SITE REVIEW: lineleeder

I posted a few reviews and intend to come back for more (this forum rocks) but here's the deal on my site....

It's yet another hosting site. I only host/design for children's or family sites and causes. I happen to be a preschool teacher (believe it or not) and I'm using my angle/network to promote myself. So far it seems to be working.

I'm looking for straight up critiques of my site. I KNOW the picture of the red headed girl is a bit blurry - it's the best picture I had of my kid (yes, she's my daughter) and we're going to do a photo shoot sometime soonish.

Can you tell what the purpose of the site is?
If you were a computer novice could you figure it out?
I'm very flexible if the customer has something related to kid's or families - is that clear from the start?
Suggestions?
etc....

The different pages are also up for critique - hosting and design in particular...
Go ahead - I can take it.
*gulp*

I would consider making what I will call your mission statement a bit larger font than the rest of the page. It kind of blend with the rest of your text.

cool, thanks - what exactly are you referring to? The first paragraph?

I'm not so sure about the Kid Theme, I'm Sure some people like kids, but, It sends me a underline message that your Site is childish, and like children, not serious.. or it could mean , you love kids.. Im sure parents would like it....

The design Is "Ok"



You have probably the least Bandwith I have seen, 1gb transfer!?!?

I agree with foxy on the bandwidth thing. If someone has 1 gig of space and 2 gigs of transfer, then they can theoretically only have 2 visits before they reach their limits. I would definately consider dropping the space factor a little and increasing bandwidth a lot. Most people don't use more than 2 gigs of transfer, but people don't know what to expect and they don't want to go over. You should invcrease the bandwidth to at least 25 gigs. Stat: At 1 gig of transfer a month, a website could only serve 68 MB a day in a 30 day month! It would take a 56k modem only 20 minutes to download that amount!

About your question about the first paragraph, yes. The part about what you do that is right after your massive header.

Any suggestions on a host that has reseller plans that will allow me to sell that much BW? I go through hostgator.com right now because they gave me WHM Autopilot for free - but I'm not allowed to oversell bandwidth - I'd love to be able to sell packages with that much transfer... where can I move to?

ANd the kid thing - it's a site that caters only to businesses that work with kids... day cares, babysitters, balloon artists, magicians, and so on - is the kid look overdone?

Ok - so reduce the header increase BW, ease back on the kid thing, and be more clear on the mission statement?

Thanks for the "ok" on the design - I prefer this kind of constructive crit you guys are giving compared to the glaze over I get from some - thanks... anyone else?

yea, like 2gbs Bandwith is really the minimal for 10$/mo service, well, according to looking around, its the lowest good one (i.e go daddy)

yea so 500mbs to 1gb Bandwith is really.. wow..

Know any resellers that sell it that cheap? I couldn't find any - I found those prices but not to resell

good idea, i missed this the first time i saw the page. i had to look twice to see the mission statement. i would agree about changing the size to a larger size.

poly

I use startlogic.com for my hostng. They are an awesome web host ad I know they have reseller plans. I would look into them. I am paying $7.50 a month for 1 gig of space and 40gb of transfer along with a plethora of features. They are awesome. I am actually running 4 websites with them now and not 1 of them has had 30 seconds of downtime....EVER!

Overall, I loved your site!

One of the first things I noticed was mentioned by some of the others above. . . . Make your mission statement a bit more noticable.

"Welcome to the lineleeder web hosting family. We provide customized and simplified hosting and design solutions for personal and business applications."

I would suggest making that statement larger so the eye goes right to it!

As far as the kid theme, I like that too. It seems like it is exactly what you need to appeal to your target customer. Also, it is 100% different from what you usually see on hosting sites. I think you have a nice branding going on.

My expertise is more in marketing, sales, & user interface, and not so much on the technical side so I cant give you much more feedback than that.

Good luck!
BaDD CoDeR

the design is alright, it would be better with bigger font. For a web hosting site, you need more than you have now. for example, list some sites using your hosting, etc....

the flash is nice, i like the kids. keep it up

You should use a frame or div/layer to make the bottom/middle parts (the html) reload (and not the flash). Also, there is a bit of flash at the very bottom that is essentially useless; you could use a gif/jpg and save the bandwidth and loadtimes.

The flash is nice, but the kid theme may be going overboard...
Things like "Lil' Red Wagon" are cute but unprofessional in my opinion, but then I'm not sure of your target audience. In any case, you seem to be narrowing that target too much.

Overall though, nice job.

I love the site! Great colour co-ordination, very useful for people looking for a fast full-featured hosting service... though is it just my computer or is the site slow? anyway I love it though! keep the good work up!

wow - thanks for all the input! let's see...

I DO need to revamp that header - it's too big. I was going for a very "lofty" kinda look but I think I got carried away cuz it's my kid in the picture

The Flash at the bottom was originally going to load dynamic advertising - please tell me what you think:

All the sites I design are going to be for local sites related to kids. I may have mentioned I'm a preschool teacher - I know a lot of people that have children and families for target market - balloon artists, day cares, magicians, and so on.... word of mouth seems to be going very well. The whole idea was to do all of these local sites and build dynamic advertising capabilities into their sites and THEN offer them the ability to advertising their site across a network of LOCAL sites that share the same target market, bring prequalified, local traffic. In addition to that, the second idea was to have them all link to each other via links pages - giving highly relevant backlinks and hopefully higher SE rankings - provided they all listen to me and farm their own link exchanges with high PR sites...

The whole goal WAS to narrow the target market extremely. To make these people feel that their site BELONGED here. No one else is doing it. That's the marketing angle.

Design-wise, it's a little weak and I know it.

If I post a revamp prior to updating would y'all consider combing through it with me? For the time being I can't switch my host because of the fact that I need WHM Autopilot and it's expensive elsewhere.... I'll work on my design first - you have all ben very helpful and your feedback has substance