Home Page Critiques

It's first impressions about your site that count. Most web sites have less than 10 seconds to entice a visitor and if they fail, the visitor leaves. Even if they stay, the average length of a visit is -- at best -- no more than two minutes. If the visitor doesn't find what they want in that time, they'll leave. You need to find out if your home page passes the 10-second and two-minute visibility test.

As an adjunct to the critiques I perform in conjunction with my speeches, I also perform standalone home page critiques. These critiques fall into two categories:

1. Your page is the subject of the Two-Minute Offense (directly follows)
2. Your page is only critiqued by me.

The Two-Minute Offense

One of the cornerstones of FixingYourWebSite.com is "The Two Minute Offense (new window)." Monday through Friday, I select a site for critique and visitors are allowed to view it for only two-minutes. After the two minutes are up, the site disappears and the visitor types in the mistakes they've found into a form and clicks the "Done" button. The program generates a results page with:

• The URL of the site
• Vincent's critique -- what I found wrong in two minutes
• The submitter's critique
• A screen shot of the site

Since it's a normal Web page, the critique can be printed for future reference. This example critique gives you an idea of what one looks like (new window)

Fix your home page design

It's difficult to be critical about the look of your web site because critiquing your site is like critiquing your baby. Why? Your baby is the most beautiful baby in the world. We're all too close to our sites to recognize their problems and that's where a dispassionate and critical eye comes in handy. If there ever was a critical eye for design, I've got it.

What you get.

If you sign up for a Two-Minute Offense Critique you'll receive the following:

Home page exam -- Instead of 2 minutes, I'll spend 20 minutes examining the page and report those issues I think need to be fixed.

Critiques from the public -- Each site featured in the Two-Minute Offense receives between 65-126 reviews per day. When a critique is generated, an anonymous e-mail is sent to Vincent with the critique (Here's a sample e-mail new window). As you can see, these e-mails are completely anonymous and there's no way to track who sent it or its location.

As you can imagine, the quality of the public's input varies from the idiotic to the brilliant but there are often very valuable insights that can help your site.

Your page is only critiqued by me

It's just the same as the above, except it isn't the subject of a Two-Minute Offense.

The cost

The cost for this service is just $250. This is strictly a design critique and has nothing to do with marketing or search engine positioning strategies. Those are full-blown topics where you'll need others who specialize in these topics.

If you're interested in a critique, please contact me. There are lots of legal caveats and non-disclosure issues that have to be worked out.