Feedback on Our Mainsite - Rip it to Pieces

[onlinemediadirect]

Hi Guys

We run a marketing company based in the Uk and rank well for internet marketing on google but conversions and bounce rates are quite high.

The site is one of those constantly in progress due to Time and budgets so we are well aware of the short comings.

I wanted to however get some other peoples opinions on why our site doesnt convert very well and is there anything you can suggest.

You never stop learning I have been in internet marketing for 10 years so willing to listen to any suggestions.

Thanks here is the site - http://www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk

[ShaMenz]

OK,

Here's 3 alternatives off the top of my head.

1. We are Online Media Direct, a UK based Internet Marketing company. We pride ourselves on being a specialist in online marketing.

2. We are specialists in online marketing. Our UK based Internet Marketing company is Online Media Direct.

3. Online Media Direct is not just another UK based internet Marketing company. We pride ourselves on our outstanding record as a specialist in online marketing.

Only guessing at the precise keys, but hope that helps,

Sha

[onlinemediadirect]

Ok Sha thats great !

Now the opening sentence I want to change that but also want to keep the keywords similar.

Would you be willing to give me a example of how you would change that opening line.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Garry,

Everybody else pretty much covered the other bits.

As to where I'm coming from - my background is in journalism and advertising. As such, I believe I have a fairly good understanding of how readers interact with text and what affects them both positively and negatively.

Some examples of errors:

"Our Qualified internet marketing experts are available to improve your company's fortune online using many different online based marketing techniques. We have proven results from years of work in Internet marketing and have a wide range of clients in many different industries."

"Our service is geared towards providing small to medium sized UK businesses an affordable solution to SEO."

"Contact us today to gain an insight as to how we would manage your company's SEO campaign."

"Plus more importantly help deliver your company a good return on investment."

There are quite a lot more and a lot of poorly constructed sentences that stop the flow of your message ...every roadblock like this that you put in front of the reader will reduce comprehension. If they don't understand the message they are unlikely to convert.

Hope that helps.

Sha

[onlinemediadirect]

Ok thanks Sha you look to be coming at this from a complete textual content point of view so its really interesting hearing those points. I will change that opening paragraph and contact Max about the text today.

In terms of "typographical" could you provide any examples ?

[ShaMenz]

Hi Garry,

Sorry to be late to the party, but just caught up with this post and took a look at your site.

Since you talked specifically about bounce rate and conversions, there are a few related issues that jump out at me, so thought I would drop them into the conversation.

• First, the very first sentence of text on your homepage is likely to disengage visitors. (BOUNCE!)
  If you read it carefully, you will see that it is a very impersonal third person statement which reads like a rather detached review. The very next sentence works to engage the reader more, by speaking in the first person and evangelizing your work. Unfortunately I fear that most people will have glazed over before they reach the end of the first sentence. Also, the second sentence has some problems of its own with redundancies like "a wide range of different". I would suggest a rewrite of the intro paragraph. Keep in mind that short, succinct sentences are better for engaging your audience. Also much better for comprehension.

• The majority of the black on white text in your site is in a bold or heavy face font. This is very poor for reading comprehension. Bold or heavy type is great for emphasizing or highlighting, but when used without a break, interferes with the reader's ability to process and understand what they are reading. This is unlikely to help with conversions. I would use a cleaner font and use some bold and italic emphasis to introduce a little light and shade to the content.

• Lastly, your text contains quite a lot of typographical and structural errors. Whilst there seems to be a developing trend toward ignoring this as an SEO issue, I will once again climb on my "word nerd soapbox".
  For some businesses, errors in text may seem trivial, but when you are in a business that is built upon the delivery of information - errors could be the difference between winning a customer and having them bounce before even reading your message.

  I wrote something on this in the first part of another Q&A thread recently. Errors are a conversion issue   I think perhaps it might be of help.

Hope that is of some use.

Sha

[onlinemediadirect]

Hi John

I just wanted to update you and say we have nearly completed most of the tasks. We are sticking with the compass and just have the redirect problem on the trailing slashes etc to complete.

http://www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk

I think you will agree it looks a lot better.

Do you think a picture of me on the introduction page would look good ?

[onlinemediadirect]

Ok so canonicals check

Faceless company check

404 redirect page check

professional achievements and how we have helped customers - check

[CuriousSeo]

Yeah something like that, if I read something about you on your homepage, or even an obvious link - 'Read more about us and how we help our clients' or something, I'd click to take a look.  It can't hurt conversions and it can't hurt the initial bounce rate either if you're getting people to click through and spend the time to read it.

Good luck and I hope my earlier comment about meta's didn't come across too harshly.

[onlinemediadirect]

Ok thats a good point I do have a small authors section but it isn't visible from the homepage that's a good point thanks.

http://blog.onlinemediadirect.co.uk/garry-pickles-managing-director/

I need to add more information here about my professional achievements.

[onlinemediadirect]

sure of course I know that but its always worth getting second opinions on things and situations. On the other had I could take a more arrogant approach and think I know it all but that may well result in errors or mistakes. I always like to gauge others opinions.

[CuriousSeo]

Personally when looking at your page you just look like a faceless company.  My first impression is that you're probably going to take a monthly retainer and that's it.

You've got that small video - but I don't know who you are!  What's your experience?  What's your name?  Who have you worked with in the past ten years and how have you helped them?  Increased traffic, conversions what?

Have you tried having your contact forms higher up the page - to see if more people fill them out?

[CuriousSeo]

Not looking to be overly negative here - but shouldn't you know the result of changing a meta description tag if you're offering SEO services?

[onlinemediadirect]

The reduction in the meta description is something I am not sure about changing as I dont want to rock the apple cart as we have some really good listings.

Do you feel it wouldnt have a negative effect Daniel.

[DanSpeicher]

I agree with everything John said, especially the text.

And your meta description is too long:

"Internet marketing specialists online media direct are experts on all internet marketing services. We specialise in providing marketing to companies who ..."

[onlinemediadirect]

thanks John thats exactly the sort of thing I am looking to hear.

Next Please

[john4math]

A few things I noticed... on my way out of the office so this is all I got:

• Some canonicalization issues.  Both /search-engine-optimisation/best-seo-tools/ (trailing slash) and /search-engine-optimisation/best-seo-tools (no trailing slash) serve pages.  It looks like you go with trailing slashes, so the version without should 301 redirect to the version with.  Also with your home page, you use http://www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk/, but http://www.onlinemediadirect.co.uk/index.php also returns your home page.
• Your 404 page is kind of unfriendly.  It's better when you return your 404 page within the shell of your site, so it's easy to get back to where you meant to go.

Non-SEO stuff:

• The compass on your home page looks like Apple's Safari compass to me (http://www.apple.com/safari/).  That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the home page.
• I don't care for the dark text, and the animation/delay on the highlight of your dropdown menus.  The text is a bit hard for me to read, and the delay feels strange.