site review www.ebizrepublic.com

fishy21

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the right section. I am looking for some feedback on my first site I have just started www.ebizrepublic.com. It is to help all the irish people out there to set up an online business. The site is in its very early stages so please take it easy. I have no experience in this sort of thing.

Peter

Bandara

Hi peter, (I'm speaking as a complete techie ignoramus)

I really like the site and the layout its excellent imo. The only think that I didn't like is the red headings in the "starting out" and the "design" sections, they kind of look out of place in Red.

Best of luck with it, there are some good people on here with experience in web business, you should get good feedback, just don't take any crisitism personally, we're all here to help each other.

Regards
HT

fishy21

Hammertime wrote: »

Hi peter, (I'm speaking as a complete techie ignoramus)

I really like the site and the layout its excellent imo. The only think that I didn't like is the red headings in the "starting out" and the "design" sections, they kind of look out of place in Red.

Best of luck with it, there are some good people on here with experience in web business, you should get good feedback, just don't take any crisitism personally, we're all here to help each other.

Regards
HT

Thanks HT

I was thinking that myself. Do you think i should just change it to blue?
I appreciate the advice.

W!zard

Nice site but you do realise your page ranking will struggle because your whole website is made with flash, meaning the text areas are not always seen by the search bots.
The domain name is catchy, good one!

fishy21

W!zard wrote: »

Nice site but you do realise your page ranking will struggle because your whole website is made with flash, meaning the text areas are not always seen by the search bots.
The domain name is catchy, good one!

i know flash isnt good for seo but the website builder i used says that their flash sites are seo friendly.
Im not sure to be honest.

TheWaterboy

I too wouldnt be too fond of using Flash - especially for an information site. I see no advantage to it. Google doesnt like flash and as a result you arent going to rank very well.

The site looks well and is clear and concise. Prob a good idea to have some sort of pricing structure. There is no indication if it is a free service.

Best of luck with it

W!zard

As a first draft website, its good Do keep at it!

Flash is still flash unless the builder reinvented it (not a chance)
Content is king and looking forward to seeing the updates you do in the coming months.

fishy21

TheWaterboy wrote: »

I too wouldnt be too fond of using Flash - especially for an information site. I see no advantage to it. Google doesnt like flash and as a result you arent going to rank very well.

The site looks well and is clear and concise. Prob a good idea to have some sort of pricing structure. There is no indication if it is a free service.

Best of luck with it

ill try and dig out he link that explains this flash site for google.
Yes its just a free content site. I have a couple of ideas for online businesses so i thought this would be a good way to start. Just to get used to using analytics etc.

RoadKillTs

Hi fishy21!

Like the site idea though I think the website builder was lying

I like the site (I usually hate flash sites ) and the name, but I would seriously consider using a HTML version instead of flash.
You going to have a site (hopefully) with a lot of content and it won't get indexed properly if you stay with flash.


Also just for a suggestion a section on Web payments would also be useful. It can be a confusing area for people setting up online businesses.
Best of luck

fishy21

RoadKillTs wrote: »

Hi fishy21!

Like the site idea though I think the website builder was lying

I like the site (I usually hate flash sites ) and the name, but I would seriously consider using a HTML version instead of flash.
You going to have a site (hopefully) with a lot of content and it won't get indexed properly if you stay with flash.


Also just for a suggestion a section on Web payments would also be useful. It can be a confusing area for people setting up online businesses.
Best of luck

I have a small section in there for web payments. Its not very detailed yet, but its in the pipeline.
The funny thing is I dont even know what HTML is. Im that new to this.

ronkmonster

For a flash site it is very clear and designed well. (usually hate flash sites)
But there is nothing (content-wise) that you need flash for. The site layout could have been done in plain html, and all you'd lose is the side wipe effect.
It would be easier for seo also.

Are you reliant on going back to your web developer every time you want to change or add new information? It would be worth looking into him developing the site as a CMS so you can add content without changing the site.

fishy21

ronkmonster wrote: »

For a flash site it is very clear and designed well. (usually hate flash sites)
But there is nothing (content-wise) that you need flash for. The site layout could have been done in plain html, and all you'd lose is the side wipe effect.
It would be easier for seo also.

Are you reliant on going back to your web developer every time you want to change or add new information? It would be worth looking into him developing the site as a CMS so you can add content without changing the site.

I built the site myself using a dit website builder called wix.com. Here is the link that explains their seo using flash. Let me know what everyone thinks.
http://support.wix.com/index.php/SEO

TheWaterboy

it seems that their sites are SEO friendly...Not 100% friendly but not as unfriendly as traditional Flash sites.

If you view the source file of the www.ebizrepublic.com you will see.

Problem is the text for all the site pages are contained in one lump of text. Personally i think it will be hard to get any decent rankings for this

ronkmonster

TheWaterboy wrote: »

it seems that their sites are SEO friendly...Not 100% friendly but not as unfriendly as traditional Flash sites.

If you view the source file of the www.ebizrepublic.com you will see.

Problem is the text for all the site pages are contained in one lump of text. Personally i think it will be hard to get any decent rankings for this

And also, each slide/page doesn't have its own url. Viewers cannot bookmark the area they are in. Not as big of a problem now with the size of the site. But If(when) it grows, users might have trouble remembering where they were or how they got there.

Another side point, some of your information is incorrect/incomplete. Domains section is area i looked at.

calahans

Hi,

Fair play on your first attempt. I think that you should have got more information before you started. With this kind of site you would like the whole site to be crawled i.e. all pages link etc. The reason for this is that you want to come up on searches for say "starting business in ireland" or "introduction to analytics". With flash this wont happen. To give you an idea of indexing go to google a put in site:boards.ie. You will see there are 8m results. Do they same for yours and there are 0. I know its not a fair comparison but its just to make the point about SEO that the others are making.

Also I think that if you want to monetize your site you will need to add a "sticky" element to it i.e. boards where people can share experiences or possibly a blog. If you get people coming back you may be able to sell advertising or services.

fishy21

Thanks for the tips guys.

I will take them into consideration. I have a forum/blog planned for the future alright. I know the content isnt great but i plan to work on it. I should be making alot more changes to the site over the xmas holidays as I have more than 3 weeks off.

I think i have learned more about web design and seo in the last day since putting up this thread than ever before.

Peter

tricky D

+100000 for dumping the Flash. Flash is a super, super technology for webgames, presentations and streaming but rarely, very rarely for websites. For almost any business going online, I would always recommend against it.

Left

I whole-heartedly agree with all the anti-flash comments. Not the way to go.
Also, I noticed at least three spelling mistakes right off the bat while skimming. I'm ultra picky about this when it comes to ANY published text. There are no excuses. Get someone to read it over, use a spell checker, and if you don't know the difference between there and their (for instance), it is worth learning.
Looking forward to seeing where this goes Kudos for the effort.

fishy21

I have just edited the grammar and spelling mistakes. Sorry about that, i didn't get a chance to proof read it first.

Do people think that a forum of some sorts would be benifical for the site? Perhaps useful for questions and discussions.

Peter

ronkmonster

Yes a forum would be a good idea. Business isn't my area so some of the terms on the site I don't understand fully. A forum would give me somewhere to go to ask someone who does know.

Does your wix site have a forum module?

fishy21

ronkmonster wrote: »

Yes a forum would be a good idea. Business isn't my area so some of the terms on the site I don't understand fully. A forum would give me somewhere to go to ask someone who does know.

Does your wix site have a forum module?

Yes that could be very useful.

No wix doesnt have a forum module but i might change to another website builder. Anyone have any recommendations?

tombull82

highly recommend word press, i.ve used it on my newest site and find it great to work with.

fishy21 wrote: »

Yes that could be very useful.

No wix doesnt have a forum module but i might change to another website builder. Anyone have any recommendations?

fishy21

tombull82 wrote: »

highly recommend word press, i.ve used it on my newest site and find it great to work with.

Do you have any examples of that? Is is easy to use?

ronkmonster

Any of the CMS systems would do, but they can be tough to get started in.

Wordpress is quiet good.

Demo http://www.opensourcecms.com/demo/1/87/WordPress

and Showcase of real world sites http://wordpress.org/showcase/

CathalMc

Its a minor gripe, but the look and feel of the site (although clearly designed professionally, and quite) is quite cookie-cutter - that was my first impression. I'd advise some sort of prominent company graphical logo, and a less subtle styling. The clarity and ease-of-navigation of the site is commendable.

Secondly, and I'd get a cross-section of replies before I'd accept this anecdote, the 'biz' part of your name has negative connotations for me, through my association of that with vast number of replicated websites in highly spammed google search parameters, or other thousands of anonymous-looking, dodgey, low-quality re-seller or pure-ad-based webpages. Other people's experience may vehemently diverge with me here, and that's fine.

fishy21

I appreciate all the replies. Its all very constructive.
I have been thinking and I have decided to change to a wordpress theme. Hopefully I can get the hang of it.

fishy21

Update

I am currently working on a new layout. A forum is underway aswell. The conent is going to be much more detailed also. So by Jan I hope to have it all set up and ready to go.

ronkmonster

what forum system are you using? just curious

gavney

Hey Fishy,

Thanks for your website, I found it very useful as I'm pretty clueless about all that stuff.

fishy21

ronkmonster wrote: »

what forum system are you using? just curious

Its called nabble. its pretty simple, but looks ok from what i can see.

Peter

fishy21

Update

The new site is well under way with much more content and new sections such as discussion forums, success stories, and possibly a blog.
I hope to have this up and running by 2-3 weeks.

Any other suggestions welcome.

Peter