www.pipistrelaircraft.com

[FergusM]

Hi All,

I feel like a sadist here, inviting a good beating upon myself. Anyway after having my site Pipistrel Aircraft | Buy Pipistrel Microlights | Aircraft for Sale developed for me over 3 years ago I then proceeded to do nothing with it, thinking that was it! I started a course on digital marketing after Xmas and wow how bad was my site. Anyway i have started tiding it up. I put descriptions on the pages. There were none. Most page titles were meaningless. I was only ranking for Pipistrel Aircraft when the two words were imputed into Google together. Its getting better now but any help from anyone would be much appreciated.

Regards
Fergus

 

[vendexo]

Hi Fergus,
some further areas for you to look at:

• Your "Links" in the main menu/toolbar is returning a blank page
• Your Contact Us page is missing a telephone number and address. These are expensive machines, and having a telephone number and physical address are important to build confidence with your visitors. They help to establish credibility for your business.
• What is the purpose of your site? If it is to sell these planes then there is no online shopping cart functionality (Your title tag includes "Buy Pipistrel Microlights | Aircraft for Sale"). Though I'm not sure people would buy things like these online anyway. Maybe you could sell spare parts and accessories online if that is a part of your business. Are you trying to recruit dealers around the country? It's not clear.
• I love the photographs. They might encourage more people to fly your planes. For the visitors to your site who cannot afford to buy one, can you direct them to somewhere where they can rent one out or take lessons?

Best wishes for your business.

 

[FergusM]

Hi Vendexo,

Thanks for your reply. I must have broke the link to links when I started trying to tidy things up. No telephone number! Wow what a mistake. I will put that in straight away. I take your point about the "buy". It's intended for google so that it connects to people wanting to buy an aircraft. I will the swap the first key phase with the last one so it does not show up on the tab. The nearest thing you get to a buy button on this sort of product is "Take a Test Flight" or " Get Prices". If they do that they are going the right way. It is an interesting point you raise about not being clear about whether I am recruiting dealers. A little more thought is needed to be put into the copy to put that right. Once again thanks for the thoughtful reply.

Regards
Fergus

 

[vendexo]

Hi Fergus,
you are welcome.

 

[TwoHeadsWebDesign]

Hey Vendexo, the type is very heavy and difficult to read, looks like everything is in bold. I think the home page is a little busy. Im not sure the news items are worthy of pride of place on the home page? Maybe consider adding an extra nav button across the top called news as you have the room, and let the main area below the pic on the home page be laid out with the intro text, aircraft buttons and price list (you might consider reducing the size of the price button also as it still wont be missed even if reduced to about 70% of current). HTH.

 

[vendexo]

I assume you meant that for Fergus and not me

 

[FergusM]

Hi TwoHeads,

Thanks for the review. I have changed the colour of the text to black and that improves things. The bold does not change when I attempt to do so in Contribute. I will get my son to do it in Dreamweaver. I am going to use that extra nav bar space for video. I took out some of the text at the top to unclutter things and that certainly helps.

Regards
Fergus

 

[tricky_d]

On the logo, the green text could be less fancy. The contrast against the background colour is poor.

The intro text could be snappier and left aligned for easier reading* and given better SEO treatment (headings).

Site is laid out using tables, a div-based template would be better. The width is 790 pixels which could be safely pushed out to 960. The css would be better in a seperate file. There's also a hell of a lot of javascript plugins which shouldn't be required at all and will bloat your site.

Users would also hope to get a good look at the planes on the homepage, they're a bit lost as displayed.

You are hiding prices, don't do that. Users shouldn't have to jump through hoops to find them out. They should be displayed prominently as they are a vital piece of purchase information. That they are going to be expensive is a given. Info on typical running costs and aerodrome charges would also help potential purchasers and help reduce timewasters.

Some of the gallery thumbnails haven't been resized to thumbnail size.

Some of the quick links on the rhs are overflowing the bottom of the table due to text wrapping. These links are also centre aligned when left is best.*

The galleries have mixed implementations: individual plane pages just open up the big image and the overall gallery has alightbox function with no navigation or captioning. Try to find a version of highslide or lightbox which provides these functions.

You could stick a Google Map onto the contact page.

Try to get testimonials from happy customers.

Copyright notice is 2007, just looks a bit sloppy.

Links could also have aerodromes which would cater for the planes.

Does your form get enough spam to justify a captcha?

The contact form has both a send and a submit button - one styled with css will do. After sending the contact form, it goes to a kontactr page then redirects back to the form. It would better to have your own form and after sending redirect users back into the site with some sort of sitemap version.

Check your spelling again and grammar and punctuation.

Beware of using DreamWeaver for design, it doesn't quite do proper WYSIWYG so needs to be checked on many browsers during design.


* Centre aligned text for text blocks and lists isn't good for readability. The eye catches new lines much better when the text is left aligned.

hope that helps
gl

 

[FergusM]

Hi Tricky_d,

I have a little bit of work to do! Thanks for such an indept review. It is really appreciated. Most things I will be able to do. With regard to the price lists I get the email address to send the list to, and then get to follow up a week later to see if there is any interest, so that is important. Everyone looked at the price list when it was available on the site, but now only those who are really interested will bother downloading. The sales cycle on something like this is up two years long, so prices being right on the page is not so important. I will be opening up an eCommerce site in the next few months and pricing will be clearly displayed with buy it now buttons, but this type of sale is a little different. I will remove the CAPTHCA and see how it goes.

Regards
Fergus