Help with my website?

[Charlie123]

Hi guys!
I was wondering if you could help me make me my website look more decent and professional?
I have been trying to acheive this for a while but I just can't see that 'Wow' factor in it?
Any advice/constructive criticism would be very much appreciated!
Any points you could give to make it look cooler and more pro would be great!
I don't really have any budget for a site designer at the moment, I designed the whole thing myself sofar.
Here it is! - http://www.slsdiscos.co.uk/

Again thank you so much for the help in advance!
Regards,
Charlie :)

[LeapCreative]

Hey Charlie :)

I've had a quick browse through, and I notice you're using Google Site's to create this. You might be better off installing a copy of WordPress and downloading a free or paid template which should take a lot of the stress out of the process. If you need any help with this, feel free to give me a shout and I'll talk you through it.


For a few tips on usability and making it more accessible:


Try not to use tables within the markup, as a lot of newer browsers either don't recognise them, or don't render them properly. Try to create any column spans through CSS (although I'm blaming this one on Google Site's ridiculous markup
A little extra work on the meta tags should improve your SEO (higher google rankings)
Try and confine the content to a maximum width, as currently it's stretching to the page width of the browser, which can vary wildly and put things in a different order


From a design perspective:


Maybe use a slightly darker colour than magenta, as it can be difficult to read on a white background
Try and keep all your fonts the same, i.e. Arial, Trebuchet MS etc, rather than having 3 or 4 different fonts around the pages
Maybe make the menu a little bit more obvious, as it looks a little like an after thought 'tacked on' at the end?
Minimise the use of the underline, bold and italics tags - it can become overpowering really quickly
Get rid of the table borders - they're not really needed
Get rid of the 'search this site' at the top. It isn't really necessary given the size of your site


I hope they're useful to you in some way :) As I said, if you have any questions about my suggestions, feel free to ask :)

[lazersounds]

Some of the text is grey on firefox so unless you highlight it it is near invisable.

Check the text as is missing a lot of capital letters etc.

Otherwise what have been said above, hope this helps :)

[Charlie123]

Hi guys :)
Thank you very much for your replies!
I have had a look through what you said and I am editing the site now! :)
Unfortunately it appears you can't get rid of the "search this site" option which is annoying but I think I'll just put up with it for the time being!
I will post sometime soon with the improved site :)
Again thank you very much for your time and help :)
Charlie

- - - Updated - - -

Hi guys :)
Thank you very much for your replies!
I have had a look through what you said and I am editing the site now! :)
Unfortunately it appears you can't get rid of the "search this site" option which is annoying but I think I'll just put up with it for the time being!
I will post sometime soon with the improved site :)
Again thank you very much for your time and help :)
Charlie

[yourdj]

put some better photos that are not of empty dancefloors and messy walls.

Move the gallery before the prices as all you are selling yourself on is that you are cheap and perhaps not very good. :)

[Charlie123]

Hi Toby :)
Yes - good point! I will do! I've updated the template and now doing things like grammar and spellings so hopefully it will be improved :)

[HeartandSoul]

Hi Charlie, I think if you used a wordpress template it would be a big help.

[Shaun]

Hi Charlie,

Not much I can add that hasn't already been said. You've received some good advice.

One point I was curious about was your packages...


Package 1 : Bronze package - 2 piece sound system, 1 meter LED light baton, 4 moonflower effect lights, a fog machine, a choice of songs, various microphones, supplied with DJ. This is suitable for smaller events up to 40 people.

- £100

Package 2 : Silver package - 2 piece sound system, 1 meter LED light baton, 6 moonflower effect lights and a small cluster laser, choice of songs, various microphones a fog machine and a bubble machine, supplied with DJ. This is suitable for smaller/medium events up to 90 people.

- £150

Package 3 : Gold package - 2 piece sound system, 1 meter LED light baton x2, 8 moonflower effect lights, a dual moving head light, a single moving head light, a Star Cluster laser, a bright multicoloured LED wash light and a larger pattern laser ( this looks great with the smoke machine which can be provided at a small additional fee) this package will fill up the medium to larger halls) choice of songs, various microphones, a fog machine, a bubble machine, supplied with DJ. This is suitable for the larger events up to 150 people.

- £200

It states that all packages come with a 2 piece sound system. If the same sound system is being used for all you packages, I'm a little confused as to why the first package is only suitable for up to 40 guests?

[LeapCreative]

Out of sheer morbid curiosity, what's a dual moving head light? I've been out of the disco game for a little while now. Is this 2 heads on one base plate?

[Charlie123]

Hi Shaun :)
Sorry, I've done the packages on lights mostly which is a bad idea to be honest :(
I think I'll remove then and put one set price?

- - - Updated - - -


Out of sheer morbid curiosity, what's a dual moving head light? I've been out of the disco game for a little while now. Is this 2 heads on one base plate?

Aha! The dual moving head is a dual scanner :p
I shouldn't really have called it that! I think I'll change the name of it to something else?

[Charlie123]

Hi Charlie, I think if you used a wordpress template it would be a big help.

Hi.
So I would use the same Domain etc...
But just redesign the face of the site?
And does Wordpress cost anything?
Thanks :)

[LeapCreative]

Hi Charlie,

WordPress is an open-source platform so there's no cost. You'd probably need a web host (there's a few free ones knocking around). You just install WordPress, then find a free template to use, so there's not much design work involved.

[Charlie123]

Hi Charlie,

WordPress is an open-source platform so there's no cost. You'd probably need a web host (there's a few free ones knocking around). You just install WordPress, then find a free template to use, so there's not much design work involved.

Ahh that's great! :)
I'll give it a shot! :)

[discojohnno]

I would agree downloading and installing wordpress is the way to go nice and easy to use and hundreds of free templates available