your honest opinion on my website will be appreciated!

[ARcollections]

Hello All,

I am new to this forum, so hello to all of you!! Here is my website: ARcollections dot co dot uk I did that all by myself, I am fairly new in business and have been doing things myself.

I would like your honest opinion so i can improve it. i provide credit control services/Sales ledgering Management to SME/Medium size businesses at the moment and planning to incorporate bookkeeping services shortly.

your comments will help me: 1) to improve this site and also help me to get started on my other pending project: an e-commerce site and something simalar to ARcollections site for a Homeshoring business.

Many thanks in advance

[fisicx]

A plain and simple design built using officelive. Nothing wrong with this but don't expect anything exciting to happen.

Building an effective website takes a lot more than just writing some content and publishing. You need to consider your users needs, they way they search for information, the key elements on the page they are looking for, information chunking, navigation, headers, imagery and so on.

Whilst I'm sure the service you offer is good, the site comes across as a sales puff not an offer of services. I can't for example see a list of the services you provide, you have a fees page that doesn't give me the fees, you say you are members of the CSA but don't have a link to their site. There are no calls to action.

I would seriously reconsider using officelive. The coding is pretty horrible and until you get some of the basic elements in place the chances of you picking up any targeted visitors is slim. Take a week to digest this excellent guide and you will hopefully realise how much more work is required: http://webstyleguide.com/

[James1980]

The design is more or less fine but I have a few nitpicks:

• Personally I wouldn't bother with a sitemap for such a small website.
  
• Don't use centre-aligned text for paragraphs, it's hard to read. Centred text is okay for headings but for "body" text use left-aligned or fully justified only.
  
• On the "Useful links" the logos are distorted, and could benefit from being 'clickable'.
  
• Contact us form: No need to ask for a first name and a surname, just ask for a 'name'. KIS: Keep It Simple.
  
• Benefits page: Four lines of text are a different font, for some reason.

The next step is to promote your website, and there are three simple rules which will guarantee success. Unfortunately....

1. Google changes the first rule every twenty minutes
2. Nobody can agree on what the second rule is
3. Nobody knows the third rule.

Apart from that it's plain sailing...


James

[ARcollections]

Fisicx & James1980

Thanks a million for your comments, i really appreciate it and i will be going through and rectify accordingly.

i will keep you posted,

once again thanks for your help
regards

[timd1230]

Site looks ok to me as a small site - Think I guess the next stage is to optimise for your key words and then start an SEO campaign,

I have a small business and I spend my money as follows - A few hundred £200 - 400 advertising in well laid out (need to keep brides interested) Well placed (goole listings) niche web directories. I also have a small permanent adwords campaign - mostly targetting the long tail although I have recently elevated 2 additional counties to pull in some additional enquiries. Optimise website Links and general SEO activities