Please New Site Review

[jvn]

Comments / Suggestions ===> pro and con please.

My new site is www.joyfulventures.com

Pre-Design goals:

#1 Offer Simple Hosting Solutions for small businesses and individuals while projecting quality service.

#2 Create an image that would generate advertising as popularity increases.

I am still tweaking the text for packges. So the reviews I need at this time are for general appearance and "attitude." Also, since PayPal doesn't allow rate changes the order page seems long. Should I have sepearate pages for the 3 groups? Or is the single page acceptable?

[eMax]

I absolutely love the name of the plans and how you have them laid out with graphics. Kinda cute actually :clap: :clap:

[nicky]

Certainly the most unique hosting site I have seen so far. Great site!

I like the bananna plan personally!! :banana:

[jvn]

Thanks Nicky,

Maybe I'll use a dancing banana next to that plan. :)

I really need to get back on this project and finish editing the text. Since I didn't get much feed back here, I went to another forum for some ideas. Some objective criticisms suggested that it was not defined well enough. I will be seperating the hosting features to use only on my local area site, and promoting other aspects of the theme on the main site.

ps - welcome to HHO. Hope you find it as friendly & helpful as I have.

[nicky]

Ok, I'll give my honest opinion - but don't take it to heart too much as I am hardly qualified as a web site designer!

1. If you are offering both hosting and design services, I would highly recommend that you have clearly defined areas for each otherwise it can become confusing.

2. I have not quite worked out what the pictures of beaches and fishing have to do with website hosting?

3. I think that you are trying to cram too much information onto some of your pages (homepage) - you need to have a focal point on each page.

4. I think that by going for a quite humourous light-hearted approah - you may be restricting the customers that you are appealling to.

5. I was bemused by the following comment on your site:

Rule #2: We Promise 100 to 150% uptime (if the server goes down for any reason, we remain up until everything is working 100% again. As such, we bill you an additional 50% of your monthly fees - - its fair because you get to sleep, while we pull our hair out.)

Do you really charge extra if you have to work overtime to fix network problems? It may work different in the US, but that seems very strange to me.

I feel really nasty now! sorry!

:p:

On the up side - the general design of the site is awesome - is it a template or did you do it yourself. If you are looking for ideas on plans that other people are offering you can take a look at my site if you want: www.fireal.co.uk. AND before you say anything, I am a minimlist! ;)

Hope this helps - sorry if i've been a bit harsh but you won't improve unless you get honest opinions - talking of which I would appreciate any comments you have about my site as it is still in the development stage.

Phew!, my fingers are about to fall off with all this typing, so I will stop now.

Hope this helps!

[jvn]

Great Review - :sun: no need to feel nasty at all.

1 & 4) Hosting & Design - and restricting customers - yes to all 3. Not defining my actual market and biz plan is where I went wrong, and is why the changes are needed.

Hosting only plans - will be limiting to smaller plans and referring larger accounts direct to my provider. They have excellent support. (I have over the last month decided to get out of the hosting business and will provide small accounts locally.)

Design - smaller business accounts in the local area.
Design Referral - accounts that require more than my limited ability will be referred out to designers. (I'm finding some here at HHO. I get to see the quality of their work and also the quality of their attitude.)

3) Too much info - I agree. This will be reduced and will identify the focal point better.

5) No extra charges - that is part of the humor - but I need to make that more evident.

The beaches, fishing, and all the fun stuff was supposed to be able to tie in to "hosting that lets you relax" and point to different places to enjoy vacations. I'll work on that theme seperately though.

As for the design - it was custom developed for me. Part of the "package" was to include working through all these changes, but the designer only added in my original comments. This is part of what the small business person faces in trying to get a complete site created. There is much more than meets the eye and a lot that requires writers as well as designers and coders. Proper budgets for different areas, etc ....


:cool:

[nicky]

Sounds like you know where your going with the site - those small changes will make a huge difference. Still as it stands, it is definately something which stands out from the normal boring hosting sites - which can only be good!

I think you are definately on the right track with the humour - but as you say it may be worth making sure that it can't be taken any other way.

Sorry to hear that your getting out of the hosting scene as I am just getting involved. Bit of a rollarcoaster ahead I imagine, but I've got me crash helmet on! :p:

I think I have made the same mistake of not targeting a specific audience enough. I am also going to be rethinking some things over the next few weeks.

Anyway - don't give up - your get there! Good luck.

:banana:

[CDXSolutions]

Your site does not say goal one at all. It says this site is for vacation packages. From first glance I thought you were selling me a trip to the bahamas. I know you are trying to go with that theme but you should say this is hosting and our service is top notch.