New website

[MBA Marine]

My website has finally had its major overhaul, I would be grateful for your feedback good or bad.

 

 http://mbamarine.co.uk/

[LadyPatricia]

Looks really good Mark, informative, easy to use and some lovely pics in the gallery.

You may well be getting a call in the near future

Steve

[JawsOrca]

Hi Mark,

 

Looks good. Comes across as very professional and very personal too.

 

 

I'm not sure if you are concerned about SEO Search engine optimisation. If you are then you need to a bit of work.

 

There's lots to SEO although a few simple bits will do a lot of help:

 

For your page titles, Explain what you do... so something like "MBA Marine | Servicing | Fit out | Boat Safety Work | two or three more  ect" (Don't repeat marine as it's not needed.. maybe include "boat" though) 

 

For your keywords (meta name="keywords" do similar (Here's my clubs one <meta name="keywords" content="My Yacht Club, Mooring, Learn to Sail, Hardstanding, Sailing, RYA Training, Boats for sale, Kent" />).

 

For your page description, you want it short and sweet probably "MBA Marine. A quality friendly mobile service, for all boat maintenance and repair in Norfolk". 

 

So do similar on each of your pages.  

 

Also on your front page.. you need to grow your text on there at least 3x that amount and include as many words of what you provide as posible. (Use your services page to expand on this.. (if you get me, feel free to pm if not).

 

You also need to add protection to your contact form as it's open to hacking and spamming so put "recapture" on it at least. or a question like "what colour is the sky".. (You ideally should have a address too for legal reasons).

 

Hope you don't take these as negatives.. I can find issues in every website I look at

[MBA Marine]

Alan,

I like what you say although understand not of it! I shall cut and paste your words to that chap who put it together for me.

 

Thank you the feedback is really helpful.

[Guest]

A lot of website design critique focusses far too much on the underlying code, such as W3C validation and such., very difficult to keep up with, even for many high budget commercial websites.

 

As Alan said, "Looks good. Comes across as very professional", which is nine tenths of having a successful website.

 

Layout and Navigation evaluation is very much influenced by personal preferences.

 

Some like sophistication and reserve, other like bling and movement.

 

I find your design quite pleasing and yet very usable, unlike for instance, the latest BA website, which is  much more clunky to navigate than the previous one.

 

 

 

 .......For your keywords (meta name="keywords" do similar (Here's my clubs one <meta name="keywords" content="My Yacht Club, Mooring, Learn to Sail, Hardstanding, Sailing, RYA Training, Boats for sale, Kent" />)......

 

The keywords meta tag needs to have quite specific phrases to stand any chance in search engine results.

 

It would be a waste having generic tags like "sailing", "boats for sale" and even "RYA Training", because they're so common.

 

Much more chance if they're more specific, like "broads sailing", "broads boats for sale", and "broads RYA".

 

Your site will have a much greater chance of being near the top of the listings, because users tend to include a locale like that in their searches to filter the results into a more useful list.

[JawsOrca]

Pleasure Andy, a few little changes will finish it off, sorry for getting technical its always the way!

 

Strow the BA's website believe it or not is state of the art and (as you probably know already) is a responsive website, it's a very cleaver art form which I've only looked at briefly although the framework behind it is relatively easy to get around (If you have spare time you may be interested to play with - http://getbootstrap.com/).It responds to the page size and adjusts (show/hides) things depending on the size so you have one page for any device. Very cleaver stuff. It is quickly becoming mainstrem although I doubt will touch small websites unless google take up or it becomes part of html.

 

Despite popular opinion, the keyword meta tag actually does very little to google (I use google as the others follow google and its the most used one). SEO is a very complex and dark art and there's a ton of things on there, some we know about some aren't and as soon as we know about them it changes, so it's a "fun" game of cat and mouse. I followed SEO for about 3 years on one website and I got it's ranking very very high (10k in the UK) or so and it made a lot of money from it! (but then got bored as its a full time job)..

 

The page title and content (and order of content and length of content and the words in the content) are more important than the keywords (in other words google doesn't need to be told what the keywords are it can work it out for itself but e.g if you have a word in your keyword which isn't in your content then you get a black mark.. more black marks and you lose ranking points)..

 

Don't worry though mark your sites not doing anything too bad (although don't go googling SEO and fall in the "Click here for 50 links" etc trap as these can blacklist your domain and you will need a serious pro to get it back) and if the chap changes the bits I've suggested it will help it

[Gracie]

Cracking website Mark, easy to use (good for me Lol) and the gallery is excellent 

 

Grace

[Guest]

......Strow the BA's website believe it or not is state of the art and (as you probably know already) is a responsive website, it's a very cleaver art form which I've only looked at briefly although the framework behind it is relatively easy to get around.......

 

Yes Alan, very clever, technically, as you say, no problems with resizing etc...

 

My point, (admittedly just my humble opinion), was that look and feel is a very personal perception.

 

The graphic capabilities of today's hardware and high speed broadband enable web designers to indulge in whatever gizmos they wish, but the primary function of giving site visitors easy access to information often takes a back seat.

 

The right balance of ease of use and sophistication is very easily lost.

 

Especially when visitors with greatly varying levels of competence have to be thought about.

[ranworthbreeze]

Hi Mark,

I have edited the description of your entry on our services information (in useful links).

 

Best of luck with the new website.

 

Regards

Alan

[MBA Marine]

Thank you all for kind comments an input.

[fishtone]

The new website looks very good Mark. Hope it brings you plenty of work. Will certainly put number in my phone book.