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chuckw
Joined: May 19, 2005
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2005-May-19 20:38
Name of Site/Business: Bread recipes for the home cook.
Site's Main Purpose: Advertising (eg Banners, Google Adsense etc.)
Please Review the following:
Does the home page sufficiently convince people to go further into the site?
Does/can the site achieve its main purpose?
Navigation. Is it clear and easy to understand?
Appearance/Attractiveness
Search engine marketing. Can the pages be reasonably well indexed by search engines?
Additional Comments/Notes
Hi everyone,
What will Google think? I was hoping I could get a few comments about my site. This is the first website I have created. So, be gentle! I would like to know what Google will think of my site when they come to check it out.
It would be greatly appreciated!
chuck
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arivers
Joined: May 20, 2005
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2005-May-23 18:13
I like the site design. It's simple and straight-forward. The "bread" color scheme is appropriate and the pictures throughout the site really help support the text. On pages with smaller amounts of text, I felt a little overwhelmed by all the ads (above, below, right....all around!). All the navigation seemed to work and I felt that it was clear how to get from one point to the next.
Regarding the homepage - I felt like this page could be a bit more benefits-oriented to encourage people to continue further into the site. Perhaps identifying why this site is special would help. Also, a stronger call to action -"don't miss this great opportunity to learn how to bake many tasty breads! View cooking classes, online recipes or submit your own recipe by following the links above." - something like that maybe.
Newsletter sign-up - There's not really a lot of information regarding what you get when you sign-up for the newsletter. Because this form is the same form used to submit recipes, I think the newsletter sign-up gets a bit lost in the shuffle.
Contact - The problem with having the contact link send the visitor directly into their email client is that many users don't have email clients. For isntance, I don't use Outlook or some of ther email program (I use webmail - Hotmail). So when I click on that link, I get an error. And since the email address isn't actually listed on teh site, there is no alternative way for me to contact you. I could use the recipe submit form, but that's not what it was intended for and by the time I figure that out, I may already be headed away from your site. I would suggest a contact page with either a contact form (preferred) or a link to your email address that non-email program users like me can copy and paste into our webmail programs. I'd be happy to clarify this point if I was too rambly in my explanation.
Regarding search engines - Overall, the site is definitely searchable. I would suggest finding 1 or 2 keywords (words relevant to the site) that you can focus each page around. For instance, "bread recipes" is an obvious keyphrase. I would try and use that phrase more on the site. Identify others as well and try and use 1 0r 2 unique keywords/phrases for each page of your site. Also, creating unique description meta tags may help searchers decide to enter your site.
Regarding advertising - I really didn't get that advertising was an important part of your website. I mean, there are a lot of advertisements, but there isn't a clear call for advertisers to contact you. I would create a place for this and clearly identify the advantages of advertising with you.
That's all for now. I hope this is helpful. Good luck with your site!
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ClickIt
Joined: Jul 31, 2000
# Posts: 746
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Posted: 2005-May-23 23:46
First off, CookingBread.com is a great name! The name tels me exactly what I will find on the site. You get 10 out of 10 plus the gold star for the name alone.
I was a bit put off by the credit card banner ad. Fot this
Web site, I would expect cooking utensils, or Fromages.com, or Wine.com or something cooking related. If it were my site, I would only allow closely related food products in the advertising space. (I would go so far as to block the Google public service ads too.) What purpose does the Tatet.com ad serve for your site? Remove that one and perhaps replace it with an affiliate deal from Fromages.com.
Nuke the Amazon ads. Flashy-blinky ads promoting non-relevent products do nothing to enhance your reputation.
And I agree with arivers; too many ads all around. Perhaps just go with the skyscraper Google ads on the right column of your site. Too many ads lead to lower click-throughs. Too many choices and people just choose nothing at all. Less really is more, as far as you are concerned.
I found the design to be not bad, but not great. It is not a memorable design.
What is your target market? Who is actually going to cook bread? Are you going for the 3M Market? (You know 3M right? Married, Monied & Middle Aged.) The brown text is a good idea, but make it easier on the eyes. Go with a darker brown and larger text. If I have my hands in a mixing bowl, I don't really want to go find my reading glasses. You can easily do me a favor by making the site easier for me to use and still retain your design theme. If the site is easy to read and use, then I will read and use it more often, right?
And speaking of design themes, you seem to have three distinct themes going on here. 1)Left column 60s era artwork 2)A not too exciting brown text with generic navigation tabs under the header 3)the photos-in-a-box that might be a link, but half the time are not.
Pick either 1 or 3 but not both. With the header logo and text, you have a kernal of a good idea, but you have not worked on it enough to make it a great application of the idea.
A very quick look at your HTML: it looks like you could tighten up the coding and improve your SEO, hence your placement on Google and the other SEs. The tighter coding should help page load times too. It's worth the effort to go through the HTML line by line.
Go ahead and write 2 or 3 editions of your newsletter and post them. Then I will be able to evaluate the newsletter and see the benefit of signing up to recieve it.
You will very likely recieve more participation on both the newsletter and 'submit a recipe' if you offer some sort of incentive for taking action. Or to put it another way, whoever submits the recipe of the month recieves a free _________ (fill in the blank with something bread related that bread cookers will like)!
And, offer some sort of contest where people who A) read the newsletter B) find additional info on the Web site C) and answer a few questions therby entering the monthly contest to win a fabulous bread cooker prize!
All in all, you are off to a very good start. It will require more work, but I am also confident that you will be successful with this site.
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chuckw
Joined: May 19, 2005
# Posts: 3
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Posted: 2005-May-25 03:18
Thank you very much arivers and ClickIt for your informative review of my site  . I will be making the changes that both of you made. It's funny, when I first started creating my site I thought it would be a piece of cake. But, man it's tough! You have to wear so many hats, you have the webmaster hat, editor hat, designer hat, writers hat, marketer hat and the list goes on. No wonder some companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars. I know I have a lot of work to do still, and with your suggestions I may get a little closer.
Thank you again Arivers and ClickIt.
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