Would love to have some Website feedback > www.Xperience.ie

xprnc

Hi folks,

First of all thanks for your time! Here's my new website: www.Xperience.ie - an Internship Listing website for Irish students and businesses.

Here are a few questions I would like you to answer:

1. when landing on the homepage, is it clear what we do?
2. is the colour combination ok, or should the sidebar have e.g. red links?
3. homepage: is the blog feed too hidden (bottom of sidebar)?
4. what is the 1 thing you would ADD to improve user experience?

Thanks in advance

rendy78f9b194

did you get a dot com domain for Xperience.ie?
seo on domain if you got it,

xprnc

rendy78f9b194 wrote: »

did you get a dot com domain for Xperience.ie?
seo on domain if you got it,

Hey Randy,

No I didn't get it for 2 reasons. First and most importantly, my target market is Ireland - so the .ie is ideal. All the SEO has been done on the .IE, servers are in IE, and so on.

Second, it was not available, but again it doesn't really matter.

What do you think of the homepage?

Thanks a mill

Graham

xprnc wrote: »

Hi folks,

1. when landing on the homepage, is it clear what we do?
2. is the colour combination ok, or should the sidebar have e.g. red links?
3. homepage: is the blog feed too hidden (bottom of sidebar)?
4. what is the 1 thing you would ADD to improve user experience?

1) Yes
2) Gloomy, dull, drab are the words I'd use to describe the colour scheme.
3) No but they probably would be on a smaller monitor.
4) Some colour.

xprnc

Graham wrote: »

4) Some colour.

Thanks a mill Graham, I will think about it and see what I can do. The grey/black/teal combination is to make the internship listings stand out more, plus it adds a bit of "cartoon..ity" to the site.

Thanks for that, I will now discuss with graphic designer and see what we can improve.

SweetCaliber

I like it, well done. I would have to agree with Graham though on it being too dull.

There are plenty of color schemes that when added will allow the ads to stand out as well.

Other than that, great idea.

xprnc

Thanks SC,

Glad you like it. Yes, maybe in the next few days I'll get in touch with a Graphic Designer and see what she thinks!

If anyone has more feedback that'd be appreciated!

cormee

Great idea for a site, are the current listings from organic traffic or did you have to advertise for them/hunt them down?

The header image is pointless, it doesn't add any real value, either reduce it or remove it altogether. Your typography is a bit random too, reduce the number of font sizes and maybe focus on making the typography the design (if you get what I mean). I'd make the h1 muh bigger too - it is the h1 for a reason.

I like what you did with the tweets, could you move them to the sidebar on the homepage, animate them (fade in/out) ?

Footer is quite ugly, have another look at that.

xprnc

cormee wrote: »

Great idea for a site, are the current listings from organic traffic or did you have to advertise for them/hunt them down?

The header image is pointless, it doesn't add any real value, either reduce it or remove it altogether. Your typography is a bit random too, reduce the number of font sizes and maybe focus on making the typography the design (if you get what I mean). I'd make the h1 muh bigger too - it is the h1 for a reason.

I like what you did with the tweets, could you move them to the sidebar on the homepage, animate them (fade in/out) ?

Footer is quite ugly, have another look at that.

Hey cormee - thanks so much for your feedback!

Current listings are both from existing internship programmes (big companies such as Google) and small & medium companies, which we approached and are advertising on the site for a nominal fee.

The header image, yes I agree, is a bit off-topic and a bit "difficult" to understand. I would have loved to have a Dublin or Irish skyline instead of an american one - but what matters is that if you do a rewarding internship, you can then expect to get a well-paid full-time job and therefore hope to live in a place like that in a few years

In regard to the font, I agree. There is only 1 font used, that is "Book antiqua" (the only differences are Arial for the H1 and a Google Font for the Logo). I think the confusion is more about the colours than the actual font. I tried different styles and combinations, to always end up using Book Antiqua or Palatino or Helvetica. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.

The tweets, thanks for that, yes they are a good idea as I think they work better than (fake or non fake) testimonials. Those are actual reviews tweeted by actual people. It'd be a great idea to have them sliding on the homepage, I have to see how flexible WordPress is with the "embed a Tweet" shortcode and if it can be styled.

The footer, yes I tried to keep it as simple as possible, I didn't want to stuff too much in there. Are you talking about the colour/background?

cormee

xprnc wrote: »

Hey cormee - thanks so much for your feedback!

Current listings are both from existing internship programmes (big companies such as Google) and small & medium companies, which we approached and are advertising on the site for a nominal fee.

The header image, yes I agree, is a bit off-topic and a bit "difficult" to understand. I would have loved to have a Dublin or Irish skyline instead of an american one - but what matters is that if you do a rewarding internship, you can then expect to get a well-paid full-time job and therefore hope to live in a place like that in a few years

In regard to the font, I agree. There is only 1 font used, that is "Book antiqua" (the only differences are Arial for the H1 and a Google Font for the Logo). I think the confusion is more about the colours than the actual font. I tried different styles and combinations, to always end up using Book Antiqua or Palatino or Helvetica. If you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.

The tweets, thanks for that, yes they are a good idea as I think they work better than (fake or non fake) testimonials. Those are actual reviews tweeted by actual people. It'd be a great idea to have them sliding on the homepage, I have to see how flexible WordPress is with the "embed a Tweet" shortcode and if it can be styled.

The footer, yes I tried to keep it as simple as possible, I didn't want to stuff too much in there. Are you talking about the colour/background?

Well done, as I already said, nice idea for a jobs site. I own a pretty busy job site myself, so if you have any questions, or want advice, let me know. I set it up about 6 years ago and it provides a fantastic source of income on top of my full-time job . Once your site's reputation grows, and you start rising up the search rankings, it will require a hell of a lot less maintenance if you have it well SEO'd.

They're not as important as they used to be but my keyword-rich domain was a great help in fighting off competition, and in the rankings. So if you can I'd advise you to at the very least secure any relevant domains that a competitor could use. Dog-eat-dog world.

Consider using rich-snippets, if you don't already (your site is down so I can't check) and implement every damned suggestion from Google and Matt Cutts' blogs, another tip would be to use the job description, start date etc in the <meta> description, it's irrelevant to your ranking but it improves click through. Also look at allowing company logos, it will lift you homepage, which could use some colour.

Regarding fonts, I was commenting on the number of different font sizes.

Not sure I'd have the tweets sliding, I'd have them fade in and out, every 10 seconds or so, that may be just a personal preference though, I find it less obtrusive.

The footer just looks like an afterthought, it doesn't really have the same feel as the rest of the design, the Post Job button looks flimsy and the stitching on the edge doesn't match the main button, also your RSS button is a different size to your other social icons.

cormee

Also look into adding XML feeds of the jobs and submitting the feeds to the job aggregator sites, they send me great traffic.

Get a Facebook page, Twitter feed and G+ going with the latest jobs, it's maintenance-free if you use the likes of Dlvr.it to post the jobs to your accounts/feeds, they pull the jobs from your RSS feeds. The basic package is free but you'll need a paid account ($10 p/m) on Dlvr.it to post to G+, however you need to be their (Google's) bitch, so it's worth it.

xprnc

cormee wrote: »

Well done, as I already said, nice idea for a jobs site. I own a pretty busy job site myself, so if you have any questions, or want advice, let me know. I set it up about 6 years ago and it provides a fantastic source of income on top of my full-time job . Once your site's reputation grows, and you start rising up the search rankings, it will require a hell of a lot less maintenance if you have it well SEO'd.

They're not as important as they used to be but my keyword-rich domain was a great help in fighting off competition, and in the rankings. So if you can I'd advise you to at the very least secure any relevant domains that a competitor could use. Dog-eat-dog world.

Consider using rich-snippets, if you don't already (your site is down so I can't check) and implement every damned suggestion from Google and Matt Cutts' blogs, another tip would be to use the job description, start date etc in the <meta> description, it's irrelevant to your ranking but it improves click through. Also look at allowing company logos, it will lift you homepage, which could use some colour.

Regarding fonts, I was commenting on the number of different font sizes.

Not sure I'd have the tweets sliding, I'd have them fade in and out, every 10 seconds or so, that may be just a personal preference though, I find it less obtrusive.

The footer just looks like an afterthought, it doesn't really have the same feel as the rest of the design, the Post Job button looks flimsy and the stitching on the edge doesn't match the main button, also your RSS button is a different size to your other social icons.

Hi cormee,

Thanks for your very good feedback.

I already use DLVR and Feedburner, but thanks for the tips anyway. They work really well and yes, Google + is something we really need, mostly after the latest Hummingbird update.

SEO is doing really well, so there is no need for a keyword-stuffed domain name any longer. Establishing a brand called Xperience is easier than internships-ireland.ie or something like that

In terms of Rich Snippet, great tip, I completely forgot to set them up. Also I need to take a look at authorship for our blog. Thanks for that!

For the rest, thanks a million. The stitching on the button looks good with Chrome, so I don't know what you're using - I will remove it so I don't get any cross-browser issue. And thanks for the footer.

Hopefully I will get 2 or 3 more reviews so I can get a better picture of what I need! Any takers?

Thanks in advance

zituz

personally I'll answer like this:
1. Yes
4. Change your web design, since (sorry) your design look like an old fashion in the industry. No eye catching. Make me feel back to 2007

xprnc

@zituz thanks so much for your help. You don't need to be sorry, it's your opinion after all and when I posted this I knew I was opening to any sort of feedback.

I'm glad that is clear what we do

For the design, I will consider your opinion. What exactly would you change, or have you seen anything online you can use as a reference?

Thanks

Elfman

I'd echo some of the comments about the design. I like the idea of each position appearing in a "Card" style but i'd look at what Mosnter.ie (http://jobsearch.monster.ie/jobs/?q=testing&cy=ie&where=dublin) have done to make the cards stand out. i.e. a strong margin color. Also the plan black and red make this look amateurish if you do some goggling for web color palates i think it would make a big difference.

If it were my site i'd have a blurb in the banner image with 2 lines about what you do . Alternatively maybe change the search box watermark from "Enter internship search term" to "I want an internship in ..."

Other quick things:
- Your heading needs to be bigger and styled more

Really really picky things:
- when you look at a internship the spacing needs work (bullet point to start of text needs space)
- Link to internship shows as text not as link

Great idea for a site btw

Cheers