Hi Winp
I paid £800 for this site, got ripped off I think, I have only just found time to get to grips with the control panel to fix things, going to spend a few days getting the content right, then give it to a new designer, I have had a quote for £1500 for a decent site
£800 and you have to upload the photo's yourself??
I reckon you could improve the home page loads by getting rid of the search box & recent posts bit on the top right & extending the header to the full width of the screen.
The whole setup is wrong though - this is a site that says what you want to say - it should be a site that says what potential customers want to hear. For example, the header menu tabs are: "Window Cleaning, about, video, latest news, testimonials, contact" - - -
1. Anyone who has found your website already knows you're a window cleaner, so tab 1 could be changed to a more enticing "Services" with a list of the types of buildings you clean in bold bullet points above the fold (Homes, pubs, offices, apartments, schools, hospitals etc etc).
2. "About" is an overused tab. Most potential customers aren't interested in much more than the very basics (eg. family owned business since 1992) and those that are won't trust you to give an accurate view of your own company, they'll seek out independent reviews. The "About us" text can easily be incorporated into the other pages leaving the site feeling less cluttered & overwhelming.
3. The video is no doubt something you're proud of,.. but being fast at cleaning windows could also be associated with being sloppy - personally I'd leave it off the site.
4. Latest news - ok its important to keep your customers up to date,.. but again having an entire page dedicated to it might be overkill. If the page isn't regularly updated then it could give the impression that your business is not progressing.
5. Testimonials are more likely to be read & believed if you put them on the same page as the service they relate to.
6. Contact us is essential, but I would add a relevant photo or graphic & some kind of text saying "We aim to respond to all e-mail messages within xxxxx hours".
I'd personally recommend removing a couple of those pages & adding a "Gallery" page & an "Area's Covered" page in their place.
I'm not a fan of wordpress though (I only use it with the Jigoshop plugin for e-commerce sites) so would much prefer to see you use a plain HTML site without a content management system. Do it right in the first place & you'll not need to keep changing it so often!
And £1500 is crazy money for a basic website - Even £800 is too much!
