Constructive critism please!

[yourlocaltrades]

Many changes have taken place, and more on the way, but some feedback to help me progress would be greatfully received.
www.yourlocaltrades.co.uk

(if your smart enough to realise its still free to register and then do so, then happy days!)

Many Thanks
Steve

[peterjhale]

It's a nice looking site - I think someone else on the forum has a similar idea (in that others vote and grade existing businesses)

Do you have an USP at all ?

[yourlocaltrades]

Originally Posted by peterjhale

It's a nice looking site - I think someone else on the forum has a similar idea (in that others vote and grade existing businesses)

Do you have an USP at all ?

If i knew what a USP was i would answer the question!
I have Mistera doing the website, so he knows everything "web based".

Ratings and recommendtions online give members an internet word of mouth, just vetting all these trades is a nightmare at the moment!

[peterjhale]

Unique Selling Point - ie: what's better about your site than all the "rest"

[yourlocaltrades]

Unique Selling Point/s


I would say due to the SEO we are more "visible" than our competitors.

We do not offer "pay per lead" now, we are offering quotations to the tradespeople via a simple monthly payment or a one off payment and this gives them full access for the year.. This eliminates the "inappropriate job" scenario and wasted "lead" payments.

Our price of £99.99 one off/£19.99 per month is less than our competitors by quite a bit.


We have just over 400 members who have registered in our first six months.

You can actually earn your yearly payment/s back from just one job through our site!

[fisicx]

Err... Not so sure about 'all the SEO you are doing'. Many of the page titles are generic which is a big issue when it comes to search engine ranking, your main navigation uses JS which again reduces the indexing potential, the H1 is again often generic and there is very little indexable material on the actual company pages. The result is that when I search for many of the companies or categories listed you don't appear in the search engine results pages.

The other issue is relevance. One one search I made, the nearest company was in another county but the distance was given as zero.

You have a thumbs up customer recommendation but no way of verifying the recommendation, who was the customer? why are they recommended?

Are you really more visible than your competitors? I can think of any number of other ways to get more information about a local company including recommendations and testimonials.

And finally, your testimonial page is 'coming soon'. This doesn't help your credibility.

However, the site does look good and there is an impressive range of registered businesses.

[Arleigh]

The design and concept of the site looks nice. The layout is clean too..
But the text in your content looks not good and clean. It's better that the alignment of the paragraph is justify. And also change its font style...

[PeterCarruthers]

A few thoughts:

• Why place adverts on your front page that give visitors a very visible route away from your site? Why make it easy to leave?
• Why not place an email 'fishbowl' on your front page where visitors can give you their email address in return for your free 10 point guide on How to Guarantee you won't get Hurt by another Rogue Tradesperson? That starts rapidly building an email base that you can educate about dealing with tradespeople, and build relationships with them while educating them.
• Why not include your testimonials with your text - rather than hiding them on another page? They carry huge power, and it seems a shame that they're not front and centre.