Thread: Please rate my site

Hi, my site is http://myhomeneedshelp.com . Please ta a minute and see if it looks ok or if there are any big blunders. Get picky!

CLIENT ID #17126

Hi Steve,

I'm certainly not an expert on web design - very much a rookie, but I will offer my take on your site. I like the graphics at the top of your page. Question: Since this is www.myhomeneedshelp.com, why is that address in smaller font and the other address so much bigger? The content looks fine, but in my opinion, I would tighten up the page some. Use a smaller font.

Just my humble - uneducated opinion. I like the idea and the service you offer. We've used something similar in our area - The Handyman Connection. Wish you much success.

Dan
My site - www.fortune-eagles.com

Thanks Dan, The screen name that is large was the first name I was going to use for search engine reasons but I saw it was no good to remember and for printed ads and posters so I added in the www.myhomeneedshelp.com. After you mentioned I see it should be the other way around and have the myhomeneedshel.com as the big one and handymanbrooklynrenovation.com as the small one. as far as how big my font is I am not sure I agrea as I have read that a large easy to read font with more pages and an easy on the eyes background is the way to go.
I could be way off on this and hope to get more feedback on that as well as if the noahs classified program that is the f"ree ad" and the "sound off" page looks ok or if it looks like a site that you wouldn't trust? Thanks again dan as I had my blinders on to the Header names of the site and will change that soon.

Hello fellow brooklynite. Two thing that I would suggest is have a colore background will make it stand out more the other on your pages you have the menu bar in the middle why not under the header. Other than that looks great make sure you set it up for geo targeting.

P.S. I'm orignaly from canarsie i'm sure you know it well, now living upstate. good luck to you.

Hi, Joe thanks for taking the time to go over my site . After your advice I changed my links to the top of page and changed there look a little. I am playing with background colors also. And yes I am familiar with canarsie but live in Bensonhurst (Bath Beach area).

Thanks again,
Steve

just spotted a spelling error.

Paste this code in your blog or website where you want the award to apear.

Hi Steve..good start..congrats!

www.bluelemonstudio.com
www.softicons.net (curently under construction)

Thank you Ramsey I hate to have errors in spelling on my site and am glad to have them pointed out. Thank you for the comment Asamboy.

Nice layout, I think the home page is a bit long and busy, you could reduce the font size of the many different text boxes to condense. In your subpages you need to put your menu bar just as you have it on your home page, this will keep a consistant and professional look to your site. The navagation although working is a bit confusing, say for example if you went to the home owners page insted of the contractors form you can not get to the other unless you go back to home. You should be able to access any page form any other. Just my opinion. Good work on the site so far.

Hi Steve

First of all your off to a great start.

I have to agree with what Ed has mentioned above. In my opinion the homepage has too much text and the way its laid out is a bit distracting to the eye.
Also, the different font size and colours are distracting.
I do really like the pots of paint and logos at the top. If you can condense the rest of the text below and standardize the font & size, it would look a lot more professional (in my opinion).
Well done so far.

Ed and Rangaz thank you for taking the time to go through my site. After looking at my site with fresh eyes I see your point and have put all the links at the top with room to add a couple more if needed. I may swich to the php menu method I have seen Naval post about. I also see what you ment by the clutter look and have removed some text and boxes and made my font for the most part 12. I hate to go smaller as I know some people have hard time reading and if I go bigger I don't get much content per page. I have also took to heart that I had to many colours in my text and have cut down to blue for the most part and a little red to draw the eys to the jist of the paragraph. Do you guys think I have cleaned it up enough or is it to much still? Again thanks for all the help guys is great to get another angle on things! Wish I had started using this part of ble vodas service last year when I first started.

STEVE,
www.myhomeneedshelp.com
www.paint.myhomeneedshelp.com

Hi Steve,
Liked your site to start with. Looked nice and crisp but then the menu at the top of the page started to bug me. I think the balance is all wrong with it up there - might work if you can get one row of buttons but with two rows it looks top heavy.

Then I went to "Find a handyman" (page has no title by the way) and the page looked a bit different plus the buttons at the top are now text and overlapping the "find help" box.

Then I clicked on "Handyman Services" and went to another untitled page that had a 3rd theme. I had to double check to see if I was still in the same website.

The last theme is my favourite personally, but I think you should try and make your pages look as if they belong together not a mishmash of different ideas. I created a template for my site and used it throughout every page. Once I got an idea of how I wanted the template to look I was able to alter the content to suit each page. I think I got it right.

One last thing, you've got a few spelling mistakes sprinkled throughout various pages. You need to go through and do a spell check again.

Sorry if this sounds brutal. On the whole it looks like a neat idea. We have something called "greyskills" over here that has a slightly similar bent. Worth having a look at for ideas maybe "greyskills.co.nz" I think.

Hi Steve

Glad the advice was of use.
Just had a look at your site again, and it looks a 100 times better than before. Its a lot less cluttered and a lot easier to navigate and read. Sometimes with webdesign, less is more. I'm also new to webdesign and learnt this the hardway too :)
Your site will only look better and better as you further tweak it. I'm always changing or updating something on mine.
Good job.

Muzza thank you for taking the time to go over my site. As with most of the advise I am getting you were dead on with the menu. I have changed position and made it fit in 1 bar(it was top heavy as you said). I also got around to tweaking the Nohas Classifieds program I am using for the free advertisments and sound off ads. They now contain enough of the look of the other pages and have the standard menu I have on all pages now. If the site takes off I will have a php guru design a more fleable interface but this one will serve the purpose till then and not look to bad I am hoping. As for spelling That is one of my many weak points (thank god for spell check) and I will be going over it manny more times but would apreciate any words that anyone would point out to me. Thanks Rangaz I think it looks better now also, thanks to everyones input.

Hi, might be worth a check out in firefox, as the text is covering the 1st 2 lines on this form LINK But looks fine in IE.

Chris, thanks for the info. I went over the site in firefox and found a couple things that had to be changed. I apreciate you taking the time to give a look.
btw your site looks great!

This page http://www.handymanbrooklynrenovation.com/payfor.php has spelling wrong for "I am interested in". I'd also do a bit of tweaking with your checkboxes and descriptions under that heading. I know it's really fiddly but in Firefox they are staggered a bit - look like a bunch of drunks in a line. Great effort though, looks heaps better.

Thanks again Muzza I apreciate you taking the time to be fiddly as you put it. I am going to be paying for hard ads in the papper starting november and already have flyers and posters made up so I want to have the site tweaked and looking good by then. Your help as well as everyone else who takes the time to look and give there feedback has helped me out a great deal. I look at the site now and it is way better than when I put it here to get ideas thanks to all the input from this forum.

Steves Painting Sevice needs an "r" on your homepage i.e. Service

Just one thought to leave you with. When I see blue on a white background and then see words with yellow highlighter I think "Spammer".

I don't know what other people think but I tend to try a different colour when I'm trying to highlight some text I want people to see. I avoid the yellow highlighter at all costs.

It's only one persons opinion but I thought I'd point it out

Muzza thanks for the spell check again. If you happen to look back, what do you think of the way I used on the hame page instead of the highlight ? I have seen this done before and am not sure if I like it or not. any feedback would be appreciated

Under the featured ad section I can see Cost $ 15 per month.
In my opinion there is too much white space at the top (nice graphics though). The menu font is too small compared to the rest of the site. Plus in your ad section you may want to use a BlueVoda affiliate link (see http://www.vodahost.com/partner/idev...e.php?id=11704 ) and use the VodaHost or BlueVoda logo in your ad box. Then if someone clicks to set up their own website, you make $ 60 or $70 from each one who signs up with Voda. I like your rotating ad box a lot. I don't like the page layout though. You might want to offer do it yourself home improvement ideas. With winter coming you could show adding weather stripping to windows & doors, talk to your local home & garden center to see if they put a coupon on your website then use their name in your meta tags.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for taking the time to see my site Victory1

I think it looks better than the highlighter but I would keep the font the same size as the rest of the text to keep it all lined up. At the moment you have your blue text on one line then half a line down you have brown text.

In Firefox it looks a little bit strange.

In Opera it looks weird. Both places where you have brown text disappear until you place the mouse over the top. So you have to mouse over very carefully before you can read it. However I also notice that you have scrolling text in your header.

In Firefox the scrolling doesn't work

ok I reworked my site with advise i received and I hope it loos better . any feedback is wellcome!

What a huge improvement, you should be feeling very pleased.

Just a couple of things, Your menu needs white lettering or similar. Black on dark blue is hard to see and someone with poor eyesight may not see it at all.

Also are you aware that the link for "Steves Painting" just takes you to the home page?

Checking a bit further. You are not getting the effects you want in Firefox. You get it in Safari and probably IE but anything that flashes or scrolls is remaining static in Firefox. That's a wee problem. People may say "well Firefox sucks" but going through my google reporting, Firefox customers make up a third of my viewers. So you need to cater for them or lose 33% of your potentail audience.

I'd suggest that you download a copy of Firefox so that you can check how other see your website. I've just recently downloaded Safari and Opera so now I can check using those two, plus Firefox and IE.

Thanks Muzza you are being of great help to me! Again you were spot on with the menu bar I swiched it to white text links , I think they go better with the art work links under them anyhow as they have white. I now need to dig into the php style sheet on noah's and change thos to white. I have firfox and in mine everything works and is showing? do we have dif versions? what exactly isnt working on firefox when you look? I am betting the scroll by where is says "seving the 5 boros" and does it just not show that? The link to steve's painting is working bot on ie and firefox on mine coule you check again for me in yours? I realy do apreciate you taking the time to help me out!

Sorry Steve, I've been a twit. I have Firefox3 but I am also using "NoScript" which was treating your site as untrusted. Therefore anything involving scripts wasn't working properly. Once I marked your site as trusted, everything worked properly. All the scrolling text and revolving adverts...everything.

One last thing - the note at the bottom of your page asking people not to Post for contractors not on your site looks mile better. But it only appears when I place my cursor on some of the blue text on your page and disappears when I move the cursor anywhere else. It's a different way of attracting attention to it but it's also possible that people will not see it if they have the cursor in the wrong place.

Thank Muzza you have been tons of help. I think site is about ready besides a few little touch ups here and there thanks to the feedback from everyone.

Thanks to All,
Steve
www.myhomeneedshelp.com

Originally Posted by steve horbach

Thank Muzza you have been tons of help. I think site is about ready besides a few little touch ups here and there thanks to the feedback from everyone.

Thanks to All,
Steve
www.myhomeneedshelp.com

Hello
When I clicked on "Carroll Gardens Handyman Service" I went to their site but I was not able to come back to yours from there. Was it the idea?
German

Steve Steve Steve.... You know that spelling is your weak spot so I feel that you must check and double check your spelling. It's the only thing letting you down now.

BlueVoda will find most of your spelling mistakes, you just have to get used to using it to spot them. A site with lots of spelling mistakes will look unprofessional and lose you business.

I was having a brief look around and thinking "wow this is much better than when I first saw it. Lots of little tweaks have made it 1000% better." Then I saw my first error, then 2 more and that was in just 30 seconds of browsing.

I think you need to get into every page - one at a time - open every text box one at a time - look for words underlined in red - if there are any then select "Tools" in the menu at the top of the page (while you are still in the text box and then select "spelling". The rest should be self explanatory.

The errors I found were these:

On your menu - one of your buttons advertises "Buisness Resources" but I think you mean "Business Resources"

and on this page:

http://www.handymanbrooklynrenovatio...t&fromfromid=1 "pet freindly" should be "pet friendly" and "Steve's Painting &Drywall" should be "Steve's Painting & Drywall"

You probably have other small but significant errors on other pages. If you can get rid of them (and it's time consuming and boring - but worth it) you
will have a very nice site that you can be proud of.

Good luck - I hope this works for you. It looks great.