Rate my website - a Business Planning Service

[koolst]

Hello there,

Hope everything is going well in your side. I have a website (like most of you), and I feel like it is time to get some feedback on it, so I would like you to have a quick look and tell me what do you think about it. Please do not hesitate to be hard if you find it awful.

The website is: http://koolst.com (Kool St, we took this name cos it sounds like Wall St and it's cool).
The site is not 100% completed but still most pages are working.

About our business:
Me and 3 my friends are creating business plans. We know we are not stars in financial industry, but do we know what we are doing and we are developing our experience a day by day, and do not charge excessively.

So what would you say?

p.s. Please find attached a little poll here

 

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[RoadTrip]

Hi Koolst,

First of all I see you are new here so I hope people aren't going to be too harsh because you're asking for help before providing any value to forum first.

But let me give you my thoughts. What could be improved according to me:

• I don't really understand the additional value of the ipad with sliding business plan. On my Macbook Retina 13 inch it's pretty annoying to scroll down the page and it takes up so much space
• There's too much text on the front page. Maybe it's me being lazy but I just think I should be able to see in a quick overview what your business does for me
• Are you creating good business plans for success or are you creating great/awesome business plans to make large amounts of money?

And who's your target market? Startups? As far as I know most startups are avoiding making business plans and instead focus on getting the MVP to market as soon as possible. But you might be aiming at a different market or different type of companies...

That's all. Good luck with the venture!

 

[jon.a]

I don't get it. State in one clear paragraph, what are you trying to accomplish.

 

[MayaMagpie]

I agree with the others... Also, there are typos in the main menu. Should be "Marketing Research" (r missing) and Inquiry now" (i missing) or rather "Inquire now".

 

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[koolst]

thanks guys for your constructive thoughts! will try to improve our website.

I don't get it. State in one clear paragraph, what are you trying to accomplish.

accomplish by what? by our website in general or by our post on this forum?

 

[Writer]

Hello there,

Hope everything is going well in your side. I have a website (like most of you), and I feel like it is time to get some feedback on it, so I would like you to have a quick look and tell me what do you think about it. Please do not hesitate to be hard if you find it awful.

Welcome. Sorry to be blunt, but I hope you appreciate my honesty. I promise that if we meet beer is on me.

From a design point of view, your website goes against anything I believe about design.
1) You force the user to scroll down a virtual iPad of no apparent use. That iPad is too BIG and shows something that can be accomplished with Excel.
2) A scroll within a scroll is the devil of web design, except extreme circumstances. Not only the user has to scroll the main page, but he has to scroll inside the "iPad"
3) The "We create your business [etc.]" and sub should be at the TOP, as that is the part where you state your service. Instead you put a slogan on top, and the purpose at mid-page. You can have the slogan on top only if your company is recognized just by brand.
4) You're wasting space from the top menu to your slogan. Yes the background is cool, but useless. Seriously: do not forget the power of WHITE pages.
5) With all the textboxes at 3/4 of the page your force the user to read too much. Shorten the text, especially if you have a "Read more" button.
6) Although I truly enjoyed the "Why people chose our business" boxes, notice that you can put them in one line or at least drastically reduce the space you need.
7) Contact & follow us should be on a different page. (A Facebook like button can stay on homepage in order to get more likes)
8) As Stephen King said, "the road of hell is paved by adverbs". There is no need to write "Basically, a business plan [...]". Change it to something like "Our business plan is a GPS navigator for your business that shows you where to go and what to do to get what you want." I counted five adverbs in a small space.

Ok, I am a pain in the a$$ today.


EDIT: In bullet 1 I am not saying that what you're doing can be accomplished with Excel. I am saying that you just show a couple of boxes and numbers without the minimal explanation of what's behind. Give the customer the "SECRET". He wants to know HOW. Put a couple of arrows explaining the "core concept" of what is seen on screen.

 

[Writer]

As a resource, look at Evernote's webiste (https://evernote.com/) which has a similar structure to yours.
Notice, minimal text, the function is stated at the top ("For everything you'll do...etc."), and real life application usage pictures (not like your iPad's content which is built for the website; recognizable by the fact that if you click on one of the cells you get the cursor in it). And no, you can't afford the Mythbusters dude

 

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[theag]

You are all over the place. All your copy is just fluffy words.

I think you need to niche down.

Examples:

Target audience: Small local business
Your value proposition: We create a business plan that is optimized to be approved for a business loan by your local bank.

or

Target audience: Fancy startup
Your value proposition: We create a business plan that is optimized to wow possible investors without being ridiculous.

Something like that.

Create some marketing personas, figure out what their problems with a BP are and what they want to use it for, and then create specialized offers for them.

 

[sle3pyguii]

Did a quick look of your website.

1. Your frontpage has A LOT of text. Like...excessively. Might wanna cut down on that.
2. The tagline "we create good business plans for your success". That "good" makes it seem like you're mediocre. That tagline makes me not want to use you because why would I want to use someone that is "good" for something as important as my business? I want "Best" or "Greatest" or something that tells me that I can trust that I'm getting top-quality stuff.
3. Your social media icons above your contact us form on the front page doens't link to your business social media accounts.

 

[jog]

Hey Koolst,

I must admit that the website has lots of text on the home page and it confuses the customer because he doesn't have an idea what your service is all about. However, I would not say the design is that awful that doesn't fir the norms. The Ipad contains the sample work (as I get it) but the scroll down takes 2-3 seconds at most so I don't think its a big deal. If I click on the Contact US box it will put me down to the bottom of the page which is quite handy I think. The only button I'd update is the one called 'Service'. Once I clicked on it I expected to see a range of services (or at least its pricing) but not the sample work. Overall, it's a good start, just to need to fix some parts. Good luck with your biz!

 

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[IvanS]

I think that making more links and replacing the text from the front page, would be a nice thing to do.

Links in the header with the info about "Marketing Strategy" and "Business Plans" make it easier to understand what is the thing you are offering. However, what if a customer would like Koolst to solely compose a Marketing Plan or Break-even let's say, providing supplementary info about the existing business idea? - If yes, then, there should be a mentioning of that.

Generally, I liked the style of the site. I also like the quotation at the bottom . What if you add more of those and make them randomly appear every time one refreshes the page?

 

[Harestock09]

Hello there,

Hope everything is going well in your side. I have a website (like most of you), and I feel like it is time to get some feedback on it, so I would like you to have a quick look and tell me what do you think about it. Please do not hesitate to be hard if you find it awful.

The website is: http://koolst.com (Kool St, we took this name cos it sounds like Wall St and it's cool).
The site is not 100% completed but still most pages are working.

About our business:
Me and 3 my friends are creating business plans. We know we are not stars in financial industry, but do we know what we are doing and we are developing our experience a day by day, and do not charge excessively.

So what would you say?

p.s. Please find attached a little poll here

Hi,

Firstly, welcome (I'm new too), and well done on taking the initiative to start something on your own.

A couple of brief comments after looking at your site:

1- There is an awful lot of text. Our generation is very receptive to 'sound bytes' rather than lengthy paragraphs that end up saying not very much at all. I would take the opportunity to reduce what text you have, and think about what you are REALLY trying to say.

2 - The text that is written there is not particularly eloquent or professional in it's overall appearance, phraseology or structure. I apologize if that sounds overly critical, but if I am looking at Masters level / MBA people who could provide me with senior level business planning advice, your standard needs to be really high, especially on the basics. Perhaps tie up with somebody with more copyrighting experience?

3 - Have you actually validated the market need? You've done a lot on the website, but have you lined up 1/2/3/4 customers who actually need what you offer? Are you really clear on what the problem you are trying to solve is, and how your target customers currently solve it?

4 - Focus on the HARD things. The website is the easy bit. The business cards take no time. The infrastructure is a doddle. What's going to be REALLY difficult? Work that out, and focus on it. It might be finding potential customers, pitching, pricing, closing. Who knows, but put your effort into that.

5 - In line with point 4 - why should I choose you over a more experienced and established consultancy? I know you say your prices are the best in the industry, but is that your key point of differentiation?

Tell me to go away if you don't like what I've written...I won't mind. I hope it's useful or thought provoking in some way, and best wishes with the venture! I know you've asked for a website critique and I've expended beyond that, sorry.

Shout if I can help in any other way or if you disagree / have questions etc.

 

[randomnumber314]

thanks guys for your constructive thoughts! will try to improve our website.



accomplish by what? by our website in general or by our post on this forum?

In both cases you have 5 seconds to make the user decide to continue reading or move on. I looked at your site and had to authorize adobe flash...then I got bored and moved on. Put your website through this test---> http://fivesecondtest.com/

 

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[koolst]

Didn't expect so much attention and so many reviews.
Thank you guys! Will take all your advice into consideration.

 

[koolst]

Hi,

Firstly, welcome (I'm new too), and well done on taking the initiative to start something on your own.

A couple of brief comments after looking at your site:

1- There is an awful lot of text. Our generation is very receptive to 'sound bytes' rather than lengthy paragraphs that end up saying not very much at all. I would take the opportunity to reduce what text you have, and think about what you are REALLY trying to say.

2 - The text that is written there is not particularly eloquent or professional in it's overall appearance, phraseology or structure. I apologize if that sounds overly critical, but if I am looking at Masters level / MBA people who could provide me with senior level business planning advice, your standard needs to be really high, especially on the basics. Perhaps tie up with somebody with more copyrighting experience?

3 - Have you actually validated the market need? You've done a lot on the website, but have you lined up 1/2/3/4 customers who actually need what you offer? Are you really clear on what the problem you are trying to solve is, and how your target customers currently solve it?

4 - Focus on the HARD things. The website is the easy bit. The business cards take no time. The infrastructure is a doddle. What's going to be REALLY difficult? Work that out, and focus on it. It might be finding potential customers, pitching, pricing, closing. Who knows, but put your effort into that.

5 - In line with point 4 - why should I choose you over a more experienced and established consultancy? I know you say your prices are the best in the industry, but is that your key point of differentiation?

Tell me to go away if you don't like what I've written...I won't mind. I hope it's useful or thought provoking in some way, and best wishes with the venture! I know you've asked for a website critique and I've expended beyond that, sorry.

Shout if I can help in any other way or if you disagree / have questions etc.

Thanks, good food for thoughts. Yes we do need any help now. What could you offer to us?

 

[smarty]

I don't know much from your business, but judging from design/functionality perspective, 2 things don;t seem right:
1) scroll inside ipad. double scroll in a page, make it boring and not professional.
2) make these boxed show up on mouse hover, not on mouse click. http://i.gyazo.com/7aeb132856f8fc5e7923ae29e3abff30.png

 

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[Vadim K]

Hi Koolst,

I like your idea, this kind of services would be very useful in the developing countries with transitional economies. It would help people, who have little understanding of what is business to guide them for first couple of years.

I agree with others that it's too much text on the front page. Boil down the text to several short points. You have enough text on other pages of the site. I would put the section "WHY PEOPLE CHOOSE OUR BUSINESS PLANNING SERVICE" in the beginning of the page, it has short points and answers the main question.

Good luck!

 

[koolst]

Thank you guys for your feedback!!

 

[elad]

Why is the navigation menu disappearing as the page scales down?

 

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[koolst]

Why is the navigation menu disappearing as the page scales down?

hi elad
actually it isn't

 

[Writer]

hi elad
actually it isn't

It does disappear. reduce the browser window's size and the text will go away

 

[D11FYY]

From someone who likes design I think this one page website idea is getting a bit ridiculous it suits some business models this doesnt seem to be one. Fair enough you need alot of information on your landing page but this doesnt fit well (imo).

Wishing you luck on your endeavor

 

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[Esquire]

*

 

[koolst]

*

got it. will fix our copy.

 

[tafy]

Website looks good from what I can see

What you need to do IMO:

1. Content Marketing (blog): You need to start making excellent guides for people to make their own business plan, I know it sounds weird but it will work. People will see how much work it takes to make a really good plan and they will ask you to do it. They will do their plan but feel its not good enough and ask you to fix it. You will also get a ton of SEO traffic for free.

2. Business plan examples, you need some of these on your site so people can see what you do and your quality, maybe say how much that particilar business plan cost. Make small>big plans and show a rough cost of each one.

3. The English: Your english is great but it needs cleaning up slightly as bits are not fluent to read, hard to explain. You team section shows everyone that there isnt any native English speakers onboard which may put people off?

 

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