Advice for Front Page!

On the front of my Free Recipe site, it looks a bit bland.
Its only really been a rush job as i havent had time to "do it up"

Do you have any ideas?
I was thinking about having a top 5 recipes or something?

Any better ideas?

 

Top 5 viewed would be a decent idea, you could also do new recipes, or cooking news articles.

 

A couple of quick things (30 second page appraisal ;-) )

The grey page backround is way to dark and hard. Try lightening it up so it mirrors say the chrome of a cooker, or change it to white completely. It will be much cleaner ad crisper, and will draw the eye to the content.

get rid of that photo of the peppers and replace it with a topical picture. The list on the left are mostly chicken dishes, so Ideally a picture of one of those would be perfect. I would also make those recipes clickable links.

You mention click on the menu, but it is not apparent where the menu is, as you have used CSS to remove the underlining (this is what made me assume the bullet pointed list of recipies was the menu refered to)

I would also add a little more text to that opening page, try making yourself standout with some sort of mission statement, or if you are a niche, then describe the niche. eg.

We provide a host of free recipes, that are in a plain easy to follow format, using every day as well as more exotic ingredients. If your a beginner we will hold your hand and walk you through preparation to serving. If you are an acomplished chef/cook, then print and go.

Also I would hack the code of the Google search and place the web search last and make the your site search the default. it is only a small thing, but better they search your site before you send them off elsewhere.