My catering index website

paul.mcguinness

Hi,

Just wondering if there is any constructive comments my catering services index website http://www.cateringireland.ie

The website trys not to intrude on the user with ads but the ads are necessary to try take the sting off the hosting costs.

Any input is welcomed including, visuals, structure, visiter relevance, Dataflow etc.

Cheers.

tricky D

Logo tagline is blurred. Motif isn't distinct enough either on the reversed out logo version. So is the Promote Your Catering Business which also has an onhover glow effect which could be executed better (glow is cropped badly).

Good h1 headline. 'Looking for a Caterer in your area?' is straight to the point.

'Search for all catering services in Ireland. Search by county or catering type to find the most relevant caterer for your event. Use the search form below or use the map of Ireland on the right hand side to list all caterers in your area.' is largely superfluous. It should be obvious enough how to use it so as not to need explanation, and it is obvious, so you can omit that. Same with 'To maximize your caterer search select the type of caterer and county accordingly' below the search form.

Removing the above and tweaking the layout dimensions a small bit would allow for Contact, For Caterers and Sitemap to rise above the fold for better visual cue like on the About Us page where you can see that there's more down there.

Why would someone like to sign up to your newsletter? Give reasons and link to previous editions. Really should have a privacy policy.

The footer has WAI-AA and css validation links. Firstly, a personal bugbear of mine, your site is nowhere near AA compliant so that should be removed. (You have no skip links, form labels, and a few other things which are required for such a claim on accessibility) The css is just not needed (it's only really relevant to a developer). I would also omit the web safe label for reverse psychological reasons.

Add a style to your search button.

The contact page has 'Search For a Caterer, Contact Us, About Us' repeated on the right. It's not really needed. The there's link to Seacrch by County to the homepage which is directly above a search field with the same function just not graphical.

The captcha is really hard to read. Do you really get so much spam that makes it needed?

I would change the link to Search Caterers to Listings which would then be sortable by a few crtieria. The search function is on every page so a separate page is superfluous.

Proofread all your content for spelling (Alternativly), grammar and punctuation (allows caterer's to).

Your pages' filenames have mixed case. Make them all lower case.

You could change the heading on the about us page to About Catering Ireland for a bit more SEO.

You don't list prices anywhere. It's a really bad to omit this as it is very important purchase info. Ideally, you are working on a freemium price model where basic listing is free (and shout that out) and then there are other tiers like top of county, side bar or homepage options priced accordingly. While you have 3rd party ads, the tier model would probably be better for revenue, they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive and you wouldn't be losing out on revenue due to users having adblockers. It is also a really good idea to give some site metrics like visitor numbers per month so caterers can figure out how much bang for their buck they get.

Get Featured on Home Page, Submit Recipe, Contact Us point to the same form when separate ones would be a bit better.

There are no images of catering at all apart from ads. Spice up the design with some. There are plenty of free photosover on Wikipedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Food or http://www.sxc.hu

The SEO on the site is generally good. You could do more work on the SEO for market segments and in your page titles. Eg. homepage has 'Welcome to Catering Ireland, Ireland's number one search index for Caterer's - Catering Ireland' which is too long and would be better as 'Catering Ireland, classified listing for finding caterers'. Welcome, index, search are dead words for search.

Like the individual listing pages. Email this Caterer could have styled buttons and them moved right into better contextual/flow position. Print style sheet is used which is good, though last time I checked, users could print straight out of the page into a print formatted page if the print css media attiribute is used, which it is. Note to self: Must hookup the printer and test that again (maybe it only doesn't work in print preview).

http://cateringireland.ie doesn't work.

hth gl

paul.mcguinness

Right thanks very much indeed, your info is a lot more detailed than i was expecting which is good. I will implement most of your suggestions.

Cheers,

Paul.

cormee

I was thinking of doing a catering directory a few weeks ago, thankfully I didn't . cater.ie is up for grabs btw, might want to grab it, if only to protect your own brand/site.

paul.mcguinness

Cheers i will pick it up.