Just published first website

gnolan

I just published my first website and would really appreciate some feedback; everything ranging from look and feel, SEO, typography, colour, usability etc.

This is my first site and I have an idea of some improvements i'd like to make to it. Thanks.

http://www.cnnutrition.ie

JD RoX

Looks like one of those free templates to me.. sorry

gnolan

JD RoX wrote: »

Looks like one of those free templates to me.. sorry

That's ok. Can you expand on that a bit more though?

JD RoX

There's not much I can comment on. Typical big header, ugly borders on the sides. Navigation hoover effect is smaller than actual menu items.
Nutritional Healths title tag is too long.
You have Validation errors.
SEO is very poor - nobody is gonna search for CN Nutrition. ( Try: Diet plans, healthy diet, personal diet plan etc )

gnolan

JD RoX wrote: »

There's not much I can comment on. Typical big header, ugly borders on the sides. Navigation hoover effect is smaller than actual menu items.
Nutritional Healths title tag is too long.
You have Validation errors.
SEO is very poor - nobody is gonna search for CN Nutrition. ( Try: Diet plans, healthy diet, personal diet plan etc )

Thanks for the feedback.

I've rectified most of the validation errors now; i'm going to ignore the erros wrt to the Google Map for the moment.

The length of the title tag was something I was considering addressing. I've altered all of them now; they are a little shorter and less descriptive.

I appreciate your comments wrt the borders and banner and it is something I plan on looking at soon.

Can you tell me what you mean by:

Navigation hoover effect is smaller than actual menu items.

I'm not experiencing that on any browser or at any magnification?

With regards to SEO, i'm not very skilled in that department but have read up on it a little. You say:

( Try: Diet plans, healthy diet, personal diet plan etc )

What do you mean by this? I've read that Google doesn't really pay any attention to meta keywords anymore. I've tried to design the site hierarchy correctly using h1-h3 tags where appropriate. How else can i specify terms and keywords like the ones you suggest above?

JD RoX

Banner: don't get me wrong, it's not the worst, but the layout of your design doesn't support it, it's too heavy on the top, and then there's nothing on rest of the page. It's like one of those kids with massive heads and skinny bodies - just looks wrong

Navigation hoover effect - http://d.pr/i/MZ2t
Text runs over the mouse-over effect. Need to increase the height by 2-4px

Diet plans, healthy diet etc - that wasn't meant for keywords, but for title tags You are right, google doesn't care for keywords... That's why we include the most important keywords into the title tag. Make sure title tag is similar to main keywords in H1 headings. Get rid of Home, About us etc from title tags, you don't need them there.

gnolan

Thanks, that's pretty helpful. I didn't even notice the overhanging letters, that should be rectified now.

I know what you mean about the top-heaviness. I think, perhaps, if the page was even a little wider it might not look so unbalanced.

Regarding the title tags, I don't really know how to alter them without listing a load of keywords. For example, "about", "nutritional health", "pricing" etc accurately describes the contents of the page. I'm assuming that it's important to keep "CN Nutrition | Carmel Nolan" in the title tag as these could be used a search terms for potential clients looking to learn more about the company.

Squeeonline

I feel it looks a lot like the final shot on this http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell especially with the lens flare, and drop shadows that don't match the source of the "light".

The top right writing on the banner is green on green and not the easiest to pick out.

The whole site doesn't look particularly special, but it does look honest.

gnolan

Squeeonline wrote: »

I feel it looks a lot like the final shot on this http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell especially with the lens flare, and drop shadows that don't match the source of the "light".

The top right writing on the banner is green on green and not the easiest to pick out.

The whole site doesn't look particularly special, but it does look honest.

Bit harsh with "The Oatmeal" reference no?! I kind of see what you mean to be honest - but (even being biased) think that that might be a little unfair.

Regardless, I'm currently going for a complete redesign. I thought the design might be salvageable with some minor tinkering but it's not really. I was never really happy with the design so a complete redesign makes sense i think.

johnfoyvision

I thing you can also enhance this website by inserting more images, sliders, graphics, text, also some interesting and good looking banners rather to redesign.

You can make this website more pretty then wwwtheoatmeat,com

It is upto you what you can thing and upto which extent.

Feathers

gnolan wrote: »

Regardless, I'm currently going for a complete redesign. I thought the design might be salvageable with some minor tinkering but it's not really. I was never really happy with the design so a complete redesign makes sense i think.

Maybe it's part of your redesign, but just to say that the banner you've commented out seems much more professional/matching the image of a nutrionist I think — this one.

I think the shading & that that you have on the current banner is great, but it doesn't feel 'on brand' for someone I'm going to go to for advice about what I should eat & looking after my health.

I'd say try the old exercise of, 'if you could pick 2-3 adjectives that it's important to get across about the business, what are they?' From that point, do you think your logo/colour scheme/font choice/use of images/copy gets these across?

gnolan

Feathers wrote: »

Maybe it's part of your redesign, but just to say that the banner you've commented out seems much more professional/matching the image of a nutrionist I think — this one.

I think the shading & that that you have on the current banner is great, but it doesn't feel 'on brand' for someone I'm going to go to for advice about what I should eat & looking after my health.

I'd say try the old exercise of, 'if you could pick 2-3 adjectives that it's important to get across about the business, what are they?' From that point, do you think your logo/colour scheme/font choice/use of images/copy gets these across?

That image that is commented out isn't part of the redesign.

The redesign i'm working on is much simpler. The "banner" will just be a h1 floated to the left of the main menu, nothing too obtrusive and less...tacky let's say than the current one!

My main worry is SEO and obtaining a high rank. It seems that the title tag plays a huge role but i don't want to have to stuff it full of keywords for a number of reasons. I've read up a good bit on SEO and the title tag seems to rank among the most important aspects.

Cork24

one Ugly Page.. Your Contact Form,, could you fix it up, its so easy to spam u !!!

gnolan

Cork24 wrote: »

one Ugly Page.. Your Contact Form,, could you fix it up, its so easy to spam u !!!

I will fix it up. I've been experimenting with some anti-spam techniques, i generally hate captcha and dislike those "add two numbers" things.

What's happening here is that there is an input box in the form that is hidden from the user with the CSS. Given that most (if not all) bots spam forms by trawling through the HTML, they will fill out this input box. In my php validation, i check to see whether the input box was filled out - if so, the form information is not sent.

Feathers

gnolan wrote: »

My main worry is SEO and obtaining a high rank. It seems that the title tag plays a huge role but i don't want to have to stuff it full of keywords for a number of reasons. I've read up a good bit on SEO and the title tag seems to rank among the most important aspects.

Just noticed that even for a search of 'Carmel Nolan Nutrion', you're still ranking second to the BANT. As a suggestion, would you be able to contact them & have them update the listed email address to one with a cnnutrion.ie domain name on this page — http://www.bant.org.uk/bant/getPractitioner?id=41404

& have the website too if possible.

gnolan

Feathers wrote: »

Just noticed that even for a search of 'Carmel Nolan Nutrion', you're still ranking second to the BANT. As a suggestion, would you be able to contact them & have them update the listed email address to one with a cnnutrion.ie domain name on this page — http://www.bant.org.uk/bant/getPractitioner?id=41404

& have the website too if possible.

Yep, that's the plan alright. Will be setting up a proper email address for the site too. Any suggestions? Was thinking just info@cnnutrition.ie.

Feathers

Think that'd help alright, as it's a good back-link to have. Yeah, I'd say 'info' is fine. Depends on how big or small you want to make the business seem too. You could go with 'carmel' either if you wanted it to seem more personal.

More suggests SEO-wise, I'd say while you don't want to stuff the title tag with keywords, some appropriate ones might be alright, so long as it's still humanly readable as a title

As in, some of the other sites you're competing with seem to have stuff like 'John Doe, Dublin-based nutritionist'. Will mean that you'll rank better if someone is searching 'nutrionist Dublin', but it's also quite valid as a title itself.

Another thing I'd suggest is marking up all the content that you can as microdata — like the contact info in the footer. It's another thing the likes of Google can pick up on. Small, but very easy to do & everything helps. Even the recipes could be marked up in this way. It means you're more likely to get people on to the site when they aren't directly searching just for 'nutrionist' too.

Also, if possible getting something like a blog up there — even if it's updated once a month. I know it's a bit of effort, but having fresh, unique content on the site that's being surfaced on the homepage will help. Stuff like the recipes would be perfect for it. Or mentioning events on locally in Blackrock/Dublin around nutrion & health — again, a great source of natural relevant content.

Are you using Google's Webmaster tools? Can be useful.

gnolan

Thanks, that's very helpful. I have heard of rich snippets and microdata but didn't really know what it was for. Given that the site isn't going to be very big it shouldn't be too much effort to implement this.

I can see the benefit of regularly updated content like a blog; i'm not sure the client is interested in this though. I'd also need to use some kind of CMS too.

I'm using Webmaster tools but it's not overly helpful right now. To be honest i need to learn a bit more about; impressions and keywords, search queries and all that stuff.