Complete website design change...yes or no?

Hi all,
I am new to all of the website game, and this forum, so I hope my questions aren't too off base. Anyway, I have a relatively new website (only a little over a month old), but I am already contemplating a complete design change. I was wondering how this would affect what little ranking I have been able to get and if I should even do it at all. Amazingly, I was out of the dreaded "google sandbox" as everyone calls it fairly quickly and my site and sitemap are indexed. I don't have a page rank yet for some reason, but google shows that it is indexing at least some of the pages.

So, here is what I am considering doing. My current site is here: www.jbandbenterprises.com

The template I am currently modifying for my site is here:
http://www.funkyvision.co.uk/temps/ft-53/

I never have really liked the design of the current site. It just seems kind of cheap and spammy to me. I personally like the traditional business template with the content in the right column and links/navigation in the left column, nav buttons along the top, etc. Also, I think this design would look more professional for my type of site. I just don't know if whatever possible damage it would do to my just emerging search engine rankings would be worth the benefits of changing it. Honestly, I think I would have a better ctr with the more professional template, rather than the personal homepage looking site that I have now, but maybe I'm wrong. I cannot get a picture of the template I'm considering using since I've added my home page information or I would post it, but it does give it a more modern or contempory business site look while still providing the same information, links, and such as the current site.

So, what do the experts on here think? Is my current site design really as bad as I think it is, or not? How much damage would I really do to my PR if I change the entire design, but keep the same title, description, metas, etc. and just change the look and navigation of the site? I am considering not even changing the secondary pages such as the links pages, webring page, and just change the main home page design so that there is as little disruption as possible. Or should I go for the whole smash and re-design all of the pages at one time? As I say, I'm new to all of this and I would greatly appreciate any and all information I can get on this subject.

Thanks in advance!!

P.S. GREAT forum!! I have already found a HUGE amount of information that has helped me get this project up and running. I guess I just need a little feedback on this one. Thanks again!!

 

Hi again, as I'm sure most, if not all, of you know, the links aren't clickable yet since i'm new. So you will have to copy/paste the two site addresses to see them, but please check out both versions so that i can get an honest opinion here. Sorry for the extra trouble, but it wouldn't let me link them.
Thanks again!!

 

I wouldn't think re-arranging your page would have anything to do with teh googles. Unfortunately you have built your page in such a way that changing its appearance/design is impossible without changing the source (okay, maybe not imposiible but difficult at best). You are using a bit of CSS but if you write your site with the Minimal Markup approach where you take your text content and mark it up as though it were a school paper or something, you could completely change the setup look feel design of your site whenever you wanted with little or no change in source code. And we know teh googlies pay zero attention to css so no change in rank (unless your visitors thought the new desgin was nasty and left).

You might want to check your local library for this book: Build Your Own Web SIte the Right Way Using HTML and CSS by Ian Lloyd. You can go through it and see how you'd change your site out of the tables and into simple HTML markup, while keeping it otherwise the same.

I would think thsat whever the googlies get back to your site, and the content's been changed, then they'll simply record that in the Google cache.

 

The second template is much better than the current one. Don't be afraid to change things around until you get a steady flow of visitors. I probably changed the layout of my site a dozen times while it was new and sandboxed. Changing and revamping is a sign that your site is evolving.

The current homepage is way too long to make anyone want to read it, so if you break it up into chunks it might be a bit more successful.

I also think that you should ditch the webring link.

 

Agreed, the second design is of course much better because it allows for proper navigation.

 

Thanks for the input. I wasn't sure about the webring link to start with. As for the content being too long, how would be the best way to go about breaking it up? I don't really want to cut out any content, as that is most of what got it out of the sandbox to begin with, but it wouldn't really flow if I put part of it on another page or something would it? Or should I try to break it up with some graphics or other destractions between the paragraphs? I've been struggling with a way to overcome the length of the message without losing any of the information. Any thoughts here?

Any other feedback on which site design would be better is still appreciated...Thanks again to those who have already replied

 

The second is an improvment, but still it doesen't do it for me.

Try ... dcarter.co.uk/abstract_02.html similar but much more of a finished template.

 

Agreed, design needs to be changed. You should let me re-design this for you. For $200 I can have it completed tonight, with all of your content implemented and easy to navigate.

Something like this would look great...

 

How do you know you are out of the sandbox? Just because you are indexed does not mean that you are out of the sandbox. Ranking on page 1, 2 or 3 for competitive, targeted keywords means being out of the sandbox. How old is the site?

 

swapping your current content into a nice clean xhtml / css template can often give a massive boost to SERP results.

if you look here: http://www.rankquest.com/tools/Lynx-View.php?url=http://www.jbandbenterprises.com/

that's a simulated lynx viewer's view of your site currently. not too keyword optimised at the top of the page where you need it, is it?

download the ranquest toolbar and go and look at various sites built on the templates youre considering and others too through the lynx viewer.

You'll find that mostly the css layout etc usually lists your navigation structure first which presumably are also your keyworded anchor text? ie the page is full of keywords and their variants right at the top where you want them.

I would crack straight on with this if I were you as you dont really have too much to lose in the in the way of rankings yet, and that layout is not particularly convincing to visitors either.

i thoroughly recommend the dcarter templates, thats what our site is built on and it rocks performance wise once you put good content and seo principles into it's design

 

Nevermind, mindless rant. Just download the real Lynx browser and be done with it.

Like, I just saw a zombie playing hockey. As a shark. Awesome.

 

I don't know for sure if i'm out of the "sandbox", but it took 4 weeks to get any of my pages in the index, so I just assumed that i am. But, i very well may be wrong. Most people talk of the sandbox as not being indexed at all for a long time. i may be at the bottom, but i guess at least i'm in there some where. It isn't much, but at least it's a start.

As for the age of the website, it has only been up for about 5 weeks or so now. So, as some of you have said, i guess i really don't have a whole lot to lose just yet by changing it.

As for the new design, i thought i would have it ready to update to the site by today, but i've got a technical error with my html editor that i have to sort out first. Everything looks great on the editor's page, but when i try to post the code to my site, i get all of the text, links, and images in the correct places...but no background or images for the template itself. It just has a blank white page behind everything. So, i've got to figure that out before I can try to update the site.

i am going to check out the dk templates also. it may be the template that i'm using that's causing the problem. As i say, i'm new to all the html, css, etc. stuff, so i'm still having a bit of a learning curve right now.

i'll keep working at it though, and i'll update this post when, and if, i ever get it updated to a new site so that you all can critique it.

I greatly appreciate everyone who has taken the time to reply and look forward to any and all further responses.

Thanks once again!!

 

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I really don't see how hard it is to not get indexed. I've always been indexed withing the week of submitting for all my sites.

Guess im just lucky

 

You are probably not out of the sandbox. You can probably count on at least 4 more months of being in the sandbox.

In other words, now is the ideal time to play around with the design because it will have little to no impact on your SERPs.

 

Well, I still can't figure out what's going on with my html editor, but I did get a temporary fix made (i hope) so that the page isn't so long. I added a page 2 and broke the length of the text into two pages. I know the site design still stinks, but at least it doesn't have the mile long text all at once. You guys (and gals) might check it out and see what you think. I re-worked all of my nav links at the top so that everything will flow back and forth between the pages, so hopefully it will work for a while until I get this stupid editor to cooperate.

For those of you who offered your services in designing the new version of my site, please don't think i am ignoring you. I just don't really have it in the budget to buy a new design just yet. As i'm sure you all know, advertising is expensive, so i'm putting any extra i money i can into the ad fund until things start moving along better. So thanks for the offers, and i have made notes of each and every one of you so that when, or should i say if, the site gets on its feet a little more and can start to fund some major upgrades such as that, then i will be definitely looking for a designer. Until then, I'll just have to figure things out as i go, and keep upgrading the site as best as i can myself.

Thanks as always to everyone who has posted. Keep 'em coming. I'd like to know if I really messed my site up tonight with the changes or if i may have actually made it a little better. Well, as much better as it is with the design it has anyway.

Thanks again!

 

Ok, it's taken me a few weeks, but I finally got my site re-design completed. I would appreciate if any of you would take a look at it and tell what you think.

Here it is: http://www.jbandbenterprises.com

I had to kind of compromise on what I originally wanted, but I think it is a lot better than what it was before. I couldn't really find any templates that I liked 100 percent, so I just started from scratch and made my own. I know it's probably not the best design ever created, but it suits what I wanted to do and it is a whole lot better than the design it originally had. I've now got all my navigation in one easy to use place, everything is seperated out to be easier to search, it all seems to flow good, and I've got plenty of room to add more content to it later.

So, give it a look and tell me what you think of it now.

Thanks again!!

 

Code-wise, ew. But as far as design...

I have a large screen. Your table is 770px wide (which is considered friendly for those with 800x600 screens) and centered, but this narrow width makes the page quite long. If you had a proper HTML/CSS set up, I'd set the sidebars like they are (fixed width) and let the page stretch out to a greater width for those of us with a wider screen (while it shrinks to a minimum of 770px for when the browser window is made smaller).

You're all worried about SEO, yet aren't taking full advantage. All that space between those paragraphs is screaming for some headers : ) Usually you're beginning a paragraph with a question. That would be a great header. By header, I mean a header tag.

<h1>This is the name of the page. There is only one of these per page.</h1>
<h2> This is a sub-header, and there can be more than one but usually not many of them</h2>
<h3>This is a "sub-sub" header. It belongs under an <h2> and should still be about whatever <h2> is about, just more specific.

When you have 4 or 5 big paragraphs like you have, which are generally about the same info, then you'd likely have multiple <h3>s sitting on top of each paragraph.
<h1>The Best Work From Home Business Opportunity Resources</h1>

(the rest is just fake text to show as an example, don't copy the text)
<h2>Make money online<h2>
paragraph intrducing how to make money online
<h3>How to get started?</h3>
paragraph about getting started in making money online
<h3>Tools</h3>
paragraph about tools used to make money online
<h3>Resources</h3>
paragraph about the resources used to make money online
<h4>Particular resource</h4>
paragraph with extra information about a particular resource used to make money online
<h3>Hurdles</h3>
paragraph about hurdles faced when trying to make money online

Etc.. This also helps you break up your text better. Teh Googles like headers because it helps them figure out which parts of your own page YOU think are most important. Your page is not ABOUT a particular resource used to make money online, that's just a small part of your page. And so people looking for only that Particular Resource would be happier finding pages that are all about or only about that Particular Resource than finding your page, which isn't about the particular resource but about Making Money Online, see? All search engines like semantically-written pages. They'll index and rank all pages, and the rank is surely determined by content, yes, but with header tags you set a bit of order to your page which makes it easier for people to figure out what's most important and what's less important.

A border would help things design wise. A slim 1px light grey border can do wonders for a page.

 

Thanks for the information Stomme. I know the code is really awful, but with my editor, I'm just lucky I got it to look halfway the way I wanted it to. As for the html/css set up you mentioned, that is what I was hoping to achieve when I redesigned the site, but it didn't work for some reason. My editor has a setting that is supposed to edit in css stylesheets, but even though I used it for the complete redesign, when I was done I still didn't have any style sheets. So, I'm still working on that part of the process. I did notice that when I looked at the source code on my page 2, right after re-designing, I did have some of the css in the code (h1, h2, etc.) but it wasn't a complete and recognizable style sheet. For some reason, it didn't do the whole thing, so I took out the extra css tags, which were not even being recognized by my css validator anyway (it kept saying no style sheet found). I don't know why my editor used some css on the second page, none on the first page, but didn't do it all. I know my editor stinks, but that's what I have and I can't really afford anything else right at this point. Is there any way, short of another complete redo, to convert my entire site from what I've got to a workable css stylesheet? Obviously, I'm new to all of this and really don't know all the tech stuff about these editors, website code, etc. but I'm am always willing to learn something new and would appreciate any advice that I can get.
I appreciate you taking the time to post.
Thanks!

 

Um, unfortunately your choices (if you want better code) is two:

One is to learn all the HTML and CSS yourself. This can be done cheaply (all you need is something that types without formatting, like a Notepad clone) but will take a bit of time (since you're obviously busy doing other things in life, you may not have a whole lot of time, and CSS takes a lot of it).

Option 2 is to get someone who already knows to do it for you. Unfortunately this is a sort of "Lemon market": you can't tell how good the used car is unless you're a mechanic... you can't tell how good a coder is unless you're a coder yourself.

The use of tables isn't really the best choice here as it will limit your flexibility and in this case adds a lot more code (increasing filesize, which if you end up getting a bunch of visitors that's a lot of work for your server).

Your CSS generator, I dunno what it's doing but it seems to have some sort of template-idea behind it... because why would it add css for something that you don't have in your HTML? This is bloat too, even though any visitors only load your css sheet once.

I'm thinking you're more likely to take the second option, but if you choose the first, stick around on these forums for answers, and check out this book (literally, check it out from the library, it's old enough): Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way using HTML and CSS by Ian Lloyd. Just be sure to check the errata link inside the book so that you don't get confused by the typos which have made it through printing : )

Since you actually build a website using that book (www.bubbleunder.com), you can pretty much make any type of simple site after going through it once.

All of this can be done completely free! (Unless you decide to buy the book, which I did). Free as in money, though, not as in time. CSS is introduced in the book and how to hook it up in your HTML page, but it's pretty simple CSS. You can go further with CSS using any number of books or even online articles.

Good Luck.