Mobile Broadband Website Review

[accelerator]

Hi Guys

I would like any feedback on this bestmobilebroadband.co.uk website, particularly the home page.

What do you like? What should I change? Where did you look first?

All comments appreciated.

Thanks

 

[accelerator]

OK, the first thing I have done to improve click through rates is add an image of a Vodafone WiFi hotspot into the table, along with a big orange Visit button. Images add interest and orange is a high visibility colour.

Who thinks this change is a good idea?

Will need to add images for the other providers next.

Incidentally, some links in to the site would be great.

Thanks

 

[accelerator]

Any thoughts then people?

 

[seemly]

For me, it looks like a contender for http://www.theworldsworstwebsiteever.com/

First thoughts: I don't know where to look first.

Do you have a missing CSS file or something?

There is no element of design and there is seemingly no effort to balance content and draw your attention in a cascading style down the page, or even a typical call to action... There are just multiple CTA's on the page, meaning I want to escape from it as soon as possible - a typical 90's "spammy" affiliate page if I am being brutally honest.

Considering I see you pointing people in the direction of conversion experts website on a near daily basis, I find it difficult to believe you yourself do not follow the advice provided?

I genuinely have nothing positive to say about the site/design/layout/content...

Also, it's a reviews page predominantly, right?
Well, the first sentence of this whole page states:

All things considered, our opinion is that Three currently offers the best mobile broadband service.

Awesome, thanks! Job done. I'll leave your site and go direct to three.co.uk

I don't even need to read through the whole page or suffer the confusion of multiple adverts and affiliate links...

 

[Alien]

Hi there,

I'm sorry to be blunt, but if I visited the site with this design, I'd close the window quite quickly as it looks amateurish.

No offence is intended at all (I hope it isn't caused), but I do feel you need a fresh (vibrant), modern and eye catching design for this kind of site and service to stand out from the others offering similar services.

 

[retired_member36]

If i was you, i would take a look at templatemonster.com, look for a design you like, then it will basically be a sake of spending some time copy and pasting everything from your old pages to the new ones where you want them to appear.

This will make people want to read on further, maybe return at a later date but more importantly increase the chances of them telling a friend/share/like your site.

From memory i think the templates are about $60, and if you spend some time searching, you might find a discount code to save some more money. If you use the design on a number of sites the outlay becomes even more worth while.

I bet your balls to a barn dance, if you get a professional layout your bounce rates will decrease and fingers crossed CTR will increase.

 

[stellar73]

I agree with what the others have already said - there's far too many blue links all over the place which is a bid headache inducing and spammy looking

I'd lose one of the columns, generally de-clutter and have a simple menu bar at the top with links to extra content in drop downs where necessary to make it appear more streamlined and professional

 

[accelerator]

Considering I see you pointing people in the direction of conversion experts website on a near daily basis, I find it difficult to believe you yourself do not follow the advice provided?

That was because my initial tactic was to build a lot of sites on a simple template. I'm now reviewing important sites and will hopefully be able to apply the advice, hence this thread.

Thank you for the comments so far.

 

[Alien]

ThemeForest.net has loads of great templates suitable for this.

 

[davedevelopment]

It looks like all your other sites, therefore I'm afraid I don't like it! The 90's called, asked for their design back

 

[Sound]

Hi Accelerator you are a great member of the forum and have been for many years.

Always the first to give helpful advise and appraisals and yet as other members in this post have said you don't seem to follow your own advice and register some strange domains and develop websites that are stuck in a time warp follow the splendid advise you freely give out.

 

[Restepp]

lots of info, so instead of scrolling down I would try to put more boxes left and right of main text (still place left there)

 

[accelerator]

Hi Accelerator you are a great member of the forum and have been for many years.

Always the first to give helpful advise and appraisals and yet as other members in this post have said you don't seem to follow your own advice and register some strange domains and develop websites that are stuck in a time warp follow the splendid advise you freely give out.

Thanks for the kind words.

I realise my designs can look dated but it's from trying to do too much and not focus that means it's difficult for me to revise designs.

Anyway, what strange domains have I registered???

Thanks

 

[accelerator]

OK guys, so now in the second line of the main grey table, I have now added this image:

The conversion principle I'm following is that it's better to use images when possible, and make them fairly large. Also, big orange buttons are good for clicks.

Rgds

 

[Tricky1]

Accelerator, please I beg you, stop...

Ask yourself, would you trust that site if you landed on it, it's complete shite..

You've asked many times peoples opinions on your template and repeatedly you have been told it is a car crash, not once have you taken it on board and made any changes.

Why don't you set up a Wordpress install and invest in a decent theme, if you get stuck with anything regarding plugins or design ask away. There's many people on here who would be more than happy to help.

 

[retired_member36]

Why don't you set up a Wordpress install and invest in a decent theme, if you get stuck with anything regarding plugins or design ask away. There's many people on here who would be more than happy to help.

+1

Then its just a sake of copy and paste the content you want, and bing bash bosh! An instant professional SEO / user friendly site. So worth the investment of a theme over multiple sites.

 

[retired_member36]

Just one other thing,

You probs take more time, creating pages, links etc on the current theme your using compared to what you would with wordpress. (Unless of course its a CMS then just ignore this statement)

 

[accelerator]

You've asked many times peoples opinions on your template and repeatedly you have been told it is a car crash, not once have you taken it on board and made any changes.

Why don't you set up a Wordpress install and invest in a decent theme, if you get stuck with anything regarding plugins or design ask away. There's many people on here who would be more than happy to help.

It's not that I'm not listening, it's just I cannot completely redesign the whole site, I am more after bit by bit improvements.

Can you give me some examples of nicely designed sites that you think it ought to look like?

I can't justify the time to switch to Wordpress, but I don't think doing that would make me any more sales anyway. I need to work on traffic to the site, and then converting better, hence the minor tweaks.

Thanks for the comments.

 

[davedevelopment]

I can't justify the time to switch to Wordpress, but I don't think doing that would make me any more sales anyway. I need to work on traffic to the site, and then converting better, hence the minor tweaks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy

 

[Jamie101]

It's not that I'm not listening, it's just I cannot completely redesign the whole site, I am more after bit by bit improvements.

Can you give me some examples of nicely designed sites that you think it ought to look like?

I can't justify the time to switch to Wordpress, but I don't think doing that would make me any more sales anyway. I need to work on traffic to the site, and then converting better, hence the minor tweaks.

Thanks for the comments.

Sorry mate, but you need to change the way that you're thinking.

The moment I go on your site I assume that it has no up-to-date information just because of the design, and I know that you really do try hard when it comes to decent content.

I recently redesigned a site that was a bit like yours and moved it to Wordpress, it only took a day or two and it was well worth doing. There are plenty of free Wordpress themes that will suit your site so you don't even need to spend any money on one.

Surely your bounce rate is high with a design like that? There's no point having good content etc. if people won't even bother reading it and unfortunately that's what would be happening right now.

I probably sound a bit harsh here, but seriously, even test out using Wordpress with just one of your sites and see the improvement that it'll make.