Updated website, feedback please

[cara]

Hi all,

pretty much as the title suggests really

if you could find any faults or criticisms then would you let us know, as it's the only way we'll learn,

also if there's anything you like, would you let us know as well:beer1:

thanks folks

opps it might help if i post the link:bang:

www.merseyme.co.uk

[DJWilson]

Hi,

i like the layout but would i would say is that there are to many options of the left hand side.

my of the best bits are the photo's i like the way they change into another picture and when you click on them they appear bigger

the homepage about liverpool :bang: is good and shows that you are well known of :)

[daz226]

nice site very well laid out and easy to navigate.

Now then did cara not invite any of the team i thought steve g would have been there was looking forward to seeing those pictures and i know cara is no billy no mates.

Your set up looks awesome and that dance floor is great cant fault you on anything u have covered all bases.

nice one

[rob1963]

Your site looks pretty good.

The main thing I noticed was that you have 20 pages on your website.

I think that's way over the top for a business that just provides discos, karaoke & quiz nights. I think it would be far less confusing and quicker & easier for people to find what they want if you condensed it down to about 8-10 pages.

The other thing I noticed is that you have detailed pricing for the disco and karaoke, but no prices at all for the quiz nights.

Hope this helps.

:)

[PropellerHeadCase]

How many DJs are there? Only reason I ask is that 'We Specialise In' is so comprehensive that you aren't really specialising any more, it's more like a list of what you can cover. Just a thought.

[rob1963]

How many DJs are there? Only reason I ask is that 'We Specialise In' is so comprehensive that you aren't really specialising any more, it's more like a list of what you can cover. Just a thought.

Agreed.

I think the wording "music we specialise in" needs changing to something like "music we play"

[Vectis]

The main thing I noticed was that you have 20 pages on your website.

I think that's way over the top for a business that just provides discos, karaoke & quiz nights.

Phew! Just counted mine and I've only got 19 landing pages (actually more like 100+ at any one time if you drill down payments, requests, photo & video galleries, requests :eek: ).

But then I don't do Karaoke... ooer... does that mean mine's OTT Rob? :confused:


Cara... looking good - nothing to add really that's not already been said :)

[rob1963]

Phew! Just counted mine and I've only got 19 landing pages (actually more like 100+ at any one time if you drill down payments, requests, photo & video galleries, requests :eek: ).

But then I don't do Karaoke... ooer... does that mean mine's OTT Rob? :confused:


vectis,

There's no right or wrong, it's just a matter of opinion.

I provide mobile discos & quiz nights, and find 6 pages on my website to be quite sufficient.

It's my opinion that for a mobile disco 8-10 pages should be more than enough. Any more, and it just over-complicates things unnecessarily.

As I've said before, I'm a strong believer in keeping it simple...just like me!

:D :D :D

[Andy Westcott]

Nice clean layout which fits well to most typically used screen widths.

I agree with the comments about having too many links:
For example, your Contact page and the Booking page may as well be one.

Same with your Disco Pricing and your Karaoke Pricing pages.

I'm not too sure about the first paragraph on your home page - the text is too cumbersome. I fully understand wht you've done that, but maybe re-arrange it a bit so it reads easier?

Also this: "the service you hire from us..."
That's poor grammar. Maybe better to use "the service you get from us"

Apart from that, far better than mine. :)

[cara]

thank you everyone for for comments, much appreciated

the reason why we have so many menu's is, we got told that when you have a long page of text and stuff where the customer has to keep scrolling, it's poor design & the customer will just get bored having to keep scrolling to find what they want.

so we've tried to make the content on the pages where you hardly have to scroll, ha ha dioes that make sense?

good point on the word 'specialise' as well guys, i can see what you mean now, we don't specialise in anything, we play a lot of music, if we specialised, we'd only play a couple of genres.

Daz: gerrard was the with his wife for about 30 mins but then left, the only reason i can think of was because there where a load of international matches that week, so none of his 'footballing mates' were there

rob: we haven't got round to finalising the quiz night yet, jsut hope we don't get any calls or it'll be 'errm, 'errm '0)

ok once again, thanks for all your input everyone.

[rob1963]

rob: we haven't got round to finalising the quiz night yet, jsut hope we don't get any calls or it'll be 'errm, 'errm '0)

Lol!

If it's any help, for a one off quiz night I charge about 60% of the rate for my standard (basic) disco.

:)

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

About £20 then? :boxer2:

[rob1963]

About £20 then? :boxer2:

:handbag:

[DJWilson]

:handbag:


About £20 then? :boxer2:


:Censored: fight

[PropellerHeadCase]

Your site looks pretty good.

The main thing I noticed was that you have 20 pages on your website.

I think that's way over the top for a business that just provides discos, karaoke & quiz nights. I think it would be far less confusing and quicker & easier for people to find what they want if you condensed it down to about 8-10 pages.

I think, Rob, that your ethic of less-is-more relates directly to the way you DJ. You have said, after all, that you predominantly play the songs from your top 120 and any special requests. Eight to ten pages is certainly sufficient to explain that, but as soon as you add any level of expertise in specialist genres and/or position yourself as more of a consultant/problem-solver you necessarily need more pages to properly explain that.

Furthermore good SEO practice says that pages shouldn't have too much verbiage on them in order to allow for those keywords that appear in your copy to necessarily peak higher, percentage-wise, by having less other words on the page. Thus rather than a long page explaining three inter-related aspects of your service it is actually better to have three shorter pages, which pushes the page count up.

Just a thought.

[rob1963]

I think, Rob, that your ethic of less-is-more relates directly to the way you DJ. You have said, after all, that you predominantly play the songs from your top 120 and any special requests. Eight to ten pages is certainly sufficient to explain that, but as soon as you add any level of expertise in specialist genres and/or position yourself as more of a consultant/problem-solver you necessarily need more pages to properly explain that.

Furthermore good SEO practice says that pages shouldn't have too much verbiage on them in order to allow for those keywords that appear in your copy to necessarily peak higher, percentage-wise, by having less other words on the page. Thus rather than a long page explaining three inter-related aspects of your service it is actually better to have three shorter pages, which pushes the page count up.

Just a thought.

Interesting thoughts Al, although this thread is about Cara's website, rather than mine.

I just feel that 20 website pages are too many for a business which just offers mobile discos...as it over-complicates things.

As you know, my site only has 6 pages, but many people don't even read THEM properly, as I often get queries asking what my prices are, even though they're clearly shown on the site. If my website had 20 pages for people to wade through, I'd have no chance!

It's not just me that thinks this way, as two other people also suggested that Cara's site had too many pages...but I appreciate your thoughts.

[PropellerHeadCase]

If my website had 20 pages for people to wade through, I'd have no chance!

Your mistake is in assuming that you're even expecting people to read all of them. Even on your site what potential disco clients are going to read the quiz pages?

[soundmaster mobile disco]

I would be curious to find out if you get many bookings for disco package 3 at £450.If i charged your prices i would not get any business because people will not pay that kind of money for a disco in my AREA?.

Also your medium package at£325 is over priced for my AREA ,I can only dream of these prices.


Mobile Disco Package 3
£425
Package 3 is suitable for large sized gatherings in large sized venues. This is our largest package & is ideal for weddings & gatherings of up to 300 people. book now

6 hours total hire time (7pm-1am, 8pm-2am, etc)
3kw Clear digital sound system with 4 speakers & 4 bass sub-woofer speakers
MP3 laptop or cd based music library with 25000 songs
Multicoloured disco lighting effects
Haze/smoke machine
Full use of our wireless microphones for any announcements you may wish to make
Self contained stand system
Dvd video presentation of all photographs taken by our photographer on the night
Includes set up & dismantling of the disco, travelling costs, hire of the DJ & his assistant, all equipment listed and is priced inclusive of delivery, labour, & insurance.
Live Chat Offline

[rob1963]

Your mistake is in assuming that you're even expecting people to read all of them. Even on your site what potential disco clients are going to read the quiz pages?

That's part of my point...the more pages you have overall, the less likely they are to easily find the pages they DO want to read.

Getting back to Cara's site, there were a couple of reasons why I thought there were too many pages.

Firstly, the longer a menu is, the longer it takes to find what you're looking for...and these days everybody seems to be in a rush.

Also, I think Cara is over-complicating things by splitting information which should be on the same page.

For example, the "home" page & "about us" pages are pretty much the same & could easily be combined into one page.

The same is true of the "music we specialise in" & the "music collection" pages, the "mobile discos" & "mobile discos pricing" pages, the "karaoke hire" & "karaoke pricing" page etc etc.

I'd also lose the games page, as it's not relevant.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

I would be curious to find out if you get many bookings for disco package 3 at £450.If i charged your prices i would not get any business because people will not pay that kind of money for a disco in my AREA?.



People always say that because they haven't found the market that pays more. I bet there are DJ and companies charging and getting that sort of money in your area.

[PropellerHeadCase]

For example, the "home" page & "about us" pages are pretty much the same & could easily be combined into one page.

The same is true of the "music we specialise in" & the "music collection" pages, the "mobile discos" & "mobile discos pricing" pages, the "karaoke hire" & "karaoke pricing" page etc etc.

On those points I would agree.

[cara]

again, thanks for all your comments folks,

the reason we've laid out the site the way it is, is because, we don't want people scrolling forever to read information that they may not want to know about

for instance: if we put the karaoke pricing & the mobile disco pricing on the same page, then the customer would have to sift/read through something that they may not be interested in to find what they're looking for.

if someone lands on the homepage, it says blah blah blah, thank you etc. if they're looking for disco hire they can just click on the disco hire link and it'll take them straight to it.

then there's also a link on the disco page to take them straight to the pricing for disco instead of them having to read through, what we do, who we are, pat testing, pli, something which they may not care one iota about.

i hope you understand were we're coming from on this?

[Vectis]

You could use on-page links with a bullet list at the top?

<a href="#karaoke>Click here for Karaoke</a>
...
...
...
<a name="karaoke">Here's the Karaoke bit</a>
...
...
...

[rob1963]

again, thanks for all your comments folks,

the reason we've laid out the site the way it is, is because, we don't want people scrolling forever to read information that they may not want to know about

for instance: if we put the karaoke pricing & the mobile disco pricing on the same page, then the customer would have to sift/read through something that they may not be interested in to find what they're looking for.

if someone lands on the homepage, it says blah blah blah, thank you etc. if they're looking for disco hire they can just click on the disco hire link and it'll take them straight to it.

then there's also a link on the disco page to take them straight to the pricing for disco instead of them having to read through, what we do, who we are, pat testing, pli, something which they may not care one iota about.

i hope you understand were we're coming from on this?

Hi Cara,

I understand where you're coming from.

When it comes to the number of pages on a site & how much you should have to scroll, there are no set rules...at the end of the day it's just a matter of opinion.

:)