Hello

Could you please tell me what to improve on my website, I'm looking to make look as professional as possible. IF you have any ideas just let me know as this will be very beneficial for me.

www.dmcarpetclean.co.uk

I like the concept, however certain areas look outdated and very plain. Typography could be improved, but a good foundation to start.

Looks ok for a DIY effort, but could be a little more polished I think.

 

Quite a lot of issues around padding and spacing of elements (navigation, page headers etc) and the logo is blurry. While some of the imagery is good and on point (pic of you, cleaning machine etc) a lot of it just looks like stock images with no real purpose (globe for About Us link etc), hands holding etc.

Stop the flashing in the header. Not only is it distracting, how do you expect people to write down your phone number??

 

As has already been stated, looks ok, but there are areas that need some tweaking.

This text

 

Carpet, upholsters and inside of a car cleaning/Valeting specialists.

 

Family run company in Cardiff, we specialize in carpet cleaning, upholstery and inside of the car cleaning. Carpet cleaning can be time consuming and very frustrating if you have to do it often, because you are using shampoo and equipment that is not strong enough. That is why we are offering great value for carpet cleaning in Cardiff, by using high quality equipment, we guarantee our work and satisfaction.

 

Doesn't fit inside its box properly and so is extending just past the bottom of the background.

In my opinion, several things in this website could be improved in addition to what has been said above me so far.

 

Starting from the top of the page, you seem to have quite a few spacing / margin issues. Text in your nav buttons are not centered properly and this should be rectified. Personally, I think there could also be more space between the nav and the logo; decreasing the dimensions of the logo slightly is one method to go about achieving this extra space.

 

darrenbale has already mentioned the fact that the text flows beyond its implied boundary (this occurs on several pages of your website). I'll also add that the picture of the male janitor on the right hand side of the page also is not aligned properly as it does not flow seamlessly with the background. Furthermore, I'm personally not very comfortable with the three circular areas left of the male janitor; their contents seem very random and inconsistent (2 images + text).

 

To be honest, your major issues have to do with element spacing and overall arrangement of content. Organization of information and it's presentation can be improved.

Edited August 3, 201214 yr by Pete Prosper

as above

also the image of you (or the guy smiling) needs adjusting for levels (more brightness), there's some grey squiggle that needs cleaning about 3 cm to the rtight of your head, and the whole image is shifted down a pixel or two compared to the rest of that light blue background (firefox latest on win 7)

 

the letterpress style text that starts "Family run company in Cardiff, we..." is too hard to read : use those kind of effects on larger text, and increase the contrast a little on the main text

 

the flashing phone number is ridiculous

 

use just the blue/green swirl for the favicon without the dm bit

 

services graphic is blurry

 

this is almost shouting "

We are using only original Karcher equipment and chemicals if applicable, some stains require prespraying and different treatment.."

 

use bold and not all caps, and left align it (use a subtle box or background if you need to draw more attention to it)

 

reduce the line height (leading) on the "great price promotion" sticker or try something like

http://pp.kpnet.fi/p.../promotion1.jpg

or

http://pp.kpnet.fi/p.../promotion2.jpg

 

green bottle of ultra + isn't properly cut out from background and the vacuum cleaner has grey bits in the white circle

(see cleaned versions http://pp.kpnet.fi/p...uff/discuss.jpg and http://pp.kpnet.fi/p...stuff/graph.jpg )

 

 

try a nice bright blue from the logo for links e.g. #009BD7

 

logo text "carpet clean" is too tightly kerned, (i.e. the letter are too close together) particularly the "Cl" of Clean

 

i would reduce the saturation of the social icons background

 

 

overall it's on the way but needs some tightenting and tweaking for that extra sparkle and to instil the sort of trust you're aiming for

 

p.s. remove the bloody blinking phone number!

Edited August 3, 201214 yr by dap

typo on the services page

Upholsters and sofas cleaning, bed matres.

 

 

Matress (or matresses)

 

oh and "inside of a car cleaning" what's wrong with "car interior cleaning"?

mattress

It's a nice idea but it's very busy, and there doesn't seem to be much consideration given to breaking up your content into the most important areas. I would suggest working out what info/boxes/areas on your site are the most important, writing them on some post-it notes and try rearranging the site around like that (stick it to a table or a large sheet of paper!) that way you can easily move around the different content and make sure you get the architecture and layout perfect before you start putting it back together again.

lol thanks Zed - teaches me right for typing while looking at my daughter asleep in her pram anyway what can you expect from an English Literature graduate?

Thank you very much for your constructive feedback, I'm currently working on imporvements suggested by you.

 

Thank you

Darius

I'm not a fan of the red in the colour scheme. If it was me, it would be a dark blue/green. For a DIY job though I have seen a lot worse.

Just had a quick look, what really concerns me is spelling mistakes on professional sites. You have spelt "Experience" wrong you have got it as "Experiance". Just a simple spell check will go along way.

Edited August 12, 201213 yr by sjay59

The major thing that needs looking in to is the alignment issues.

Grab a grid (in this case 960gs) and design to fit the grid. Currently things don;t line up against any sort of ruler and this makes the site look sloppy.

Simply sticking to a grid will help the site look remarkably better with not to much effort.

I'd echo what others have already stated particularly with regard to margins, padding and the odd typo here and there. The main thing for me though was on this page:

 

http://www.dmcarpetclean.co.uk/carpet_cleaning_cardiff.html

 

The last photo shows what appears to be a carpet that has been cleaned one side but not the other. I guess this is to show the effect of your carpet cleaning skills and I think this is a good idea however, move the sofa man it looks like you are just cleaning up to the sofa and have no intention of going under it! (unless of course you cleaned half the carpet then put the sofa back? ... i'm assuming you didn't do that). It might seem a little fussy but those are the little details that I notice when looking to hire a company that I've not dealt with before.