[Website]Dog sitting/boarding website looking for feedback

Consider your audience. Put yourself into the shoes of someone who might need your service, and that someone just loaded your website.

What is the first thing he sees? Your logo. Are you well-known? Would people recognize your company name? Does anyone even care about the logo in the first place? No. Your logo will have zero bearing on whether or not this user wants to hire you. Put the logo portion at the bottom of the website.

What does the user see next? A quaint little company slogan that undermines the user's intelligence. Of course that's what you provide. All services of this sort purport to provide the exact same thing. Just saying it doesn't make it true. Put this at the bottom. Put it right above the logo. That logo is a sort of stamp and as the last thing the user sees when visiting your site (and actually taking the time to peruse it), it will leave a much stronger impression. Actually, put this logo at the foot of every page. Every time the user has scrolled to the bottom of a page, the footer logo is there.

Moving on, the user sees what bad care looks like. Don't bash dog kennels. Even if everything you say is true, your potential customer is probably quite used to using dog kennels, and have their own reasons for not wanting to use them now. If you give them a bunch of ideas as to why kennels are a bad idea, they may start to believe themselves to be bad owners. You are filling a niche that isn't dog kennels. Do not even remind them of alternatives to your service. Get rid of that stuff.

Next thing? Dog daycare. Everything I said about the kennels goes for this too. You are an alternative to everything out there, but you must convey that without reminding the customer of what is actually out there. These two sections belong deeper in the site -- not the front page. If they are deeper in the site, the potential customer will feel more well-informed by having done "research" into the best options and finding out that you are it because you have STUDIES and ARTICLES of experiences at dog kennels and daycares. Your opinions will not sway the potential customer into feeling more informed on their decision.

That last section with the service radius and such? Yeah, that's the meat. It needs to be the second thing your customer sees. The first thing visible is the three services you provide. Just provide links to what you already have. Those are pretty good. I would say that you should just put all the services on the front page below everything and let the links to the services simply skip down the page, but that's up to you.


Here are my main points because I gave you a fairly detailed critique.

  • Nobody cares about your logo. Make it a footer logo.
  • Business slogans do not motivate sales. Put it in the footer.
  • Move critical analysis of existing services deeper into page so customer feels they have done due diligence.
  • Show services provided and keep the service map.

OK. Hope that helps.

/r/design_critiques Thread