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Website Evaluation

Paul David

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My Brother in Law has started his own website. It's not finished yet but here's what he's done so far. I've told him what i think needs improving on it but i said i'd post it on here to get some real feedback from people who know what they are talking about.

www.brandulance.com

Tell me what you think!
 
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GSF

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It's bad. Really bad lol. I dont know where to start. No clear message of what he's offering. Crazy early 2000s jumping graphics and design. I'm guessing he's offering some kind of branding/ marketing for companies but his own branding is terrible. Good on him for starting something but just needs a lot of work! Maybe look into using a template.
 

KeepGoin

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It's a shopify site. Tell him to use a template and get the flashing thing off of there. Headache inducing
 

minivanman

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Yeah, take that flashing thing off and get rid of all the B's. Then someone might actually be able to see the site. I had to close it out.
 
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1step

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I can't really tell what he is selling but it doesn't seem like shopify is the best platform for this. It seems wordpress would be much better, given the flexibility on the platform I think it would be much easier for him to customize a template and start over. I agree about the website being very ugly/poor and needing to use a template. I would recommend he goes on themeforest to buy a wordpress theme

Design:
1. Fonts are hard to read
2. Homepage slider is terrible, moving logo is distracting
3. Logo/category images on homepage (brandulance for affiliates etc) are poorly designed, pixelated, and hard to read (font) - background on these is odd
 

Devilery

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It's bad. Really, really bad. And shopify is a horrible platform for project of this kind. Tell him to create a Wordpress site and buy Divi Builder. It costs like 100$, but it's one-time fee and can be used for unlimited sites. It has over 100 templates, which can be edited super easily (basically swap the content).
Check this example, there's many like this and all can be edited effortlesly Digital Marketing Landing | Elegant Themes
P.S. I'm in no way affiliated or anything. I just had to find a way to make my own sites without any skills and this is what works for me.
 

Jon Anthony

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Blogger here. $15k/month blog owner.

Biggest thing is to have the landing page IMMEDIATELY display what you're about.

Benefits, benefits, BENEFITS.

Second, get rid of that annoying moving gif. It serves no purpose.

Have a "learn more" button and some case studies as well.
 
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Bertram

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It's bad. Really, really bad. And shopify is a horrible platform for project of this kind. Tell him to create a Wordpress site and buy Divi Builder. It costs like 100$, but it's one-time fee and can be used for unlimited sites. It has over 100 templates, which can be edited super easily (basically swap the content).
Check this example, there's many like this and all can be edited effortlesly Digital Marketing Landing | Elegant Themes
P.S. I'm in no way affiliated or anything. I just had to find a way to make my own sites without any skills and this is what works for me.
Hi, this is really helpful. I have multiple e-commerce sites to launch including digital products and it's my first time around. I'll most likely go with Bluehost. Is there any real benefit to having a dedicated IP?
Thanks.
 

biophase

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My Brother in Law has started his own website. It's not finished yet but here's what he's done so far. I've told him what i think needs improving on it but i said i'd post it on here to get some real feedback from people who know what they are talking about.

www.brandulance.com

Tell me what you think!
Whoa! The purple!!!! Just no.
 

Devilery

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Hi, this is really helpful. I have multiple e-commerce sites to launch including digital products and it's my first time around. I'll most likely go with Bluehost. Is there any real benefit to having a dedicated IP?
Thanks.
Sorry. Didn't quite get what you mean. The Divi Builder is like a plugin which offers customizable templates for more than 100 industries. You can use it on as many sites as you wish.
I guess you're talking about hosting. In that case, yeah, Bluehost is fine and in my opinion there is no point of hosting websites on your own, dedicated server.
 
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Bertram

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Sorry. Didn't quite get what you mean. The Divi Builder is like a plugin which offers customizable templates for more than 100 industries. You can use it on as many sites as you wish.
I guess you're talking about hosting. In that case, yeah, Bluehost is fine and in my opinion there is no point of hosting websites on your own, dedicated server.

Thanks, much appreciated.
 
Last edited:

Rawiri

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Hi, this is really helpful. I have multiple e-commerce sites to launch including digital products and it's my first time around. I'll most likely go with Bluehost. Is there any real benefit to having a dedicated IP?
Thanks.

Yes, there is. The primary one is really security.

If you are on shared hosting then you lose large amounts of control. You could have the best security on your own site and it doesn't matter - a hacker will just hack you by going through some other random person who has a hobby site with crappy security hosted on the same server. If you're creating an e-commerce site that is going to have a database with customer information then that is a big liability.

Depending on your set up there are other things too, like flexibility of what you're doing on the back-end. Deliverability of emails (someone using the same server - or hacked in - could have spammed emails out and got the IP blacklisted). Slowed down speed of the site (depending on how popular the other sites are) - which could possibly lose sales and impact SEO if that is a traffic source being pursued.
 

Bertram

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Yes, there is. The primary one is really security.

If you are on shared hosting then you lose large amounts of control. You could have the best security on your own site and it doesn't matter - a hacker will just hack you by going through some other random person who has a hobby site with crappy security hosted on the same server. If you're creating an e-commerce site that is going to have a database with customer information then that is a big liability.

Depending on your set up there are other things too, like flexibility of what you're doing on the back-end. Deliverability of emails (someone using the same server - or hacked in - could have spammed emails out and got the IP blacklisted). Slowed down speed of the site (depending on how popular the other sites are) - which could possibly lose sales and impact SEO if that is a traffic source being pursued.
Thanks for the feedback. Security will matter. Clients will transmit and create legal and financial info plus private content on three sites. Two more are E-commerce and one is online publishing.
Should I consider a VPS instead of a dedicated IP?

Bluehost offers dedicated IP with a strong hosting package for $13.95/mo.

I used HTML 5 to build websites for three annual bikathons and my real estate hustle, but I am "self-taught" and I want to save time with a flexible website builder. In the deep past that was Dreamweaver. It looks like Bluehost offers plans that use uses Wordpress. From what I gather this is a step down.
 
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Last edited:

Rawiri

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Thanks for the feedback. Security will matter. Clients will transmit and create legal and financial info plus private content on three sites. Two more are E-commerce and one is online publishing.
Should I consider a VPS instead of a dedicated IP?

Bluehost offers dedicated IP with a strong hosting package for $13.95/mo.

I used HTML 5 to build websites for three annual bikathons and my real estate hustle, but I a! "self-taught" and I want to save time with a flexible website builder. In the deep past that was Dreamweaver. It looks like Bluehost offers plans that use uses Wordpress. From what I gather this is a step down.

A dedicated IP will basically help with the e-mail issue (if sending out business e-mails from the domain name etc).

In the sense of increasing security it won't do much, though. (EXCEPT if it were required to get a SSL certificate, which you will need for e-commerce - but with a big host like Bluehost you should be able to get an SSL certificate on shared hosting...)

The most secure is of course, entirely dedicated server. But that is often a pain to deal with, not to mention expensive. VPS is a good middle ground - not as secure but way better than basic shared hosting.

IF you want to use shared hosting (which is honestly probably fine at the start and then you could move over later) then I would save your money and not bother with the dedicated IP since it probably won't be needed...and you can use some other e-mail for business on the off chance there were. Just check the price for SSL, if any, since you'll need that.

Otherwise VPS is what I would do. And best case scenario the VPS is shared among a whole bunch of servers to reduce risk of any down-time. I don't know if Bluehost operates it like that.
 

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