Please review my site

I would be grateful for any criticisms or suggestions for improvement of my site, www.myoquip.com.au. The site has been operational for about three years and was initially constructed by my web host, and since then expanded and updated by me.

I have quite deliberately tried to make it very different in appearance and function to those of other firms in my industry to reflect the fact that the equipment is fundamentally innovative.

Please feel free to be very frank with your comments.

I am afraid I have to say that this site needs a complete redesign as it looks like sites of the past decade.

Besides design navigation needs some work as it is not clear where are the products, where someone can contact you, etc.

On the marketing view there is not something that catches my eye. So there is no "path" for a conversion.

Hope my review helps....

BTW do you have any connection to Greece? Your username means "sea" in the greek language :)

I think the site navigation needs some work for sure, and the site width could b more dynamic for users with larger screens which is more common these days. :)

Thanks for the very prompt reply, Nikolas.

Least important issue first. I chose the username "thalassa" simply because I grew up in a street called Thalassa Avenue in what is a beachside village and now a suburb. I was aware of the derivation of the name because of looking it up decades ago.

More substantive matters:

On design navigation I would have thought that the buttons on the left directly point to the products and the two boxes relating to the MyoThrusta and MyoTruk lead directly to their product pages. But it does not really matter how I see the site - what is important is how a visitor like you sees it.

With regard to making it easy for visitors to contact us, that is something I will look at further. We do have the usual "Contact Us" button. The issue of a "conversion path" is a difficult one for our company. For most visitors we have the problem that our products are radically different and so there has to be a focus on education and persuasion. Conversion in terms of making a sale and even in opening a dialogue with the visitor is something that we have found difficult. I would welcome any suggestions on improving our response rate.

Your lead comment that the site looks like one from the past decade is concerning but it is the sort of feedback that I am looking for. Do I lose the site's essentially informative function if I attempt to make it look more up to date?

Regards
Bruce

Thanks, toy17s. I will now have to make obvious my ignorance. I would certainly like to be able to make the display expandable but I do not know how, and in fact have never known that this was possible.

Can you give me any guidance?

regards
Bruce

Regarding design/navigation, the bad thing is that we are getting used of our own site, so you have to ask people to check it out (like you do now :) )

As for the convertion thing, in such cases I consult my clients to use a 3 click navigation. That means that you have :

1) A frontpage that exposes your key products with :

2) a "buy now" page that contains some key features of each individual product and

3) a page that has all the reguired information in depth

This way you are not distracting the visitor who knows the product and wants to buy, you give some curiousity to the "neutral" visitor, plus you fulfil the extra curiousity that someone may have :)

For the design I would suggest you to hire a proffesional to create a nice template and add it in a CMS where you will be able to update the content. Of course you can make it by yourself but I am not sure if this will have a good effect in your business.

 :P id go with what Nik has to say

You site's code is not valid you have two body tags etc.

The site has a lot of things that needs improvement.  It looks so generic at its current state.  If you got it for free from the hosting provider,  I suggest you take into consideration hiring professionals to redo your site.  The look and feel of a site has also something to do with conversion IMO.

All multimedia content on your site calls for installing any plugins in FF3. I think it's not comfortable for users.

I can see you've spent some time developing the content of the website, however I agree with the other posts... You could turn this into a great website if you spend a for more hours in the design of the site. Consider using the professional designer if you think its too much work. You might find it's worthwhile. Keep up the good work.

too much text and too little graphics

I would not go graphics intensive but graphics.  Make sure to keep the content fresh and unique...

The first thing that struck me was that the site looked odd with the site name on the right and image on the left. Then I see it changes from page to  page. Some times left some time right, some times big, sometimes smaller. The header should be consistent on all pages.

- as you navigate over the links there is no indication that you are, the links should also have some kind of indication of what page you are on

- the layout of the  links change the position on different pages. Its already a bit confusing where you are, then have the link you just clicked on, move from under the mouse to where? The links need to be consistent on al pages.

- the text in the links on the left is right up against the edge of the window, need some padding or margin there. This changes from page to page. There is at least 2" of unused space on the right of almost every page.

I liked your site very much.

Im sure you do :)

About the site, i would add more colors. Or there are simple templates that you can use if you are a minimalist :) Don't leave it like this, the content is great but the design is ruining the site. Just an opinion.
Good luck!

i agree with  negreanu
good luck

Gotta clear up the meta tags and body tags!

I like your website too much.