Brand new site: would appreciate suggestions/tips!

Howdy,

My site, directed to students interested in an international education, went live a little over a month ago and would appreciate some recommendations and tips from the experts here.

I still have a bit of work to do on it (custom design for the forums, newsletter subscription...), so I am trying to do little every day.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

 

Looks very eye appealing so far. I would sell more sizzle on the front page. Why would i want to join your site? not what it does. Enjoy blah blah blah if you sign up today! stuff like that! make be exciting for you target market.

 

Thanks! That is actually a really good tip. I am concentrating to much on the "how" instead of the "why"....

 

Nice site and video, you made it yourself?

The audience that you are targeting really deserve that Facebook connect button above the fold or without scrolling (on a 1280 x 1024 resolution), without A/B testing I'm sure you'll get more users by this tiny change.

Congratulations on your work

 

Thanks! Video was not hard to make, actually. All credit goes to animoto.com, a site that makes it quite easy to produce videos--specially for a total noob like myself with too small pockets to hire professionals. As for the Facebook Connect tip, you're right, gotta move that little button up!

 

I liked the site especially the colors. but the header bar needs to be short, and so does the middle dark blue bar. If you make these corrections then the page will have less length and so users won't have to scroll the mouse wheel 3 times to reach the bottom. I liked the gray footer but you may as well extend its width to the whole page width, that would be great. try and see whether you like it..
hope this helped

 

I have to agree with sunscapes, the header is far too deep and it should be about half to two thirds of what it is currently.

Otherwise good clean look, easy on the eyes, good color combination.

 

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I will be implementing some changes within the next few days and will check back to see what you think.

While I'm at it, I think I may not be doing such a good job on my on-page SEO, and feel that I should tweak my landing page and Wordpress to optimize for the keywords I am after. Namely, study abroad, international education, exchange students, and the correlative phrases (e.g., how to study abroad, study abroad information, etc.).

Thanks again!

 

Hi,
The home page is attractive however it is not easy to find your way around and is very dull on the other pages. Also if you add more colour i think this will attract more people.

 

Thanks. I'll be going over the design of the inner pages soon. There is so much to do! Any suggestions re on-page SEO? I'm quite a noob, so I am not sure I am using my meta's to the full of their capacity, as well as the on-page text....

 

it is awesome
seems professional job

 

Thanks, trying to make it as professional-looking as possible... Still stuck with the keyword thing... Trying to figure out the whole thing about keyword density, proximity, etc., etc....