Proofreading website

RuthieC

Hi guys,

Any chance you could take a look at my site: www.proofreader.ie. I'm not sure how it's looking on macs, someone mentioned that the homepage text was moving when scroll... it's not meant to.

Any advice/suggestions would be great

Thanks a mil

Ruth

tricky D

You're using Flash. That's a bad idea. You would be much better off using html for a load of reasons.
There's no proper contact or company information.
'Win win' conventionally uses a hyphen: 'win-win'.
Logo could be better.
No 404 page.
Social media links would be better in their regular branding colours.

Squeeonline

Flash is the worst thing you could ever possibly make a website in.

All those on mobile devices have massively reduced experiences, to the point where some wont be able to view your site.

There is nothing at all on that site that requires flash (not that much does these days anyway).

My honest suggestion as a web designer myself is to start again. By all means use the same design, it's quite nice, but make it in HTML/CSS. I'd be happy to help with this if you wanted.

cormee

It's a great idea for a service, and badly needed judging by the content of a lot of sites out there.

If I was building the site I'd move all of the 'Request a Quote' functionality out to the homepage, I'd also make it easier on the site visitor to request a quote, I'd have a file upload button to upload Word files, and a textarea to paste content on the homepage.

Regarding your current site:

- Bad idea using Flash (as has already been pointed out)
- When I highlight the text in the textboxes on the homepage (in Firefox) the first line disappears.
- Shouldn't an ellipsis have a space before and after the marks?
- Very poor contrast between your navigation links and the background
- Your top-level 'Service' link on your global navigation doesn't link to anything, users on mobile devices probably won't be able to go beyond your homepage. You need to link your top-level links to a page with your category links
- Your site doesn't support tabbing
- Is 'typos' a clipped form or a contraction? If it's a contraction it needs to be 'typo's'
- Shouldn't 'realized' be 'realised'
- Your SEO is very poor/non-existent , there's not much you can do with that while you use Flash though

If I was you, I'd move the 'Our rates start from 1 cent per word' out to the homepage, it's an attractive proposition and is buried where it is. By the way, shouldn't the numbers 1-10 always be spelled?

RuthieC

Thanks so much guys for having a look. I really appreciate the time you've taken. I'm pretty much a total newbie at this stuff. I'm aware of the flash situation, but the website was built on wix.com, as I can't afford to be paying someone to build the code. I'll probably do that further down the line when I start actually making money from it. It does have a mobile site though, which is basic but does the job http://m.proofreader.ie/

Cormee, you said there isn't really anything I can do to better my SEO because of it being a flash site. Is there no way around this for the time being?

JD RoX

There are ways around it - quality directory submissions, Social bookmarking, Guest articles for blogs and stuff.

I wouldn't suggest you to do directory submissions - if you can't afford coder, you won't be able to afford good directories, but the bad ones will damage your website even more.

You can also do Google adwords. I'd say there won't be much competition for your type of business. Put a limit of €10 per day, keep it for a week, see how it works - if there's any roi

tricky D

RuthieC wrote: »

Thanks so much guys for having a look. I really appreciate the time you've taken. I'm pretty much a total newbie at this stuff. I'm aware of the flash situation, but the website was built on wix.com, as I can't afford to be paying someone to build the code. I'll probably do that further down the line when I start actually making money from it. It does have a mobile site though, which is basic but does the job http://m.proofreader.ie/

Cormee, you said there isn't really anything I can do to better my SEO because of it being a flash site. Is there no way around this for the time being?

It costs around the €100 mark to do something like a Wordpress version with your own hosting which would be a superior solution to your current wix one.

Squeeonline

tricky D wrote: »

It costs around the €100 mark to do something like a Wordpress version with your own hosting which would be a superior solution to your current wix one.

And that would be money well invested. There are plenty of free and premium themes (only go with trusted sellers, many free ones are infected)

I've written a couple posts about the subject http://paulmaceoin.com/2012/wordpress-templates-free-or-premium/ http://paulmaceoin.com/2012/5-tips-on-picking-the-right-theme-for-your-next-web-design-project/ http://paulmaceoin.com/2012/top-7-wordpress-themes-of-2012-so-far/ which may help.

It'll also save me repeating myself here :-D

Gralus

I think you have a really nice website and use the images very well. I agree with one of the above posts saying you should have the 'request a quote' function and the '1c per word' on the homepage rather than making users click through. And you should also shine up that logo immediately.

Regards Flash, I don't think it a huge issue apart from old computers that don't have flash. I know people who have ranked well with different keywords using wix. It's not your standard flash website. All the text, image tags, headings etc can be crawled by Google. Also you have a basic but neat and optimised mobile/iPad site - more than half of good websites ttoday still don't have. Don't use a standard wordpress template. You're website has character. Your customers will dislike a standard template more than a flash website (unless they don't have flash).

I would recommend you spend your time with outbound marketing rather than inbound marketing. It will always help to read the basics of SEO, and you should at some stage try tick all the boxes for on-page optimization...but SEO is a huge and continual task - if you have no budget, spend your time cold calling business and facebooking students.

JD RoX

It would cost around €80 to recode this in html, keeping the same layout and look + adding contact forms. It's not all that expensive. Don't save money on your own business

tricky D

Gralus wrote: »

Regards Flash, I don't think it a huge issue apart from old computers that don't have flash. I know people who have ranked well with different keywords using wix. It's not your standard flash website. All the text, image tags, headings etc can be crawled by Google. Also you have a basic but neat and optimised mobile/iPad site - more than half of good websites ttoday still don't have. Don't use a standard wordpress template. You're website has character. Your customers will dislike a standard template more than a flash website (unless they don't have flash).

Disagree. Flash has significant issues in relation to mobile devices. While there is some crawlable content, there's more on-site SEO to be considered than that.

Gralus

I will agree - obviously Flash on wix has some limitations regarding SEO but can still be effective if used properly.

And in terms of flash on mobile, she has an optimised html5 version of her website for a mobile.

To me - with no budget - it's a good job.

cormee

JD RoX wrote: »

It would cost around €80 to recode this in html, keeping the same layout and look + adding contact forms. It's not all that expensive. Don't save money on your own business

There's no way anyone (in Ireland) would code that properly for €80. I'd almost* pay you the €80 myself to see what you produce.

Or are you suggesting putting it on elance?

*almost

Squeeonline

If I were to do it in pure html5, I expect it would come to the €300 mark. Depends if the client is willing to lose some of the unnecessary flash features. If not, it'll be more.

If you were to replicate the page in wordpress that might come down to 200, hard to tell.

Feathers

Gralus wrote: »

Regards Flash, I don't think it a huge issue apart from old computers that don't have flash.

I thought the biggest issue with it being in Flash is that it was slow. Would've been frustrated with it had I been there as a customer, didn't mind so much coming from this thread. But even then, sometimes when I clicked on a link nothing happened — had to click a couple of times to be sure.

That's grand if you've a fancy 3D image gallery, but a site as light-weight as this should be lightning fast, & would be in HTML.

JD RoX

cormee wrote: »

There's no way anyone (in Ireland) would code that properly for €80. I'd almost* pay you the €80 myself to see what you produce.

Or are you suggesting putting it on elance?

*almost

Website coded for €80 http://verisurepestcontrol.com/
Without outsourcing

Squeeonline

JD RoX wrote: »

Website coded for €80 http://verisurepestcontrol.com/
Without outsourcing

That's a nice site. I'm a little worried about the egos of the SEO and designers with the size of the footer text. Should be about half that.

It's not even using a WordPress template. Possibly a pre-made html one though, but can't tell.

JD RoX

Squeeonline wrote: »

That's a nice site. I'm a little worried about the egos of the SEO and designers with the size of the footer text. Should be about half that.

It's not even using a WordPress template. Possibly a pre-made html one though, but can't tell.

I know, I only designed it, then had to add footer text, but I know absolute 0 about coding So I couldn't really change the text size

Squeeonline

JD RoX wrote: »

I know, I only designed it, then had to add footer text, but I know absolute 0 about coding So I couldn't really change the text size

Wow, considering all the comments you make on other peoples' websites here and you don't know how to "code" HTML/CSS?

It's very easy to learn, harder to master.

into your CSS (main.css), insert this

#signature {font-size: 10px;}

Your site also has some in-line styling which is bad practice. If possible, it should all be in the CSS file.

uck51js9zml2yt

You could also look at http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/

a free domain and hosting for a year with a set template.

JD RoX

Squeeonline wrote: »

Wow, considering all the comments you make on other peoples' websites here and you don't know how to "code" HTML/CSS?

It's very easy to learn, harder to master.

into your CSS (main.css), insert this

#signature {font-size: 10px;}

Your site also has some in-line styling which is bad practice. If possible, it should all be in the CSS file.

Ohh man, I know it's bad But as I look at it, I don't have to program to know if website works or not. Every day I work hand in hand with developers, troubleshooting websites, fixing codes etc - I just have no clue about font editing in css.

That site has some "wrong" coding, but reason being is that we only had 16 hours to design and develop it from scratch. In all fairness, it's still better than most websites being programmed in Ireland. For example, look at SilkWebdesign ( I bet you have heard about them ) - they still program using tables...

_______________________
Just took a look at that signature - I added it, that's why it has inline styling

Freddio

JD RoX wrote: »

€80

JD RoX wrote: »

16 hours to design and develop it from scratch.

thats 5 euro an hour

Squeeonline

JD RoX wrote: »

For example, look at SilkWebdesign ( I bet you have heard about them ) - they still program using tables...

Oh em gee view-source:http://www.silkwebdesign.ie/

Feathers

Squeeonline wrote: »

Oh em gee view-source:http://www.silkwebdesign.ie/

On the upside, if they ever wanted to send any of their pages out in an email — job done! & the clip-art is quality! Very retro.

Feathers

Augustine Calm Ventilate wrote: »

You could also look at http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie/

a free domain and hosting for a year with a set template.

That's a really great initiative! (Apart from the girl with Comic-sans body text listed as a 'success story') How long have they been doing this?

JD RoX

Freddio wrote: »

thats 5 euro an hour

Not really, that was the price for programming, my wages weren't included in those 80 euros.

Squeeonline wrote: »

Oh em gee view-source:http://www.silkwebdesign.ie/

Madness, isn't it? ... Once I sent them an email saying that 'tard who uses tables should be fired.. Didn't get any reply, but they advanced to my level - next website they released was made with inline styling, and just few tables