Thread: New site up and running....

Boy! Now I'm in trouble asking for feedback!

Seriously though, I'd appreciate any comments on the new site - the first I have ever built.

It is intentionally clean and simple, compared to others in the same business, as I have always believed in being simple (!) and direct. I have a few things to add yet, such as tables showing performance increases for each vehicle, a deposit payment system etc, but this is 90% done. Yes - I left the hard bits until last....

The site is www.experttuning.co.uk

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Paul

Site looks really good..well done!

Thanks Darren. Appreciated. Can't be good enough though. You haven't asked if I come down to Bristol!

Cheers

Paul

hahaha...I'm to old to bother about getting my car expertly tuned. As long as it goes from A-B. My wife however screws her car to about an inch of its life,....hmmm, so do you come to Bristol?...lol

Hi Paul,

I love it! For a first site it's brilliant!! Love the logo and the colours and the pics...all really great. Really easy to navigate and yes, nice and simple as it should be. I really tried to look for spelling mistakes, grammar errors etc and can't see any.

I looked to see what area you cover and couldn't see that anywhere so I'm presuming you cover the whole country... Maybe that could be pointed out, unless I missed it or you chose not to.

In FAQs, under "Should I tell my insurance company" I think you should have "We are a responsible company and the answer..."

In Prices, I think it should read "as long as we are able...."

Also in prices, I can see a black line through the logo that I don't think should be there.

I was really picking holes though, not to be nasty! Just trying to help. Well done!!

So sorry - I just went back and there is no line through the logo!!

I'm off the Specsavers...

Thank you Sally. I really appreciate the input and will act on it. Coincidentally I had just thought about the location and have just done a quick text based fix while I figure out how and where to put a map. I'll definitely get onto the other things too. One of the benefits of developing and controlling your own website....

Paul

Thanks Tony. Noted and will get fixed. Attention to detail.....

Very, very slick and modern. Excellent use of images and visual appeal, but I too think it needs more in the way of valued Content.

Thanks GulfCoaster

I'm interested to know what you mean by more valued content. What do you think should be there?

Thanks

Paul

Incredible website Paul, how long did it take you?

Thank you Ryan

It took too long! Starting from nothing, probably about 100 hours, but I must admit, if I had planned properly, scaled photos properly before insertion etc it could have been a lot less.

My advice...

Plan before working if you can. Get your photos the right size before you start. 72dpi - exact width and height you want them on screen. Try and develop a template page with all the things on it that will appear in every final page of your website.

My biggest mistakes (time-wise) were:

Scaling photos in BlueVoda instead of scaling them to the right size first in photoshop - then having to go back and replace them all because I had multi-megabyte photos uploaded instead of smaller photos.

Not working out how to get links into text so using pictures with text instead - then realising this was no good to Google before going back and re-working every page the right way.

It goes on....

As I said - planning would have paid!

Good luck with yours

Cheers

Paul

Originally Posted by paulsdunford

Thank you Ryan

It took too long! Starting from nothing, probably about 100 hours, but I must admit, if I had planned properly, scaled photos properly before insertion etc it could have been a lot less.

My advice...

Plan before working if you can. Get your photos the right size before you start. 72dpi - exact width and height you want them on screen. Try and develop a template page with all the things on it that will appear in every final page of your website.

My biggest mistakes (time-wise) were:

Scaling photos in BlueVoda instead of scaling them to the right size first in photoshop - then having to go back and replace them all because I had multi-megabyte photos uploaded instead of smaller photos.

Not working out how to get links into text so using pictures with text instead - then realising this was no good to Google before going back and re-working every page the right way.

It goes on....

As I said - planning would have paid!

Good luck with yours

Cheers

Paul

Believe it or not Paul I had to deal with that same problem just yesterday. I have a banner rotator with pictures on my site's homepage and I uploaded them directly from the camera and scaled them down in BV and it took the page almost 10 minutes to load, all fixed now though.
Thanks for your advice, I've never been one for planning ahead but I'll certainly try my best.

Thanks again,
Ryan

Hi

I have had my website up and running for a couple of months now. It has generated good results but I wonder how it comes across. Is it too simple? Too complicated? Too technical? Not technical enough? Informative? Over-informative?

I know that's a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question because there is no content or presentation that will suit every viewer, but I would really appreciate any comments you can make from your personal point of view.

Many thanks for your time. It will only take a moment and you might even find the content interesting!

If you do a search for similar companies (search for 'remap' or 'remapping') to see how the competitors look for a comparison that would be fantastic.

www.experttuning.co.uk

Thanks

Paul

Very nice looking website, like the colors and it's ease of use great job Paul

Wow, great job. Great quality images.

Great images and easy to read, but why not using a more appealing title?

You start with "remap, chip tuning....
Is it how people would look for your services using the SE's?
Why not "Tuning car services"? (...and something more specific after 'services' maybe)

Good luck!

Stunnig job!

Easy to navigate and the fonts are easy to read.

Just a suggestion: Why not make the testimonials font one size smaller and italic. Otherwise it doesn't catch the attention it could be getting. Just a personal point of view from me...

Otherwise, great pictures and content. Website loads fast.

Thanks for the feedback all...

I'll change the testimonials as suggested. Re; the title, the most common search term in the UK for this service is remap and remapping. I'll give the suggestion some thought though....

Cheers

Paul

Hi

I think you're right about the buttons. Lazy! I will redo them.

I think the fast loading is just due to making sure every graphic is the right size before loading it into BlueVoda. Originally I had graphics that were too big and I left it to the browser to resize them. Took ages!

Just use photoshop or something to make sure the pics have exactly the dimensions you want them for the page. Don't re-size them in BlueVoda.

Cheers

Paul

Planning is indeed very important when creating a website, and that is why it is stressed so everywhere you turn in these VodaTalk Forums!
It becomes time well-invested to scour previous threads to learn the techniques and solutions to issues before they become pratfalls to your progress, and to include them in your pencilled outline for easy reference when actually transforming your vision into an online reality.

Often overlooked are the tools VodaHost offers to make the job easier and more productive, so the results are optimally performing ..... such as the PixResizer Tool, which is a wonderfully capable substitute for those who do not own PhotoShop or a capable Photo Editor to properly format, resize, and optimize images.

The more familiar you are with all the pages of not just the Forums, but all the VodaHost websites, the more enabled you will become!

Pix Resizer - Free formatting optimizer for your website's photos and images. A Must-Have!


BTW: Showcase Forum Rules(#3) allow for only one thread per website to be created, which is why yours have been merged this once.

Good & attractive looking site. Couple of things that would be worth doing as you fine tune your pages (or remap) (Sorry) Think about giving your images good names & tag lines as this all helps with the se's. IE: Your main image is called "Website Logo on Blackish 440.jpg" & would be better with a name something like “car-tuning.jpg”, with an alt tag of “Car & commercial vehicle tuning & remapping” Doing this with all images can help a lot. Would also be worth a look at adding some “h tags” to each page.
Just on a different note, my nephew just had his car remapped & the company that did the remapping charged him £30 for the remap that lasted 24 hours then reverted to the old settings after this period at a time when the car was idle. If he liked the remap he could then pay for the full upgrade (£270-00) with the refund of the £30 paid for the try out.

Good luck with the site.

Glad to see the methods of proper page titles, image titles, H-META, Alt Text as "tags," and other page relevancies are finally being emphasized regularly as core to the "optimal" page build itself .... no matter how fancy the site, if it does not have the simple construct compliance in place, it will perform poorly!