How does my new site look?

[NeatStranger]

Hello All!

It has been a few months since I last posted, I have been steadily working away on my new website in the "Desert of Desertion". There have been new ideas come and gone, but I have seen this business through and I now have a fully developed product.

This website essentially lets you buy the addresses in a specific geographic region to build a mailing list for sites like www.click2mail.com, or I use it for Vistaprint mailing services.

As stated in previous posts, I needed this tool to help my marketing efforts in the family businesses(Internet Service Providers). Most often we can only cover a small area of 10-15 square miles spread out through the Phoenix area. Our companies needed geographic based mailing lists, and EDDM often wasted hundreds if not thousands of flyers.
We were paying for an overseas assistant to drop pins and collect addresses by hand. I built a program to do this much faster and cheaper. Mail-Sprout is mostly a "Scratch Your Own Itch" product, and other than a few months of coding and work it didn't cost anything to build.


If you have some time, take a look at my new website: www.mail-sprout.com


Notes: The server I use to count the addresses can count an area up to about 600,000 homes. Above that it might error out. The maximum number of addresses that can be bought in a single go is 20,000-27,000; I don't see this being a problem, but for more addresses than this I would definitely have to run this script by hand.

Also, be patient when clicking through the site; this is a fairly computationally heavy set of tasks and it might need a second to catch up. This is a bare bones proof of concept still.

Please let me know what you think!

 

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[User62861]

The website looks good and simple. Few things...

The logo is in low quality...try to upload SVG file of the logo. You won't lose any quality no matter how you resize the logo/website.

Font on the main banner image is a bit small and thin.

 

[NeatStranger]

The website looks good and simple. Few things...

The logo is in low quality...try to upload SVG file of the logo. You won't lose any quality no matter how you resize the logo/website.

Font on the main banner image is a bit small and thin.

Awesome, yeah I just ordered a new logo last night; so hopefully that will be done soon. I will have to size up that font.

 

[User62861]

Awesome, yeah I just ordered a new logo last night; so hopefully that will be done soon. I will have to size up that font.

Where did you order it?

 

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[NeatStranger]

Where did you order it?

From a Fiverr logo designer. This one was quick and dirty; I designed it my self in Canva.

 

[User62861]

From a Fiverr logo designer. This one was quick and dirty; I designed it my self in Canva.

I do logo design and brand development and I was a member of Fiverr a loooong time ago.

This is my advice...not sure what's your max budget for the logo ($250 should be some minimum), but don't use Fiverr. Go on Behance or Dribbble and find a designer you like...hire him directly!

Please visit those sites and compare the quality with Fiverr.

If you don't have a good budget, save your money and use free Google font for the logo until you save enough.

Fiverr is basically just a flipping unlicensed designs from sites like FreePik. It's illegal and wrong. It's not a good thing to build your service on.

Anyway, this was just my perspective as I've been doing this for a long time now.

 

[NeatStranger]

I do logo design and brand development and I was a member of Fiverr a loooong time ago.

This is my advice...not sure what's your max budget for the logo ($250 should be some minimum), but don't use Fiverr. Go on Behance or Dribbble and find a designer you like...hire him directly!

Please visit those sites and compare the quality with Fiverr.

If you don't have a good budget, save your money and use free Google font for the logo until you save enough.

Fiverr is basically just a flipping unlicensed designs from sites like FreePik. It's illegal and wrong. It's not a good thing to build your service on.

Anyway, this was just my perspective as I've been doing this for a long time now.

Yeah, if the site gets any traction I will definitely upgrade. I just basically paid someone $20 to take my existing logo and make it look a little prettier and provide me with a couple high res files. I haven't heard of Google font before, normally I just do my graphic design work in Apple Preview or Gimp for layer editing and then move it to canva to add fancy fonts to it.

 

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[Guest921Y]

Can you give us more of a "hook" on the main page? the real benefit? Many who are already looking for your services will already understand, but some won't realize that they need it until they visit your site, and you want to sell them immediately.

 

[Sadik]

There's a typo on your homepage "prescise"

 

[Sadik]

On your Map selection page, the Add Rectangle button should be above the map, not below it. I kept clicking on the map a few times expecting something to happen and then realized nothing's happening... Luckily I scrolled down before closing down the window. Also the "Number of Addresses" results is very slow, you should probably add some changing text to keep the user engaged while the system is fetching results if you can't speed it up.

 

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[journeyman]

I like it. Clean and minimal.
You may want to put some more content in the homepage.
What's your stack out of curiosity?

 

[rjrobbins2]

I like it so far, it is simple and easy to read. Are you going to be adding to it because although it is clean, it seems incomplete. What did you use to build it?

I would suggest putting more space between your menu items in the right hand corner. They seem jumbled together a bit. I would also either add more copy on your front page hero image or use a larger font.

Also, it seems to load a little slow. It could be my internet as it has been spotty lately. Compress your images if you havent already. It will help with load speeds. Speeds are big for Google SEO. Run a speed test to find out how it ranks. Ryte.com gives you a free monthly scan that will help you find problems with SEO such as speed, links, etc.

I would make your About page more personal. Add some personality to it. Why are you doing this? What are your goals? Who makes up your team? What is the story behind this business. What value do you want to add to the world with this project?

For your pricing page, I would do boxes for each pricing point like you see on most webpages. That is going to be a high conversion page if this works for you so it needs to be more attractive. That page is somewhat plain. I would read up on copywriting a bit to get a grasp on verbiage that will help you convert. Web Copy That Sells by Maria Veloso is a great book for that. In fact, copywriting or the lack of it is one of the biggest problems. See below for pricing example:

I applaud you for taking action and it is a great start but always remember that websites are dynamic and should be continually maintained and updated. I just dont know if there is enough there to get conversions. I cannot recommend Web Copy that Sells by Maria Veloso enough.

 

[rjrobbins2]

I do logo design and brand development and I was a member of Fiverr a loooong time ago.

This is my advice...not sure what's your max budget for the logo ($250 should be some minimum), but don't use Fiverr. Go on Behance or Dribbble and find a designer you like...hire him directly![/QUOTE]

I have always been rather pleased with what I have gotten for Fiverr. I usually pay either $5 to $10 and hire like 3 people which gives me like 6 to 9 logos to choose from. When I get one I like, I pay for the source files and everything. I have never paid more than like $40.

If you are starting a bigger business or have a larger budget, I would suggest your advice but when you are bootstrapping, I think Fiverr works fine. There are some talented people that work out of Asia and other places you can find that can provide quality on par with what you find on Behance for 99 Designs.

 

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[Cvince]

Here's my two cents;

- The logo looks very amateur. I suggest hiring a professional company to get this done. If you cannot afford a professional logo you can create something basic with a non-copyright font.

- The website is overly simple/basic. As a consumer I wouldn't be sold on your services. Study the business copyright of your competitors and apply it to your website. ( Lists Archive - InfoUSA )

- I see spelling mistakes on the website. Personally I'd rewrite everything. It looks like it was thrown together in 24 hours. Now, If you don't see any issues with the wording then you should hire a copyrighter who specializes in your industry.

- Use an original favicon because a competitor is already using 'yours'. ( Mailing Lists | Business & Consumer | Marketing Campaigns | InfoCanada )

- The maps process was extremely confusing & slow. As a consumer I would of left the page and headed to your competitor.

 

[Walter Hay]

Your home page has a call to action, but the only incentive is your claim that direct mail has a higher response rate than emails do.

The site linked by @Cvince Lists Archive - InfoUSA had a reasonably good headline when the site opened, but the effect was spoiled by the banner scrolling automatically.

As in direct mail, the headline must grab attention and demand that the reader wants to continue reading.

Your headline has no appeal. It should in some way address the need that has drawn visitors to your site. Otherwise, why would anyone bother to read on by going to the next page, unless they were desperate for a list?

Walter