Divine Write Copywriting Forum

Hi, newbie here. Well, I say newbie, my partner and I have been in the copywriting business for over 13 years, both in the UK and over here in Oz (WA). However, I/we are new to the Divine Write forum, and while we've been freelance copywriters off and on for years, it's only recently that we've both turned our backs on the egos and politics of advertising agencies to plunge headlong into the freelance marketplace.

Anyhow, we get most of our work through word of mouth, but a little while ago I put together a little website in the hope of generating some more work via the interweb. The site is very basic - my web design skills are limited - but we're now ready to invest a bit more time and money in developing it.

So (he said, getting to the point) is it OK to ask for some feedback and constructive criticism from forum members? If so, can I post a link here?

Hi mate, and welcome! Sure, post away! I'm happy for you to do it, anyway. Having said that, I'm only the owner of the forum. The forum itself has become a little too self-aware for my liking, over the last few months. It may stop you from posting the link. If it does, just lemme know, and I'll edit your post, after you've submitted it. The forum hasn't yet become so bold that it defies me publicly!

Cheers.

Cheers Glenn. My humble home-made website is located at

Like I said, I'm looking to update and improve, so any feedback on our current site would be really appreciated. As I mentioned, we're pretty new to marketing ourselves online, so let me have it with both barrels - I want to get the next incarnation of caboodlecopy.com right.

Cheers,

Paul

Hi Paul. I don't have much time this morning, but based on my very quick look, the first things that jump out at me are:

1) It seems a little over-optimised. Particularly the home page. I'd be using that page to illustrate how succinct and elegant you can be. Use your nav and Services page to list your services, and your deep pages and blog to provide the backbone content for your SEO.

2) The Website Copywriters page http://www.caboodlecopy.com/Website_copywriters.html seems to be all bold. Not good for readability.

3) Your calls to action seem a little long (the bold bits at the bottom of your page). There's too much bold, so it undermines the emphasis.

4) I'd be careful of unmarked links. Google generally doesn't like it when you show something different to readers than you show to search engines.

5) The rotating graphics in your header are a little confusing to me. Usually this space is dedicated to your own branding. You appear to be using it to showcase the brands of your clients. This may detract from your own brand a bit. Maybe rotate your client's brands somewhere else on the home page - somewhere where it's clear that it's a portfolio / showcase item?

That's my two cents' worth, anyway.

Cheers.

That's great Glenn. Thanks. Always good to get an objective point of view. Absolutely agree with everything you mentioned. I didn't know about the unmarked links thing. Makes perfect sense though.

We'll definitely be making the next incarnation copy-light, and we'll no doubt tone down the SEO too - coming from agency backgrounds (where SEO is generally outsourced) SEO is a relatively new area for us and I guess we've used our site as a bit of a test ground for various bit and pieces.

It's funny, the rotating banner at the top seems like a bit of a divisive issue - people either love it or hate it.

Thanks again.

Pleasure! David Burch (on Twitter ) also said, "I'd remove the image that looks like a girl screaming under plastic wrap... That was the first one I saw."

You might wanna take that into consideration as well.

Cheers.

Thanks again Glenn. Another valid point.

Hello again,

Just dropping back in for a quick update - our new site is (almost) finished. We've been frantically uploading content over the last few weeks, and we still haven't plugged the blog in yet, but it's practically there.

Anyhow, please take a look and let me know what you think (especially if you spot any typos)



Paul

Hi Paul. How's it going? Site's looking good, but noticed a few things:
1) In Firefox 3.5, there's some sort of nav issue. The drop down menus seem to overlay each other at the top left. They don't disappear when you mouse over a new menu. The new menu simply displays over the top of the old one, and in the incorrect position. (See New-1.gif attached File comment: Nav issue.

New-1.gif [ 24.04 KiB | Viewed 56413 times ]
.)
2) The home page seems a bit over optimised for search. To me, it reads awkwardly, and you may also put off readers who are NOT in Perth.
3) I'd like to see the pics in your portfolio clickable...
4) The SEEK logo in your portfolio is a little misleading, as they weren't the client...

With the nav problem above, it's a little difficult to check out all your pages, so I don't really have any other feedback.

Cheers.

Hi Glenn,

Hope you had a good Christmas and New Year.

Thanks ever so much for taking the time to give us your feedback. There's a minor header issue in Chrome that I was aware of, but I didn't know about the Firefox issue - serves me right for trusting the developer to do all the QA. I feel an irrate phone call coming on.

You probably have a point about the home page, although we are focusing pretty much solely on the Perth market for now. I think we'll have to work on that. And the images will be clickable...eventually. Just got to organise and upload all the target PDFs.

Thanks for flagging up the Seek logo (it was just supposed to be a placeholder - a screen grab of a recent Seek ad will be going there, but, again, we just haven't got round to organising everything yet). The same goes for the Rent logo.

Thanks again. Hopefully we'll have everything ironed out and uploaded this week.

Paul

No problems. You might find these tools useful too:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/ ... thers.html
https://browserlab.adobe.com/index.html

I haven't used either, but they look very handy.

Cheers.