I’ve had another great volunteer for my site review series. These are featured in my e-newsletters. (To subscribe see below.)
Dani Helimen, with Red Canary Creative, offered up their site to be poked and prodded by us. Red Canary Creative is a web design and development company. As seen from their design portfolio, they have done some great work in various industries. If you are not familiar with them, I recommend taking a look at their work. They impress me often.
Of course, is this the case of “The Cobbler’s Children Have No Shoes?” Often times internet developers and designers are busy making their clients shine, they forget about their own site.
I will get the conversation started with 4 things I found on an initial look.
- Title Tags – This is where I usually start with all SEO Site Reviews. If the title tags are not optimized, then all the “advanced” SEO tactics are not going to help. This site uses the same title tag for most, if not all, pages.
However, the correct title tag is being picked-up by Google.
That’s even more concerning, because it seems like the site is presenting some data to search engines and other data to users. Whether intentional or not, that’s a characteristics of “black hat” SEO techniques.
- Internal Linking (Contextual Linking) – Linking your content within the site helps Google find your pages quicker. Along with the navigation links to the content, also add links within the content itself.
Contextual linking especially is strong. Google not only looks at the links, but it associates the content around the link to determine relevant keywords. For example, the “Why Fly With Us?” page, can be a great place to link to services and portfolio.
Internal linking is one of the reasons blogs do so well in search engines. They are often chock-full of contextual links.
- Local Directories – Google has recently placed an extra focus on local. They often pull reviews and data from local directory sites. The more links and content you can get on these sites, the better. This site was not found in any of the directory sites below.
- Yelp
- YellowPage.com
- InsiderPages.com
- Dir.Yahoo.com, Local.Yahoo.com
- URL canonicalization (confusion) – In essence, canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL for your site and using it consistently. In the case of Red Canary Creative, Google sees the main page as www.redcanarycreative.com. However, all references on the site link to http://www.redcanarycreative.com/index.php as the main page.
This could pose a problem, because Google may see this as two different pages. Thus, spitting apart the link value going to that page. www Vs non-www can also be confusing by the search engines. It’s important to maintain consistent reference across the site. It’s also recommended to use Google Webmaster Tools to identify a preferred domain.
Okay, your turn. Let Red Canary Creative know what you think of their site. Honesty is good. However, don’t be afraid to leave complements too. If you like something let them know in the comments below. If you don’t like something, let them have it.
Also, if you are looking for design and development, give them a call.
Tags: landing pages, Nashville, red canary creative, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, site review« « Product Ads – PPC Video of the Week | The Key Alliance » »
November 30th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Just a few comments (aside from SEO, which John covered in great detail):
1) Love the site design; An obvious plus for a any serious web design/development company looking for business! It’s very clean and the navigation makes sense, and the content quickly answers the “Who? What? Why? and How?” questions visitors have when they first encounter a new site.
2) Most of the main category pages begin with a statement. Except services… Instead of “What can we do for you?”, wouldn’t it be stronger to say “What we can do for you.” ? Just a thought.
3) Also on the services page, and maybe elsewhere (not sure), I noticed some special characters translating into symbols in the body text.
Example: “Real? Tangible? PAPER? Oooh…we just got goosebumps.”
I’m using Google Chrome v7.0.517.44 on a MacBook Pro… As a designer myself, I know it’s aggravating, but exhaustive testing across browsers/platforms will of course add to your street cred when hyping your services.
Just my 3 cents.
November 30th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
First, great points on the SEO, John. It’s cool that you do this for people.
Here are my thoughts on the design and the SEO:
Design Thoughts:
1. I love the overall design. Any suggestions are just that and are certainly free to be ignored.
2. One of the first things I looked for was an “About” page. It took me a second to realize that it was called “Canaries.” It’s extremely cute and I didn’t mind it one bit once I figured it out. What could help the visitor is to have text that contrasts with the background for the description below it.
3. I’d love to see your portfolio and your services broken down into multiple pages so I don’t have to digest too much information and scroll a lot. It will also help with SEO since you can get more niche content, urls, internal linking, etc.
SEO:
I’m not sure I’m a fan of “Blog Tweeting” as a link title. Not intuitive enough.
1. John mentioned it with the home page and that’s the “index.php” issue. It turns out that all of your pages use that structure and the “Canaries” page is http://www.redcanarycreative.com/canaries/canaries.php while the “why” page is http://www.redcanarycreative.com/canaries/whyrcc.php. These aren’t the most user-friendly or search engine friendly URLs.
2. You’d probably do well to have sitemap for both SEO and usability.
3. It would appear you have a blog (at least you link to an RSS feed) but I see no way to actually visit the blog portion of the site…scratch that…figured it out.
Okay. Those are my thoughts. All-in-all, I really love the theme, the design, and the “Red Canary” idea. It’s a great looking website and I applaud you for taking the big risk of being open like this. It’s not easy.
Cheers,
Travis
November 30th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Great stuff ladies and gents.
I’d add:
* More compelling/engaging headlines on each page (your primary h1). Granted, the on-page implications as far as rankings are minute, but it goes without saying that the headline is your best chance to grab reader and keep them reading past line 1. Use this real estate to your advantage.
* Consider adding “why fly with us” to the services page.I see no need to have them separate unless you’re trying to optimize for SEO value, but the messaging on the “why” page is obviously pushing for conversion by conveying value of working with your team. SEO value would be minimal considering content. I’m more concerned with user here.
* Same for “how we hatched” to team page. Your back story and narrative are a logical fit there.
* Consider adding specific services offered under each heading. For example, what type of web dev and design do you specialize in? I’d reckon that your customers are actively vetting your expertise against their specific business needs. Do they align? Are you making this clear?
* Would like to see deeper case studies developed for your portfolio. Good start, just like to see ya dig down a bit more.
* Testimonials. I know you have some client love ready to unleash. Rock it out.
SEO optimization is obviously important, but remember that no amount of SEO juice will keep prospects/users on your site if you’re not providing a compelling reason to do so.
I think you have a solid foundation in identifiable brand, a clean site design and a consistent voice. What’s next?
November 30th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Wow, what a great idea! John, this is truly some amazing insight and I love how you use a real site as an example.
I have always been a fan of Red Canary, not only their site but their work. Self-reflection is hard as a business owner, but with friends in the industry who are willing to help you and guide you, the process is much easier.
We are really lucky to have this kind of talent in Nashville. I hope we can all work together at some point!
November 30th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Thank you for all the great comments and suggestions! I am one of the co-founders of Red Canary, and with the redesign/development in process this really helps. I would love to have a re-evaluation of the site after we have it redesigned/developed and implement the suggestions all of you have given us. I would recommend this service to any company.
Thanks a million,
Alisa Meche
Red Canary Creative
http://www.redcanarycreative.com
November 30th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
first of all…thanks so much to everyone for their respective feedback.
@Ashley
2) that’s a great point. More of an affirmation than a question. I like it =)
3) eek! i’ve noticed those before and thought i had ‘em all fixed. I’ll definitely do another once over to fix those mistakes.
@Travis
Design
2) we were trying to be clever in our titles, but now i understand how that can be confusing to a user. we’ll revisit the naming conventions and up the contrast on the descriptions underneath.
3) that’s a great suggestion! especially since we have expanded our offerings, breaking them down sounds like a good idea.
SEO
3) again, our naming conventions are confusing. I’m glad you pointed this out!
@Brett
1) gotcha
2) we wanted it to be separate as to what we do vs how we do it. but i think we fail a bit about making that clear. we were thinking about putting more of a list of services (short and sweet) then having a “why” page with a strong call to action. but perhaps combining the two is a better idea. good input.
6) our testimonials are severely lacking. it was an afterthought. we’ll be beefing it up for the next go round.
November 30th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Good suggestions. Agree with Travis – customers look for “About.” We’ve been trained for more than a decade to do so. Better to follow consumer behavior (old UI adage: “if the user can find it, the function’s not there”). The site looks better than most on a mobile browser, but still have to re-size and pull the page around to see elements… Can you design a mobile version of the site (automatically redirected when a mobile browser tries to access) that looks/acts more like a mobile app? Maybe not important now, but keep an eye on your analytics to see when mobile browser access numbers start growing. Good luck!
November 30th, 2010 at 11:56 pm
This is excellent – both the post AND the comments. I applaud everyone for taking the time to give thoughtful feedback. This is SO valuable…I might have to nominate myself for a site review! I actually thought about doing something like this on my blog as well – I might have to steal (with credit) this idea!
Overall, I like the site. The color scheme is great and I love the bird illustrations. The site looks high quality and your font choices are nice. I think your site is clever, but not overly cutesy. Though, I agree some of the suggestions above could make it a bit stronger in the navigation. Instead of being cute in the navigation, opt for that in the body copy so you don’t lose that element.
I think the “how we hatched” info is what someone would expect on the “about” page. The canaries page is bios, which is good, but I think you want to see information about the overall company first.
On the homepage, I wish I was able to visit the website of the examples you provide. Seeing a screen shot is nice, but I wish there was a way to easily view the live site. You have that on your portfolio page, but not the homepage.
The blog appears to be a separate page or site altogether. I would weave the blog into the site and include it with the rest of the website’s navigation. And, I’m sure John would agree that it would also boost your SEO if you posted more often. I also agree with Travis that “blog tweeting” isn’t the best name for that link.
I also would recommend moving your social icons up a bit. It depends on how prominent you want that to be, but often times they are higher.
Overall, I think you have a nice looking site. I think making some of these tweaks will really knock it out of the park!
December 1st, 2010 at 8:44 am
I think everyone else has most of the main SEO points covered, so I’m going to take a step and ask: how important is search to your marketing efforts?
Obviously it has to be at least somewhat important since you jumped on this opportunity, but I noticed two things: 1) your content focuses on personality rather than keywords and 2) going by the meta tags (yes I know search engines don’t look at these, but I like them to see how a company thinks of itself), I’m wondering how much keyword research you did?
My guess going by these two factors is that word of mouth brings most of your business. But if you are looking for better generic search results like “nashville web design company,” which doesn’t turn your site up at all in 10 pages, looking for less competitive “long tail” keywords might be beneficial. Then, pair those with internal linking if you can find a way to do so organically.
Overall I do like the strong, confident but fun voice your content has, and I love the design, including the creative page names… I myself struggle with balancing the “average” user’s need for clearly named pages like “About,” and wanting to stand out from the crowd!
December 1st, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Great stuff here – wow! Some talented folks in this town…
I love the site overall. Great branding throughout and a nice visual feel. I envy the visual polish! I think the copywriting is well done, and carries the branding elements through without getting too campy. Personally, I really don’t mind the navigation labels, considering that you’ve got some qualifying microcopy underneath to explain them. I don’t think it’s a huge hazard, from a usability standpoint.
With that said, here are a few thoughts of things I noticed that you could take a look at (all pretty minor, really):
- Put a hover state on your main nav items to give the user more confirmation on hover. You do this in the utility nav to the side, well done. Also, look at keeping the nav item highlighted for the page you’re on, to give users a clear signpost orienting them as to where in the site they’re at.
- To that end, I might add some breadcrumbs as well.
- I’m going to take a different stab at the page headers than Brett did. Brett makes a great point about engagement, and my argument is going to be that the page headers need to match the navigation labels to provide clear wayfinding and confirmation to users. Perhaps a compromise of sorts is in order: a page header to match the navigation with a pithy directly underneath to give some punch to the top of the page, per Brett’s recommendation. In this case, user’s aren’t using the the header as an intro piece to the page, they’re actually using it more as a wayfinding element to let them know what page they’re on.
- Small point I noticed: there’s a shift from third person to first person on the 3rd bio. Might make the voice more consistent there.
- Travis’s point about breaking the portfolio out into pages is good. If you don’t feel like going that far, a list of links at the top that jump to anchors for each section would be good. That would help provide more visibility to the items way down the page and encourage discovery a bit more (it also helps to reinforce what it is you do, in a nice compact list)
- Unless there’s a *super* compelling business need (and I can’t think of one that’s compelling enough…), I might shorten the contact form. Even though few fields are required, each additional field reduced conversion to some extent. Keep only the minimum amount that allows the *user* to complete their task (as they see the task in *their* head, not as you see their task), and use disciplined follow-up to get the rest of the information over time.
- Check the hover state on the contact form button. Make sure that on every hover, the mouse is changing from pointer to finger. Bonus points if the button changes color or state when hovered (don’t make it campy tho).
- Why the separated fieldsets? In the user’s mind, filling out the form is a singular task, and there’s not enough info being asked for to necessitate the use of separation to ease the task of filling out the form. This is something worth A/B testing – try separated and non-separated and see which has the higher conversion rate (my thought is that some users will see these as two separate forms, instead of separate sections of one form. This could be alleviated by adding “Step 1: Who are you?” and “Step 2: How can we help”, above each fieldset to give context to the split. If you added that, I think it might be fine. Worth testing to verify tho.)
Honestly, overall, it’s awesome. Very polished, consistent, and effective. Everything I’ve mentioned here is pretty minor stuff, and is just me being uber picky (since there aren’t any glaring issues to pick at
)
Hope this is helpful! Great job, and good on you for putting things up on the chopping block!
Justin
December 2nd, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Great stuff everyone. Thanks for contributing. Another site review coming next week, I hope you return then.
Also, if you missed out on the first one, be sure to check out http://www.johnwellis.com/2010/09/site-review-christa-m-miller/
-John