review website

[idagreenluver]

here is my website
www.usavtours.com/about

If any suggestions, comments, or attaboys! Please let me know. Feedback is important to me. I want this site to be user friendly and catchy to the eye. All remarks good are bad would be appreciated greatly. Also any other ideas on ways to "Get out there"??

Thanks
CJ

[fisicx]

Hi CJ (welcome to the forums),

My first question - what's the purpose of the site? Is it a directory, a virtual tour, a shop or a web design business. I'm really confused. The bits I did look at just seem to be wordpress tutorials.

And your homepage is underconstruction and the second tab is for 'shipping rates' so this just add to the confusion.

However, your 'about' page didn't convince me that your offer was worth persuing. Because people scan the page they will only see the bits they want to. My eye was drawn to the line:

Search Engine Submissions - $60 to $500 PER MONTH (And MOST of them don’t even work!)

and I wondered why you were going to charge me for something that didn't work. It was only after looking more closely that I realized the list was for your competitors. I thought the page was about YOU. In any case this sort of negative persuasion is not effective. Your visitors actually don't care about your competitors, they want to read what you can do for them. What is this virtual tour thing?

It seems therefore that the major problem with the site is the lack of focus. anybody landing on your homepage is confronted with an 'under construction' sign and some tabs that offer no incentive to explore.

I'm also a little concerned that you don't make it clear that your web design appears to be limited to wordpress themes.

Anyway, there's my 2 cents.

[idagreenluver]

Thank you for your insight. We do agree, there is a lack of direction and our main focus at the time is our platform and not the directory, the directory will becoming as we set up more clients. So do you think we should focus mostly on WEB SOLUTIONS?? We are going to tweak it today and rearrange, redirect, rewrite things will you look at again tomorrow and give me more feedback?

Thanks
CJ

[fisicx]

Ok, the site is a little better now but the directory thing is most confusing. Are you only listing the sites you host or is it a complete directory service? In any case it doesn't work.

Your products page (header 'About') lies to me:

...you’ll end up paying about $100 a month or $1,200 a year through our competitors!

Where is the evidence for this?

You mention search engine submission. Anyone vaguely web savvy knows that this is a complete waste of time so I'm surprised that you offer this service.

You mention thay you have tons of add-ons. Are they really yours or are you promoting wordpress addons?

You are not being honset with your potential clients. They are not buying a bespoke website from you - all they get is a wordpress template.

These video tutorial you offer - there are actually far better tutorials available. The ones I use are in the WP knowledge base - and I can print them out and refer to them.

Your client websites seems to be missing from the google index - I can't find any of them. This is worrying. I suspect however it's because your client's sites are not unique domains - all you have done is set up a subdirectory and plonked the WP theme in there.

I'm not really sure where you should go next. The whole focus of the site needs to change. I sort of think you should be pushing the wordpress resource thing, it is more likely to bring you traffic and potentuial customers. As it is though, the site is not ever going to rank well until you fix the page titles, headers and write lots of copy.

Another little example. You have a tab called services. What does that mean? The actual target page is just self promo fluff that is full of inaccuracies and looks more like an affiliate page than anything else. And you still haven't told me what services you offer.

But when I eventually get to the prices page I can chose this 'virtual tour'. What is a 'virtual tour'? What advantages will it give me?

Your demo page is just another WP blog. And it's not even your template - it's a standard theme and you haven't even bothered to strip the links from the footer!

I've also done a bit of research and discovered that you don't seem to be hosting the websites, you appear to be registering with godaddy and hosting with dreamhost. Once again you are not making this clear to your clients (incidentally why godaddy, thay don't have a good press).

One last thing. Credibility is an important factor, you have no contact details, no email address, no telephone, no address. Your anonymity will lose you potential clients as will paypal - it may be fine for ebay but paypal is not the best solution for an online business like yours.

Trying not to be negative, I do like what you are trying to do but the lack of focus, the poor copy and confusing navigation will put off many potential clients.

And I'm also sure that when WP, the theme authors and plugin/widget creators catch up with you they will be most upset that you are not giving them due credit.

More to ponder...

[idagreenluver]

Thanks again for the feed back. We were aware of make a page to give credit to wordpress, this is now done. I don't know if I see where we come across like we are a hosting company, we are only a hosing solution. In fact that is what the whole thing a SOLUTION. We don't charge for anything else but the set up fee and the up keeping. Alot of people don't know how to set up sites on platforms like wordress, don't have the time to learn, or just don't want to. We try to offer them a way to have all the benifits that word press offers without the hassle. The virtual tours are out "nitche". I am trying to go through the pages and re word them, or think about it, but i kind of like the way they flow. I love the demo page, it shows all of the great things one is able to do with wordpress, I love the tutorials, for it is easier for some to look and be guided through a processes that might be frustrating if they were let to just read it, that is the purpose of them, to make it easy. We do offer clients customized sites that out team builds and I think we state through the pages that they can get themed pages as a basic, no fee and that there are thousands tot chose from, we even have a template page to show they are wordpress themes. We are not trying to say these things are ours, we are not tryign to sell them as ours, we are selling a services of setting the clients up on our platform with wordpress. And none of the sites are to be found yet they are all only a couple of days old. And they do all have their own unique domians, we did not just "set up a "subdirectory and plonked the WP theme in there. Our business is to help them, not hinder them. anyways, your comments we very help ful and I thank you.

[fisicx]

This is not critisim, it's just an reply to your post.

I don't know if I see where we come across like we are a hosting company, we are only a hosing solution.

On the site is says:

What comes with our packages? Glad you asked:

1. Premium Web Hosting - 99.9% Up time with all the features we can throw at it.

That pretty much indicates to me that you are a hosting company. If it said:

'We can register your site for you and arrange for hosting with a xyz'

then you would be telling the truth.

We are not trying to say these things are ours, we are not tryign to sell them as ours (sic)

Yes you do:

We have TONS of cool and unique features that you can add on to your website, with new ones coming out all the time!

That indicates to me that YOU are the owners of the plugins and widgets.

And they do all have their own unique domians

Not true:

Bonnies Creations
Watts Electric
Silver Valley Fitness/

are not unique domains - they are sub directories of usavtours. If all the sites redirect to usavtours then their search engine visibility will reduce to almost zero. However, If I am wrong and each client does have the own domain and webspace then I stand corrected but the existance of those clients within your domain is a little disconcerting.

You didn't answer the question about paying $60 to $500 per month for search engine submissions. Can you show me one single company that charges $500/months for SE submission?

And you still haven't expained what a virtual tour is? I have no idea what is it and why costs $100.

The site homepage is still under construction, why don't you make the 'about' page your homepage - it might bring in some business.

More stuff to ponder and digest at your leisure.

[dependx]

Hello,

I am not real comfortable with your site at all. I think that you need to play a different game by making your site look like a public relations article in a blog that creates interest, then, you could include links for a selling page. (to close prospects)

You could offer lots of different articles on many one page sites that touch on current issues in the industry -- all sites would link to a well designed page for making the sale. Ok, you won't generate a ton of money, but I think that you could start promoting your service for some money results that way.

It should not take more than a day or two to make it a reality. You could also get other web people to benefit financially through this method, by linking to your selling page from there articles too!

[fisicx]

I've been doing some forum maintenance looking over older threads to filter out the spam and pointless posts so I thought I go and see if any changes have been made to the site. I see a new WP theme but I still have a big question over this claim:

Originally Posted by idagreenluver

And none of the sites are to be found yet they are all only a couple of days old. And they do all have their own unique domians, we did not just "set up a "subdirectory and plonked the WP theme in there.

On your site you link to the Coeur d’Alene Cellars homepage but then link to the 'new' site which is a sub-directory of usavtours (usavtours.com/demopage/).

Which one is the real site? Incidentally I much prefer the BEFORE to the AFTER - on your WP version I can't even buy their wine!