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A little help please

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    A little help please

    Please look at this if you have the time and give a critique. It has nothing to do with alpha software except the not completed windows database is about complete using alpha.

    http://www.allfaithsites.com

    It is just open temporarily for your viewing. So far 163 people have already found it at random.

    Tnank you in advance.
    Dave Mason
    [email protected]
    Skype is dave.mason46

    #2
    Re: A little help please

    Hi Dave,

    One small critique, the centre panel with the images of different heights changes it makes the all the text below move. I suggest this is kept to one size.

    Apart from the mixture of fonts and all the capitalisation, looks a very interesting site, hope you do well with it.

    Please have a look at this and let me have your critique.
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    Comment


      #3
      Re: A little help please

      Dave:

      These are just opinions - In the final analysis, only you can determine what is and is not right for your site.

      Here are my thoughts:

      1) I'd make the logo larger - much larger. It seems lost in the corner, and IMHO would be better to the left of "All Faith Website And Software".

      2) I'd make the phone number and email address a much larger font (Verdana preferred), and move the phone and email address to the right side.

      3) Too many CAPITALS. Too many exclamation marks. Too many variations of blue font colors. The trend is softer, lighter colors these days.

      4) The word 'Get' at the front of the first few lines is, well, overused. Try beginning with words like "Easily", "Quickly", "Inexpensively", and the like. The website should be selling the software. 'You' and 'We' are over-used on the 'What You Get' page. Try separating all that into two groups - What you can do, and what we will do for you.

      5) Me? I'd have the area in the middle of the home page in a table with checkmarks in the first column, and the features in the second column. I'd left align the features column. My eyes were forced to look all over the page at the features.

      6) Can you smooth out the transitions between the images that fade in and out? It looks a little more like a GIF file, than java or Flash...

      7) The name and email boxes are way too small.

      8) Larger fonts would be easier to read. Think about dark gray rather than black fonts.

      9) The pricing boxes don't really tell you what you are, or are not getting. I'd figure out a way to map that back to the 'What You Get' page using something like checkmarks for what is in each package. Give each package a distinct name. I'm guessing, since you have an add to cart button, you are hoping to get sales without a phone conversation, first.

      10) The prices in those boxes are all over the place, and the 'Cents' are in different size fonts. And the prices all end in different numbers. I'd just use .99 .79, .49, or .29 for everything. I think most people expect those. I've never seen a price that ends in .17 or .96 before. Place the price in the same location in each box.

      11) "GET MOST OF WHAT OTHERS HAVE AT EXTRA COST AS STANDARD!" - Depending on how you read this, the user may walk away with the feeling he only gets most of what other similar software has at an extra cost if he buys yours. I think a lot of your points on the first page are missing commas, so they read without the pause a comma adds. I think what you mean is, "Our software has most of the features you would expect, and many additional ones included at no extra cost." By using something like this, you are avoiding refering to 'Others'... You never want them thinking about looking at your competition, and drifting from your site.

      12) "YOU WILL GIVE US ALL THE INFORMATION WE ASK FOR ABOUT YOUR CHURCH AND USERS ALLOWED TO DO THINGS FOR YOU FROM YOUR CHURCH.".

      Sounds a little creepy, if not demanding, as I read it.

      I'd soften a lot of these statements. Try things like "Simply supply us with the some general information like user names and passwords, and we will quickly set up your user profiles. One of our friendly technicians will assist you in determining what information is needed."

      Well, I hope I didn't just make an enemy... I mean well...
      Last edited by CraigSchumacker; 06-12-2015, 07:41 AM.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: A little help please

        On the positives, The top banner overall looks very good, as does the column on the right side of the home page.

        The contact us, blog, list your church, and other pages look good. (Just revise some gramatical issues you were probably going to get to, anyway...)

        Also, you have enough content there that you should get listed fairly visibly in the search engines.

        At any rate, the best of luck.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: A little help please

          @ Craig - Thanks and will be working on some of this
          @ Kieth - Thanks - your site looks pretty good except the content is left side and header is centered. Looks like they don't belong together at all. Speed is a bit slow like a windows server would be. If you get the alignment worked out, I would like to see it again.
          Dave Mason
          [email protected]
          Skype is dave.mason46

          Comment


            #6
            Re: A little help please

            A little study at a professionally built site would go a long way toward improving your own - see Realm

            If I were looking for someone to build a site for my church, I would probably call them first...and their pricing is reasonable. They were 2nd in the search list for "Church website software".

            Be sure to check out the videos on how to use the software under Resources - very informative.
            Last edited by MoGrace; 06-12-2015, 02:08 PM.
            Robin

            Discernment is not needed in things that differ, but in those things that appear to be the same. - Miles Sanford

            Comment


              #7
              Re: A little help please

              Dave:

              I'll ask you to rip through some of my stuff at one point. Revenge can be oh-so-sweet!

              I suspect you can do well with your software.

              The hard part for me is I am no good with sales. By my measure, I make OK software, and I make it pretty with graphics, but I stink at selling.

              I suspect graphics and sales are a good programmer's greatest challenge.

              I hope the same is not so with you, but in any case, the better the site is at selling your product, the less selling you need to do.

              Again, I hope you do very well.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: A little help please

                Robin,

                I have done many google(and other) searches in wich the one you mentioned never came up at all. Searches can cover so many wordings.
                Their alexa ranking is average.
                I just did your search on google and it did not come up on the top page here, Maybe their budget ran out.
                Their pricing starts about where mine is maxed out.


                .
                Last edited by DaveM; 06-12-2015, 02:53 PM.
                Dave Mason
                [email protected]
                Skype is dave.mason46

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: A little help please

                  Robin makes good points, but....

                  I, personally, don't like the Realm site. Yes, it looks good, but no information about the product. I walked away feeling there wasn't much to the software.

                  I did not find it in Google, either. They don't look optimized to show up in the organic results at all...

                  Now, no one has time to read these days, so too much content can be overwhelming. But if it's laid out well, and has easy to digest sales points without having to read too much, I think Dave can do well.

                  I think bullet points in a large easy-to-read font are a big plus toward a quick sale.

                  Here's my list from our forthcoming website that lists features for a restaurant inventory and labor system we are working on. Eventually, a new column will have a link a screen shot that correspond to each feature.

                  Now, no one will actually read all this, but they will eyeball it, and will probably feel the software is feature packed. The name of the software in this list is Acmesoft, and is fictional. I will take this down in a day, or so. I'm just using it to illustrate point # 5 in my first post.

                  In the end, users today want easy to learn, easy to use software with the features they need.
                  Last edited by CraigSchumacker; 06-12-2015, 05:51 PM.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: A little help please

                    I agree Craig
                    I did not like the realm site either.
                    Having been a master salesman and trainer, it is known that people have to see something about 3 times for it to stick. even if they don't read it, it is retained in their subconsiousness
                    Dave Mason
                    [email protected]
                    Skype is dave.mason46

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: A little help please

                      I take it neither one of you went to the resource page to check out some of the videos? They give you live screen shots that show how the software can be modified to display what you want to see. I thought that was a nice feature. But what do I know? I have been in sales too, and I find the best approach is one of information. The professional design of the site itself at least gives the idea they know something about what they can do. This is a visual world and the eye will catch every thing that is out of sorts like mismatched fonts, using all caps, misspellings and info that doesn't match elsewhere...and since you are selling CHURCH software for whatever denomination; peace ought to be the goal not pizazz.

                      IMHO
                      Last edited by MoGrace; 06-12-2015, 03:47 PM.
                      Robin

                      Discernment is not needed in things that differ, but in those things that appear to be the same. - Miles Sanford

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: A little help please

                        Robin:

                        Nope, never made it there. They lost me long before that.

                        I want you to know I greatly respect your thoughts and opinion. You are a talented person.

                        For me, a 50 year old, I look for bullet points, or FAQ's to determine specs. I already know what I need, and just want to see a quick statement it is there.

                        But that's me...

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: A little help please

                          Agreed, Dave's got some work to do on the website, if he so chooses. He writes his messages on the board quite well, so I think he may have rushed things a bit asking us for our thoughts.

                          I think it's safe to say we are all rooting for him. It's a tough market with a lot of competition out there.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: A little help please

                            Craig,
                            The difference is in who your intended market is. You are a computer savvy person; and I would guess that most people in a ministry setting know lots about that subject and very little about what goes into designing website software. They do however know what they see from other ministries who have gone online. That particular site I referenced, seems to know a lot about who their target market is and what ministry entails and so they approach their audience with some knowledge of what their customers expectations are and what they hope to achieve. Dave asked us for a critique, so I imagined myself as a potential customer and my first thoughts were that he needs to give more attention to both those areas.
                            Robin

                            Discernment is not needed in things that differ, but in those things that appear to be the same. - Miles Sanford

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: A little help please

                              Dave:

                              Robin makes good points, one of which is that your logo should appear at the bottom of every page with a link to your finished site. You will likely get extra traffic that way.

                              Comment

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