A Few Moments of Your Time

[port perran]

My "day job" is as a Driving Instructor/Trainer in Cornwall.
As such, I have completely revamped and remodelled my business websites. Although the old ones are still "up & running" for a months or so whilst these new ones achieve decent google listings.
I wonder if one or two of you would mind having a look at my sites and feel free to comment with suggestions , amendments or ideas for improvement.  They can be PM'd if you wish.
The websites are :
www.dtcornwall.co.uk
www.dtinstructors.co.uk

I would be very grateful if one or two of you can have a look.
Many Thanks in Advance

Martin

[Mustermark]

Hi Martin,

I like the nice simple design and the clearly visible phone numbers and links.  The content looks good and the information 'pane' is short and to the point.  Overall the layout of the links bar and the information pane are really good.

The odd thing for me is the relatively large 'inactive' space to the left of the links menu.  I think people instinctively expect the links to be at the far left.  The 'inactive' space with your picture of the wing mirror might be better as a banner at the top of the page so that the page layout is more instinctive; or possibly better on the right hand side so that this is what is cut off and lost from sight if being viewed in a narrow/small window.

Hope this helps,
Mark.

[scotsoft]

Both sites look very clear and easy to follow.

However the blank right hand side on both sites made me think something may not be loading in properly.  If you could add some pictures or graphics to fill the empty space, that would balance them out on the screen.

Only my thoughts of course and no doubt others opinions will differ 

cheers John.

[port perran]

Thanks Mark & John

We need a Luke and Matthew now !!

I take both of your points and will see what others thinks.
Thanks for taking the time to have a look.

Martin

[Mike W]

The sites are clean and easy to navigate, so well done, I don't have any comments in terms of content etc, the sites look professional and the same styles tie them together nicely.

Putting my professional hat on for a sec, though, I'm not a massive fan of 1 & 1 generated sites to be honest, I prefer Wordpress in terms of the code they generate. Here's a site I did for a mate, which uses Wordpress for the blog section:

http://www.alansschoolofmotoring.com/

[Country Joe]

Hi Martin,

I looked at both sites and tried a number of the links to different pages. Everything worked as it should and was easy to use. I have no helpful suggestions as I think they are fine as they are.

Joe

[Michael Fearn]

I would suggest doing 301 redirects from your old sites to the new ones. This helps with transferring ranking to the new sites, plus anyone that clicks on a link or bookmark/favourite to the old site will be redirected to the new one.

Some more info here
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

[d-a-n]

All the info is there but it is a bit lost on the front page. From a design perspective, you need to get it spaced across the page, so it flows with the way people naturally read.

Maybe de-clutter the front page, less text and have bigger pictures and push a lot of the text into the 'about drive time'.

There seems to be lots of repetition and similar sentences throughout, maybe keep it to the relevant areas off the menu.

The font looks like Times New Roman and Arial - change to one font type or have two contrasting fonts.

Maybe put the menu bar on the left, the picture currently on the left as a banner across the top of the page in landscape format and the text filled bit I'll describe further below.

In the 'about drive time' section, don't have a sub menu about you, integrate it with the about or make it a separate choice on the menu - I nearly missed it.

On the front page, focus on a mission statement and then the remaining text could be a few bullet points which sum up the text that was there eg: 'Professional, flexible one to one tuition' - 'Highly experienced and qualified' - 'Wide range of training opportunities' - 'Pay as you learn'. You could even make these into hyperlinks which will send people to the relevant area.

Can you get an email address which is linked to the website eg: martin@dtinstructors.co.uk - you can link this with your yahoo so that all that goes into the new address will land in the yahoo as well. Will be more memorable for customers.

If people like it, they'll look further into the site anyway.

I probably sound like a tyrant suggesting all these changes, I don't mean to be rude in anything I've said as you have more than enough info on the site to work from and you have the structure up and running and it is currently useable, I'm just a bit of a design person and like things to be just so!

[EtchedPixels]

Looks mostly good but the validation tools identify a typo (<p/> that should be </p>) which is probably a bug in the tool you used. Doesn't seem to cause any bad effects on layout fortunately for you.

Otherwise it looks fine visually and even looks good on a phone, except that on a desktop I see the text on the left doesn't wrap properly. I get

Drive Time Cornwall
Drivign Instructor Tra

Now the English on the other hand is another story and I'm amazed nobody else has pointed out all the spelling and capitalisation errors.

On the front page for example you start with what look like rather good capitalisation details on the title. However on the Why page it then says

"Becoming a Driving Instuctor"

Two things

1. No capitals on them
2. There is an 'r' in instructor

Definitely closely check your text (you have other bogus capitalisations too). There are studies that show pretty convincingly that even when they don't see them, typos on a site make people perceive it as less trustworthy.

The Legal Information address bit also looks very oddly formatted for some reason


(and for anyone who thinks capitalisation is not important, consider the following sentence: "I helped Uncle Jack off the horse". Believe me capitalisation matters  )

All that said it looks better than most small business sites I've seen!

[port perran]

Thanks for all your comments.
As for grammatical stuff and capitalisation, I will be going through both websites with a "fine toothed comb" to correct these as I agree with EP that these little things are important.

Again, many thanks for all your help/advice.