Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi, neighbor -

1. I can't put my finger on it, but the layout doesn't work very well for me -- at least not as well as it probably could. I'd have to spend some time thinking about what I'd do differently, but it's really not 100% clear to me what you do from the first thing I read; I have to drill down a little bit to finally get to it.

2. I am not a huge fan of white text. Similarly, the orange text on gray is hard to read, at least for me.

3. I think if you're going to put yourself out there as a language translation expert, you may need to have your site available in more languages than English and Spanish, especially if you're looking to find clients who want their work translated into English.

4. I could not find any examples of clients, projects, case studies, testimonials, etc. "Proof" is often the most overlooked aspect of all marketing.

5. I think your industry lends itself well to incorporating video into your site to really deliver the message. I can see using the CommonCraft style of video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YB74txAaTc

Of course, these videos are not cheap (on average, $5,000), but I bet if you spend some time searching, you'll find someone local who can give you great results for a lot less money.

6. Aesthetics aside, I think there's more that you could be doing from an SEO perspective here.

Looks like a neat business, though, and I hope you're having a great year!

Paul

Very quick first impression: Very interesting business proposition that is not clearly and quickly communicated on the website.

Copy is too detailed/dense. May be OK for SEO but not for humans. Could use some pictures of humans and/or images that communicate key benefits and clearly identify the target audience segments.

This may be a situation where the website is less important than a series of landing paths based on which audience segment you're trying to reach. How do people find your site? Can you create a different landing path for each source?

Too many places to go (and get lost) from the home page. Better to have more pages with fewer choices on each. Also not clear what the call-to-action is on many/most pages.

What's the purpose of the website? Are you expecting to generate leads that are then followed up with a phone call? Or do you think someone might actually become a customer just from the website? Would it make sense to have a few targeted PDF downloads for people who really want to know more, and thus free up the website to segment and guide prospects through the sales funnel?

When you ask for suggestions on how to improve the site, it begs the question of how you will measure improvement. If we don't know what success looks like for you, it's going to be pretty hard to figure out how to improve anything.

Hope this is helpful.

I wouldn't focus your business as "Atlanta Translation" (in your title). Instead, your focus is worldwide.

The major benefit of your services is being able to sell products/services to more people. Do you have any case studies of companies you helped enter new markets and the result on the company's bottom line?

As you know, the trick to being a good translator/localizer is knowing a lot about the culture. Can you share about studies of "the wrong way to do things" (more fleshed out than your "Turkey" example)?