The Site – Lou Riley Live

The current website is a blog which serves as a living record of the weight loss journey Lou is undertaking.

I asked Lou the typical pre-review questions, and here are his answers about his blog:

Q: What is your primary goal for this site?
A: My primary goal is to create a movement in the health and wellness industry based on my personal journey as captured on video. So I guess I am building the “Lou Riley Live” brand. I want to draw people into my story and have them subscribe to my blog. Once I establish a “fan” base, I want to convert them into customers for the health and wellness product I am affiliated with.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest weakness of the site at this point?
A: Biggest weakness? A lack of visitors. I also need to improve the process for converting visitors to sales. So far in the videos, I haven’t sold anything. I think that creating this “movement” will make selling easier as visitors will be able to connect with me and not a product. I like the design, but I think some color adjustments can make it better.

Overall, it looks like the goal is going to be to solidify the Lou Riley brand and to bring in more new and repeat visitors. Once he’s got those things, the sales will start coming.

Current State of Affairs

Let’s take a peek at the current Lou Riley Live site:

Lou Riley Live - Home

Sometimes a long screenshot of a website can really tell the story at a glance, and I think we’re seeing that here as well. We’ve got a really big white space in the main content area that’s throwing things off balance, but there are quite a few other things as well.

Let’s Talk Branding

The very first thing we need to talk about is how to make the Lou Riley brand so integral to this site that there is no mistaking what this site is and who it’s by. To do that we need to take two initial steps:

1. Focus on the brand.
2. Remove everything irrelevant.

Old Branding.

Start building the brand from the very beginning. Put your name at the top, and I’d love to see a photo up there too, something to really push who you are.

Be reachable. People may want to contact you – but more importantly, they want to know that they CAN if they want to.

Add Contact Page.

The second thing about branding, is emphasizing that this site is a video blog. People will go there to see videos. I see the pagination of the videos on the front page as a problem.

Video Pagination Problem

The videos stop there, and if I want to scroll through them, I use the navigation there. I have no incentive to keep scrolling down. BUT there’s a lot of stuff in the sidebar further down that I won’t see by stopping there! We need to do that in a different way that doesn’t leave a large empty space in the content area.

Removing The Excess

Let’s just talk about what to take out.

Ditch the entire blogroll section for now.

Remove blogroll.

Remove the login box. You’re the only writer on the blog – and as far as I can tell there’s no members-only material, so this is just taking up space for now. Bookmark the link to login and write posts, no one else really needs this.

Remove login.

Take the Twitter out of your products – this should be in with your social bookmarking links.

Remove Twitter.

We also want to remove the duplicates. I see that video with the veggies 3 times on the front page of the site. That makes people think there’s very little content – which isn’t true in your case. The recent videos in the sidebar should only show for internal pages (like when I’m on a single post page watching a single video) because then I don’t have to go back to the homepage to see what else you’ve done recently. The featured video should stick at the top, without repeating underneath itself on the homepage.

Remove duplicates.

Personal Product Recommendations

Right now you have two major product selling sections on your site. One in a box like ad section and one in a vertical format down the sidebar.

Drink Ads.

Nutrition Ads.

The nutrition ads are okay, they’re small and consolidated (once you remove Twitter you can add a 4th also). The drink ads are a bit of an issue though. They’re too separate, take up too much space, and have a big blank space to the right. Additionally, the first drink is the only one you can see doesn’t show up below the point where the videos stop and people quit scrolling.

I’d like to see you put those drink ads in a similar configuration to your nutrition ads.

Also – give us a reason to trust those products. Rename the sections to personalize it! Maybe instead of calling it ‘Sports Nutrition Products’ you can call it ‘Stuff Lou Is Eating – Certified by Lou to Not Taste Like Powdery Health Food.’

Ok, so maybe you won’t go that far, but we’ll trust your products more if they’re personal recommendations. People who want to lose weight often try to copy a process that was successful for someone else. If you tell them what you recommend – they’ll trust it more (even if you’re not actually using it – although it’s best if you are).

Build Your Fan Base

One of the biggest parts of building a brand is getting people to recognize it through exposure. To do that, you need to build a following.

Subscribe & Connect.

Your social networking and subscription buttons need to be way up at the top of your page so it’s always being pushed. And hey Lou – we connected on Facebook: You have no Facebook button anywhere on there!

One final note on subscriptions. I’m going to strongly suggest pushing email subscriptions to your blog via Feedburner. I would go with an email subscription textbox signup right in the sidebar.

The reason is – your audience isn’t specifically high-tech users and many people out there are still uncomfortable with feed readers. Email, now that is familiar to most people. Since your site is something that can reach out to many many different kinds of people – I would go with the most universally known way to get updates: email – and push that hard.

Prominent Navigation

I see that you’re using tags for navigation through your video posts. That’s fine – but they’re located too far down. We need to move stuff around on that sidebar to make sure that the primary site navigation is always located high enough that people don’t have to scroll to see it.

Tag Navigation.

Another note on tags — rename that section to not be called ‘tags.’ I know they’re tags, you know they’re tags, but an inexperienced web user doesn’t know they’re tags. Doesn’t know what they are really. Make it dead simple for people, something like: ‘Topics of the Videos’ and put a little text in there that says something like, ‘Click to see videos on this topic.’

Improve The Look

I really think your site could be better served by a different WordPress theme. I found one online called Videographer that I think you could tweak to really push your brand more. Simple is best, adding is easier than taking away.

The theme looks like this in its bare basics form:

Basic Videographer.

What I really like about this is the way the videos are organized to scroll down in a list that keeps the eye moving and the user scrolling. This allows your sidebar to grow a bit because there is still content in the main section.

The other reason I like this theme is because it is so minimal and open to tweaking.

Playing With Changes

Let me show you what I did in a bit of playing around with this new blank slate.

Lou Videographer.

I stole the picture for the header from Lou’s Facebook (great sketch image by the way), and threw it up on top. People like personality and a face to go with a name. Then the name, brand yourself by using a unique font and look for your name.

Don’t consider what I did in the header as a refined or complete — it’s more a sketch of what you could do.

I do think it’s important to add a tagline or quick summary of what this site is about in the header. Also, you’ll see that I’ve moved the social connect buttons up to the top header. This visually associates you with being reachable and real – that’s a good thing.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the site needs to stay plain vanilla white and this minimal forever — add a fun background that doesn’t detract from the videos. Add flavor to it in small places, but even if you put out this design on without changing the background or colors: it would put more focus on what the site is about = You, and Your Journey.

However – if you’re really in love with your current theme: ditch the pagination so the page is filled with videos instead of broken down into little bits.

Getting Visitors

The site is doing pretty good on general tech tests. If you want to run your own on your site regularly to see how you are doing, check out Website Grader. I think the biggest thing is going to be promotion.

Digg and bookmark your videos. Maybe write a bit more text about your videos so the search engines have more text to parse for relevance. Keep up the networking. Write some articles on what you suggest to position yourself as an expert and submit them to online article submission sites like Ezine Articles and GoArticles. Make sure your videos are uploaded onto every single video site in existence that will take them and work on building community within those sites. In other words — you’re doing good, just keep trying to get the word out.

Last Thoughts

Lou… I love what you’re doing. I think you are a charismatic man on a mission, and a truly beautiful person for how strong you’re being through this journey of yours.

I think that many people out there will connect with you on so many levels. You could be a symbol of living hope to people who are struggling with the same problem, who have the same desires for a healthier life, and I sincerely hope you keep doing what you’re doing.

Heck, even if you never sell a dime worth of products – I hope you never stop giving the world the opportunity to share in your experiences.

I want you to always feel free to ask any technical web programming or design questions you may have, and I hope that you’ll come back by here from time to time and let us know how it’s going.

My best and most sincere wishes that you succeed in all ways.

~Nicole

Interested in a Site Analysis?

Would you like to have your site reviewed on Beyond Caffeine? Drop me a line and let me know all about it! Do you have a site that you think needs a redesign? Head over to my business site and get your free consultation.

The Site – Nothing But Costumes

The current site is an online web store that sells a wide variety of costumes for all occasions.

I also asked Mark the same two typical pre-review questions, so that I could understand his business needs a bit.

Q: What is your primary goal for this site?
A: We are looking for an office, so we eventually want to be a Brick and Mortar. There is always like a .05-1% visitor to sales ratio. So getting more customers AND a better sales ratio is important.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest weakness of the site at this point?
A: NothingButCostumes.com Explodes in Sept-Oct and then falls off the cliff. I have thought about a face design yet my customers tell me how much they like the site.

So in a nutshell, we need to figure out how to get more visitors and improve sales conversion by looking at the existing problems with the site. Additionally, to offset the problem of lackluster sales for the rest of the non-Halloween time of year – we need to figure out how to make the site be more year-round.

Current State of Affairs

Let’s begin by taking a look at the current Nothing But Costumes (N.B.C.) store.

N.B.C. - Home

While Mark mentioned the design as a minor note – I think the design is a HUGE problem. At first glance the site is overwhelming, cluttered, and unfinished looking.

Image is important, and as a consumer I know I would be very hesitant to buy from a site that looks like it isn’t complete. Thoughts that would run through my head range from “Is this a reflection of how they do business?” to “Am I safe entering my credit card information here?”

Building visitor trust is essential when selling products online. They have to be willing to take a leap of faith that the site will keep their payment information safe, that they will actually get their product in the mail, and that the business will keep theit promise of providing it on time.

From a web design standpoint – this site isn’t finished, not by any stretch of the imagination. To that end, I’m not even going to address the visual design of this site because it doesn’t have one yet. I know this is a bit harsh, but I think an honest professional opinion is needed – if the customers are saying they like the design… frankly, they’re just trying to be nice.

I’m going to strongly suggest either heading over to Template Monster and buying a pre-made ZenCart template or think about getting a custom design for this site from me or anyone else.

That said, there’s plenty of functional aspects that can go wrong even with a great design – so I want to touch on several of those.

Rebrand To Be Year-Round

One of the elements that is a big problem for this site is the peak at Halloween time and lackluster site performance for the rest of the year.

First things first – remove the elements that scream Halloween.

Halloween Elements

Keeping Up With The News

Perhaps it’s only because my daughter, her dad, and I are all planning to go to the midnight opening of the new Harry Potter movie, but I started wondering whether or not they have Harry Potter costumes. I’m sure Mark knows this, but for anyone who isn’t aware – going to a midnight movie opening in costume is very common.

Showcase Trends

Turns out, there they are, buried waaay far down on the list. Look, see that? Transformers too! If you haven’t been to a movie theater recently, go to one. You don’t have to watch a movie if you don’t want to. Go look around inside a movie theater. See what posters are hanging up. That’s what ALL those movie-goers are seeing anytime they go to see a movie. It’s pre-selling, early branding, conditioning. I can promise you that Harry Potter posters have been hanging up for months at my theater and I’ve got a note on my desk reminding me to reserve midnight showing tickets. If you can, stay and check out a movie – watch the trailer previews. It’ll show you what will be soon hanging on the walls.

Keep an eye on TV people also. Did you know that Miley Cyrus started filming a new movie this summer? She’s talking about it all over the place, including @mileycyrus on Twitter. That news is sparking an even bigger interest in what is associated with her name — Hannah Montana. NothingButCostumes has Hannah Montana costumes, and they’ll probably be extra popular this year.

How about the news? Michael Jackson died recently. I’ll wager a guess there are quite a few people who will want to dress up as MJ for Halloween this year, but even more than that… some people may have wanted to get the costumes out of a nostalgic tendency. I’m not sure if the site sells those, but the idea is simple: Sales always spike after catastrophe and death. It’s the well known morbidity factor. Look at how the sales spiked for the Batman movies when Heath Ledger died.

The point I’m getting at is simple. If you know what’s happening now, just happened, and is happening soon – you can tailor the things showcased on your site to grab those hot buyers.

Know Your Competition

I headed over to Google and typed in the one keyword phrase that should bring in the most ‘ready-to-buy’ visitors for this site: “buy costumes”

The Competition

The very first site that popped up was BuyCostumes.com so I decided to check out the competition. That site is actually quite nice, although it does suffer from some clutter issues.

Since I just finished talking about keeping up with the news, I found it amusing that I landed on BuyCostumes.com and saw a showcase of all the hot new movies people might want costumes for front and center on the site.

Movie showcase

Keep an eye on the competition. They may catch something before you do. If they do, see it, jump on it. Don’t let them have an advantage over you. How else does your business compete with them? With a strong brand people remember, trust, and recommend.

Rebrand to Be Memorable

Every business wants their customers and visitors to remember their name. They want them to talk about how great their business is, and return to it later. Branding is very very important and developing a strong brand takes time, effort, and skill.

Logo Comparison

One thing to begin with is to have the primary site branding done professionally. The Nothing But Costumes site needs a stronger brand that has nothing to do with Halloween, and an image that can go on every single piece of marketing material it has.

Keep The Focus

On any business site, it is important to maintain the overall focus of that site. I see a couple of things on N.B.C. that I would suggest keeping out of any new design.

Your fortune is..

I have no idea why there is a daily horoscope front and center on this site. It needs to go. So does the animated rotation of costumes. If there are photos of costumes on the front of the site in the new look (which there should be) – the rotating carousel is unnecessary.

Linking Out

If a business store MUST link out to another site, it’s vital that offsite links open in a new window and are not given prominence over anything that is important to the business.

Don't hide the gems

Keep the focus on converting visitors to customers. People love specials and like to browse what’s ‘featured‘. This should be prominent, because those things are a huge lure to buyers. They should be a big focus. From a marketing standpoint, those things should also be things that are currently very hot right now.

A minor note. On the sidebar there is ‘Other Stuff We Sell’. For a site that says ‘Nothing But Costumes’ I think that’s going to have to go. It seems strange to go to a site that only sells costumes and find candle holder sets. The Mardi Gras masks? Can’t those just go in accessories – there are only 2 of them. I’m not sure why there are 2008 links there, but I don’t see those as necessary. Rarely does a shopper say.. hey, I want to go shop for something old. Just mix those in among all the rest and they’ll never know

Don’t Overwhelm

Online stores are usually a de-cluttering challenge. They have a lot to say, a lot to sell, and they want everyone to see it at once. For the visitor, however, with too much stuff crammed onto a page, their eye doesn’t know where to look.. so it goes everywhere. They’re overwhelmed. Watch someone using a store site they’ve never seen before. People need to be SHOWN where to look, and what to look at.

When the site is redesigned – that ENTIRE list of things down the center needs to go. Hand select a few items that are REALLY strong and have great selling potential based on current trends, and put those on the front page.

Break things into chunks for people. Pagination is where you break content apart on to separate pages that they move through using a numbering system. Any site that has 87 items on one page in the boys costume section needs pagination. Break that list up into no more than 12 items per page.

The drop down menus are distracting and overwhelming. They need to stop being dropdowns. The same content is listed on the left, and they should link only to the primary pages not show each sub-page as well.

Categories

If I mouse over categories, I get a list so long it makes the page scroll. If I mouse over Categories -> Licensed TV Movies … the list is twice as long as the categories list. That has become too huge to be manageable for a typical user.

I should be able to click on Categories at the top (no drop downs) and see a nice, neat, listing of the categories .. organized in the group I see on the left hand sidebar. I shouldn’t see a site-wide sitemap, which is currently the result.

Build Trust – Fix Errors

One of the easiest ways to make someone not comfortable buying on a website is to have lots of system errors popping up all over the place.

Keep the software updated and get help fixing it if needed.

Site Errors

Several of those links (Page 2, Page 4, and the Zen Cart Dev) contain unfinished content. One page with default text still in it. One empty page, and one with an error message. Just don’t worry about putting those things back in a new site, they’re not needed. The videos – which are a great idea to help people see costumes on live people – are wonderful, but could be on an attached blog.

Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling isn’t good on any store. It indicates a code error in most cases unless someone is browsing with a teeny-screen resolution. In this case – it’s a code error.

Getting Visitors

Optimizing sites for search engines is a learning process, but there are a few major changes can be made easily and NOW.

The page title, meta description, and meta keywords are all way too long. It is very likely going to be seen as an attempt at keyword spamming by the search engines, and they penalize for it.

Title is 523 characters long = reduce to 70 or less.
Meta description is 1195 characters = reduce to 150 or less.
Meta keywords are 23 = reduce to 10 or so highly targeted keywords.

Make sure that on a redesign, alt text is added to all images and use correct, keyword rich, descriptions of those images. Currently 10 out of 14 images on the page don’t have alt text at all.

Big problem — there’s no WWW to non-WWW redirect set up for this site. This is probably causing a major problem.

Rather than repeat myself, I’ll direct everyone to read the previous site analysis I did on New Focal Media where I describe how a lack of redirect causes duplicate content penalties from Google. It also means splitting up of inbound links in the eyes of search engines. For instance, there are 812 links coming in to the non-WWW version of the site, and 1449 coming in to the WWW version of the site. Search engines are currently seeing those as two different sites, not one with a total of 2261 links pointing to it.

Get the word out! Put up a blog. Can’t put it any plainer than that. Make a blog on the domain, attach it and link to it from the main store, and use it to post videos and articles about costumes. Then use that blog to generate traffic for the site by listing it on social bookmarking sites and other social media sharing sites.

Last Thoughts

The site has some really great costumes and I think it could do really well if it’s given wings to fly. The business potential is strong and the customer base is out there. The site needs a serious redesign, a careful eye out watching for clutter issues, and some social promotion to get the word out. Mark, would love to have you back for another review in the future! Some before and afters would be awesome.

Interested in a Site Analysis?

Would you like to have your site reviewed on Beyond Caffeine? Drop me a line and let me know all about it! Do you have a site that you think needs a redesign? Head over to my business site and get your free consultation.

~Nicole

The Site – New Focal Media

The New Focal Media site currently has a black and white minimalist design, and operates as a business site with attached blog.

I asked Christopher a couple of questions in order to understand his interest in a site review:

Q: What is your primary goal for this site?
A: The primary goal for the current design was to create a clean, professional portfolio to point potential clients to so they can see some of our work.

Q: What do you feel is the biggest weakness of the site at this point?
A: The biggest weakness is a lack of visitors and no clear call to action to convert visitors to clients or potential clients.

After over 10 years of talking to clients about changes they may need to make – I can tell you that he’s definitely got the advantage of coming into it with a good understanding of the needs and the problem. The goal of the site is a good one, and one of the things that will make it hard to get potential clients from this site is the lack of an action call to get people moving toward being his client. I will address the lack of visitors, as well as some other problems throughout the review.

Current State of Affairs

Let’s start by taking a closer look at the current website design.

New Focal Media Original Homepage.

At first glance, the site is very minimal, which can be excellent. In this case, if you mouse over the large dim pictures, they use a Flash transition to become more clear and the wording darker.

Let’s take a look at this page visually, not functionally.

New Focal Media Homepage Visual Notes.

You can see that on the grid, the horizontal alignment is good, but vertically we’re seeing problems. The fact that the site has a huge chunk of white space below the design makes it look incomplete and unbalanced. This is only blatantly evident on high resolution monitors, but as low quality monitors are definitely growing less and less these days, building with a high resolution monitor in mind is important. With it in mind, not for it. You still want to put all your major content ‘above the fold’ so that it can be seen for any resolution of monitor immediately. However, keep in mind how your site looks on high resolution monitors as well.

The two options to make it more balanced are to either shift the design to vertically align itself based on screen size, or to add quality content to the bottom of the page area, or both. I’m suggesting both.

New Focal Medial - Functional Notes

Looking at the homepage, there are some functional changes that should be made. The link to the blog is not functional. I kid you not, it took me over half an hour to realize that was a link. I thought it was a tagline. The main navigation images should not be done in Flash. There is nothing those images are doing that cannot be done with backward compatible Javascript. While it is possible to make some partly accessible Flash movies, in this case, it’s not accessible.

In the new mobile world we live, using Flash as a main component of your site can be a business killer. Many mobile devices (including the very popular iPhone) Do Not Support Flash.

Some people think that since they can view things like YouTube on their iPhone that they must be supporting Flash – but that’s not how it works. YouTube (and many other major sites) actually do a device detection and if you’re visiting from an iPhone, they serve your videos to you in H.264 video streams – not Flash. Of course, the iPhone supports HDTV, but not Flash. In fact, the only mobile browser that’s supposed to support Flash correctly is the relative newcomer – Google Android.

So back to the homepage, the main menu names are too light. I understand that they’re supposed to be dim until you roll over them, but there is too little contrast for it to come close to good readability.

The Work Page

I’m going to skip now to the Work page, because I’m saving the About page for last (I have the most issues with that page).

New Focal Media - Work Page

This page isn’t bad from a design perspective. I would absolutely suggest putting those videos on a hosting service instead of serving them up as self-hosted Flash. There’s two reasons for this. The first one is what I already discussed about the problems with Flash on mobile devices. The last thing you want is for people to go check out your work and see a blank page or a page full of errors. Pop those videos up on YouTube and let YouTube handle converting them to a format anyone can read. The second reason to push them to a place like YouTube is that it tells people you are ‘up to date’ on hot trends. Businesses that push video to YouTube for marketing are a step ahead.

When you look at an interior page, you also see that the main navigation picture border just disappears and it should stand out more instead. People need a visual marker of the page they are on. Make it more obvious.

A final note on this page – the black bar at the top is missing on this page. Consistency is important.

The Contact Page

Moving on to the Contact page, I have some suggestions.

New Focal Media - Contact Page

The Contact page isn’t terrible, but needs a few tweaks. Vertically the page has more space between the bottom of the logo and the start of the content than all the other pages. Move up the content to align with the rest of the pages, again – in minimal design, small details become huge. I already discussed the border need for the navigation which applies here as well.

Most important is the need for a major call to action on this page. If you’ve got someone to the Contact page, they’re -this- close to being a potential client. Give them that final push. The text on the left is small. Enlarge it and break down your contact information loud and clear in the space below it.

Make your labels on the contact form bold, and change that ‘Send’ text to say something that really pushes the user like ‘Get Your Free Consultation’. I feel the message box area is too wide and should be taller instead, but that’s a minor aspect.

The Blog

Once I realized the top black bar was a link to a blog, I decided to check out the blog to see how it looks.

New Focal Media - Blog

Having a blog attached to your business is great! You’re obviously keeping up with best business practices, but when you write about business on your blog – use your blog to promote your business! Put the business logo on the blog to start with. Use an empty space to put your own advertisement on your blog that will send people to your main site. Those two things will help convert readers into buyers. A minor suggestion would be to make your sidebar section headings bold as well.

The About Page

Ok, on to the page I have the most issues with. The About page.

New Focal Media - About

The About page is the most important page on this site, in my opinion. It’s where you get a chance to explain what you do and what you can do for your clients. This page does neither of those.

I have to admit, after a couple of hours of looking at this site to do the review, at the end of it I’m still not sure what New Focal Media DOES exactly. That’s a problem.

I get that they do something with businesses and video. Does New Focal Media consult with businesses about how they can produce more compelling video? Do they arrange employees and customers to give testimonials? Do they edit video to make it more personal? Do they actually shoot the video and organize the shoot with location and equipment? All of the above? I’m not sure.

If I don’t understand what this business does, I could be missing out on a service my business could really use and I wouldn’t know. That’s the site visitor perspective. A business site needs to convince people that they need a service they may or may not even know they needed.

One of the very annoying functional aspects on this page is the arrow to navigate between the two paragraphs. It’s only 2 paragraphs, just put them on one page.

An even better suggestion – the business has something to do with video right? Make a screencast or video! Put it on that page, and explain to me what the business does. Show me the process of working with New Focal Media. Tell me how awesome they are and exactly why my business is never going to make it without them. Build a sense of NEED. Of course, host it on YouTube and let them handle the conversion

Suggestions For Change

So, let’s get to the final suggestions. I’m going to use the About page as the example for changes to the site.

NFM About Page BEFORE

NFM About Page AFTER

[ NOTE: We already know that the site is aligned nicely on a horizontal line (vertical being the problem) so I've trimmed the white space on the sides just to have smaller screenshots. ]

Ok, so let’s talk about the changes I’m suggesting.

Sitewide Change Suggestions
Change 1: The black bar is useless as a blog link. Make it a call to action instead.
Change 2: Enhance the navigation images with some type of border.
Change 3: Make the current page navigation image darker and more obvious.
Change 4: Link to your blog by putting links to recent posts at the bottom (below the fold).
Change 5: I ditched the little email and location bit below the content in favor of a more prominent and bold listing of contact information at the bottom of the page.
Change 6: There are LinkedIn and Twitter links on the blog – show them here too, it reinforces that the business is ’staying current’ with trends.
Change 7: Added basic (and expected) information at the base footer, like a quick link to the main page, contact page, copyright, etc..

About Page Specific
Change 1: Put the two paragraphs together.
Change 2: Copywriting basics – bold text.
Change 3: A video explaining what New Focal Media does!

I think those changes really make the site look more complete, and consistently push the visitor toward becoming a client.

How about taking it a step further?

NFM About Page COLOR

I love LOVE minimal designs, but one of the greatest misconceptions about minimal design is that it means black and white only Let’s try really making it pop! How about adding some color to indicate what page you’re on and to emphasize copy? You can even use different colors on different pages. A splash of color will not make this design cluttered. It’s not necessary, but can be fun to play around with to see if it works.

One last change, although it’s actually a pretty big suggestion. Change a couple of page names. ‘About Us’ would be better as ‘What We Do’ and ‘Our Work’ could be ‘The Portfolio’. If you change the names of pages, don’t forget to do some page redirection so the old pages redirect to the new ones. I also suggest adding in your basic sitemap and privacy policy or terms of service.

Visitors and Traffic

There are a variety of reasons this site could be suffering in the traffic department.

The first one involves coding. This site is suffering in the coding department. There are no code headings (H1, H2, etc..) to indicate page structure. Due to that, search engines are likely not reading the page with the elements of importance emphasized because nothing is given a hierarchy. Do some Google searching on HTML Headings and SEO.

Drop down the amount of meta keywords to around 10 or so. A lot of keywords can be seen as an attempt at keyword spam.

The second problem is the homepage Flash. The Flash is making the primary page links into movies with no alternate for search engines to understand. What does that mean? It means that the search engines are ignoring the Flash and only seeing this one page disconnected from the others. The search engines will index the other pages on the site as well, but not as part of the same site, as independent pages. The search engines are not understanding that the home page, about page, work page, and contact are all connected. Ditch the Flash for images that link to the correct pages and add some Javascript afterward to get that transition back – Google will start understanding the site better.

Help the search engines understand your site structure even more by adding a sitemap. Do a quick search online sitemap builders to do this.

The main site doesn’t have an RSS feed attached. Building a new feed just for this site isn’t necessary, there is already a blog. Grab the RSS code from the top of the blog page source and drop it into the main site so that people can subscribe to the articles from there as well.

There is not a permanent redirect set up for the WWW and non-WWW versions of the site. What that means is that instead of there being only one version of your site, there are technically 2: www.newfocalmedia.com and newfocalmedia.com – This is a BIG issue. Google penalizes sites for duplicate content, and having two versions of the same content is seen as exactly that. Redirect the WWW version to the non-WWW version. Do a Google search on how to set up a WWW redirect.

Tell people about it! Sign up on Technorati and list your site there. Get a del.icio.us account and start using it for bookmarking (your site and others, don’t just spam your links only). Submit all your blog articles on Digg – but always submit other peoples articles as well in between! Always tell your social media followers when you have an awesome post, but don’t forget to tell them about other things as well!

Last Thoughts

New Focal Media has a site that has great potential but is just in need of some adjustments to make it more consistent and pack a major punch in the sales department.

Interested In A Site Analysis?

Would you like to have your site reviewed on Beyond Caffeine? Drop me a line and let me know all about it! Do you have a site that you think needs a redesign? Head over to my business site and get your free consultation.

Fireworks.

There are many things that come to mind on the 4th of July. Things that remind of us being American. Things we’re thankful for. Things that need changing. Things we have yet to do.

Today, I want to celebrate on my blog by combining two of the things on that list: The ‘Freebie’ and the American small ‘Mom and Pop’ business.

I’m giving away 4 free web site and design critique and will write an article with my feedback.

Keep in mind – yes, you’d get a live link on the post. Yes, you’ll get a professional and experienced review of your site. BUT if you do not want to hear where your site needs improvement, and you do not do well with hearing criticism of your site — pass on this freebie.

If you want me to review your site and write about it, hop on over to the contact form. Make sure and tell me your name, give me an email address to contact you when if I pick yours to do and to let you know when it’s done, and (obviously) tell me the URL you want reviewed. Anything additional is up to you.

Have a great 4th of July!

~Nicole

The following video will cover a few of the core supported modules for SilverStripe: Userforms, Blog, Forums, and E-Commerce.

I strongly suggest that if you want to be able to see this clearly, you view the SilverStripe Modules video in HD and use fullscreen instead of watching the embedded clip below.

View the post about the first video in this overview series on SilverStripe SEO.

SilverStripe Content Management System.

I’m not entirely certain how it is that I had not read anything about SilverStripe until it won a place as the ‘Most Promising Open Source CMS’ awards. My best guess is that I simply scanned past any news on it because it so closely resembles the ‘Silverlight’ technology in name, and I have no interest in reading or writing about more Microsoft technologies doomed to failure.

When I was able to take a look at the website, I was truly impressed with what I saw. Right on the front page is a listing of the key features of SilverStripe – and the words scalable, open source, BSD license, modular, standards compliant, and template freedom all lead me to check out their online video demo.

What an excellent video! As I watched, I was mentally working through a list of requirements I look for in a backend as I watched the video, and kept seeing more and more of them covered. One of the things I felt was lacking in the video was an exploration of blogging capabilities. There is a blog module that you install if you’d like a blog, and while the demo site in the video had that there, the time spent on it was minimal.

There are several modules that can be added, which are not the same as widgets (which they have also). Modules are essentially core features (such as blogging, e-commerce, and forums), whereas widgets are like WordPress sidebar widgets that include things like a Google calendar on the sidebar, a quote of the day, and so forth.

While the functionality of the system seems to be great, the one place I see a lot of room for improvement is in the way it handles the actual look and feel of the site. Templates are handled in ways I don’t feel are very user friendly at all. For example, in order to change the theme your site uses, you have to manually edit a file to change the theme name:
SSViewer::set_theme("themename");

Another thing that I find overly complex is that the MVC approach to the modular creation of the system is extended to the themes. You cannot add PHP directly into a theme. Instead, you have to separate all your PHP and create a new function controller class whereby you declare all of your PHP code as custom functions. Those functions are then called from the theme. In theory, this approach is probably best, but in practice it may prove to be a bit cumbersome. In fact, my initial impression was that they managed to make templates even more complicated than Drupal. Keep in mind, these are only initial impressions, I’ll play around with the templating system and see if it’s as complex as it seems. UPDATE: At the time I wrote the initial article, I complained a bit about the complexity of theme creation, but praised most other features. I’ll come right out and say that I was wrong – there’s nothing complex about theme creation, it’s just done so differently that it took me a bit to figure out how it works.

Overall, from the user standpoint, it seems to be powerful while not appearing to be too confusing. From a theme developer view, I’m not certain that it’s quite so easy.

~Nicole

Mozilla Prism is one of the most recent projects sitting in Mozilla labs – and one that completely stumps me.

Not only do I think that Prism really defines the word ‘uselss’ I also think it is a dangerous step BACK in time for technology progression.

Hold that thought, I’ll make one exception to its usefulness: It’s great for Kiosk applications, but since I feel that Kiosk applications are a dying breed anyway, that means little.

So what does Prism do?

From Mozilla:

Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.

What Prism does is create an installable application. After you install it, and click on the icon, it loads a slimmed-down version of Firefox showing a single website on your computer. It shows without the user-chrome (the toolbars and junk around your browser).

So… in a nutshell, Prism is a much more complicated way of doing something that is already extremely simple:

1. Dragging a link from your browser to your desktop. (Much simpler than installing)
2. Clicking a link when you want to go to a site.
3. Hitting F11 in Firefox to make the user-chrome hide.

Except, of course, that doing it the easy way means you can still use tabs. Doing it the Prism way means you can only have one web site at a time.

This is progress… how?

Desktop applications are dead. They have been for a while now. Internet applications are the future from now onward.

Having to install an application is something people don’t want to have to do. Having to download updates is also something we want gone.

I know that grates on some developers, particularly people who are very fond of writing desktop applications because that’s what they know how to do. I understand that it’s depressing to think that something you learned to do really well is no longer needed. But that’s what happens sometimes when progress comes about. Trust me, you can get over it. 10 years ago I was writing desktop applications. Today, I would never waste my time with it.

What I don’t understand is why Mozilla would have a project that does something which is very anti-progress.

So here are some of my questions:

1. Currently to visit Gmail (for example) I can click a link and open it up. Why would I want to download and install something to achieve the same thing?

2. Firefox has tabs – why would I want to lose them?

3. Why would I want to install something, when installing something inherently means it is only available on that one computer?

4. If I really want to install something, why not install one of the many Firefox extensions that will allow me to have even ‘full screen’ stuff hidden or work in Kiosk mode?

In a nutshell, I’m confused by Prism.

I don’t see a usefulness for it aside from the random person building a Kiosk application.

~Nicole

ExtJS is one of the javascript libraries on a growing list emerging of late, but one thing really makes it stand out – the demos. For most web programmers, often the success or failure of a new language or library is directly related to how appealing its online demonstrations are.

As programmers, we’ve been exposed to more old and new languages, interpreters, libraries, standards sets, software, etc… than we can keep track of anymore. After a while, we tend to give anything new a quick ‘once over’ to see if it grabs our attention. Unfortunately, things that don’t really shine fall by the wayside, and things that glitter tend to do well. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the things that glitter are better than the others, but when it comes down to the few minutes we are willing to devote to analysis of a new language… it has to capture interest quickly. ExtJS 2.0 has some of that sparkle.

It comes down to site design in the end – we want the demos up front and prominent, and the ExtJS site provides that. Right at the top of the main page we have a nice big area that lets us immediately (and visually) understand what ExtJS is designed to do for us. It definitely makes an impact.

We see full out examples of a feed viewer app made with ExtJS, an offline Gears example, a task system made for AIR, a full image organizer, and a web desktop. Then they show us the components themselves: grids, trees, windows, tabs, layouts, forms, and some of the other things we absolutely expect to see when it comes to a new javascript library that is going to be competitive with what we are using. Best of all – in most of the examples we can quickly click a link that shows us the code behind the component.

Of course, we have seen many times before that all the great code in the world isn’t enough for a programmer if you don’t give them documentation or tutorials. A programmer really has no desire to sit down and comb through thousands of lines of code and try to figure out what the person who made it was doing – particularly not when there are competing languages that come with tutorials and full documentation. ExtJS wins again on this mark, having a nice big link that says ‘Learn’ right at the top of the site.

The Learning Section has exactly what most programmers are looking for – an overview, an intro tutorial, a migration guide from other libraries, FAQ, and interactive demos … along with all the regular full documentation and a community forum.

Overall, I think the site was designed with great usability and marketing in mind for the programmer who is the target audience. It’s quick and easy to find exactly what you need to help you decide if this is a library you are interested in. Does it necessarily mean it’s the best library out there? Who knows. Everyone has their preference, but the good construction of the information presented about the library gives ExtJS a fighting chance to shine along with some of the other current big players. Personally it has me interested enough to experiment with a bit to see if it’s going to work for me.

~Nicole

MyPoints went from being a very old-school cluttered and difficult to navigate site, to having a great new design. The new design looks fabulous and is definitely an improvement.

Now, if only they would take a look at the code behind the new design. Admittedly, I have the feeling that they are actually looking at the code. It’s sort of like… half old-school / half standards. In fact, I get the impression the code is a work in progress or maybe the web dev is working on learning how to move the site to that.

Either way, it’s an improvement. The markup errors are mostly easy fixes (forgotten alt attributes and unescaped characters abound). The doctype the new site is set for is XHTML 1.0 Strict, so hopefully that is an indicator that they are going to be correcting the errors.

I noticed that they are also linking to lightbox scripts in the header, and that while some of the design is still using tables, its also being structured with divs now.

In any event, if you recall what the site looked like before, this is a massive improvement, and I hope that the code just keeps getting better.

~Nicole

Now, in my opinion, this theme is far from perfect, but I like the approach used. I noticed a few things that I do not care for, and I’ll list them here:

1. Love the accordion, but I don’t like seeing it open on something that requires a scrollbar. Gives a poor impression on first loading. I think the default showing accordion section should be something like an ‘about’ page or some other small summary of the site that will not scroll.
2. If you increase the text one step or more on the browser (ex: CTRL and + in Firefox), the top half of the site is great still, but there is significant break on the lower section right at the ‘previous posts’ link.
3. Speaking of the lower half of the page, I don’t care for the colors. To me the two halves look like two different designs. I think what is doing it is the higher contrast green used on the list items. To follow the theme on the top half, I would suggest reducing that bright green to match the muted green used in the post titles within the slider. They could even go to that bright green on hover like the top does.
4. It needs something in the top left corner. My eye keeps drifting to that spot for some reason. Maybe a jump scroll button to the lower half.

Overall, I love the approach. I think it could use some tweaking, but it is a great idea

~Nicole