Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hmm ... before you seek additional marketing help, you need to get some technical help. That's because this website is so slow to load (averaging over 73 seconds), that no reasonable consumer will wait for it.

It is imperative that you address this before you even consider anything else, because marketing doesn't work on websites that consumers don't see.

Here are some of the issues that must be addressed:

1. Page size. This website's home page is over 16,000KB. It needs to be under 100KB to load fast in most browsers.

2. Images. One major component of this problem is how images are used. The site CSS calls a large number of images -- 78 on the home page alone -- and this is killing your site performance. Bring this down to under 20 by:

-- Consolidating images that are adjacent to each other into a single image.
-- Eliminating things such as arrow images and replacing them in the CSS with text symbols.
-- Eliminating things such as hover images and replacing them with CSS instructions such as color changes and boldface, etc.
-- If graphics are used for headlines, revert back to type instead.
-- Make sure all images are optimized for web use.

If these corrections are things with which you're not familiar, get help from an experienced designer or hire an expert using www.elance.com, or a similar site, to lighten the page load time.

3. Links. There are some broken internal links, a situation which is not helping the browser. Please test all your links and fix those which don't work.

4. Java Script. The site calls a lot of Java Script -- about eight times more than is normal for a functioning site. Get the Java Script well under 100 KB by consolidating and compressing. Do you really need all of it?

5. Clerical Errors. There are some typos in the code. Here is a list:
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.betterbladders.com.

And, there are some errors in the CSS. Here is a list:
https://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.betterbl....

Once these essential technical issues are resolved, then it's time to talk about marketing again. Please do come back then.

Make it obvious where you're located (in title and banner).

Make it obvious that your solution is non-surgical.

Great job getting the website "up to speed."

Overall: The site is very good and customer-ready. A couple of tweaks and adding some SEO will bring it all the way home.

You're doing a lot right. I'd give you a list but it's clear you already know what you're doing. Tweak these two items:

1. Everything else on the top line line is more impactful than the phone number; so give the phone number a color or treatment that makes it prominent on the page.

2. Create a right-hand module that repeats "See how the Bladder Center can help you" and get it up top on the subordinate pages (after the home page). This element needs to be above the fold; but it's okay to repeat it (leave it as is) in the wide strip at the bottom also.

On the back end, the site needs search engine optimization (SEO) so your site will show up on search engine results pages (SERPs).

1. At a minimum, each page needs a keyword-rich meta-tag description.
2. I'd also recommend a keywords meta-tag for all content pages, and robot instructions on pages you don't want search engines to index -- meaning, don't make your home page compete with, for instance, the seminar sign-up page.
3. Your images have "alt" tags, which is good; but over time you'll want to refine those tags to center on keywords. For instance, "Safe and Effective Bladder Control Therapy" might become "Bladder Control" if you want your page to show up when people type "bladder control" into their browser's search window.

I assume you're working with someone who knows how to do this; but if not, here's some quick reading for you:

About meta-tags: https://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-wonderful-world-of-seo-metatags.

About optimizing images -- a good article on the basics from MarketingProfs: https://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2288/five-ways-to-search-opti....

Bottom line, a lot of very good work. This site is appealing, well organized, well written, and will be a workhorse for you. (And now, it's really fast, too.) Congratulations!