- Charlene

First Impressions

My first impression is that an engineer designed this site.
Navigationally it is sound. All the categories are clearly marked (no mystery meat navigation), and the pages load quickly. But the design and usability features are lacking.
This is a one-person service-based company - I think the website should reflect that her personality (since that is what she’s selling, after all). I know this woman personally, and this website does not reflect her personality or aesthetic at ALL. It is very cookie-cutter. There aren’t even any pictures of her!
(UPDATE: photos were thankfully added)

In the original design, they had used a deep (and angry, IMHO) orange, and had a silhouette of a woman on a beach in the background. Travel site anyone?

Design size

The box design makes me feel claustrophobic. They’ve taken up more than a third of the box space for the header, which isn’t even very cohesive. And they’ve put all the site text inside a very shallow scrolling box. People don’t like to scroll anyway, and scrolling inside such a tiny box isn’t going to be very enticing. There isn’t that much site text to start with, so cramming it inside this box just doesn’t make sense. This site appears to be designed for 800 x 600 monitors, which is no longer the “accepted” common denominator. Should be designing on at least 1024 x 800. 

Should Have Footer/Contact Info on Every Page

This site is lacking a footer at the bottom repeating the site’s navigation, and also providing a contact phone number and e-mail. (UPDATE: they added it!)

Testimonials Should Be Front and Center

Again, when you are running a service-based business, (or any business, for that matter), testimonials and word of mouth are your bread and butter. Where are her testimonials? Buried under the heading “Clients.” What’s worse, when you go to the Clients link (expecting to see a client list, which you don’t get), if you happen to keep scrolling, only then will you see the Testimonials.
Testimonials belong front and center, according to Matt Bailey, of Site Logic Marketing. At the Search Engine Strategies NYC conference, he told us that you should have testimonials appear on every page. He suggested having a column for the testimonials built into the design, and having them rotate randomly. I suppose you could also put a different testimonial on every page. The point is, they should be obvious instead of hidden.
(UPDATE: at least Testimonials have been raised to the level of subcategory).

Surface the Subcategories

This is a personal opinion, but I think that sub-nav should not be hidden on a nav category page. For example, on this site, If you click “services” you will see subcategories of “personal” and “professional.” I would prefer a drop-down menu with choices.

Better Naming Means Free Keywords

Most of the nav categories are fine, but I think “services” should be changed to “coaching,” as that’s the only service that Spirited Impact offers. By changing to “coaching” you’ve quickly added another keyword to the design structure - great SEO benefit!

Use Succinct SEO Keywords and Description

Although keywords and description meta tags are no longer powerful in getting the Google juice, it doesn’t hurt to have them in there. 

In ideal description would describe the who/what/where of the site in one or two sentences like this:

Spirited Impact
Nicole Stone and Spirited Impact offers life coaching using a toolbox of personal training, meditation, essential oils, and straight talk to open you to breakthroughs by any means necessary.

Keywords would be things like: coaching, corporate, meditation, essential oils

Instead, it looks like they lifted copy from her front page, and random words for the keywords. 

<meta name="keywords" content="home, welcome, spirited, impact, everyone, tools, they, need, 

happy, successful, life, just, gets, sometimes, help, break, through, your, self-imposed, 

barriers, find, your, power, clients, people, notice, something, their, life, working, they, know">
<meta name="description" content="Home. Welcome To Spirited Impact  Everyone has the tools they 

need to be happy and successful. Life just gets in the way sometimes. I help you break through 

your self-imposed barriers and find your power. My clients are people who notice something in">

Make Page Titles Unique

Each page does have a title, but it’s too short. Again, Matt Bailey said that every page should be unique, and should have a short phrase in the page title.
So instead of

Products | Spirited Impact

You could have:

Mindful Products for spirit and body | Spirited Impact
OR

Personal Coaching For Breakthroughs | Spirited Impact

All in all I would say this isn’t a HORRIBLE site. The navigation is clean and it works. Pages load quickly. But the site design isn’t cohesive, and I don’t think it does as good a job promoting the client as it could. And I can say this because I know the client. And sadly because of this site design, site visitors won’t know her either.

I regularly do live-blog coverage of Search Engine Strategies Conferences for AIMCLEAR, a Minnesota SEO firm. Many of these articles have been given “best of the web” mentions in the SEO community.

SES San Jose, August 2008

• See all SES San Jose articles

• Cool iPhone 3G Apps, Radical Mobile/Local Search
• Landing Page Optimization:Core Skills, Power Tips
• Facebook, Feeds & Microblogging Part 1: Twitter
• Facebook, Feeds & Microblogging Part 2:Angry Facebook Guy
• Once Upon A Time…There Were Five Kinds of Stories To Build Your Brand

SES New York, March 2008

• Installation and Configuration Guide
• Workstation Guide
• Error Detector Plugin Guide
• PowerPack For Oracle DB Guide

Best thing about conferences: free stuff! I have already got Ideas That Stick book and Always Be Testing by the Eisenbergs! wheee!

From March 17-20 I’ll be in New York city (my new home, as of April 1!) to cover the Search Engine Strategies conference for Aimclear blog! I’m very excited and honored to be chosen to cover this awesome event by such an fantastic company!

Here are links to my coverage of SES NYC seminars:

• Narrowcasting, Kitchen-Sink ID3, End to End Podcast & Audio Search Optimization!

• The Pinocchio Effect: Site Clinic with Matt Bailey and Jennifer Laycock

• Blogging Boogeyman: WHAT Is Social Media Good for? PART 2

• WHAT is Social Media Marketing Good For Anyway? Part One

• Cookies, Milk & Kramer Part 2: Converting Visitors To Buyers @ SES

• Cookies, Milk & Kramer: Converting Visitors Into Buyers @ SES

• Happy Birthday Google Website Optimizer! What’s New With You?

• Expect Barking Cats? Customers Redefined

• From Camel’s Eyelids to Auto-geolocation: the Future of Mobile and Local Search

• Critical Context in Analytic Data: Captain Kirk, Mortality Rates & Red Shirts