Http://www.retrodata.eu

Data Recovery Site

Outline : Provides data recovery services for individuals through to large companies. Site is there to bring in more business and spread word of Retrodata

Please critique: content, ease of use, if you were looking for data recovery, would you find what you were looking for, reactions

The original site is: http://www.retrodata.co.uk

Any comments? The site clearly needs more data which is currently being worked on but was wondering if people could offer their opinion.

Thanks!

P.S. Not looking at design critiques at the moment, as content is king, I'd rather concentrate on that for now.

Some thoughts:
> there is a lot of data on the site, but it's not very organized. I.e. within each page there are no sub-headings to organize content.
> there is also a lot of tiny text in the middle of your left hand side navigation which on first glance I take as an ad and skip...

Just my thoughts =).

I agree totally with the post above.

The testimonials look like adverts, but the content of them is good. Perhaps (I know you didn't want design advice but...) use php to randomly display just two each time the page loads from a database or a flat file so that it looks less like adverts.

The text needs to be made much more concise on the home page, possibly with links on certain words to other parts that then explain them in more detail.

I would steer away from using bold on whole sentences as it makes it slightly more difficult to read and use more of the blue headers to split the text up.

I've tried to resist, but the one design thing that got me was your favicon, a green speech bubble?!?! A spanner or something would be better!

Regards,

Watters

I think that you are both looking at the old site???

The new site is: http://www.retrodata.eu

That site has the unfortunate effect of looking like one of those domain company's websites. You know, when you go to a website and the domain has been purchased by one of those evil companies that mass buys domain names.

Thanks but...

The newer version is great.

Much clearer and everything is well organised. The design (I know...) looks great, not like a site where the domain is owned by a faceless advertising company like one post suggested.

Well done, ask for feedback from clients to get the last few critiques that only customers may notice.

More importantly, I would trust your site, I personally would feel confident in using your service after reading through, so it must be good!

Best wishes,

Watters

Thanks!

I did the original but the owner had more of a say in what was going on. However, after certain issues with other developers, I said that if he wants a decent site, to leave it down to me.

Will try and get some customer feedback.

Actually, content is not king..... content is second to design, design is what gets people in, your design must invite the potential client in.....

rule no.1 to websites : people eat with there eyes first... ( and i mean that as respectfully as i can )

for potential clients :: Design draws them in...content sells..

regards

Actually no, content IS king. Take 2 extremes.

1. Ultimate designed site - no content.
2. A page full of text with content that can change lives

Poorly designed website still can have a very high ranking but sites with rubbish content do not.

The only way a "crappy looking" site, with great content, will achieve a higher site ranking, is if people are actually looking for the site in question specifically, or people have found out about the services they offer through word of mouth...

Sure people will shop around, and I am not saying good content is not required, but as i said before, it has been proven on countless studies, that people will ALWAYS eat with their eyes first (look at the prettiest thing first, if u will).

So this thread can turn into the world’s biggest argument between myself, an award winning, marketing professional with a masters on the subject and...you {insert your background here}.

Sorry if that sounds condescending, but I am very passionate about my profession...

I know this isn't a discussion thread, but I've got to add my bit.

I design websites for clients (not for a living) and my job, as I see it, is to create the design that the content goes into, in such a way that the content is easy to navigate and sift through. It also must be a design that represents the target audience (my next design is for high end car tuning so that will need a different design totally to a high end opticians and a boy-racer tuning site).

My clients write their own information and they provide this for me and I lay it out. And the thing is, no matter how good I make it look, the style of writing sets the standard.

I've worked with universities and local shops, the content from the universities is much better in writing style and ease of reading.

Design is key, but content sets the level for which the design can be graded upon.

Sorry Lord Webmaster You carry on thinking that design is more important than content - might win some more awards not if there isn't any content it won't be. How is a search engine going to pick up and rank a site with no content? Ok there are ways, but I am speaking in 99/9% of the cases.

Countless studies - ok.... I am basing my opinion on the extremes (as already mentioned). Imagine a site with the best design ever (probably written by your award winning hands?) but NO content. Now imagine a site with NO design, just relevant plain text. Which one is the search engines going to pick up? Which one will be of more use? The Internet is the information superhighway and most people use it for information of some sort.

As it happens, I have also won awards and have a MSc on the subject (the irony), but that means nothing in the real world. How many actors deserve winning an Oscar award? How many presidents truly deserved to win? Out of interest, do Eric Meyer or Jacob Nielson have qualifications?

Wattersisere is right - but I still insist that content is more important. http://maddox.xmission.com/ for example. I think you'll agree with me regarding the poor design. However, content is of such a high standard, the site gets thousands of hits a day. Are these forums well designed??? IMHO, not really, but it's the content that stands out and makes it invaluable. Same applies to Google - how simple is that and yet it's the content that makes it what it is.

looks good