Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Start the home page copy telling the visitor what the website is about. Instead of "Valued Opinions is a service...", say something more like, "Get Rewarded For Telling Us What You Think!" Right now you have too much text about your company "we" and not enough about the visitor "you".

You have analytics enabled - that'll tell you how people are finding you and where they're looking on your website.

Website Grader offers a few tips for you: https://websitegrader.com/site/www.valuedopinions.co.uk

The main page could be more engaging. I suggest a bigger flash with the about / benefits brief info embeded in a cool animation and no side bar.

Sub pages could be like the rest of them.

I can give you some SEO tips
1. Create meta description tags
2. Create meta description keyword tags
3. Put some keywords tags in title - not just [Page name] [Company name]
4. Rewrite urls from domain/index.php?id=48 to domain/keyword-menuName
About design - maybe you can add some rounded corners to it and some kind of shades . So it looks more modern Web 2.0 style
Regards,
Rodion

Dear rum68br,

If the point of the site is to get people to offer their opinions through surveys and to be rewarded for the process, you need to make it clearer how people do this.

Your "Join Now" button? It's invisible, It will gain far more visibility in the top right portion of your page, the space currently occupied by your logo, which really ought to be on the left

The points above all offer great advice and YES, you site needs to be more engaging. The "nuclear" family and all the other people on your slide show? Who are they? The quotations you use? Who said those things? The single woman in the park and all the other spare people hanging around on soft focus backgrounds? What are
these people doing?

Quotations are GREAT—they offer vital social proof. But you've GOT to back them up with names, places, and contexts.

There's a general rule of thumb in graphic design and art direction, one that's often forgotten or simply ignored, and it's this: less is more.

On ANY page, in ANY ad, and on ANY Website, any visual element that isn't earning its keep, that isn't pulling its weight or that isn't somehow contributing to the point is excess baggage; it's clutter. It might be pretty, but it's still clutter.

If some element ISN'T earning its keep, it's just taking up space, space that might be better off containing some other, more relevant element.

So, consider cutting the slide show. Or replace it with something more relevant to your audience. To keep people coming back, you've got to give them more: more incentives, more reasons, more content and context. You need to create word of mouth reasons, which means making more of your offers, prizes, and incentives.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA