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looking for feedback on my new website layout

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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
a bit of background ...

i have started a dog training business and decided to try to put together my own site to save on start up costs. i have no background in web design and no experience with iweb prior to this little project.

by reading tutorials, i managed to register my domain through go daddy, host the site through mobile me, build it in iweb, and submit the site to google.

this forum was a great help to get me started, so i thought it would be a great place to solicit feedback. specifically, i am looking for improvement ideas for the overall layout and design.

thanks in advance for the help. given that i know nothing, i think i've done ok to get this far, but i'm sure there are tons of ways to improve it.

www.k911.ca is the address.


thanks, brian
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
thanks, 'clean' was one of my main goals.

i used iweb exclusively. does iweb have the ability to create a form like that? would it just send some sort of template via email?
 
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eleven2brett

macrumors regular
Oct 20, 2008
224
0
H-Town
It looks very clean and simple (both of those are good things) One thing i might suggest would be to jazz up the homepage. Maybe make the most important information stand out a bit more or have some customer testimonials.
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
eleven2brett said:
It looks very clean and simple (both of those are good things) One thing i might suggest would be to jazz up the homepage. Maybe make the most important information stand out a bit more or have some customer testimonials.
Click to expand...

thanks for the feedback.

i've only had a couple of customers as i just started last week, but i'm planning on getting a few testimonials up in the next week. i'm also planning to add pages for pictures and links.

any specific ideas on how to "jazz up the homepage?" i've kind of exhausted my creative ideas. :p
 
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eleven2brett

macrumors regular
Oct 20, 2008
224
0
H-Town
As a matter of fact I do! Don't go crazy, but to add some graphic headers and shorting your paragraphs would go along way. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.
 
sickmacdoc

sickmacdoc

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2008
2,035
1
New Hampshire
One thing I noticed is that the links and information at the bottom of each page simply echo the links and info at the top of the page and in my opinion just come as needlessly redundant- particularly since the links at the bottom are non-linked on the front page. At least the links themselves for sure- I've got mixed feelings about the phone number/email info.

As I think about this more, I think I would try removing the links at the bottom and removing the contact info from the top-- thus leaving just links at the top and contact info at the bottom. As I visualize this anyway it would just serve to further clean up pages that are fundamentally clean to start with.

Nice and simple- a thought a lot of people would do well to emulate! ;)
 
K

Kathy223

macrumors newbie
Sep 17, 2008
13
0
I like it. The logo colors are a little flat. I think brightening it up along with the red border would really make things pop.
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
thanks for the advice! :)

i'm going to play around with it today and see what i can figure out.
 
B

briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
anyone else with an opinion before i let this thread die?

i really appreciate the ideas.
 
sickmacdoc

sickmacdoc

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2008
2,035
1
New Hampshire
I don't have any more ideas for now, but I hope you will let us know when you have implemented some stuff and come back and share. I know I would love to see it since it is such a clean site! Good luck with it.
 
chosenwolf

chosenwolf

macrumors 6502a
Feb 4, 2006
507
0
Los Angeles
I really like your website. As others have said, it looks very clean and very easy to navigate! Is there a big market for such a service in Canada?
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
sickmacdoc said:
I don't have any more ideas for now, but I hope you will let us know when you have implemented some stuff and come back and share. I know I would love to see it since it is such a clean site! Good luck with it.
Click to expand...

thanks, i will. i've been a bit busy this week, but i hope to have a few minor tweeks done over the weekend.
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
wickedG35 said:
I really like your website. As others have said, it looks very clean and very easy to navigate! Is there a big market for such a service in Canada?
Click to expand...


thank you, that's great to hear!

haha, i hope there's a market. honestly, there is some competition, but there are so many dogs (aprox. 1/3 homes have dogs) that i should be able to make a decent living just with private training. that said, i plan to expand to a larger operation in 2-3 years, offering high-end dog sitting, training, canine health services, etc. i'm targeting the upper-middle class, hoping that they will have more disposable income, despite this little economic downturn.
 
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briank911

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 21, 2008
14
0
ok, so i made a few minor cosmetic changes. let me know what you think.

- i removed the contact info from the top and the navigation links from the bottom
- i changed aligned the fonts and made the contact/link font bigger
- i lightened the color of the box behind the links
- i broke up the text a little

i don't have the testimonials yet, but they'll be added soon. when i add them, is it better to put them on the 'about' page or should i create a separate page?

it does look cleaner, but i'm not too sure about the navigation menu. any suggestions there?
 
M

Mitou

macrumors regular
Jan 25, 2008
208
0
I like your site it is as others have said clean and effective.
About a sign up form, while iweb does not provide one you can use a service like wufu.com or mycontact.com for a form that you can customize and get the code to put in a widget.
I don't have an objection to some links at the bottom of the page. Since the nav bar generated by iweb is javascript and does not help with google search it can be nice to have a few of links at the bottom of the page. If the page is long people don't have to scroll back up.
 
sickmacdoc

sickmacdoc

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2008
2,035
1
New Hampshire
Brian-

I really like the changes you have made! It looked clean before, and even more so now.

As far as the nav menu goes, I think it looks fine now- but I played with it a little (hope you don't mind) with one idea I thought of, but I am not sure. That idea was to move the dark grey lines above and below in closer to the text as the original to me just feels like too much space in respect to line spacing in the text- but man, that is really getting picky! ;) I've attached a sample- your original at the top, the grey lines moved in below (probably moved in too far in retrospect), and the text being a tad smaller to institute a separate entry for "testimonials" as you asked about in the third spot.

I prefer that to be called out separately, but keeping the testimonials under the "About..." heading would be fine too!

Anyhow, congrats on your changes. Hope it brings you some calls and business!
 

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sickmacdoc

sickmacdoc

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2008
2,035
1
New Hampshire
Mitou said:
<clip>
About a sign up form, while iweb does not provide one you can use a service like wufu.com or mycontact.com for a form that you can customize and get the code to put in a widget.
<clip>
Click to expand...

And just for anyone who was interested in the two links provided as a I was and got some unexpected results entering those two, they are actually http://wufoo.com/ and http://www.mycontactform.com/ rather than the two given.

Thanks to Mitou anyways for giving me a couple of interesting leads for forms that got me searching for them. I appreciate it! Those two sites look very helpful!
 
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