Please review my website

[jeff123]

I own a web design business and want your ideas on the look and feel of my websites

www.bestwebsitesdesigner.com and www.411webmaster.com

Please give suggestions to improve

[Fergal]

jeff123 why do you have two different websites to promote the business? Does that not cause some confusion amongst your customers?

411webmaster
Your title tag is 411webmaster.com - a good title tag is very important for your SEO and that one is not going to be much help to you.
How are you trying to position your services in terms of your target market. E.g. are you targeting the higher end of the market who will spend more on a quality site or those that are looking for a cheap website? How does the image of the Dollars in your rotating header image fit in with that?
It might help to give the "Get a Free Quote" section of your homepage more prominence - you obviously want people to be completing this form and it is your main call to action. If you can give it a stronger position on your page, you should get a higher conversion rate.
Overall the design is impressive and professional.

bestwebsitesdesigner
Again this is a professional design, some further comments below;
The video with Jodi doesn't mention the site by name, including the site name in the video would help create greater brand recognition and recall in the minds of your visitors.
I notice that you use Yahoo Messenger for your Live Chat, how is that working out for you?
The site name text, in the white text against the clouds background in the header, is not very distinct, making it a little stronger would also help your visitors to remember the site name.
A good testimonials page is very important for building credibility amongst your potential clients. It might be an idea to link to yours from your navigation bar.
All your testimonials use the exact same text in the "Overall Ratings" and "Competative Price" fields. That probably takes away from their credibility. I'd imagine the answers were picked from a selection of options, but it will still look suspicious to some of your customers.

You will probably get more helpful replies to your review requests, if you can please give a little clarity as to why you have two sites.

Good luck with them!

[GekiDan]

Like what Fergal pointed out above, may we know why you have two sites?
Anyways, here's my review:

Jeff Website Designer:
TITLE: I saw that your logo tells the visitors that your site's name is Jeff Website Designer while the domain is bestwebdesigner.com, but I can't see it on your homepage's title bar (it's visible in the testimonial page but not in some other pages). You could do the same thing yo have done on your testimonial page to all your pages.

FAVICON: I wonder why you don't have one since your site offers services on web
design. Adding one will help future customers remember your site when they have it bookmarked.

LOGO: You got a good logo there. I liked how "W" was placed above "J". The only thing that bothers me is the height of the word "JEFF". It seems so short and barely readable unless you squint your eyes a little. You might want to take a look at that.

BANNER/HEADER: The text in your header, the URL of your site, is barely readable with the clouds graphic. Maybe make a thin stroke (about 2-3px) on the text and blur it a little. It might look more distinguishable that way.

LAYOUT: I like the consistencies on the layout, except one. On your Services page, there's a white space on the right of your banner. As far as I see, there should be a graphic there like the other pages. You might want to check that out.

FOOTER: I noticed that on your homepage, there's a stat counter. But it's placed on the far left, leftmost of the window. It kinda destroys the good footer layout visible on other pages. BTW, do you really need a visible stat counter?

All in all, it's a professionally designed site since you are doing a web design job for a living.
Hope you can take my comments and suggestions.

Wishing you more success:thumbsup:

(Will review 411webmaster.com later)

[hcted]

Ok, on the bestwebsitedesigner website, it is way too crowded. Make it simple. The lady on the left is annoying and is in the way of content. I really advise your revise the index. The menu is not consistent either.

on 411 webmaster, it has too much information. Shorten it, or use images to show content, and break it up. It is kind of intimidating.

[VVhite_Angel]

I will just talk about how i understand the site, how it appears for me.

411 webmaster : Good, clean images.
Last works seems nice too. Well i prefer see the last works than a big image like 100% satisfaction.

I think people are better attracted if you can bring some good last works to them.


bestwebsitesdesigner : Don't like it, doesn't inspire me trust.

[PaulPinnacle]

jeff123 why do you have two different websites to promote the business? Does that not cause some confusion amongst your customers?
I can't speak for the customers, but it's a huge point of confusion for me.

Due to the duplicate content on both domains, are you using the latter as a development site to compare designs?

I only glanced at them, as I wasn't sure 'what' to review here, but the duplicate content, linking of the latter domain to the blog of the former, the strange hosting via the golddeals.info site and very questionable looking testimonials all look like major issues.

Perhaps you can clarify what the position is with the two sites to give a better understanding of the situation. If they are being used as two separate and independent sites as is, there are some huge issues that need to be addressed.

[rakebackblogger]

http://www.bestwebsitesdesigner.com/

Homepage - way too much going on here. I dont know where to give my attention to first. Way too many stand out bubbles and flash banners.
The design doesnt look cheap which is good but way too cluttered.

All the other pages look fine

Not too sure about the Helen Keller quote on the 'Why Hire us page'. Doesnt really work for me.


411 site

Less cluttered, Still a bit too much flash on the home page
no need for thr Free Homepage Mock up to be flashing or no deposits at the top.

Other than that I actually prefer this website to the other one.

Cosmetically Im not a huge fan of that shade of green but its tolerable..

[jeff123]

bestwebsitesdesigner.com was my old website and had a good ranking on seo. It is in top ranking for lot of keywords.

I wanted to start google adwords as a additional source to get clients.

But I was not that happy by design of bestwebsitesdesigner and I didnt wanted to redesign it because otherwise I thought that I will affect my ranking on search engines

thats why i created 411webmaster for google adwords

Content similarity is not an issue for 411webmaster as I am not really looking to optimize it for search engines and use it mostly for adwords

[Jahan Choudhry]

The first website definitely sticks out with the woman on the left speaking. It leaves a memorable impression, something very good in an ever increasingly competitive field.

I will try to give more feedback later.

[PaulPinnacle]

But I was not that happy by design of bestwebsitesdesigner and I didnt wanted to redesign it because otherwise I thought that I will affect my ranking on search engines
I think you're looking at this in the wrong way. If you improve your website, make it a better experience for your users, improve on areas you feel aren't working well, etc., it should end up giving you a huge benefit for SEO, as your users will be far more likely to link back to an improved site.

If the majority of changes are aesthetic (i.e. design only not content) and you make them with user experience in mind (e.g. don't slow load times with bloated code/images), then you should have minimal worries about rankings. As long as you don't make major changes (navigational changes, site architecture changes, moving pages, drastically changing titles/content/etc.), then I'd suggest there is very little risk and far more potential for positives rather than negatives.

As for having a site specifically for PPC advertising, it's a risk. For a considered purchase such as a website, people seldom buy on the first visit to a site so you need to ensure you're 'easy to find' if they wish to come back. One of the factors they'll consider in their evaluation of your service is how well your own site performs (e.g. 411 in the 'why us' states 'search engine friendly designs', yet the site itself is very unfriendly and will perform poorly). When they then see it linking out to an external blog, at a domain which contains all the same content, it can/could/will cause serious trust issues.

Having put the work into your initial site, I think you're hugely devaluing the importance of 'brand' and the benefits you might gain from merging your 'high rankings' with an improved website (pretty much a fundamental for a web designer).


Content similarity is not an issue for 411webmaster as I am not really looking to optimize it for search engines and use it mostly for adwords
I'd suggest you reconsider this.

I'd specifically suggest reviewing it in relation to the Adwords landing page and site quality guidelines (https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46675) (with a focus on mirroring and framing (https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&guide=28439&topic=28441&page=guide.cs&answer=190437) and the "Relevant and Original Content" sections).

This is totally ignoring the equally relevant issues of duplicate content and linking of sister sites that could impact on the original site (I've not checked how you might have set up the second site in terms of your robots.txt and nofollows etc., which potentially remove some of the risks here, as I see the fundamental reasons for the sister site being enough reason to remove it and focus on 'THE' site).