# New Website, Any Suggestions?



## Mp3 (Jun 10, 2009)

I am redoing my website now that the rainy season has hit Seattle. What do you guys think? I am running out of ideas to change it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.:thumbup: The Ad at the bottom is just for testing purposes of another project, I am going to remove it soon. I am also working on the process section right now so it might be changing. 
Link:
House Painters Seattle


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## nEighter (Nov 14, 2008)

I like it :thumbsup:


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## APS INC. (Sep 17, 2009)

I think it looks great.:thumbup1: Did you have to get permission from SW to use their logo?


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

Here is site that you can get some general ideas on improving SEO on your site.

I like the way you used testimonials on every page.
Great placement for contact info
Site looks clean.
I would change "about us" to "home", make a new "about us" page and make it personal.
Licensed is misspelled on front page.
I would try and find a better pic for front page, or crop that one, all I see is dead lawn. (I see now that is a slide show? seems to change every time I visit)
I think you have too much info in one long paragraph on front page. 
You should change the page titles "Most value painting about us" could be "painters serving seattle, renton, washington" ,use keywords.
Add links to the bottom of every page linking to the other pages in site.

These are some of the same things I learned by posting my site for review, hopefully some of the others who have more insight than I will chime in!


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## y.painting (Jul 19, 2009)

Here's one for local SEO: add your address, phone, and email to the footer of the site (so that it appears an every page). In the header, make sure your phone number is done in CSS (so that it is actual text google can crawl), not just a picture. This will help you out in local search.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

APS said:


> I think it looks great.:thumbup1: Did you have to get permission from SW to use their logo?


Good question Patrece, we talked about that here,
http://www.painttalk.com/f23/can-you-post-up-paint-company-logos-your-site-6141/


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## APS INC. (Sep 17, 2009)

*Rcp*

Hey Chris- I liked the way you gave advice to House Painters.....think you could take a looksie at my website? I haven't had time to look at the link you sent about the SW logo, if I can do that, I will add their logo and the credit card thing that MP3 has.......more pics are supposed to go up soon also.
thanks


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## nEighter (Nov 14, 2008)

I am jealous of the click on the picture make it bigger deal your site has. My template is just a bare bones thing.. no frills what so ever.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

APS said:


> Hey Chris- I liked the way you gave advice to House Painters.....think you could take a looksie at my website? I haven't had time to look at the link you sent about the SW logo, if I can do that, I will add their logo and the credit card thing that MP3 has.......more pics are supposed to go up soon also.
> thanks


Now keep in mind I am far from an expert! But I have been doing a lot of research before revamping my site and this includes stuff I have read/learned but not yet applied to my own site.

Overall, nice clean site. Simple and easy to navigate. 
Need to add anchor text linking pages at bottom.

Home Page
I have read studies that show having phone number on upper/mid right of page is beneficial. You still want to have a "contact us" page, with a contact form for people to fill out.
I would add bigger, showier photos and less what I call me, me ,me. Tell your customers what you can do for them. "Are you ready to increase the value of your home with fresh color?" "We can add warmth to your kitchen".
Save the we are licensed, good, reputable, etc for the about us page, and add some personal stuff. 
Spread your testimonials out thru site, with a picture.Connect the words to a picture.
Although I love the way your photo gallery displays, they are not organized or tell me anything. I love the way these are set up.
Look at a bunch of different sites and print off pages you like, look at them as a consumer, not a business owner!


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## Pressure Cleaning (Nov 1, 2007)

I like the header and all, but you may want to lighten up the colors like on your logo. When I think of painting its to brighten up the place. Just to dark for me.


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## joselucas (Nov 8, 2009)

*Optimize the website*

I think optimizing the website is a good way to go. You site is nice, but optimization is need it. However this kind of thing is not for the fainthearted.

An example is this, optimization is for users that are still using 56KB modems. The more time your website takes to load, the faster you can lose clients.

1. You have to many HTTP request.
2. Your images are to heavy. Like 100KB each.
3. You have to many Javascripts. You need to put them together.

This is one example how optimization can reduce the weight of your whole site..

Example one.

For instance this image weights 113KB and check the one I upload it only weights 20KB. This is because I optimize the image. By the way the image was reduced to a little version because the limitations on this forum. It now weights 14KB.

Also the houses on your Home page are huge. Because this is a long topic, you will need to do a research in Google to learn how to optimize the website or just hire somebody.

Good luck in anything you decide


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## PaintingContractor (Dec 24, 2009)

Ok.. first and foremost... I think that you need to think of who your perfect clients is! My perfect client are residential homeowners & contractors, so if you think of your perfect clients and how they use the internet; that should get you going on the right direction. I don't nessisarily agree with the previous post about optimizing your website for dial up customers! If you think about it, these are typically people who can't afford high speed, or live way out in the country where high speed isn't offered... For me, and this could be different for you, but my "Perfect Clients" are located in town and have money to where they could afford high speed. I'm not saying that you should put images that are full size on your website, but I don't think the size of the webpage is as big of a deal as it once was. 

Anyway, once I looked at your website, I noticed one thing that really really bothered me... and that is the Google ads throughout the site! You are shooting yourself in the foot by giving other painters your business and driving them away from your website. The purpose of your website is to have clients click on the contact button / CALL YOU!!!!! Remove the google ads.. this isn't the place to have them!

Here is your current title: 
<title>Home « Most Value Painting – Your Seattle Area Painting Contractor</title> 

I would recommend retyping it using content that you already have on your page. 

Also with regards to your keywords: google doesn't like websites that has a ton of keywords in the meta tag where there aren't any of those keywords in the current webpage. This doesn't help your ranking.. so I would suggest to either remove the keywords that you are not using, or start writing some copy using the keywords that you really want. Remember you don't need to have all the keywords that you want on your entire site in the meta keyword of your home page, you can spread it out over the entire website. 

for instance... I would suggest putting your specific services & locations examples inside your keywords on your home page... and then on your Services or Methods section you can get in more detail with your keywords, based on the content that you actually have there. 

YOu see, I write keywords for the meta tags while I read over the page's content. If the keywords that you want aren't in the content, then rewrite it!

This is how your description meta tag looks:

?php if (function_exists(’generateRandomImgTag’)) { generateRandomImgTag(); } ? Welcome to Most Value Painting, we specialize in residential and commercial…

This needs to be actual text describing what your website is actually about. search engines do not know how to interpret this. 

The methods page has a ton of broken links... users & search engines don't like this and it hurts your page. 

I really like the previous work page, however... I was once told that if you are to put an image of your work on your website to ALWAYS have the clients testimonial next to it. Also, have testimonials on every page. 

Allways remember that the overall purpose of your website is for your clients to contact you. 

Anyway... I don't want to discourage you, the website has incredible potential and there just needs to be a couple of initial changes to start making your website thrive!
Let me know if i can be of any other help.


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