Please give me a criticism of my site dedicated to building websites

[socialme82]

I think there is some serious irony here but if you wouldn't mind reviewing and giving me a critique on my families web design, web video production, and SEO firm website I would love it! Thanks in advance!

The addy is Aproprion » Website Installation And Design (http://www.aproprion.com)

[vangogh]

Ain't irony grand. :)

First impression is the site looks professional if not original. I can tell it's a theme, not that there's anything wrong with that. My immediate next impression is please don't have the video auto play. It's one of the quickest ways to get me to leave any site. I'm surfing the web quietly and don't realize my volume is up and then your site is screaming at me. It doesn't make for a pleasant experience. if you just give be a play button I will play the video. If you auto play it the quickest way to make it stop is to leave your site.

A quick look at your navigation and button on the home page leads me to believe you offer Joomla services. Yet when I click on packages and pricing I'm taken to a page about WordPress installation. Why not mention WordPress in the navigation or the button. If I visited your site looking for WordPress services I might leave not realizing you offer those services. I know you have it in the home page text, but it's not as obvious as Joomla.

On the Your Order page there's default text reading "And this one as well" I assume that's leftover from development and should read something else.

On the Articles page you mention different sections of articles, but I don't see those sections. I'm guessing the sections aren't ready yet, but thought I'd mention it in case they are and the links are missing.

I think the font-size on the site could be larger. It can be hard to read in places, particularly on the portfolio page where there's no sidebar and the text is allowed to run the full length of the page. I'd also prefer to see more images on the portfolio page. Why not let your work do the talking.

Overall the site looks nice. Other than not making the WordPress services more apparent, it's easy to tell what you do and it's easy to navigate the site. The design is professional and suggest you'll do good work. The copy could be improved, though that's true of most sites. I would like to see the text larger to make it easier to read. Overall pretty good job.

[KristineS]

I'm with Vangogh on the automatically playing video. That is the fastest way to get me to leave a site. I also didn't like that there appeared to be no pause button. I finally found a way to turn it off, but I found it annoying that I had to search.

Overall it's a decent, clean site. I found the white text against the green background on the homepage a bit hard to read, but that could be my monitor or my eyes. I liked the thing where you can see live talent on your site. I thought that was a useful sales tool.

I did have a few questions about how things were structured. The menu order seemed odd to me. You have video, then contact, when it seems like contact should be at the end. Also, why is Joomla is listed on the menu, as is Video, but Wordpress is not listed listed by name? You can't find Wordpress unless you click the store tab, and if you're going to have a store tab, why not include all the products people can purchase? As it is, it's a bit confusing. I also think your articles page either needs to be added to or cut down. If you're not going to have articles in a particular category, or if you're intending to write articles but haven't completed them yet, I would wait to add the category to the articles page until you had something to list under it.

I would recommend having someone who is a member of the grammar police read your site copy. I saw some grammatical errors that should probably be corrected.

[StefanT]

Yes, I also think the site looks professional but the auto-play video was annoying and would also normally make me want to leave. Besides the comments above I am so distracted by the speaker's background (the library and the sunset). I keep asking myself why is that there? what does is have to do with what the guy is saying? I would have preferred something more neutral.

But it's a really good starting point for a site. Just rethink the site's menu, playback option and make sure someone edits the content for mistakes.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have to agree that the white text on the green background is not very comfortable to read.

I like the idea of the video, but not on autoplay and not the background. It doesn't fit.
Also not a big fan of the "Video" link in the navigation. I'd probably use that video integrated in the content somewhere, not as a stand alone navigation item that just says "Video".

I also agree with the WordPress copy. You need to get rid of all of that stuff in the footer that tells the world where who designed the template you are using and where they just skip over you and get one just like it for themselves.