New Montessori Site

Smarty Pants Montessori

Hi Folks,

we've just launched our site for our new Montessori school in Rush, Co. Dublin.
Feel free to give us your feedback, it's all appreciated.

www.smartypants.ie

Thanks,
Laura & Michelle

Smarty Pants Montessori

Basically we're just looking for a little feedback on what people generally think of the site - Is it informative? is it direct? is it playful?

Anybody?

L & M

tricky D

You have been poorly served by your designer.

Logo is very poor. Typography, content and content organisation is very poor. Use of screen space is poor.

Very poor search engine optimisation.

Background images appear to be stock and so may be copyrighted which could end up very expensive for you. Make sure they're used with correct permission and licencing. They're also ridiculously oversized at over 0.5MB each. Having kids in the backgrounds seems like poor judgement to me wrt child safety.

Your homepage says and sells just about nothing. If I'm looking for services like your's, I want something which inspires trust, tells me where you are, outlines services and gives prices. These are key pieces of info required to make a purchase decision. That type of content should be on the homepage instead of making users look for it.

Some of the pages have scroll bars which is just bad design, really bad.

Info about your facilities is lacking. You could have photos of the facility and I'd suggest photos with yourselves for the human touch.

No contact/enquiry form.

No footer with copyright, location, company reg etc. info.

I repeat - no prices.

Apols for the harshness but not for the honesty.

Smarty Pants Montessori

Thanks for the input.

As far as the design goes I can't really see where you are coming from,
we're quite happy that it's strong, colourful and contemporary...
This is the latest part of our identity rollout, which we are very happy with so far.
The site isn't to be used to list prices but more to give a quick overview of our services.
We are including an image gallery but it is yet to go live.
We'll keep your suggestions in mind when we meet the designer next.

Thanks again,
L&M

tricky D

Smarty Pants Montessori wrote: »

Thanks for the input.

As far as the design goes I can't really see where you are coming from,
we're quite happy that it's strong, colourful and contemporary...

Years of design theory and practice says it's a very poor design.

Smarty Pants Montessori wrote: »

This is the latest part of our identity rollout, which we are very happy with so far.

There's almost no identity and branding work done here. The logo is just a font with zero extra treatment, no colour, no metaphor, no brand equity, nothing to serve identity.

Smarty Pants Montessori wrote: »

The site isn't to be used to list prices but more to give a quick overview of our services.

Price, location and trust are key to your business' success and omitting prices is a big, big mistake. People hate when it's omitted. Location info is pushed to the back. Little effort is made to establish trust which is much more important than you realise.

Smarty Pants Montessori wrote: »

We are including an image gallery but it is yet to go live.
We'll keep your suggestions in mind when we meet the designer next.

Thanks again,
L&M

Do yourself a favour, get another established designer to give you a quick opinion. I'll be very blunt here, your current one is not up to scratch. He has no idea of search engine optimisation which is absolutely crucial to your site's success. If you don't get a grip on that element, your site will languish. His website also speaks for itself.



@goulders best to start your own dedicated review request thread for purposes of clarity and to have a better chance of more reviews.

Smarty Pants Montessori

Again, thanks for the input, that's clarified a few points for us.

I know this isn't the best place to post it but would you mind PMing me your own site to get a better understanding of what you are talking about regarding optimisation, design, identity etc?

It would be much appreciated!

Thanks,
L&M

Cianos

While they look nice, I'll echo that hi-res photos of kids on a montessori site is not a good decision. Parents looking at these photos will presume that the children photographed are attendees of your Montessori's and the first thing they'll think is "I don't want MY child on the internet!".

Tricky D, I'm just wondering what the main shortcomings of this site are regarding SEO?

Smarty Pants Montessori

Thanks for your reply Cianos, we'll take that into consideration.

Trick D,
We've had the scroll bars removed and are happy that it looks well now,
having looked at many many other montessori/childcare sites we are confident
that the site is visually very strong and collected. Far more so than the norm.

I havn't received a PM from you regarding my previous request,
I guess you don't want to lose your anonymity. Which is fair.

Thanks again.

L&M

tricky D

Cianos wrote: »

Tricky D, I'm just wondering what the main shortcomings of this site are regarding SEO?

Some of the pages have content in the meta keywords but most search engines are ignoring them, so pretty much no value there. The main keywords used on the site are 'montessori' and 'afterschool' and most instances are not semantically formatted that I can see. They need more treatment as headings, alts and emboldened text. For better effect there needs to be more use of related keywords and location names - the searches that will get them found. Currently the only location oriented keyword is 'rush' which is used only once on the whole site with no treatment and is very weak for purposes and intents given that it's a regular word and a popular band name which lessens its value. I would be optimising for at least 2 sets of terms: skerries, rush, lusk, donabate, loughshinny, north county dublin, st. catherines national school etc. and montessori, afterschool, creche, childcare, day nursery, day care, preschool etc.

The logo's alt tag is the specific company name ('Smarty Pants Logo') with no generic search term value so very limited effect in terms of casual finds. I.e. that content is only useful for people searching for the company name as opposed to more generalised search terms - industry and locality. Other alt tags are similarly not well seo-oriented.

Smarty Pants Montessori wrote: »

Trick D,
We've had the scroll bars removed and are happy that it looks well now,
having looked at many many other montessori/childcare sites we are confident that the site is visually very strong and collected. Far more so than the norm.

I havn't received a PM from you regarding my previous request,
I guess you don't want to lose your anonymity. Which is fair.

Having looked at other sites I was surprised at the quality of design or the lack thereof. More of an opportunity for yours to shine.

Currently there's very little on my own site that would help you, but I am working on something.... You could do a bit of Googling.

dory

There doesn't seem to be any way to scroll down.

"Unfortunately we are only in a position to provide drop-off and collection services from St Catherine's National School at this" is all I get on the Clubs section at the end. I presume there's some more I can't see.

Trojan

This site has me a bit conflicted. I do like some of the design ideas - the abstract layout, I like the way the photos are similar to the way bing do it, which I like, and the colour scheme is good.

I'm not convinced that the photos of kids are as inappropriate as some of the posters above believe - but neither am I a parent, so take my opinon with a pinch of salt on that one.

The logo isn't really a logo, which is fair enough if you didn't task & pay the designer for creation of a custom logo.

I'd echo a lot of the above comments on the structural and user experience issues - scrollbars, SEO elements, etc. While some of the commenters above haven't listed their own website, the points are nonetheless valid.