Feedback etc appreciated...

ike

Hi Folks,

I'd like to get some feedback on our site please http://www.singingstarexperience.com - its meant to be a brochure type site and we wanted to keep it as simple as possible.

Would appreciate any thoughts. Thanks a lot

lil_lisa

Just a few pointers, I would have it positioned exactly in the middle, you can do this with left-margin:auto; right-margin:auto instead of the exact values you're using.
Also maybe a thin border would look nice with a light foreground colour or a light background colour.
Finally, I would consider changing the font of "Singing Star Experience", it looks quite old fashioned and dated.

ike

Thanks for having a look, a fresh pair of eyes it always good, I will address the alignment.

We're a bit tied in on the font in terms of having promotional material printed etc, but may make some subtle changes over the next while in terms of colouring and background. Thanks again

Cianos

ike wrote: »

We're a bit tied in on the font in terms of having promotional material printed etc, but may make some subtle changes over the next while in terms of colouring and background. Thanks again

Don't be worried about making sure your printed material and online material look the exact same. As long as the online material is a clear improvement, no one is going to knock you for having a font that is different to what was on your flyer....most people probably wouldn't even notice.

Instead I think it'd be a boost to your image as people will see a more professionally finished site that they can actually engage with. Your site will continue to be the most important asset of your business, so don't let a pile of flyers lying in the corner stop you from maximising its potential

tricky D

First, you could explicitly specify a white background.

Not hot on the jagged effect on the logo. You could rework the logo to include a star with a singing element as opposed to a star with 2 eyes. (Make the star sing). The warped text means the end of your brandname is somewhat lost, especially for smaller versions of your logo. The greyed notes don't do much as they are currently.

Right click is disabled. Why?

The homepage content could do a better job explaning the product/service and you could better address some of your market segements. Got any special offers/deals/free stuff?

Spaces in your filenames should be avoided.

Get a favicon and link the logo to the homepage.

The About page and the homepage are the same.

Read up on search engine optimisation wrt page titles, headings, strong and alt tags.

On the Packages page, try to differentiate between the various packages as they all have the same basic treatment (look). You could redefine your packages as like Solo Singer Basic, Pro and Ultimate or Solo Singer Mini, Mini+Photo, Max+Photo. (Those aren't great examples but you get the idea). Then do up some graphic for each using something logo related perhaps.

The blocks of text could get a lightly coloured background tp help seperate them and also enables positioning of the PayPal button at the end of each offering where it works better.

Try to get product samples/examples and testimonies from happy clients.

An overview of the process could be an idea with some graphic treatment like a few panels with each stage.

The typography is all the same and very basic.

I'd put your contact details (postal, landline and email) and perhaps your company number in the footer on every page. Omit the blacknight link, it's not needed.

Get a contact page with a form.

You're using gmail email addresses which isn't as professional looking as an info@singingstarexperience.com email alias pointing to both your singingstarexperience.com email addresses. This is fairly easy to set up on your hosting package.

I would use a different editor as the output under the bonnet isn't good. However that's more a technical concern and considering this looks to be your first outing you're probably more worried about getting something out there to get you started.

Your photo album uses Flash when it would be better to use jQuery or a lightroom gallery. Again that is probably not a big concern for you at present.

I just found the process overview which is buried in the photoshoot page. Make that more prominent or better put it in the nav menu.

Try to give the photos of the two of you a bit more of a relaxed (no folded arms) and friendly feel (to help allay the first time in studio nerves) and maybe in the context of the workspace.

For the next version of your site, I'd advise you get more input from a professional designer. Even an hour's chat could make a helluva difference.

hth/gl

ike

Cheers tricky, thanks for taking the time to put together a detailed response, there's lots of food for thought there. We'll certainly be reviewing the whole site over the next while and will pobably take on board some of those suggestion.

Thanks again

PaulPinnacle

Big +1 for tricky's post. If you cover all of the points he raised, it would lead to dramatic improvements.

I normally don't have a problem with text size on websites, even when other do, but I found the default text on the small size here. One of the first times ever I actually used the 'text zoom' tool on firefox for anything other than playing around.

tricky D wrote: »

The blocks of text could get a lightly coloured background tp help seperate them and also enables positioning of the PayPal button at the end of each offering where it works better.

You appear to have made this change by the time I checked the site. I'd suggest adding some padding to the text so that it's not tight against the frame. At the moment it's a little harsh to view and difficult to read.

I'd remove the backing from the process page, it's not in keeping with the rest of the site and isn't actually providing any 'segmentation' in that location.

On the packages background, I'd be inclined to try a colour that's more in keeping with the existing colour scheme of the site. The colour used at the moment doesn't really 'fit in' in my own opinion, but that's very subjective.

tricky D wrote: »

The typography is all the same and very basic.
...
For the next version of your site, I'd advise you get more input from a professional designer. Even an hour's chat could make a helluva difference.

Given the sector you're aiming at, I'd assume that having a very high quality finish (in relation to your recordings, photos and cover designs) is vital. This level of finish should really be displayed on your website too. I'd suggest that putting the effort into improving the quality of the finish (in terms of the logo, layout, font selection, etc.) on the site might provide a great return in the long run.

How are you currently marketing the idea? If you hope to get customers directly through the website from search engines, there's a huge amount of SEO work to be done there (even if you just want to make it a little easier for people specifically trying to find your site to find it, it could do with some SEO work). If you read through some basic SEO guidelines, you'd be able to make some fairly dramatic improvements with very little time/work. If, as you're going through the information, you've any specific questions on it... post on boards and you'll get plenty of help with it.

It's actually a really interesting idea with great potential. Best of luck with it, I hope it goes well.

ike

Hey Paul,

Thanks for the input much appreciated, I've started working on the SEO side of things, as lot of our random business has come from people searching for such a product. Getting customers through our website would be our preferred method of marketing the idea, that combined with word of mouth has accounted for 90% of our business to date.

Regards marketing we've ran a Facebook campaign, Google adwords, sponsored talent shows which have generated a few more hits to the website but nothing more. One target market we accidently fell over was younger kids (typically aged 8-12) getting it as birthday presents etc. Typical example one parent books it for their child as a group session and then the other kids on the day love it and start looking for their own session for their birthday.

We knew from the start that it was only ever going to supplement the studio and my photography work, it was never going to be a main source of income. We already had the equipment/facilities in place so it was just a question of packaging up a product to get some more out of them. We also felt it would be a slow burner - but still there is a lot of potential in the idea. We missed the Xmas market last year as we really only kicked off in Jan, but we're more or less on target for what we predicted for year one.

Thanks again - lot of food for thought

PaulPinnacle

ike wrote: »

..as lot of our random business has come from people searching for such a product.

That's a very positive sign. If you're already landing a few, with some tweaks you should be able to expand on that greatly.

ike wrote: »

Regards marketing we've ran a Facebook campaign, Google adwords, sponsored talent shows which have generated a few more hits to the website but nothing more.

The good news here is that even if the results of the advertising here hasn't given a strong return on investment (which is the end goal with any advertising), it has provided you with knowledge and information that will help you going forward.

Using a mixture of your analytics data and your campaign data, you should have a clear idea of what keywords convert/drive traffic for you. You can then focus on getting your site SEO to focus on these terms. (I work in the PPC advertising side of things, but always go to pains to highlight the importance of using paid advertising as one element of a broader marketing campaign and that it should be used in parallel with SEO, off line advertising, etc. etc.)

Glancing at the site:

Title: Probably the most valuable area on the page for SEO purposes. It gives (or should give) the SE's a clear idea of what your site provides and is the 'hyperlink' that will appear on SERP's when you do rank for a term (so has a dramatic impact on click rates once a term does rank). You want to get your most important keywords into your page titles. "Index" should really be "Singing Star Experience | An experience to remember | Index" (or something more along that lines, containing your 'most important' keyword)

Canonicalization: As far as the SE's are concerned, www.singingstarexperience.com isn't the same page as www.singingstarexperience.com/index.html (or for the www / non www pages). This means that as far as they're concerned, you've simply got a number of pages with duplicate content showing up. It also means that you've got the potential for the benefit of backlinks to be split between the pages, rather than flowing to a single page.

Meta Description: When you rank for a term, the snippet shown on the results page 'should' be your meta description (at the moment you don't have any, so google will randomly select text from your content to produce it). It's always best to have a well produced description here to ensure you maximise your clicks once you do rank for a term. Explain what you do and what the reader will gain by clicking on your page, but in a short/sharp summary.

Analytics code: If you check the analytics help pages, you'll find plenty of reference for the newer 'asynchronous' code. It's a little faster to process than the older scripts and also as it can be located in the header section (move it up to just before the </head> tag) should provide more accurate data (as the code is processed earlier, less bounces are missed).

Semantic Coding: Using good semantic coding (so your <title>, <h1>, <h2>, <strong>, <em>, etc.) to clearly explain what is important on you site (to both the readers and the SE's). Search engines assign a hierarchical rank to the different headline markup tags, so get your most important terms higher up the list and the other relevant terms further down.

There are dozens (or hundreds) of other steps you should take, but if you tackle the above you're covering the most important areas and should see some dramatic results for what's pretty quick work.

ike wrote: »

One target market we accidently fell over was younger kids (typically aged 8-12) getting it as birthday presents etc. Typical example one parent books it for their child as a group session and then the other kids on the day love it and start looking for their own session for their birthday.

Heh, some nice in-house viral marketing right there.

Might be worth seeing if you can link up with any of the 'novelty gift' type sites out there at the moment. Has clear advertising benefits for you (hitting a great target market) and as it's adding to the services offered via the parent site so is good for them.

ike

PaulPinnacle wrote: »

Canonicalization: As far as the SE's are concerned, www.singingstarexperience.com isn't the same page as www.singingstarexperience.com/index.html (or for the www / non www pages). This means that as far as they're concerned, you've simply got a number of pages with duplicate content showing up. It also means that you've got the potential for the benefit of backlinks to be split between the pages, rather than flowing to a single page.

Thanks again Paul - might seems a basic question but I'm not sure I understand what is meant by that - do I just create a seperate home page??

PaulPinnacle

ike wrote: »

might seems a basic question but I'm not sure I understand what is meant by that - do I just create a seperate home page??

Questions are only basic when you know the answer. So never be afraid to ask, no such thing as a 'stupid question'.

No. The problem here is despite the fact that you only have one home page, the search engines are viewing it as a number of different pages, all with the same content, at the moment.

If you google for it you'll find numerous different ways of resolving the issue (it's a very common one faced by most sites). Probably the most common solution is to set up '301 redirects' (a permanent redirect - it will depend on your hosting the easiest way to do it, possibly via your .htaccess file) to point each of the possible pages to your one 'master' location.

So you end up sending http://singingstarexperience.com/, http://www.singingstarexperience.com/index.html, etc. to all point at "http://www.singingstarexperience.com".

It's not a 'huge' deal. But as you can't control what link people choose to use when linking to your site, best to make sure you're gathering all the backlinks to a single page and not spread over a few.

You can quickly set your preference here via Google Webmaster Tools, but you're better doing it on your own server so the benefits are with more than just Google.