Need Opinion on My Business's Website

[Rob@ThePCWiz.info]

Guidelines on Feedback
A well formed response telling what is wrong, and a short explaination as to why. (if anything) Be generous, I am asking for an honest opinion, but there is still a line, and I hope you guys are adult enough to know what that line is. And lastly, don't be afraid to tell me your feedback


What is My Business?
I work on computers for a living, repairing them, and repairing software on them. I work with Desktops, Laptops, and Servers, and I do just about anything within human, computer, and legal limits.

The Website: http://thepcwiz.info

Thank you in advanced, I hope to be hearing from you guys soon.

[Gallahhad]

Looks pretty good; if your Licensed and Bonded, I would put that up on the Banner with your logo.

I would also reconsider the wording for the:

Donate A Junk PC (http://thepcwiz.info/index.php?page=donate-a-pc)
posted on February 03, 2010 07:53:01 pm
Donate your Old Junk PC, we will restore it and sell it to users who really need it. (students, elderly, etc.).

The current wording sounds as though you might be profiting off of donated items. Perhaps reword it so that people understand what your trying to get across.

Looks Great, Wishing you all success.
Gallahhad

[Rob@ThePCWiz.info]

I am somewhat profiting off of donated items, I am making back the cost of repair, and giving about 40% of the profit income to Red Cross for Haiti Relief Fund, however profits that are not donated go into buying new parts for future "Junk" repairs, normally just monitors and new cases (old cases tend to be missing the side, or are extremely damaged).

[rickyjones]

* Technician is misspelled in your banner (Technitians).
* I highly recommend a .com versus a .info, just personal reasons.
* I would get rid of the "Staff" private link - guests will continually click there to see who the staff members are.
* The links under Contacts are mailto links - I highly recommend that you modify these to go to pages that explain who that person/group is with an email form that a visitor will fill out. As it stands the mailto link will open in the default email program - a vast majority of home users do not use an email program. Using a form will virtually guarantee that they can send you a message and that they will include all the necessary information that you need to respond to them.
* I recommend some sort of testimonials page if you have any former/current customers that would be willing to write a recommendation.
* With the RSS feed at the very bottom of the page I doubt many will see it - might be better in a separate box to the rigth maybe?

That's all that I can think of off the top of my head - good luck! I'm on the other side (of the state) doing the same type of business :-)

Thanks,
Richard

[Rob@ThePCWiz.info]

wow thank you very much. I will definitely get on those errors right away!
I could still use more opinions and feedback from other users incase anything has been missed though.

[Gallahhad]

I am somewhat profiting off of donated items, I am making back the cost of repair, and giving about 40% of the profit income to Red Cross for Haiti Relief Fund, however profits that are not donated go into buying new parts for future "Junk" repairs, normally just monitors and new cases (old cases tend to be missing the side, or are extremely damaged).
Nothing wrong with that, but currently it is left to the imagination, it's best to spell that out in an appealing way so that some people don't assume the worst.

GL and again, looking great.

[Sporkman]

- the bulleted list of locations under "Service Area / Metro Detroit Area" are all misaligned,
- In "Prices may Vary, prices listed are only rough estimates...", "Vary" should not be capitalized,
- "Experienced" is misspelled in the title,
- Not sure about having an ad placement on your business website - that will only invite potential customers to leave to a different site. You want people to stay on your site.

[pwnst*r]

That's why we do our best to get your PC back to working condition in no time.

"In no time" is unrealistic. I think you should reword it to "as quickly as possible" or something similar. Don't pretend to offer something that you can't actually deliver.


There is no problem we cannot solve, no virus we can't stop, no encryption we cannot break. We here at The PC-Wiz are the best in experience and skill.

That doesn't make you sound like a good business at all. Remove that completely, as I don't see a need to even offer such a service.

Also, what are you using for remote support for windows machines that aren't able to do RDP by default? Have you looked into gotomypc from Citrix?

[ve4cib]

I'm not a huge fan of the white background with royal blue bars, personally. It looks like of... 1998ish. But it's functional, and well-laid-out, so that's good. Colours are a minor nitpick anyway.

I would make the banner image a link to your home page. If you look at the Ubuntu logo at the top-left if every forum page it's a link back to index.php. Your site would benefit from something similar.

Also, your statement of There is [...] no encryption we cannot break makes you sound either way over-confident, or like you're going to steal your customers' information from their HDs. In either case it's bad and should go. Besides, let's see you break RSA. Professionals have been working on that one for a while and nothing's been published, so I highly doubt your company can do it.

Finally, under operating systems you list "Linux". Some zealots will take issue with that and demand that it be listed as "GNU/Linux". Whether or not you choose to listen to them is up to you, but you have been warned. You might also want to say something like "Linux (Kernel 2.4 and later)" just for consistency's sake so that each OS has a version range.

[audiomick]

Hi.
The "service area" list doesn't render nicely for me. It looks like the text is centered; I think it would look less untidy if it were to the left.

I the "about us" section, there is some clumsy language:
either "does not meet a customers standard's" or "does not measure up to a customer's standards"

for the next sentence I would suggest "We aim to have your computer back in optimum condition in the shortest possible time." To say "we do our best" leaves open the possibility that you will not succeed. The suggested phrasing only leaves open the possibility that it might take a bit longer.

The next two sentences are definitive statements, and therefore open to argument. Think about formulations like "there are no better than" rather than "is the best".

under "Services"; the word "vary" doesn't need a capital V. The phrasing here suggests that the listed prices have nothing to do with what you actually charge. I would suggest having no text before the price list and the disclaimer at the end. For the disclaimer something along the lines of
"The quoted prices are estimates. Actual prices will vary according to the extent of the service provided."

I am reminded of something that I read once about fonts, although I can't remember where it was. It was to do with typesetting on posters, and said that there shouldn't be more than 3 fonts on one page, or maybe even only two. I think you have only used the one font, but it looks like more due to the different sizes and colours. The whole thing looks a little "busy". Maybe you need to spread it out a bit, and try to have some sort of symmetry in the size of the boxes, even if they are not completely full of text.

Good luck with the business.

[Sporkman]

Also:

May I suggest helpful site for general business advice (including about small business websites like yours):

http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum/

Members there have businesses across a wide spectrum, and are very friendly and knowledgeable.

[ramblinche81]

Congratulations on your ambitious efforts and good luck.

I think a few people have already pointed out the obvious typos or editorial errors.

I will offer slightly different and fully recognize these are opinions (shaped by years of retail and brand related work)

Since you and your site are NEW, think about first time viewers of your page. Their first question is...can this guy/company help me.......make it easy and obvious for first time visitors. I like the images by the way.

Are you walk in or do you provide in home service ?

What is your CORE strength, skill, value added service and what do people see when they open your page. 2/3 of the opening screen view references viruses. 1/3 contact info. Is that all you do is virus repairs ? Think about what is visible opening view before scrolling down.

About Us (merge with We Will Work On)
- rephrase "no time" to a time frame.....same day in most cases....or similar. Be honest and realistic. IF THIS IS A COMPETITIVE STRENGTH SHOUT IT OUT.
Sorry, I don't know how long no time is.

- what help or value added service do you provide that people need ?
- are you walk in or in home service ?....dont make go to five places to figure out if you can help me.....make it obvious for the first time visitor.People that already know you will know where to navigate to get info.

consider......We want to help you get the most out of your home or business Windows/Linux/Mac PC or network. We offer walk in and on site hardware installation and troubleshooting, virus removal, registry fixes and network related usually on a same day basis. Our talented and creative web designers can also help you etc.


Latest Feed
put the date after the news headline Conficker xxxxxx - Feb 08, 2010

reduce feed visible content at least 1/2 to make room for more feeds for hardware and user app related topics....you are trying to attract hardware and software users, ????

Use scroll over text boxes (same as Ubuntu forum thread headers) which give the first few lines of text for the link, then visitor can decide to open and read the whole thing or move on to next topic.

Virus Alerts
I didn't catch if anyone commented on the Virus Alert dated 2007 that scrolls past. Would you think a tech support shop was current if they had 2007 news posted front and center as an headline Alert ?

Services
take out the range and use "starting at $##"
I like the call for an estimate hook


Hours - tech support that is not available until noon needs rethinking how to meet customer needs start of day.

[Maheriano]

I'm self employed as a web developer doing some fairly high end sites so I'll give my criticism of your site. Don't take it too bad and let me know if I can help you even. But if it's any more than a few minutes it'll cost you.

It looks terrible, it really does. There's no filler colour, it looks like there's zero CSS and all of the font is the same across the entire page. Nothing is grouped and easy to read, after reading one section I don't know where to go to next. There's no flow to the site, you should be guiding the reader around the site. Also I managed to read a bit of the text, it's really not written well at all. It says a baby is able to hack into your system it's so easy.....well I don't know anything about that exploit so does that make me dumber than a baby? Sorry man, I don't mean to make you feel bad but it's just a raw deal of exactly how I felt when viewing it.

[hessiess]

You say on your website that you have 5+ years of web design experience, yet your website is absolutely packed with deprecated tags and tables used for layout, it does not validate ether http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fthepcwiz.info%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0.

While you may have 5+ years of experience, it is obvious that you are not familiar with current website development technologies.


no encryption we cannot break
Another clear indication that you do not know as much as you think you do, Modern block cyphers such as AES, when used with a strong password are, as far as is currently known, completely unbreakable. There are no exploits besides a brute force attack, which is scuppered by a strong password, assuming you don't have a few billion years to spare;)

[Maheriano]

Another clear indication that you do not know as much as you think you do, Modern block cyphers such as AES, when used with a strong password are, as far as is currently known, completely unbreakable. There are no exploits besides a brute force attack, which is scuppered by a strong password, assuming you don't have a few billion years to spare;)
Triple DES and elliptical algorithms haven't been broken yet neither. From what I've heard.

[Barrucadu]

I'm not good at ‘criticisms’, I am, however, good at listing things that stand out as wrong / odd:

I'd suggest having the RSS feed mentioned in a <link> tag in the header so browsers can find it and tell the user that there is a feed—without the user having to look around the page for it.

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<!-- ****it

…need I say more? :P

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Also, ew: <center> tags, tables for layout, invalid code, and randomly capitalised tag names.

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/* CSS generated at csscreator.com */
“I can't do CSS!” isn't a particularly good message for your site to shout out.

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Is that Times New Roman? Or is it just the default font for [enter your browser here]? I didn't notice any fonts specified when skim-reading the code, but I could easily have missed them.

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“In just an hour or two, you could have a website layout to your liking.” — you can work that fast to learn everything a client wants and create a design that satisfies them utterly, incorporating all of their feedback? I am impressed.

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And I think the navigation bar looks a bit rubbish.

[Tristan Tonks]

- the bulleted list of locations under "Service Area / Metro Detroit Area" are all misaligned,
- In "Prices may Vary, prices listed are only rough estimates...", "Vary" should not be capitalized,
- "Experienced" is misspelled in the title,
- Not sure about having an ad placement on your business website - that will only invite potential customers to leave to a different site. You want people to stay on your site.

I agree with the comment about the ads, Maybe you could reconfigure them to be less intrusive?
Also I would recommend ditching your 'explanation' of pricing and replacing estimate with "guide-prices". If you are selling stuff of the shelf then your pricing needs to be compliant with 'trading standards' but every-one with any brains knows that costs vary.
Other wise I like it.
When designing websites it is good to remember that they need to be able to evolve organically without loosing their branding, Maybe as a second point, your branding could be more defined so that as the site changes your re-visitors will recognize the site.

Hope all goes well.