By Angela Atkinson

If you stopped by our blog yesterday, you might have seen the announcement we made about our newly launched forum, as well as the offer we made to give you free feedback on your author site or blog.

Several of you came into the forum and added your blogs or websites for review, and we’ve given detailed suggestions and ideas for improvement on each–and also pointed out what we think you’re doing right.

If you haven’t had the chance to check out the forum and that particular thread yet, don’t worry! There’s still time to take advantage of this valuable free offer!

Here’s what you get!

Below is my feedback on one of our more recently posted site review requests. And be sure to check out the forum thread to see other examples of our free feedback. If you like what you see, feel free to request your own free site review!

Our Member Wrote:

Hi!

My site has been up for a few years. http://tigersterraincreativeenterprises.webs.com is the site name. I do need suggestions on how to fix what is wrong. Right now, this is the best I have. I would appreciate some help so that I can get more business. Thank you so much!

My Response:

Hi Teresa,

I think I can help. You’ve actually got a good start as far as the content goes on a lot of your pages. However, if you want to get more clients and traffic, you could benefit from a whole site redesign.

Here are some points that will help to improve the usability and appeal of your site, as well as bring increased traffic (and potential clients) your way!

• The first thing you see when you click on your site is the ad in the top bar. I realize that this is required in order to keep your site free, but I think you should seriously consider buying a URL and switching over to a different hosting service. If you want to go super cheap, set up a free Blogger.com blog and pay the ten bucks a year to get a dedicated URL (you can move over to a paid server when you start making money.) This will instantly make you appear more professional–the combination of no ad at the top and a dedicated URL (one without the .webs or .blogspot in it–just yourbusinessname.com instead.)
• The next thing I noticed is that your header takes up nearly all of the “above the fold” space, meaning that your valuable content is not visible when a user arrives on your page. I would reduce the size of your header to no more than about 200 pixels and bring the more valuable material up to eye level.
• You should also rethink the color scheme of the site–light print on a dark background can cause many people to strain to read it. This makes them more likely to click away.
• The name of your business, Tigers Terrain, seems to have very little to do with the service you’re offering. If I were you, I’d develop a tagline that ties it in, along with a logo (maybe a tiger with a pencil in his mouth, for example), or consider changing the name. Upon arriving on your site, I did not realize that you were actually providing writing services–I actually wasn’t sure what you were selling, if anything. The idea is to brand yourself and make it immediately clear to site vistors what your site is all about.
• Your rates and services page is good in that you clearly define your prices (though I have found it hard to so clearly define pricing on a standard level because each project is different), but I would suggest adding a bit of a description to each type of service. “Copyediting, basic” might mean different things to different people. Also, you might want to clarify your abbreviations next to your pricing. Not everyone is going to know what “prn pg” or “wd” means–especially not “non writers,” who will be the ones looking to hire you.
• The top paragraph of your about page is well written, but I would suggest adding individual bios for each of you as well, rather than contact information. (Move that to the contact page and link to it instead.) Alternatively, you can add a sidebar and place your contact info there.
• I would advise removing the contact from on the contact page. Contact forms are sort of ambiguous, and many potential clients won’t use them. Instead, I’d suggest adding email addresses for each contributor, as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter information on each. This way, it’s easy for your potential clients to get in touch with you via their preferred methods.
• From your news page, it appears that your site was just launched. The only two posts there are from a few days ago–and the first one that your potential clients are going to see is “when should you walk away from a client?”. Since every other page of your site is directed at potential clients, this type of blog post could be a real turn-off for them. If you want to write for writers, consider starting a separate blog for that. This site should be primarily focused on your clients (or at least, you should create content with them in mind.) You can definitely make announcements about your freelance writing careers and business here, but I would not write anything that might offend a potential client.
• I would update the blog/news more often/regularly as well (say, twice weekly), and this will help you get a better search engine ranking since the site will be crawled more often if you publish more often.
• Also, I could not find a way to subscribe to your news/blog updates. You can easily add an email subscription option through free services such as Feedburner and Mailchimp. (I prefer Mailchimp for the extensive flexibility, but Feedburner is also effective and easier to set up.)
• I would remove the photos page, calendar page and author page. All of these have no data, which does nothing for your site but waste site visitors’ time.
• I’d remove the order form page, as what you’ve got on it is a contact form (which is also on the contact page.)
• I’d remove the guestbook page because it makes the site look far less professional. These are outdated and businesses don’t generally use them these days.
• I would also remove the comments section and share buttons from all of your static pages. This tends to make the site look slightly less professional as well.

I hope you find this information helpful, and I’d love to see you in the forum more often!

If you’re interested in getting your site or blog reviewed free, act fast! This thread and offer will close on Thursday!

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