Website Review

YellowSheep

Hello All

After 49 years living on this planet, i finally managed to built my own site, which reflects the experience of 33 years working on same.

www.muellerconsulting.ie

I would be really appreciate your comments about functionality, layout and any suggestions for improvement. All comments are very much appreciated.

Thanking you in advance.

Kind regards

Oliver

smash

In my opinion it's quite gaudy and amateurish. There's no real design to it and it's years behind in terms of functionality such as responsive design.

I think you'd be better off purchasing a template and just adding your content. Also add a decent version of your logo, it's very pixelated.

Graham

You'd probably get better feedback in the Website Reviews forum:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1382

Initial thoughts:

• Its pink
• It took me a minute to work out what the business actually does
• Its pink!

jhegarty

The pink hurts my eyes.

I wouldn't even bother reading the content.

tricky D

Spelling mistakes.

But by far the most important issue is that it's using Wix and as far as I can make out content for SEO is pretty much non-existent.

Gloomtastic!

Doesn't work very well on an iPhone Oliver.

It's good to know you're out there though. There's certainly a market for what you're offering, you just need to talk to your clients before they've lost all their money!

Maybe you should run something in the Business Partner sticky - http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055838808

Good luck to you!!!

Fr_Dougal

Are all of the businesses you have given as references still in business? A quick google would suggest that this may not be the case.

EIREHotspur

Oh Dear Lord....

My advice would be to hope a Website Designer wants one of your courses and you could come to an agreement to do a website for you.

You look to have good info and the courses cover a lot.
My advice is to:
- totally redesign the website
- get rid of pink as a colour
- do some videos as examples of steps on your course
- get rid of pink as a colour
- more images and some testimonials/reviews of people who have taken courses

jtown

smash wrote: »

In my opinion it's quite gaudy and amateurish. There's no real design to it and it's years behind in terms of functionality such as responsive design.

I think you'd be better off purchasing a template and just adding your content. Also add a decent version of your logo, it's very pixelated.

Where would you get a good template for a sports site? Have you a link?

benny306

@jtown - google 'wordpress sports themes'. That should give you a good start.

@Yellowsheep,

1. My first reaction was probably like most others, It's pink! Pink! I would definitely try a different color scheme. Something a little more neutral.

My thinking behind this:

Number of people who will 'Purchase a Course' because of the pink website = 0
Number of people who will refuse to 'Purchase a Course, because of the pink website > 0

2. 'Than this course is for you.' Little things like incorrectly using than instead of then can go a long way with your users. You're trying to sell yourself and services and spelling/grammar errors only distract from your goal.

3. The service doesn't really hit home at first. What do you do? What can you offer. I did a quick search of other restaurant consultants. Most highlighted facts like 'We've save our clients over 2 million in the last 10 years' or 'We've helped launch 25 successful restaurants in the last 5 years.' Why would I choose Mueller Consulting over someone else? Why would I buy a course? How did people get to my site? If it's from Google what did they search for and how can I highlight that?

4. Overall design is dated and not very appealing. Someone else had already mentioned about getting a good template and customising it. I would agree. Wordpress templates are aplenty and there are some really good designs out there.

5. Make purchasing a course as easy as possible. You highlighted 3 courses on your home page. I can't click on any of them, I can find out more info on any of them. Make those course boxes in gray clickable.

In my opinion, each course should have it's own dedicated page which provides more info. You might even want to have an FAQ page.

gargargar

Get rid of the upload job/cv area. It's a distraction from your services and nobody will post a job or cv on your site. Why would they?

Duckjob

Speaking as someone who works in web- It's just awful. Sorry, but it is.

If you want to promote a professional presence online, hire a professional web company and get it done properly.

Dave!

Sorry OP, have to agree with the consensus - it is not a good website. Visitors have higher standards these days for websites. You might have gotten away with that one in 1995, but not today I'm afraid

If you have a serious business that you want to promote, then spend a bit of cash and get it done properly. I recently did a website for a friend's business for E150, which was built on Wordpress, so he could update it himself too! If none of your friends will do you a deal, you could probably find a student or some other part-timer who could throw something together for relatively little.

I'm curious to know what your site is built on, because the URLs are a bit wild!!

http://www.muellerconsulting.ie/#!about-me/cicd

I think people might be reacting a little over the top to the pink colour of the site. I think it's nice. I don't recall seeing m/any pink sites so that makes it stand out a bit to me. Adding a bit of purple or other such related colours would probably do no harm though (rather than full-on pink the whole way through).


I also agree with the above comment about scrapping the "post a CV/Job here" thing. Who does that appeal to? Or are you just trying to do a bit of matchmaking now to try and work out something for future use (if you're not in, you can't win, and all that)?


Out from that though, I think it's grand. If I wanted to book a course I can see the calendar, I can see what's available, etc.

It's practical and it works for what it does as far as I can see.

Spelling errors need to be corrected but that's a minor enough point.

All in all I think it's not too bad, though I do think you'd have benefited from a pre-purchased theme, rather than an entirely DIY job.


For example, my website is http://shanemaguire.ie/ and I think it looks pretty well for what it is. Take into account that I literally know nothing at all about web-design or related areas and it becomes a little bit more impressive. It cost me less than €100 and I've had a few people compliment it (though it's currently being updated, so it's missing a fair bit of content, etc.).

I'd advise on going that route if possible for yourself.

Duckjob

If the only problem was the pink it wouldnt be so bad. Sounds harsh, but OPs site is a textbook example of what happens when people think they can "do" someone else profession themselves. ("Profession" - the clue is in the name)

The business idea may be great, but if so, it is being done a real disservice by putting such a cheap and tacky looking front on it.l

IrishExpat

The others have covered it; design, spelling, copy, SEO etc.

I'm sure you're proud of it, as you built it yourself, but sometimes you need a professional opinion.

Also, web design is not as prohibitively expensive as it may have been before. As this is usually the reason business owners take the DIY option.

Some suggestions - a new colour palette and typography, and some thought to the calls to action.

benny306

@Dave As far as I can tell, the site appears to be built using wix.com. I don't have any experience with them, but those url's don't seem right, very strange indeed.

tricky D

It is indeed built on Wix which is just 100% rubbish imo. Take a look at the source, it's one of the ugliest instances of markup I've ever seen and the content is pulled via some javascript which obscures said content for spiders. And it is all one page. Why, why, why? The OP would be much better off using Wordpress or similar.

YellowSheep

Hi All

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments.

Cheers Oliver

Carlosd

Don't sweat it.
The site looks awful but you don't need to do it all yourself.

Take a look around at other websites, get an idea of what you like. If money is tight try Elance and pay a designer somewhere in India. Take a quick look at a few sites on Seo and try to make your content as relevant as possible to what you hope clients searching for your service will be looking for.

YellowSheep wrote: »

Hi All

Thanks for all the suggestions and comments.

Cheers Oliver