Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

[letstalkchef]

Hi everyone! I know I have posted my site in here before, but I have made a lot of changes thanks to all of your advise! Please take a look at where I am at now. I do not have a lot of products entered yet, but I will begin pushing that aspect once the layout is 100%. Any feedback is more than appreciated.

www.letstalkchef.com

Thanks everyone.

~Joe

[Marincky]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Well Joe, I can see this is going to be a very very big site to construct, what with all the various product pages and recepies and I guarantee that you will be working on this site probably until the end of time... I have a directory and I know what this is like!

I think the basic layout is fine, and I can imagine a few cooks or would-be cooks being very interested in a site of this nature and can see it very much as a bookmarked site.

There are some improvements that can be done with your page titles. A good example is your recepie section.

When clicking on the vegetable recepies, your page title merely says 'vegetables', you have the opportunity to vastly improive on this, with the very minmium you could at least have 'vegetable recepies' up there. just 'having 'vegetables' alone could mean anything in the SE's eyes.

You also have a couple of pages that look totally different to the main layout design.

Example: http://www.letstalkchef.com/bread.html

I think to look uniform you need to have one or the other.

This is a site that will never be finished, I have two or three similar, but this can be a good thing as Google love a site that's very active and always changing, improving, adding etc.

I also see a huge potential to generate extra income from a program like Google Adsense here too, especially on recepie pages where there is loads of room for such a feature, and seeing as the recepies aren't generating an income for you, let a few side adverts do that for you?

Best of luck with it, If I get a spare moment I may even throw a few wonderful dishes in myself

[letstalkchef]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

The "Bread" page you mentioned is from my previous sit design. As I update more information onto the site the "old Pages" should get eliminated.

What is the benefit of renaming the page titles; such as "vegetable recipes" as opposed to just "vegetables"- do people even look at that?

Thanks Ramsey for all of your input.

~Joe

[karel]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Hi Joe, before I comment any furthur, are the sub-category links in appliances suppose to work? As they don't for me.

Paul

[letstalkchef]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

No they are not supposed to work. At this point I have not entered very much product information. The appliance format will be identical to the cookbook format; perhaps with more pictures in the item description page however.
For now I am just looking for feedback on what the site looks like, the ease of navigation, and honest opinions on whether this site can "make it" as a culinary refernce online.
Thanks for your question and please send me any recomendations that you may have.

~Joe

[agnelofer1]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Hi...i like your site. However, as a customer...i would like to see more pictures..especially for a food site:)
example...reciepes of chicken,pork, vegetable, etc. If you can include an image of the dish ...that will be great

[Marincky]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

The "Bread" page you mentioned is from my previous sit design. As I update more information onto the site the "old Pages" should get eliminated.

What is the benefit of renaming the page titles; such as "vegetable recipes" as opposed to just "vegetables"- do people even look at that?

Thanks Ramsey for all of your input.

~Joe

Page titles are probably the most important part of your meta data as it is what the search engines will pick up on.

So people typing 'Vegetable recepies' or 'recepies with vegetables' or similar will be directed to sites or pages within a site that is about vegetable recepies.

If you have good content on your pages and good page titles you COULD be one of those that appears higher than others.

People very rarely type in one worded search terms, they tend to elaborate on what they want to eliminate all the '****' from the first few pages..

I have a client who sells wedding dresses, but she has a shop in Reading in Berkshire in the UK. Now she doesn't want customers from Scotland or from the USA, she just wants people who will be in her area. So all those people who live in Berkshire are more likely to type in 'Bridal shops in Berkshire' than they are to type in just 'Bridal shops'. When they do type in 'bridal shops in Berkshire' my client's site is top of page one, this is because the words 'Bridal' 'shop' and 'Berkshire' are all on the page title of the home page, and within the content of the site too.

It's not as easy as that but hopefully you get the idea...

Now I really must go cook my tea!

[Marincky]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Ok, potatoes in the oven and chops under the grill so now I can come back to my post above which was rushed sorry...

What I am trying to point out to you above is that making your site more specific to what you do rather than a generic site is that you are narrowing the search results down by doing so.

In other words.. People typing 'Vegetables' in the search engines will find over 58 million results.

But those typing in 'Vegetable Recepies' produce just over 65 thousand results. So obviously you want to try and concentrate on getting your site on the latter results pages rather than the former.

Then on your vegetable recepies page, let's say you do a carrot recepie page. .. well that one only get's just under 37 thousand results...

it goes on and on and on....

So on your vegetable recepie page, title it 'vegetable recepies'

On your carrot recepie pages, title it 'carrot recepies'

You can add to these titles by the way, I am just giving you these as an example.

I hope this all makes sense.

[karel]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

At this point I have not entered very much product information. The appliance format will be identical to the cookbook format; perhaps with more pictures in the item description page however.
For now I am just looking for feedback on what the site looks like, the ease of navigation, and honest opinions on whether this site can "make it" as a culinary refernce online.

On the question of can it make it on-line. Yes it can, I can't give you all the answers here, I don't know them all myself but its all about building it and then sticking with it and putting loads of hard work into it, it also depends what you exactly want out of the site. Is it going to see items to make money, be more of a hobby, an affiliate site?

My main anxiety site took two years of constant work and promotion to get it where it is. It is now the number one ranked independant site in the U.K for the subject. But I have put so much work into it. I have a very active blog attached to it that I update weekly and answer people's questions. I have wrote countless articles across the web. I have worked hard to get links to my site, I update my main site as often as I can. I have a small adsense campaign. But a lot of my traffic comes through people talking about it on forums and recommending certain pages of information. It just takes work to make a site like yours work, loads of content is good, make people want to talk about it, refer people to it, keep updating it, write some food articles, it can go as far as you want it, but it does take work. I have 4 other sites that do o.k, but I don't put the same time an effort into them.

Paul

[SAman]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Hey Joe,
I like the changes. You are on the right track, and it's been said it will be a unending journey. I am excited to see it further, as I am the cook in our house, and like to try new ideas. I am going to put it in my favs.
Good luck!!

[whiteshepherd]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

It looks great ... you have had some excellent advice from Ramsey and Paul .... my comment is about the photos ... especially the one on the about Joe page ... they look distorted so I wonder if you have used the handles on the box to resize them ...? there is free software here called pixresizer that is an excellent tool for optimising your graphics and photos ...

I agree to it will always be a work in progress ... my www.paradogtraining.com website has taken seven months of solid work and it is still only about 85 persent there.

keep up the good work and is I have bookmarked it as a site I can use in the future ...

[Vasili]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Hi...i like your site. However, as a customer...i would like to see more pictures..especially for a food site:)
example...reciepes of chicken,pork, vegetable, etc. If you can include an image of the dish ...that will be great

....yes, a monsterous job it will be, and hopefully the only thing 'consumed' will be the foods and not the "webmaster"!

I agree with the observation that for this type of site, visuals are critical....and once you get how to handle them properly down to a personal science (as mentioned above), you need to emphasize this aspect more: even as a core value, maybe even as far as replacing textual content whenever possible, showing "steps" or "process" more. People not only identify more easily with visuals (for instruction, for emotional connection, for remembering, etc.) but they learn more efficiently as well....and this is a site that is supposed to "enhance" the visitor, right?

Honestly, my first observation of the main page was "are we talking toast here, or what?" Much too bland and "cold" ...the dark theme does not porse for this genre: lighten it up, freshen it, and somehow create a visual "flow" rather than rely on geometric shapes that are "hard" on the eye when toned darkly......"white is always right, and use gray to softly say"


Well....so much for my 'kitchen conversation'......back off to the livingroom to watch the game....

[Collectors-info]

Re: Re-designed Website Looking for Honest Opinions!!!

Hi, not sure if your catering for all browsers, (Sorry about the pun). But there is quite a bit of misalignment with images & menus. when viewing in Fire Fox.

Good luck.