New website - feedback please

Hello all

I have just completed a new website, what do you think, I know changes needed in header, but overall what do you think please?

http://www.mostlytasks.com/

thanks

George

On a quick note, you should prob change the question from "did you find us on google?" to "how did you find us?" leaves it more open ended, as not really sure how a yes or no to that effect would help you.

Hi George,

Overall, I think the design is decent (clean, legible) but there are a few things that spoil it:

• the resolution on the header is poor so it looks blurred
• the green slideshow on the home page doesn't fit the rest of the site
• I would turn off the commenting facility from everything except the blog
• the graphic on the contact us page is terrible
• take the facebook link out of the top of each page and put it in a sidebar - it's distracting
• make sure your use of fonts is consistent

Other things you need to sort out:

• a mobile phone number and gmail address just scream cheap, back bedroom operation. There is no way I would trust you to deliver professional services.
• Once you get a proper phone number, put it in your header - it needs to be prominent
• Your About Us page tells us very little about you and your team
• Are those testimonials real clients? If so, they need to be attributed. If not, remove them - fake testimonials are worse than none.
• Most VAs give some pricing guidelines these days. I know some people disagree, but I think including pricing has more positives than negatives.

Finally, if I read one more Virtual Assistant blog where the only articles are of the "Why you should use a VA" genre I will scream.

Sorry if some of this sounds a bit harsh - I'm hoping it will be useful for you.

Alison

I agree with Deborah for the most part. Also I would personally make the contact us form a seperate tab, that way you could get more detail from the 'get go'. I was also a little confused by the questionairre in the blog section, the questions are not written like questions, a simple 'Do you..' at the beginning of this section would make it easier to understand.

Finally, remember the 7 second rule, studies have shown that you have 7 seconds to catch my attention, do you really think I'm going to scroll down the page? Remember that many people are barely literate and many refuse to learn how to use a computer properly. Kep the message clean clear and hit them between the eyes, if they have to think, they will probably click off somewhere else! 

It is a good site overall, just needs a couple of tweaks, hope this helps

Peter

Liam, Alison, Peter

Many many thanks for your comments, that is a really impressive to do list I have full of really useful actions. I'll make those changes and post the site here.

Aside from the very good marketing tips, the changes needed are technical and take me time and practice to get sorted.

George

Morning George

Building on the other comments, which I think are all valid, in my opinion the conversion 'architecture' of the site needs addressing.  The content of the site is all structured and written in the sense of 'outbound' message - from us to you - what we do - as a test, try writing the content without the words 'we' and 'our'.

If you consider for a moment WHO is your buyer and what are THEY loooking for, actually the most interesting stuff is buried away on your Partner business resources tab.  Really, these should be big visual signposts on your front page, and direct users to the other content that is mapped in sequence to their buying cycle - what information to THEY need to help them make their buying decision, supported by appropriate video / download content etc - all leading towards the conversion goal of contacting you, either by phone or through your contact form.  Anything with a Call to Action - contact numbers, social media linkages - should be top right corner on the front page and big / in colour so that people can pick them out.   You have some of them on the front page but in small text and overpowered by the moving graphic, which however snappy it looks is distracting to the subconscious brain.  I would replace the contact form on your home page with more blog content - something that is more likely to engage a reader - and put a 'Contact Us' C2A button that will take them to the Contact page.  As Peter points out, you have about 7 seconds on your Home Page to capture the attention.  Frankly, you lost me within that time.

In the end, Content is the most important thing in your site.  Forget the graphics for a moment, and it's all that search engines have to go on as well as what the user is really looking for, so you have to make it what they need to help them buy

Hope this helps, happy to talk through further if you like.  All the best, Noel

Thanks Noel,

Great suggestions, I am working my way through all of the ones I have had - seems that the message is "content rules" and importance of buying cycle customer journey, calls to action. 

Regards

George

1. Why are you using a @gmail address when you own the domain? it's a simple job to get an @mostlytasks.com email address

2. Way too much white space hanging around, the layout on the homepage is all over the place. But the rest of the site is alot more structured.

3. Stock imagery for the VA's? I've yet to meet a VA who looks like that!

4. Pages with no content? find out more...

5. Some of the graphics are really blurry and/or cheap looking (bright green) etc

Just needs some tightening up by someone who can do design/layout.

1) Using WordPress so +1 from me

2) Using a free "blog" theme, which looks awful, really really poor theme - Choose a "CMS" theme rather than a blogging theme.

3) Images are blurred, meaning they are too big and being squeezed into the spaces, reduce all the images to the right sizes

4) Using Gmail addresses and mobile phone doesn't instill confidence - Get a landline number (redirect to the mobile if need too) and get your domain emails e,g, info@mostlytasks.com

5) The "slider" function is poor, get rid of it as it's wasting prime space on your site, it's flash based (meaning mobile devices and apple devices can't view it), it's very small with bad colour choice meaning it's hard to read the slide information, and the information isn't very appealing, it needs to be bold, agressive and instantly tell me what the slide is about.

To be perfectly honest, it's a poor example of  a website, it shows it was made by a non designer, and it will put some people off. Spending £300-£500 with a developer will get you a custom WP theme that suits your business and does everything you need.

Hi Matthew and Gareth,

Awesome advice many thanks. 

Have to agree with just about all of it.

Regards

George