How would you recommend my website?

Dynamike · #1 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 12:14 PM

My website is only 99% done. I still see touch ups that needs to take place. What are your suggestions?
http://detroitmichiganmagician.com/

missme · #2 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 12:38 PM

I love the site. I can't find anything that I don't like about the site. It loads fast and its colorful and fun. Great site!

safe sites · #3 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 04:46 PM

The site looks great nice layout easy to look at.

I did find a problem which may just be down to firefox but I couldn't use my mouse wheel to scroll down like on other websites this may cause some people to leave your site.
I did almost leave myself when it did that by closing firefox down thinking it had locked up on me.

Also I did a Meta Tag Analysis on your page...

meta tag length value
Title: 34 Dynamike Detroit Michigan Magician
Description: 119 DynaMike Magic Show Party Magic In Detroit Family Entertainment Strolling Magic Kid Parties Christmas Stage Performance
Keywords: 251 Dynamike, Detroit Michigan magician, magician in Detroit, Magicians in Michigan, comedy magic, kid parties, children birthday parties, Christmas party, entertainment, Halloween, Illusionist, magic show, Wayne county, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw, Easter
Author: 10 Dyna Mike

Meta tags analysis.
Title: Title relevancy to page content is terrible.
The Title relevancy to page content is 0%.
Description: Description relevancy to page content is terrible.
The Description relevancy to page content is 6%.
Keywords: Keyword relevancy to page content is terrible. However, this is not necessarily bad if you have a lot of content. The most important factor is to have your keywords on the page a few times.
The keywords relevancy to page content is 0%.
Robots: Found no robots meta tag.
This tag is not really required but helps spiders to index the web page.

I used SenSEO Firefox Extension to do the meta tags analysis I hope you didn't mind but I wanted to help out.
I know you said that the site is only 99% finished so I'm guessing that you are looking into that side of things.

Overall though I thought the site was really well designed and I liked it.

Dee · #4 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 05:24 PM

It is a nicely designed site. I happen to like magic - got a friend who's a magician - and he has a site, not nearly as nice, but I love'm anyway. LOL I liked the stars around the hat. The navigation was easy. Can your videos be enlarged? I didn't check.

James · #5 (**permalink**) 10-08-2009, 08:59 PM

Up until now I have generally thought to myself that I would never use flash, just rely on some good css stuff and a little javascript maybe. But I have to say, you have really used flash in a way that is interesting. It adds a lot to the site but is not obtrusive in any way. Great work.

While "safe sites" makes some good points, I would be a little softer in my interpretation of your header outputs. I wouldn't say they have no value, but the points are basically well taken, anyway.

Remember, the title is not only what appears at the top of your browser, it is a key SEO factor and is usually what people see as title of the search engine output. For that reason it is useful to plan carefully what you name your page.

"34 Dynamike Detroit Michigan Magician" is not meaningless, but who would know what the 34 is about and the grammatical structure is weak. It identifies you but little more. How about "Dynamike, the Master Magician, Motor City’s Top Children’s Magician."

The description, likewise, begins with a meaningless number and reads more like a list of key words than a description. Again, this description's primary purpose is its use in search engines where it is printed out after the title for people to learn what your site is about. It needs to read like a sentence and also be written to sell people on checking out your site.

On your services page I would not have the Paypal buy button (unless it is really working and I am wrong on this). I think your brief introductions are not enough to sell a package. I would replace the Paypal button with a "Reservation Information" button. Then I would have a more detailed reservation explanation with answers to questions like how much for each package, how far you will travel and any charges for certain distances, how to schedule and confirm dates, guaranteed refund if you cannot appear on date reserved by paying PayPal now and a recommendation for doing so to reserve a date. You would also need to have a calendar with open dates. Then, perhaps, have a "Paypal Confirm" reservation button.

Dynamike · #6 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 02:23 AM

Safe Sites, I am glad you did what you did. I joined this website forum for support. Thank you very much for finding me a rating. Now I know more about what needs improvement.

James, my only problem is flash will bring down the SEO. I am looking for some one who can either make it HTML with partial flash, or someone who can change it to CSS. I love the look of the flash, but business is before pleasure.

There is a magician forum and we discussed having an open calendar. We think it is not as good to have one for several reasons. One reason is because a lot of open dates might be showing. The magician will not look so professional to the prospect. When I get calls to perform a show, they tell me the date. I might be open all that day. But I still ask them what time to make myself look more professional. there are other reasons too regarding not to show the calendar. One reason not to show the prices is because we rather have the customer call directly so we can close the sale. Plus other magicians will be able to spy on my website and compete against my prices. There are other reasons too.

Thank you for the suggestions everyone.

catinhat · #7 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 06:54 AM

Neat and nice work IMHO.

Dynamike · #8 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 07:03 AM

Thank you for the compliment Catinhat.

James · #9 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 04:00 PM

Good thinking all around. Here are a couple of followup comments in response.

First, the flash you have looks great. I am not a flash user so I cannot say exactly how best to implement it but there are others who can. What you want to do is to have the flash as background. You want to take the text you want the search engines to pick up in the header and put it into the foreground with html and leave the flash in the background.

With css should be able to position the text on top. However, I do not know much about this so it may be more difficult than it appears—what isn't! If you can't, you are wise to find a way to do without the flash, sadly.

I understand wanting people to call for details and dates. But if that is the case, I would take out the Paypal button. It makes it look like you are asking people to decide to pay before knowing the prices or whether you would be available. Better to have a "Contact Us for Details" button or link.

Dynamike · #10 (**permalink**) 10-09-2009, 04:17 PM

I have been having my web designer(s) make so many changes from all the info I have been receiving from different website forums. I am going to give them a break. One will go over it with me so I can learn how to do it my without using them constantly.

The Pay Pal button makes it easier for the customer. There is no fee in the Pay Pal form once it is opened. It is there because of the deposit for the magic show. The customer will not have to send a check or money order. The deposit is for a small amount. Once paid, the show it approved to take place. The balance is received at the location on the day of the show. There also are no prices showing anywhere. That makes it practically impossible for a customer to open the Pay Pal form without contacting me, make up a dollar amount and put it thru. I am always sure they will contact me first before sending a deposit.

jay144 · #11 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 04:51 AM

It is a nice layout some flash sites take a really long time to load and i press the back button immediately. Yours didn't take long at all. I think your website is great and I also think it's great that you were able to follow your dreams and are trying to motivate others to do the same.

sequencehosting · #12 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 07:37 AM

I think your site is very nice. I understand SEO is a problem with flash sites but in this case I would certainly keep the flash. It loads quickly and looks fantastic.

A couple of things you could do to help with SEO are:

- design a new version of the site without the flash and either allow visitors to choose which one they would like to view or use a script to display the right version. SEO wise you could use a robots.txt file to make the search engines crawl your html/css version and not your flash version.

- Create a blog to complement your website. Your blogs focus could be to bring in search engine traffic by writing articles targeted on certain keywords. I use a blog on my website because web hosting is so competitive it's impossible to get any traffic from search engines so I use my blog to target long-tail keywords and it's working well.

Personally I wouldn't worry about SEO too much because you have a fantastic site that works very well with your niche. Instead focus on keeping the visitors you do get. Adding a newsletter would be a fantastic way.

Keep up the good work!

James · #13 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 08:04 AM

Dynamike, the idea of a newsletter might be good. If you have people sign up for "further information and updates" instead of a newsletter per se you might get better response in this situation and furthermore could send out on a less regular basis. Just be sure that when people first sign up you send out immediately a bulletin with detailed information about signing up for a program.

Adding pictures of events and also including them in your newsletters/bulletins would be especially helpful, but you do have to be sure and get photo model releases from anyone who might be in the pictures. This means that with children it would be a little harder because you would have to get signatures from parents.

James · #14 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 08:16 AM

Quote:

The Pay Pal button makes it easier for the customer. There is no fee in the Pay Pal form once it is opened.

Then why not leave the link and just rename it "Reservations" or something. You should do what you think is best of course, but I am just thinking that if people are interested in a program and want to set one up they might hesitate to click on a button that says "PayPal" because they are not wanting to pay already when they don't have anything set up to pay for. So they might feel they are left hanging. At least I would offer a second button saying something like "Reservations" with information about how to set one up.

Jonathan · #15 (**permalink**) 10-10-2009, 09:33 AM

Awesome site! I wish I was in Detroit so I could see your show!

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