SITE REVIEW: Home I.T. Solutions

Hi, I run a home based business helping small businesses in my community start their web presence. For a while I had a poor website, kind of like mechanics who don't fix their own cars.

Recently I have done a bit of work to bring my own website to the level that I try to hit for my clients. I'm looking for some feedback from members of this forum, who appear to have quite a bit of experience in reviewing sites and designs.

My website is http://www.homeitsolutions.ca. I use WordPress (from wordpress.org) to maintain my pages, and have slightly modified one of the free themes available.

I do know that I need to work on conversions, but I find it difficult writing about myself as I'm not the bragging type.

Your comments are greatly appreciated!

mmmmm, wordpress. It's currently my favorite.
The theme is techy, but it feels a little dark (not that that is bad, just saying). Also the header image seems to be taking up a lot of space for how dark it is (It doesn't really pop that much, its very subtle), so you could bump up everything and have room for more content above the fold. Also the Home IT Sol title is just kind of hanging out in the middle there, I feel like it should be aligned or anchored to something.

The navigation bar text isn't a hug draw, could you play with bold fonts, text size and padding to make it draw the eye a bit more. The content area looks good, but you might want to think about adding color to your headers or something just to create some more visual interest. Also the dotted line on the right doesn't extend all the way down. The content padding is good though I really like the amount of white space between the edge of the container and the content, very nice to look at.

Welcome to ozzu wpgwiggum, hope this helps.

I like all your suggestions, and have implemented the easy ones for now.

Have yet to figure out which colors I should add that would complement the look, as well as finding a way to implement that dotted border so that it isn't stuck to either the left or right edge.

I'm also thinking of placing a little something in the header image on the right to fill in the black space...but have yet to come up with something relevant.

Anyone else have any helpful suggestions?

filp the header image horizontally, and create a nice logo to replace the text. Place the logo in the black area.

Might help a bit.

I had thought of that, however the keyboard would look a little strange flipped. Or am I being too particular?

Header image to big

Move up the main web content up. Lighten up the very background colors

Maybe pick another template?

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

Other than that is ok.

Hope this helps.

I see your point about the keyboard, would look a little strange to have the caps lock where the return key should be. I still suggest a logo though; I always encourage branding.

I like the general design a lot. It's concrete professional and not boring.

I would put some website screen shots or something on the websites page. I didn't expect just text there and it without any images I didn't either have the incentive to go read it.

Scrolling images in portfolio are nice idea but they need to be bigger, maybe put a much bigger version on the websites page.

The form and form validation works nicely.

The most critical comment.. that ads on the right need to be smaller. This is a page where you try to sell us something (your services) so they are too visible and too big - bad signal! If you had a page with free advices or something then there you can go wild-er with ads .

It's bad that the first page (index/home) has to have a lot of whitespace below text in central area so that that big adblock can show itself.

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Just trying to help you by saying what comes to my mind when I see your page.

I definately appreciate the comments. middayc, i totally agree with everything that you said. The ads I had on my site weren't really doing anything for me...and I'd rather come across as a professional rather then try to make 5 cents on an ad someone might click.

Still have to work on making my banner a bit less tall.

Nice and clean design, perhaps you can make the login link show a little bit more on the top side of the page

The header image is a bit large, but I think it works...however, I would create a 'header image randomizer' so that the imagery does not become so static. The way it is now, the dark, large image follows you around, I would personally like to see a randomly selected image from a pool that is displayed, hopefully with some more cheerful colors than pitch black.

Hope that helps.

Yea, i've been so busy and haven't had a chance to revise the darkness of this image...or its size, but it is still on my (large) todo list!

nice and qute design

creative design!!!!

My suggestions are to remove the comments option from pages that dont need it (ie: browser home page, useful links).

Also that link on the left to your portfolio... It's so compressed that I can't tell what they are and there's nothing really encouraging me to click it. I thought it was an ad at first. Why not add a portfolio link to the top?

Another thing to consider is actually doing some blogging with Wordpress I held off for a long time because I didnt think it looked professional. However I started blogging about issues I've run into and how I've fixed them and went from having no traffic for 3 years to having between 1k-2k visitors a day and tons of back links. Now when someone Googles my services in my area I actually show up amongst the competition. Plus it makes my site look active and not like something I slapped together and forgot about.