdSense, above your page's content. This is very bad because a visitor may click away before they even have an opportunity to see what you're offering.

You can find affordable hosting for as little as $4 per month, though I recommend you go with a service that charges around $10 per month like Host Gator or Dream Host. (I prefer Host Gator over Dream Host.) Both of these services are stable and have good reviews, but your mileage may vary.

Having your own host will instantly give your site a more trustworthy and professional feel, especially for your target audience (instant and online marketers, I assume).

Content Structure

Right now your site is split into two equal columns, much like a newspaper. Unfortunately, online reading is nothing like reading a newspaper and this layout can be confusing to the reader. Consider putting all the content into a single column that flows down the page and you can sprinkle the images at appropriate paragraphs.

Too Many Choices

There are six "buy now" buttons and all of them are for something different. You've just presented your visitor with too many options and it may result in her choosing none.

Consider splitting your sales offers into their own pages, if there's enough content for each. Otherwise, make it absolutely clear which option you want the visitor to choose by leading her and giving her a strong call to action.

Basic SEO and Usability

Reviewing the mechanics of the page, I notice the page title is "Page 1", there are no headings, and there are font inconsistencies; Half the page is shown in a sans-serif font, Verdana, while the other half is shown in a serif font, Times New Roman.

Consider creating a proper page title, something like "Grand Niches for Your Online Business" or something that contains your keywords that can also grab the visitor's attention from the search engines. Also, take the time to craft a proper meta description that gives the reader what to expect at the site -- this will help when a person is scanning the search engine results and may even help with ranking if it contains your keywords.

Then, go through your content and decide on clear content divisions. Wherever there is a clear division, add a proper heading. An example would be <h1>Your Page's Title</h1>, <h2>The Secion Title</h2>, etc. It would help if your headings also contained some of your keywords.

Finally, the font inconsistencies can be easily handled by the use of a stylesheet. Instead of using in line font tags, remove them altogether and define the font style in a CSS file.

Hope that gives you some ideas and inspiration for your site. The site does look good and the only place you can go now is up.

~ Teli

[reina]

Thanks for your constructive criticism! I appreciated it so much. I made those changes instantly. I get addicted to the net and will stay up all night to make sure things go okay. I still have a few more to make no doubt: but, I am certainly going up! Thanks a million.

[King Conga]

Reina,

I'm inspired by your productivity. I'm just getting into the whole blogging for $$$ just in the past month or so. I went to both your sites and while their nice, I didn't notice anything much different from mine insomuch as Google or any other ads. I noticed a few of the embedded links, but other than that not much. The reason I'm asking is how are you making $$$, and if you are making good $$$...How? I'd love for you to go to my site that's in my profile
www.freewebs.com/unklebuck/. I'm going to look at mine again and see how I can maybe put some links in there. Otherwise, I'd be priviliged at yours, or anyone else's critique.

Thanks,
KC

[tigergem]

Hi reina!

I like your site. I like your font and color choices. The overall look and feel are very simple, easy to follow and pleasant to look at. That green is such a nice color!

I just wanted to let you know that in the Firefox browser some of the text runs off the right side of the margin of your intended text box, and there is some left to right scrolling of the page. I am sure that can be corrected with some tweaking of the width on those div tags in the style sheet.

The lines that run over the right side are these ones, and I marked where they leave the white background and run into the green:

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The grey contact form also overlaps the green background but this gives it kind of an asymetrical geometric offset look. I know you didn't do it intentionally, but it looks nice anyway.

I did not look at your style sheet, but it looks to me like the div that contains the main text of your page is offset to the right the same width as your picture of yourself, which is outside of that text box div. Hopefully that will guide you to the right place in the code to tweak it.