Simple site review: agendapersonala.ro

Hello, in this blog post I analyze the web site agendapersonala.ro.

A. General web site analysis (elements that can be applied to many pages)
A1. Copywriting
A2. Design
A3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
A4. Structure of information
A5. Usability
B. Analysis of the main elements in the homepage (cutting the homepage into pieces)
B1. How to order?
B2. Agenda configurator
B3. Why the personal agenda?
B4. Prices
C. Conclusions

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A. General web site analysis (elements that can be applied to many pages)

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A1. Copywriting

+I like the fact that you speak a pretty good Romanian;
1. In the footer you say “www.agendapersonala.ro – 2010”; well, isn’t an agenda ordered now, at the end of the year 2010, making me think about the future? I’d try to put more emphasis on the New Year;
2. You have a very little amount of text on the pages of the web site;
3. I don’t like the fact that the Testimonials page is empty;
Give me some information about your clients; let me know what your portfolio is;
4. Very few contact information given;
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A2. Design

+I like the use of empty spaces, the web site feels free;

1. The top menu is very crowded;
2. I have only seen two photos on the web site; they are both stock photos; I would recommend you to:
– Put more photos, on each page it should be a corresponding image;
– Put photos that are not really stock photos; give me the impression of something which is authentic;
3. You want to give the impression that the product is very natural, handmade & so on, while the graphics of the web site are very cold and computer generated; I don’t see how this fits the model;
4. The logo:
– Is hard to read; the text “agenda ta” is very crowded, written in a bold&italics font, difficult text;
– Is not clickable, which is a serious Usability problem;
– You say that this is my personal agenda, and you show me a photo with an agenda which can be possessed by anyone, has nothing particular, and inspires me to think about a stock photo with an agenda; unprofessional;
– Has no motto; the title of the business is sort of a motto, but if I were you I’d also have a motto on the header area;
– The “your agenda” text is hard to read, while, on the other hand, “personal” is very easy to read due to the high contrast; I’d try to keep an equilibrium, since both are important texts;
– Is not aligned with the rest of the menu;
5. The header area is very crowded;
6. I don’t like menu items written on two lines of text;
7. Why “Home” and not the Romanian equivalent of “Acasă”?
8. I don’t like the use of Capital First Words in the Title; also, you use it differently (“Materiale, finisaje, contact” should also have Inital Capital”);
9. I like the fact that you use only three colors – white, blue, and black, with a predominance of blue, but it’s too much; you seem to exaggerate with the use of blue on the web site;
10. Sometimes you repeat the title of the page in the contents of the page, which is a bit disturbing;
11. The colors are very cold;
12. The text on the pages of the web site is hard to read due to the image on the background; I’d avoid putting images in the background;
13. The top menu, with black on dark blue, is hard to read due to the contrast;
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A3. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

1. The titles of the web pages are the same on the whole web site, big problem;
2. You use the title element very strange:
<meta name=”title” content=”” />
<title>Agenda personala</title>
First you define it as empty, and then you fill it in; strange;
3. You don’t have a proper meta description for any of the web pages:
<meta name=”description” content=”” />
4. First of all, the meta description tag should exist; it would be very useful to have unique descriptions on all of the pages of the web site;
Why is it important to have a web site description? Not only does Google take that description and shows it in some searches as a snippet (small texts shown in the search results, under the title of the page – details here: Google snippets), Facebook also takes that description and uses it when someone sends a random page from your web site (the link send via Facebook has a description, which is exactly that description from the meta tag); it is thus useful to have a description for Google, also for the situation when someone recommends your page via Facebook, to give just two examples;
How can you make a description with good usability, so that the people are invited to click on the Google or Facebook result?
i. Directly – invite the people to visit your web site: “Visit our web site” / “Click here” / “We invite you on our web site” / “See our web page”;
ii. By presenting benefits, giving a motivation to enter the web site – “Our web site offers you X and Y and Z”, “The advantage of using the web site is A, B, C”, “If you enter the web site, you can register to …”, “The visitors of the web site can benefit from …”;
The description should be made thinking about the people who search for a term on Google, find your web site, and two rows of text appear; you should make the text thinking of those people on the Internet, and things will be fine; in other words, avoid writing:
“Our web site sells potatoes; the potatoes we sell are cheap; we have other vegetables, but we sell mainly potatoes; buy potatoes”,
or, even worse:
“potatoes, small potato, potatoes, potato food, packed potatoes, visit our web site for the latest potatoes”,
with the thought of obsessively repeating a keyword in order to have better positioning in the search engines; no important search engine (attention!, no one!) uses the description for positioning in search results; you should do the descriptions for people, ignore the web spiders; this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use keywords, on the contrary, you can use it and even repeat it (but don’t overdo it); on the other hand, you should write the page description thinking about the visitors; a good example:
“Online potatoes: web site about fresh vegetables in Romania. In order to choose from the biggest offer of online potatoes, visit our web site.”
Finally, we advise you to keep the description under 155 characters (spaces included), to fit in the space allocated by the search engines (otherwise, it will be interrupted by suspension points “…”);
As a general idea, the description for the main page is more important, because it is most often visible in searches;
I would say that your description should follow all these guidelines;
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A4. Structure of information

+I like the fact that the Contact menu item is the last in the menu;
1. I reach the footer area; give me something to do; scenario: I visit your homepage, read what it is to be read, I reach the footer area; here there are more options:
(i.) I can click one of the links in the footer, if there are any;
(ii.) I may leave the web site;
For (ii.) scenario not to happen, you should have some interesting links in the footer; top pages on your web site would be a good place to start;
2. (+idea) Right now you have almost nothing on the footer, very bad; put some information in there:
a. Contact data;
b. Links to top visited pages/products; or most sold products; or cheapest products; newest products? etc.;
c. Pictures with your employees / store / map location – helps me build trust;
d. Link to a sitemap of your web site (which you lack);
3. Why have you put three separate menu items in the same page? I’d keep things more focused:
“Materials, details, contact”;
4. I don’t see anything on the social networks; also nothing about a newsletter;
Regarding the newsletter box – if I were you, I’d create a page dedicated to the newsletter, instead of having the option right in the sidebar; why the need for a dedicated page?
a. In the sidebar you give me no warranties – what will you do with my email address, how will I unsubscribe, how often you will send me emails, in what purposes you will use my email address; in a dedicated page, my advice would be to have all those details;
b. Also, a tip to you would be to register to Data Protection Romania, and get an official act which allows you to use email forms;
c. Right now I can’t see any of the previous newsletters; this would be an important function – I would like to know, prior to subscribing to a web site, what other newsletters have you sent; have a list of previous newsletters in a dedicated page;
d. Also interesting to have would be the option of displaying the current number of subscribers;
e. Also, still about the newsletter box, I would include the options to subscribe via:
– classic newsletter (email);
– RSS feed (you can specify this for a specific section in your web site);
– Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn / other social network account in which to announce the most important events; you have to be where I, your visitor, already am;
5. I’d put more emphasis on the “About us” page:
What answers I’d love to receive from the web site:
a. Value Selling Proposition (VSP) – answer me the question: “What value does the web site bring? What are the benefits of using it?”; you should have a dedicated page the answers to these questions; tell me why your business field is good;
b. Unique Selling Proposition (USP) – this question is “What do you have and others in the same field don’t have”; what makes you different? Why you, instead of others? This is a key-question, which deserves to have an answer;
c. Guarantees – let’s say I buy from you, I don’t like your service; what happens then? Tell me what my guarantees of using the services you provide are;
d. Testimonials – what others clients who bought from you said; a long page, with name of persons, photographs and company names assigns you a lot of trust; do you have a lot of clients? Let me see them;
e. Case studies – this one is even better: you take one person and present the whole process; he was looking for a service in your field; he did a little research, he got to you eventually, and picked you because …; the result was that …; six months later he’s still satisfied because …; after he has recommended you to others, they reported him that …;
I would love to see all of these been linked-to on the “About us” page;
6. I’d also love to see on the About us page:
a. The company history;
b. Financial data about your company, which I could find out myself from the Finance Minister web site, or some extra data;
c. Data about the web site traffic (I should feel that I am part of a community);
d. The USP and VSP from above;
e. Mission, values, objectives, aim, motto; I would advise you to see a video by Guy KAWASAKI, or, if nothing better, read one of his articles;
f. Details on the structure of the company;
g. (cool!) Videos with the company from the exterior, interior, with the employees, with your clients; give me some videos and I will love you;
h. CVs of the management;
i. A press release section (it helps the visitor trust you);
j. How do you care about the planet? Ecology and your company; Amazon.com’s example;
k. Why, if I buy your products, I support Romania and the Romanians?
l. Clients testimonials (you can also put less-than-pleasant impressions);
m. Case studies – detail me, how miss X, from Y town, with Z job, wanted to renew its wardrobe; she first went to the town’s mall where … (important!), but she decided to buy online because … (important!); she studied the market, and picked you because …; 3 months after the acquisitions been done, her impressions are …; if she were to recommend another friend to buy clothes, she would tell her …; the study should better contain some before & after pictures;
6. I don’t like the fact that the Testimonials page is empty;
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A5. Usability

+The forms are easy to understand and fill-in;
1. You have no option for subscription; people visit your web site and can’t subscribe;
2. There is no search form;
3. The logo is not clickable;
4. The footer makes want to leave the web site, due to its scarcity;
5. For the agenda configurator you have used a form which is scrollable; my suggestion would be, instead, to have the scroll for the entire page;

6. Even when mentioning other tools, you don’t link out (don’t link to others); why?
7. I’d put the contact data in every page;
8. On the contact page, the email address is not clickable;
9. I’d also put on the contact page something to make me better connect with you – a small bio, photo, physical address; it’s an economical transaction, you’d better not be just a name on the Internet;
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B. Analysis of the main elements in the homepage (cutting the homepage into pieces)

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B1. How to order?

+Very clear steps;
1. “obtiunile”? Really?
2. Instead of:
“Descrie paginile de care mai ai nevoie si nu se gasesc in configurator, in sectiunea Adaugari.”,
I’d say:
“Descrie paginile de care mai ai nevoie si nu se gasesc in configurator, in sectiunea Adaugari (desigur, dacă există).”;
3. This doesn’t sound too Romanian-ish:
“Ne dai un ok”;
(OK is both something to be counted – one/two OKs -, and something to be given);
4. I’d avoid using this tense:
“transportul fiind gratuit”;
Gerund tense is a rather passive way of saying things; I’d opt for:
“transportul este gratuit”;
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B2. Agenda configurator

+Clear fields; I like the way the images open;
1. If I specify that I am a company/institution, why don’t you ask for more data?
2. Your configurator is still for an agenda for 2010; why?
3. If you let me pick A4/A5, I’d specify the exact size of these;
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B3. Why the personal agenda?

+I love the fact that you give reasons for buying the product;
1. I recommend you this video:
E-Commerce SEO: Making Product Pages into Great Content – Whiteboard Friday
for details on how to increase the value of a product page;
Ideas:
– Use comments from the users;
– Use titles which are optimized for the search engines;
– Make your own photos of the products;
– Give statistical data about the products (sales, number of visits);
– Make a news section for the products;
– Make a graph with the historical data of buying that product;
2. No links to Getting Things Done (GTD)? Why?
3. Not Romanian:
“focusati”
(nișați? Concentrați?);
4. How does an “optimal” point of view look like?
“punct de vedere optim”;
5. I’d translate this:
“Setam reminder-e”;
6. (+idea) Why don’t you have a partnership with TaskWriter?
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B4. Prices

+Very good prices!
1. If you abbreviate, you should specify in a legend what “buc” and “pg” stand for;
2. This:
“alb – negru”
is actually written like this:
“alb-negru”,
while this:
“format A5 – cu paginile”
has correct spacings;
3. Does this make sense to you?
“Preturi Agende format A5 – cu color”;
4. Why is it that the first row in the tables is empty?
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