Websites Please Review My Website!

Hello, I have a dog training business and am in the process of updating my website. I am adding some new pictures and would love to know how you think it looks! Thanks for any help you can provide!

Golden Paws Dog Training

Nicole

 

You have some nice pictures that could be enhanced with out of frame techniques
Penguin Pete's Blog
Make a Subject Pop Out of a Photo-Show and Tell Graphics
Photoshop cut-out pops out of the frame

Home Page
<title>Welcome to Golden Paws Dog Training</title>
Google displays 66 characters (including spaces) of the title
You have 35 characters (including spaces)

<meta name="description" content="Golden Paws Dog Training offers dog obedience and agility
classes, boarding, grooming, and retail. We have lots of experience with dogs and will help
you and your canine companion achieve a better relationship!">
Google displays 150 characters

Training/Boarding
<title>Services</title>

<title>mydogs</title>

About Me
<title>About Us</title>
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Several of my web pages are visited without going through the index page
Therefore make sure each page has a good title (about 66 characters) and a good description (about 150 characters). Is training/boarding about services. Would the average visitors look for services or training - boarding. Would people looking for kennals look for my dogs. You may want to add to the title of "my dogs" to explain more, such as their accomplishments or awards.
-
hope this helps
falcon

 

May want to check other similar websites for keyword ideas
(keywords are what people use to find the website)
Better keywords mean more visitors
example:
How To Train A Dog, dog training tips and techniques for home based dog trainers

this one you will have to scroll down to see the source code
Adams Dog Training and Dog Behavior

remember, you are checking the site and source code for information and ideas
Dr. P's Dog Training & Behavior Main Page

maybe some article ideas for your site or training tips
dog training tips puppy training dog behavioror and dog obedience info

More of the same
http://www.freedogtraininginfo.com/

Keywords:
checked in wordtracker
Free Keyword Suggestion Tool from Wordtracker

20257 dogs
15820 dog
5872 dog breeds
893 dog training
116 dog obedience training
112 obedience
56 dog obedience

according to these results - look at the results for "dogs" and "dog" -
"dog training" and "dog obedience training"
That is why you need to use a keyword suggestion tool.
-
hope this helps
falcon

 

Hmm, the site looks like it has been on the ice for 10 years

 

Is that you in the picture with the dog? If not, I think you should add a picture of you with a dog, especially in the "About Me" section. Obviously you need to finish the "My Dogs" section. This should be quick and easy, as uploading a few photos and typing a little bit of text could complete this section. Maybe put a poll on there and say "Which one of my dogs is the cutest?" or something to allow the visitor to interact with your website. I would also ask a few of your past customers to write a one or two sentence review of your services, and add it to your home page. Otherwise, you could add a new section with "Testimonials" or something similar, and have a lengthy article or two about the dramatic effects seen in one or two of your previous customer's pets. You could make the site a little more visually appealing by adding some big golden or black paw prints along the sides of the page, filling up some of that white space. How about a few videos of you and the dog in action, training, etc.? How do I pay for your services? Possibly consider setting up a PayPal account or some other type of credit card/digital check processing program onto your home page.

 

If those are pictures of your service/facility then I think the site is well done. I would update the "My Dogs" page to at least state the full intent of it's existence so viewers might re-check it sporadically for the update.

 

Pictures are nice. You can put a free web template(are thousand on this forum) and you site will be more interesting and you can see better position of your pics.

 

The website looks like it came from long ago. The drop shadow on the top text especially shows that.

The white space makes a viewer feel uncomfortable. It grabs one too much. Make the body behind the text and graphics some sort of off white, or change the color scheme entirely.

Change the GPDT News to just "News." No one looking at the site thinks you are giving news for anything other then your school. The abreviation looks awkward. The goal with a menu is to not need to think.

On that subject, there is too much text for each option. It looks like you are listing actions with "click here" but you are surrounding it with so much text pollution. Cut it all down. I can help if you want.

Decide whether you want NAV options on the top or left side.

It looks like you included the CSS inside each tag you wanted to be effected by CSS. Just have the CSS as a seperate file. It's easier for you in the end.

In conclusion:

The website is better than I can do. Just think about the things I said, but consider everyone elses advice first.

 

Visually, this website looks bad:
- Individual elements of this website have different width
- Too much white space

 

I like this site, its a good example of what can be done if you put alot of effort into the site and learning some of the tricks of the trade.

The my dogs page stands out to me as your best layout wise, but the home page feels a little "awkward" maybe try move things around a bit to make it more easy on the eye.