I'm posting because I know we have a lot of IT guys and other web-savvy folks. My brother advised me that he thinks my business website is not good enough and needs to be redone. I was hoping some people could take a minute to look at it and give me the unvarnished truth. Does it need to be redone? What's bad about it? As some might remember, my wife runs a business called urbanCHEF that does hands-on cooking classes and we recently opened a new, bigger, more professional space. Because it's something that is generally done by appointment, our main storefront is the website, where people learn about what we do, find classes they want to take, sign up and pay. Though we're not professional web people or anything, we wanted to build it ourselves so that we could keep the autonomy of changing things without going through someone else. Maybe foolhardy. I won't tell you what my brother's complaints are yet nor explain why it is the way it is, so as to avoid coloring anyone's opinion. I appreciate whatever feedback anyone can give me. Don't worry about hurting my feelings -- I'd rather have my feelings hurt than forego profits. http://www.urbanchefhouston.com/
Website looks decent. A little too plain, stock images. Nothing to show what they will expect. Also it seemed a little slow loading, maybe the Calendar integration (waiting for heelcode.com) ?
It loads slow and looks like one big i-frame. Anyways, as someone who works with IT and designers to create or redesign websites on a regular basis I will say - I hate anything in marketing that's subjective. Some people like certain things, others don't - it's all one big pee-pee game. Don't let someone else step on your dick unless they've got sort of amazing resume to back it up. And in the end, it's just one person's opinion. What I would look at is how Google-friendly the site is. If traffic is even hitting the site (who cares if it's a good or bad looking site if you're not getting visitors?). And how the traffic you are getting converts. If you're site is converting 10% of its visitors then you're more than fine, just get more visitors to it. If you do get it redesigned professionally you can still make updates on your end, just opt for a user friendly CMS like WordPress or Drupal.
There are a lot of artifacts around the logo by the way. Also... its just so bland. You can still retain the minimalistic design and make it more lively you know. Its not a pressing concern, but if you do have the time and the money to redesign the website then by all means go ahead. Its not as bad as your brother may lead you to believe.
Seems fine but the tablet touch version under Class Schedule is a bit of mismatch and doesn't seems to belong on the same website. You probably need to rework that to a more touch friendly interface and make it load faster when clicking on the Submenu that doesn't make it seems like it's taking your to another link.
I didn't see anything wrong or anything great about it either. Looks like a typical website for a local business. If you want to jazz it up, make sure you don't over do it or clutter it. I don't really know much about web design, so I can't offer anything but that.
Web designer here. The site in general is too plain, suffers from bad loading times, and inconsistent page layouts for seemingly no reason. Also, there's no reason to have frames and the use of Flash is overkill. The same site could be built in plain HTML/CSS with a bit of JQuery and retain all the animation while speeding up load times. It's not horrible, but it's just not very good either. And personally, I tend to assume "not very good site" = "not very good business". Not always true, but it's a common perception.
Just Google "clean and simple website design". Lots of samples and ideas to choose from. Yeah, also stay away from Flash since it's not supported by all browsers and you know who so your site will either get mess up or not load properly across each type of browser(s) or OS system.
The main thing that is a HUGE problem is how slow the site is. People don't like waiting and you will lose a lot of potential customers. Do you have Google Analytics installed? This might give you some insight as to whether this is actually happening. +1 to Ziggy's advice about visitors - you getting any? Conversion rates? If the site is the main front for people that are interested in your service I would definitely look at getting it redesigned - it looks 'ok' but not great. So many businesses are getting nice designs for their sites - it's not that expensive if you know where to look. Services like 99designs for something of high quality and low expense, for instance. In terms of coding I would look at a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress. If you need more tips on any of those things PM me.
Echoing the comments of others -Flash is being phased out...for a site like this, ditto the others on not needing it. You don't need too fancy like html5. There are a lot of javascript packages out there that accomplish the same thing but quicker. In non-tech speak, my opinion on a quick litmus test for a "minimalistic site" is that it looks and performs very similar on an iPad as it would on a desktop. In other words, the contractor you hired could do a lot better with less. -Depending on your current and expected traffic, AWS for content loading is overkill like flash. These are all impacting your load times. If you have Firefox, download the YSlow! plugin (needs firebug) and run it on your site. It's fairly straightforward that a relatively intelligent net user can run. -I think minimalist is okay, but the dropdowns and the real estate looks off. If I was a repeat user, I'm not gonna care about the intro page. I would like an extra widget or info box that summarizes classes that I might be interested in. If you're looking to modernize your business, you can invest further to host a local server to your biz (or let AWS serve in this case) and put a simple database that updates class availability (w/ no page hits and w/ ajax...not flash). Then you can add improvements like "Order Soon 2 Seats left!" or generate metrics on the fly to improve mailing list promotions and availability. -Your website looks like a simple portal, but it could be a lot lot more. The bright side is that there are more tools to make it easier for design and implement without going to a year or two of classes.
Second opinion: I'm not sure who designed that website... but whoever it was didn't incorporate any sort of grid spacing or system into their design. When you click on gift the picture doesn't follow the same gridding as the other pictures in the other categories. Also why does the "Gifts" tab have a separate heading/body formatting than the other tabs? You're going to want consistency there... Above all else I'd suggest moving away from Flash, the slight delay between clicks might turn off some... I'm not as distinguished in design as others here so I might be completely wrong, but there's my two cents.
It could do without the Flash. Use HTML or something that's not so memory intensive. It will take ages to load on older machines. Otherwise it looks fine. Simple and straight forward.
Definitely not IT stuff; but would like to see address, phone number, email on first page. Class schedule maybe presented on an additional page in a calendar format.
Clutch has his own company that does this stuff, doesn't he? Two Roads Media. Here's the website: http://www.tworoadsmedia.com/ Perhaps you should check out his company, JV. It might be fun.
If you intend to have a search engine look for things inside your website, don't use FLASH. Also, how does the site look to you in iPads, iPhones, Android phones, different browsers? That should give you an idea of what looks good and what doesn't. If you can't see it in a specific browser, find out why, then give those people with that capability a way or an alternative. I always make sure all my sites can be seen in ALL browsers, maybe not the same way, but at least to contain the same stuff. CONTENT is KING. It looks like you've met that criteria, at least for the people who can see it. I'll take a deeper look and see what I can find. I'm good with "perfecting" things... from a web designer point of view. Because it's your wife's website and you're cool with all that is in there, you will have an easier time convincing her to change things, mix things up a bit, or leave things the same. Sometimes, clients won't even listen to your suggestions and they'll want things just because they've seen them on other sites, going against what you recommend. Listen to some good advice here on this thread... like: ^ This man is REALLY GOOD at websites.
First, thanks to everyone who took the time to look at the site and to give feedback. Some of what you said was too techy for me, but I gather everybody loves the flash. Second, here's what my brother said. Tell me how much you agree: * The homepage doesn't have enough content and the user has to choose to keep clicking to get to the meat of things. He wnats something dynamic here to provide up-to-date info. Others here mentioned that too. * Flash is evil. No need to comment further on this score; I think I got it. * Site within a site. The scheduling is handled by a SaaS called MindBody. It would take the customer to another url, except we use a widget/whatever-it-is called HealCode to embed MindBody into the rest of the site. Even so, he doesn't like that there are basically 2 sites -- one for information and another for transactions. And, finally, I'll try to respond to some comments: We come up high on Google searches for relevant key words like "cooking classes." But, I don't think we have good data on the behavior of visitors. I suppose that's because of the flash. I don't know what that means about artifacts. We do like the clean minimalism. But, enough people have complained about the simplicity that I get the picture. We're aware, but somewhat constrained by the services we use. Maybe another argument to chuck them. No contractor; used a template as a base and messed with it from there. So, inconsistencies and so on come from wrestling with the base product to make it do what we want. What is AWS? As for the guts of the thing, we're more or less married to MindBody for managing the schedule/transactions/etc. The web design wilh have to fit around that. Thanks again to everybody. Any more comments are welcome and voraciously consumed.
I think he meant "Amazon Web Services" in AWS. FLASH is not bad ALL THE TIME. Use sparingly, and have alternatives for it. I personally don't do much flash, and only use it if it's absolutely needed, like embedding videos and galleries you wouldn't want people posting somewhere else... that you'd have to go out of your way to get (screen captures only, etc.). If I could just give a few pointers on ANY type of site: Condense information to get people to click LESS. Use maybe two or three colors through the entire site. Don't make your readers keep up with many styles of text, font, etc. For example, the text on the main page is in a different font and color than the rest; that doesn't seem pleasing to the eye. Only have necessary links and tabs. A technical example: the drop down links to "classes" and "types" has one item that doesn't have a destination or doesn't "click" to content. Remove unnecessary links and tab spaces. When hovering the mouse over the "more..." tab items, they overlap the current 'frame'. This makes the drop-down menu unattractive. Keep a consistent look throughout. Don't change the background colors, styles, etc., throughout. Make sure you proofread, then proofread again. Lastly, proofread one last time. Also, have someone else proofread. I think you get my point. Proofread. I'm using Firefox. If I am on "Home", I can click on classes tabs like "schedule" and "types" and get there easily. If I am on "classes"->"schedule", I cannot click on "types." Is this by design?
