Home Inspection Site Need Review

You have got alot of problems with this site. Instead of listing all the things wrong with the site; namely colors, layout, format, ... I would instead just recommend that you try to get a professional to do this site.

To give you an idea of where I'm coming from with that statement (that I'm sure it will come off a bit harsh) is that you are breaking many artistic rules of style and at the same time the site is not techinically sound (right of the bat I noticed that your page size has a fixed width that is far larger that it should be as someone with a small monitor is going to have a heck of a time trying to view your information).

I understand your point of going for a more personal feel, but I think that it needs a lot of work before it is ready to be published.

here is a similar thread that was started by another novice that might interest you

http://www.webmaster-forums.net/showthread.php?t=30289

the site has come a long way, but is still lacking in many aspects necessary to be considered a professional site. Many of the site admin's of TWF express their feelings on what it takes to create a professional website, those the are the comments I would read.

Aaron:
You have some of the key information that home buyers are going to look for when hiring an inspector. The challenge is to now present that in a way that is compelling and persuasive. You do want to convert them from just visiting your site to actually calling you.

I don't think you are that far off and since you seem to enjoy building and managing your website, a bit of effort and you should be able to get there.

To start with, your website is definitely too wide. While screen resolutions are increasing to 1024 and greater, on our site we still find over 50% of our visitors are using screen resolutions of 800 or smaller. Simply change your table width to a maximum of 770 and you should accommodate 90% of visitors.

Your title tag on some of the subpages are pretty silly when you try to list all the zip codes that you cover. You do the same thing on your home page. That might be considered by some spiders as spam which gets you kicked out of the game really quickly.

The site definitely has an amateur look to it. That's not necessarily bad, you are a home inspector and not a web designer. But a little cleaning up and you can add the polish necessary to build credibility rather than hack.

Good luck.

Thanks for your input. I am making many changes and will relaunch it in a few weeks. This was my first attempt at a site and I have learned a lot since I published it. I know about titles and key words now after reading up on SEO.

I can change my page width to a fixed size but I don't know how to make it re-size automatically. I have heard a lot of bad things about using frames.

Please keep the criticism coming.

..aah, I remember my first site.

In the redesign of your website remember - white space is good. Have white to separate the main block elements and it gives you site a clean look - for example, look at bbc.co.uk donclocks.org or rspca.org.uk - they have lots of use of white space, thus making it feel less cramped and more ordered.

To have a table stretch the size of the window, do all things in percentages, ie, 100% will go the whole way across etc.

Finally, I reiterate the comment made by r3a1 - you will get a much better website if you hire a proffessional to do it. Then you can be involved in the consultation and and review purposes but you have someone with years of experiance in the industry.

Hope it all goes well

David

A couple questions:

Did you code this by hand, or did you use a program, like FrontPage, or even Microsoft Word, to do it? I notice a lot of times that people that use programs to code their website often end up with a web page with all different color fonts and everything in different spots and scattered throughout, and that just does not look good...at all.

First off, the background just isn't working for you. Also, there is a huge gap in the info at the top and the stuff at the bottom...what's up with that?

The links to the left don't match the color scheme you started out with, neither does your "banner". A banner should normally be centered as well.

I wish you luck with your business, and if you need any help, feel free to contact me through the various methods found on my site.

Hi. I don't like red letters against a blue background. Some of your subpages have red headings. It's just a weird contrast.

Ouch My eyes!!! That is beyond all hope of recovery. Start over!!

You can just go to my web site and pay a 20$ for a template. Then just put your website content in it. You proubally dont need to learn everything that has to do with website deign.

Whats with the long space after the main content and all the links and google stuff as well as hiding keywords waaaay down?
Its ok as a start, but you need to redo it to standout...

Looks pretty good. I'd put your contact info under your picture. There is a lot of empty space, WHY? If you're trying to hide the links at the bottom, why not create a links page and use a simple, subtle Links hyperlink?

You need to be careful of spamming.

Dedicated Home Inspection Services- Home inspections by Aaron Pfaff Certified Home Inspector in Wisconsin Serving Southeastern Wisconsin

Aaron,
I don't want to be too critical because everyone has to start somewhere

If you really want to do the design yourself may I suggest you take a look at some professionally designed templates? There are many available and they may help you get the professional and personable look and feel you are wanting.

As the web site is now there is no flow. My eyes immediately jump all over the place as it seems you want to give out a lot of information too quickly. Think about why I, as a possible customer would be visiting your web site and then lead me further into your web site to get more information.

The fonts on the left-side buttons are too hard to read, some of the graphics are very poor quality, your text margins need to be justified, there are too many different fonts used and you are definitely spamming the search engines - everything below this line will get you penalized by most search engines (Visit a complete list of WebRing memberships here).

I think the goal of your web site is for me to be able to gather enough information about you so I can decide whether or not I can have confidence in you to do a professional job for me. Can I trust you to do an inspection on one of the most expensive financial obligations that I will every make. Your web site needs to instill that confidence in me and I'm afraid that as it is now, most people will be pushed away from doing business with you. And probably pretty quickly too. If I was to judge your professional skills based upon this web site (which people will do) then I would not be hiring you.

Take the time to investigate either getting a professional web designer or purchasing a professionally made template. Spend your time writing the content. Content is every bit as important as design.

I hope some of these suggestions help and I apologize if I was too critical.

Sam Warren
Picnic-Basket.com

Built with sitebuilder.

Ok I gather this is your first or one of your first sites you've made but I honestly think you have gone and figured out everything that shouldn't be done and gone and done it.
Most of the things have already been mentioned above, but my main two concerns are the spam words used in the lower section of your site (it's not a porn site ya know) and the main one would be 'way to much information'. I come to your page and think OMG i want to buy a house (or get it inspected or whatever you do) not site down and read war and peace or work out the meaning of life. (sorry for being so blunt).

You have a lot of information, which is good, but seperate it, I know nothing about your field but you have to look at it from my angle as I would be the type of person looking to hire you. Break the site down into section, main, buyer and seller.
While the .pdf files are a great touch, why use .pdf? (why does anyone use pdf), pdf is blurry, hard to read, usually big in file size, not really portable because of size and restrictions in versions and not everybody has the reader (it's a download, not part of windows).
I go to the sellers page, I see a link at the top for a pdf file, yet there is heaps of written text on the screen, is this the same thing? and to the left under the links is something about another pdf file which is 570kb, I am on dialup so would never d/l that, instead would go find an inspector who uses plain html or even just plan text file.

Your picture (no offence) is scary, you have a posed smile (a fake smile produced when asked to smile), looks like you just wet your pants and need to be else where. If you aren't photo genic and not everyone is get some one to follow you around and snap some candid shots (dont pose or try to pose) and this usually gives a good pic of a non photo genic person. there is another way to 'trick' you into a real smile but the person taking the pics only needs to know, if you know about it, it wont work.
Anyways back to the site.
None of your pages actually have page titles, so you wouldn't know what page you were on.
The fianting goats is a site you can base yours on, it's only one page but has lots of sections, you need to break your site down into sections like this (each section a page of it's own though and forget the spam words at the bottom. oops ok the goats site has more than one page, so forget them, just the main page as example as all that should be on seperate pages.

From a home buyer, I'd want, fast, friendly advice and would want to trust you from the get go, after all buying a house to some people is a once in a life time event. dump the spam, be honest, earn our trust and respect, don't try, just be yourself and you'll go far.

Yeah i agree with pretty much everything that people have said so far. It really does feel like i've stepped back into 1995 or something. I think you really should just take this back to the drawing board, find colours that work together - light purple and that grey colour don;t really 'gel' together nicely for me. Try not to make the navigation look like it has just been 'plonked' on as an after-thought, intergrate it into a nice design so it looks like it's meant to be there.

If you want to get taken seriously, you will need to either enhance this site an awful amount or simply get somebody to create one for you. There's plenty of templates that would cater for your needs too.

Yes, templates are the best option. There are thousands of templates that have been professionally designed and published for free. I would go with http://www.templatesbox.com/templates.htm I have used a few before. They are easy to modify, and they are not just the photoshop file(includes website and all). The site you have now is UGLY! The content is good, for now. But concentrate on getting rid of the purple and the banner. There are some pretty awsome banner/logo templates too. Everything else everbody has written is great advice!

Lucas Sawyer
Family-Guy-Clips.org