| Overall: | 15 | 2 |
| Design: | 8 | 1 |
| Navigation: | ||
| Usefulness: | 5 | 1 |
15
2
Codepal provides coding services for design agencies. We use the latest technologies to convert your designs into truly enriching digital experiences.
Outsourcing the slicing of your designs is cost-effective, time-effective and provides you with ample time to get on with your work leaving behind the tension of converting your designs into web standards compliant websites.
I am not much of a graphics designer so this is the best I could do by learning tutorials and stuffs.
The feedbacks I want are:
1> Is the site visually appealing?
2> Does it convey the message of what the site does?
3> Is it convincing enough for a prospective client to order for our services?
4> How should I go about marketing the site? I also have a blog in the site which would be regarding all about web development and stuff.
I would really appreciate any kind of suggestion for improvements or anything else.
Thank you
~Sumeet Chawla
Your site looks nice. Nothing wrong with your basic theme. I don't like the frequency your main graphic rotates. You don't give it enough time to read. If the words are not important, maybe they should be either blurred or removed.
It seems all the information that explains who you are and what you do is below the fold.
After poking around for a few minutes, I started getting a blank page that said "Error establishing a database connection". It would be best to trap this error so you can display something even if the database is down.
I noticed you are putting your google analytics java script code in your robots.txt file. Probably automatically. You should not do this.
Your projects tab is empty. Either give it some information or temporarily disable it.
In your footer, the rollover graphics are cool, but what is the point in linking to yahoo and wordpress?
Since this is a "new" site, I would not scratch out "bachelor" for "masters" in the bio. That would make more since if your site had been up for a couple of years and you are changing your bio.
Good luck.
Thanks for your feedback Steven.
I have decreased the frequency with which the portfolio changes the graphics.
Like you and Brian said, the main paragraph which communicates the purpose of the site goes below the fold in low resolutions.Can you provide any suggestion on how to let the user know what I do?
I will work on that error catching thing to display a custom error message.
I think the google analytics code is automatically appended in the robots.txt file by the google analytics plugin for wordpress. How would it effect my site?
I have disabled my project tab for the moment. Was about to put content in it but got busy with some work.
Thank you for appreciating the roll over graphics in the footer :) I forgot to change the link to the yahoo one and have corrected it now. I have given the wordpress one just to give a support back link to the wordpress site.
Bio corrected also.. Thanks a ton :)
I do not use WordPress, so I can't say for sure, but I would expect you should be able to configure your plugin as to which type of files you want to inject your javascript analytic code into. If you have not already done so, set up a google webmastertools account. They have a tool to validate your robots.txt file and will tell you how google will treat these lines.
I send the link to a designer, a friend of mine, he's a good designer but has none for the code.
Good for such people.
But the design and layout of the page itself is somewhat confusing, the eye must be too busy till you see what you get here.
Good content, good design.
Pricing could be made clearer. I would look for a pricing page before clicking on order now.
It is convincing enough. You can advertise on designer blogs. Thats usually how I find these kind of sites.
Interesting. You really thought the pricing was elusive? I thought it was pretty well presented on the landing page (see the screenshot).
My experience from other similar services is that they have a pricing page detailing how many days turn around. How much extra for wordpress integration etc. $100 is kinda vague and hard to compare.
1. Yes it looks fine.
2. It does convey the message but it doesn't sell it very well.
3. Probably some but I think it could be better
4. Build up relationships with designers
Thanks for the feedback. One way I have thought of building relationship with designers is that I am planning to code the free PSD's which the hard working designers have created for the web community. I will also be providing these xHTML/CSS version of these templates to the web community for free too. This way, I can give back to the community as well as get to know the designers by contacting them and showcasing my work. Is it a good idea?
1) Yes, I like the design and layout for the homepage and other pages.
2) Again, yes, the message is clear and straightforward. I both code and do web design and can appreciate your layout elements and the overall style. Your site would definitely be categorized as Web 2.0 as far as style goes...
3) Your landing page does a fairly good job of explaining the service although you could use a large and prominent call to action. Currently you might lose people because they don't have a quick and easy way to contact or sign up. The "order now" button needs to be styled differently because even when I was looking for it, it took me a while to locate it.
4) SEO, SEO, SEO... Dig up those links and get the search engines to recognize you. Write content that people want to read. Keep plugged in to all the social means of transferring information. You could even go out to site like scriptlance.com and attempt to get some jobs there so as to build a name and reputation for yourself. The bottom line is, get yourself plugged into the community and offer a useful service.
Thanks Micheal for the back up. I will try to improve the landing page to pass the message in a much better way and also try to stress more on the contact options.
I socialize in all the possible networking mediums out there.. Till now I haven't been promoting my site cause I didn't have a good one but will have to do it now :)
As for places like scriptlance.com and getafreelancer.com, I have accounts there since I started out my career as a freelance developer. But my experience was real bad. People don't generally accept bids or may be I was unlucky. :| I mean there are like 100 people bidding on the same project. Even though I believe I can do a better job on the project but still its like a lucky draw system where if I am lucky, I might get the project. Well, its my opinion and I don't mean to say that these places are not good enough for getting clients :P But that was my experience :|
1) Yes, I find the site visually appealing.
2) I think it does, however, it took me a min and I think what helped me understand it is the "Hi, we convert your..." paragraph. I would consider moving this up to the top somewhere so it's the first thing a user sees.
3) I can't answer that as I'm not your target audience
4) That's a difficult question. Make sure you are searchable in Google. You could ask previous clients to refer you. Not sure much more here...
1) I really like the light purple background color and images you chose on your landing page. Very appealing. I also like the layout of your footer.
2) For me the message of the site is very clear. I am not sure if it would be for my non technical friends. Maybe a section for "Why do I need you" where you explain in more details what part of their website development cycle you are playing.
3) I would spice up the Business Template, this might be the majority of your requests and it could look much better and more appealing. Also the Vector Tracing HTML Mail image looks blurry and is not the most appealing image again. I would change it.
4) I would focus on SEO for your site. Most people who need their design -> code know what they are looking for and will just search on google for design to html or something similar and choose based on portfolio and price.
Well I won't have too much to say on this since it's just a WordPress site.
1) Yes, the iste is very visually appealing. I like the color choices and the logo looks very nice. I noticed that the contact page's tab was labeled "Get in Touch". I would stick to what people know (e.g. Contact Us or Contact) instead. I also noticed that your Projects page was empty. You'll want to correct that quickly or remove it because it looks incomplete. I also noticed that your logo doesn't link back to your home page, it should.
2) I think the site did a good job of letting me know what it was about. My concern is your value proposition ("Hi, we convert your beautiful designs...") is probably going to be below the fold on a lot of resolutions and without that it's not very obvious what you do.
3) I'm not in your target market so I can't really answer this very well but I saw nothing that would have turned me away immediately.
4) The blog is a good idea. Create valuable content that gets you links. Other than that there's always AdWords marketing but you're probably going to run into heavy/pricey keyword competition in that space.
Thank you Brian.
1> I will change the "Get In Touch" tab to "Contact Us" tab. But my logo links back to the homepage only, how come it didn't work at your place?
2> Yes, it does go a bit below the fold sometimes. Any suggestions on how to let the users know what I do other than the "Hi, we convert.." message?
3> Thanks :)
4> How do I promote my blog as in what all places to submit my site and stuff? I have seen people doing that a lot but am not much experienced in it :P
Actually it looks like the logo link is working. It seems to not appear active just while the page is loading but then it works.
As for where to submit your site, obviously submit it to Google and Bing. Make sure you have a sitemap and submit that as well. After that it's really mostly just getting quality content written up that other important sites might link to.