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Dan Furman
07-25-2011, 12:09 PM
Ok, I had my site redone, relaunched it a month ago, did some tweaks and such, and i think I'm happy with it now. Let me know what you think - any and all comments and critiques welcome. Especially "bad" stuff - if you see / feel / read something you do not like, tell me.

My main goal was to make the site itself larger (my old one was too skinny), and to also make it more "Dan Furman, Copywriter" than "Copywriter Dan Furman". I still want anyone looking for copywriting to be satisfied with what they find, but at the same time, I want to promote more "me" than the actual service.

Business Writing Services and Website Copywriting Services by Professional Writer Dan Furman (http://www.clear-writing.com/)

Spider
07-25-2011, 02:37 PM
Looks good to me. I thought the text size was rather small but when I zoomed to 125% it was better and widened the page to a less skinny format. 150% was even more readable but required horizontal scrolling. I noticed, too, that there was no line-wrapping so I was forced to squint or scroll horizontally. If your target audience are all under 40, this won't matter, but if you want to reach the over-40s you might want to make the text easier to read.

You write beautifully, but that doesn't help if your audience can't read it!

Dan Furman
07-25-2011, 03:27 PM
Thanks Spider. Especially for the writing comment.

well, this tells me my initial suspcion was spot on - my "old" site was made in 2005, and reflected monitors then - it was VERY "skinny" on a default view, so a big goal for this new site was to be seen better on larger monitors with higher resolutions. i'm not too concerned w/ mobile, as I feel my type of business requires some research, which will still be done on a desktop or tablet (I don't see that changing, really).

I got it up to 200% without sidescrolling on my 22" wide monitor. It looked good - I'll have to live with that (I do play w/ text width - as I've mentioned to you, I think it's important.) I'll sacrifice some side scrolling if someone needs it huge.

Thank you again. Very helpful.

Spider
07-25-2011, 07:31 PM
You're welcome - just remember that not everyone - probably not many have a 22" monitor, and those that have wider screens don't always view at full width. In any case, as was pointed out to me in an earlier discussion on widths, it's not so much the inches width but the pixels width that is important. Common computer screens are 1366px wide and I generally view in a 1000px or less window. At a barely comfortable (for me) reading size, I had to go to at least 1200px width window with your new site, but a next-step-better reading size went beyond 1366 and required horizontal scrolling. And many people surf the web with 1200px screens in less-than-full width.

Just pointing out the difficutlies some of your viewers will face. Have you considered a fluid format that wraps the text so each user gets to see your page how THEY want to see it?

Business Attorney
07-25-2011, 10:43 PM
Nice job, Dan. I didn't read every word or every page, but I liked what I read. I particularly liked how you ended the page "Website Copywriting."

Sorry, no constructive criticism from me.

Dan Furman
07-25-2011, 10:57 PM
Thanks, David.

Something has been bugging me - it seems like i am "uncomfortable" in reading the site. It's backwards to me (I know a lot of sites have a right hand sidebar these days, but I find that distracting throughout an entire site).

I reversed it here - anyone want to weigh in on which flows better / is easiest on the eyes? I honestly think the left hand sidebar is better...

Right hand sidebar (the way it is now) (http://www.clear-writing.com)

Left hand sidebar (the way I am contemplating) (http://www.clear-writing.com/indexR.html)

Business Attorney
07-26-2011, 01:38 AM
Looking at both, my opinion is that the original (right sidebar) draws my eye right to the text. I almost don't notice the sidebar at all. Since you have all the buttons and links that you need in the text, I would say that is a good thing. It may be because I am trained to do that since most newspapers and blogs put the good stuff on the left and I only occasionally glance at all the ads, links, blog rolls, tag clouds, etc on the right.

With the sidebar on the left, my eyes are automatically drawn to the sidebar and I have to redirect my attention to your text.

So for me, I would say that unless your sidebar is as important as the main content, I'd leave it on the right side. It is there if someone wants to read it but the design puts the emphasis on the content.

noshmarketing
08-24-2011, 01:58 AM
Hi Dan - Thanks for posting the links to your site. The font used in the top menu, to me, is still really small. I would also change the hover color so it doesn't go to black. I personally try to keep my hover effects to a minimum (I try to keep the hover color the same as the link color or I try to ensure that there's a good contrast).

There's one thing that you wrote in this thread that keeps coming back to me, and it's that you said, "but at the same time, I want to promote more "me" than the actual service." I'm just wondering why you would rather focus the site on yourself rather than on presenting a solution to a problem and pain point that someone has. Just curious as I do not know what your marketing methods are or how you draw people to your site so I'm not making any judgments.

Dan Furman
08-24-2011, 11:34 AM
Hi Dan - Thanks for posting the links to your site. The font used in the top menu, to me, is still really small. I would also change the hover color so it doesn't go to black. I personally try to keep my hover effects to a minimum (I try to keep the hover color the same as the link color or I try to ensure that there's a good contrast).

There's one thing that you wrote in this thread that keeps coming back to me, and it's that you said, "but at the same time, I want to promote more "me" than the actual service." I'm just wondering why you would rather focus the site on yourself rather than on presenting a solution to a problem and pain point that someone has. Just curious as I do not know what your marketing methods are or how you draw people to your site so I'm not making any judgments.

This is a really good question that I am wrestling with, and do not have a clear answer to yet. Thanks for asking it :)

My general feeling is if someone is just looking for any old copywriting, they can get it for $10 a page from India. There's a billion and a half "content providors" that do just that. I simply cannot compete without offering the "me" aspect (as a plus, I do "Dan Furman" better than anyone!) So why not go in that direction? (hence my doing what I did.)

If someone is looking for a copywriter (an individual), well, that's the itch I am looking to scratch.

Jury is still out, but signs are encouraging.

Spider
08-24-2011, 06:51 PM
What's the outcome on the left- right- sidebar debate? I am having the same internal wrangle right now and after looking at both for a few weeks feel that the left-sidebar is just more natural. Mind you, I don't have advertisements in the left-sidebar and I feel comfortable with ads being thrown off to the right. But a right sidebar just makes the page lop-sided.

I seem to be able to skip over the left sidebar and start reading the main column quite easily, while a right sidebar seems to take my attention away from the main content, especially when I get to the end of the headline.

I think I'm going to go back to the left sidebar with a right sidebar for ads or quotes, if necessary.

What are you going to to do?

noshmarketing
08-24-2011, 08:56 PM
This is a really good question that I am wrestling with, and do not have a clear answer to yet. Thanks for asking it :)

I simply cannot compete without offering the "me" aspect (as a plus, I do "Dan Furman" better than anyone!) So why not go in that direction? (hence my doing what I did.)

If someone is looking for a copywriter (an individual), well, that's the itch I am looking to scratch.

Jury is still out, but signs are encouraging.

Hey Dan - That's really good. Why someone would be looking for a copywriter as opposed to copywriting? You could summarize that and make that the first thing that people see when they visit. That's what you could try focusing on, and then you could create a pathway using your website from problem to solution.

Here's my logic: The person/company who specifically speaks to my pain point and promises to relieve it is probably going to be more memorable than everyone else. I use the term pain point broadly; I'm just referring to whatever need drove that person to start looking for a copywriter in the first place. Remember that people look at a number of websites in their search and get distracted and blind-sided with all kinds of irrelevant crap. The company that reminds them what they were searching for is going to hit home.

Just something to think about! I love talking about websites; thanks for responding to me.

Dan Furman
08-24-2011, 09:47 PM
What's the outcome on the left- right- sidebar debate? I am having the same internal wrangle right now and after looking at both for a few weeks feel that the left-sidebar is just more natural. Mind you, I don't have advertisements in the left-sidebar and I feel comfortable with ads being thrown off to the right. But a right sidebar just makes the page lop-sided.

I seem to be able to skip over the left sidebar and start reading the main column quite easily, while a right sidebar seems to take my attention away from the main content, especially when I get to the end of the headline.

I think I'm going to go back to the left sidebar with a right sidebar for ads or quotes, if necessary.

What are you going to to do?

I kept the right sidebar, but with a few changes - I put a "list" of my services there, and changed the quote botton.

I also had a picture up top (in the main content), so it was text / picture / sidebar, and that was really bugging me as I read. I still have a picture, but it's much further down (the post it note that's there now.)

I *do* like the right - I think it's more natural, and puts more focus on the main text.

The results have been better. This stuff *definitely* matters. I would say keep testing, Spider.

Dan Furman
08-24-2011, 09:54 PM
Hey Dan - That's really good. Why someone would be looking for a copywriter as opposed to copywriting? You could summarize that and make that the first thing that people see when they visit. That's what you could try focusing on, and then you could create a pathway using your website from problem to solution.



well, I think they (my type of clients, anyway) are looking for copywriting by a copywriter. Or, they are looking for copywriting, but once they see a few sites, see that there's a difference between me and a content providor. So the copywriting is still the first thing (hence all of my various landing page headlines/etc are geared towards copywriting) but the site is clearly "Dan Furman - Copywriter"

I'm still tweaking (I like the "pain point" analogy. I say the same thing in do the web write, except I essentially say to solve your visitor's problem - I like your phrase better ;)