so you’re saying i have no idea what looks good and i should give up?
No. I was wondering if your focus shouldn’t be more on the functional aspects of a web-page; there is no question that aesthetic considerations exist, but I consider them secondary.
no offence but what you seem to offer can be had a whole lot cheaper and even the design is pretty standard and can easily be duplicated with many web page programs even some that operate online and are automated can produce pages of equal quality. You are charging a huga amount of money for what would obviously be very little work for you. Your hosting costs are also much higher than can be found elsewhere.
Do you offer online purchasing and database support? Companies that are going to invest in establishing any kind of real web presence are going to want to be able to showcase their products and probably would like to be able to recieve purchases orders online.
Anyway what you are offering may have been needed at one time, but with advanced software and improved computer literacy among business owners, your skills are not going to be in much demand without a serious rethinking of your prices and/or much more “service” and technical support for your customers needs.
I did very similar work for a few years myself, but I always had my technical skills with computers to provide my main income. Your market has simply left you behind.
I’m was going to mention what herman_and_bill said. Say you could find something like an animal shelter, those sites tend to attract regular visitors, and volunteer to redsign their website. You get free advertising, plus you could help out a non-profit organization.
I could even suggest a shelter that despertly needs help in that area, their site is horribly done (I did it myself, so I know), but it does get a fair bit of traffic 
Aren’t I helpful
Seems I missed herman_and_bill’s post the first time round. I have acutally been down that road. I have several sites i do for nothing - one is a community radio station that will be on air this october (am hoping that will get me some publicity locally) and I have designed and update monthly, a site for a very popular newsgroup - and i am in the process of redesiging a couple of support group websites. I’ve been working on a huge site for my local town, that I’m trying to get some funding for so that I can finish it - once that gets launched I’m hoping that will get me some “free” publicity too. I’ve also just last week designed a site for free for a local group that is putting on a christmas party for special children.
I have no real shortage of sites that I can do for no pay… but I kinda need a few paying ones too.
I guess I should have said in my OP…that I’m not in this to make a heap of money. I have some chronic disabling health problems - I’m trying to do this when my health allows, just to earn a few dollars to survive…not make millions
One of the reasons I started persusing this is because I can work from home in my own hours and be as flexible as I need to be bearing in mind my limitations with the way things are for me physically
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Use a slightly larger type size – not everyone has big monitors, and older people (who often make the decisions) don’t see as clearly.
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Use fewer words – rewrite to eliminate at least 30% of them. Again, this makes it easier to read.
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Display the benefit your customers will get first. Before the flash presentation begins, there should be some text that “sells the benefit”. Get their attention within 2 seconds.
Some people will want a professionally designed (or redesigned) website rather than their own home-grown version. You must understand what they are getting out of it, and promote that benefit.
Frequent benefits in other businesses are: saving money, making more money, saving time, reducing risk, decreasing mistakes, increasing fun/pleasure/comfort/pride (or other “soft” benefits), keeping up with competitors (and thereby making more money and reducing the risk of business failure).
E.g. “Make your friends jealous with your ultra-cool Anchor-designed website” (okay, it needs work, but you get the idea – it sells the feeling of being cool and better than your friends).
Your flash logo is nice, but it doesn’t sell anything by itself. A visitor to your site has to wait and watch before they know what you’re selling, and what it will do for them. Don’t make them wait. Sell their benefits the moment the webpage comes up.
Well, for one thing, there are many sites out there that throw up frames and if you go through them to get to another site (from a links page, say) the frame stays. If there isn’t a way to get rid of that frame, I get mad.
Mostly, though, they make my screen look too cluttered. I don’t NEED the menu following me everywhere I go. I’d rather just backclick. I may well be in the minority here.
Not a whole lot to add beyond what’s been said, but a little heads up: Your site breaks in Mozilla/NS.
Proofread carefully, or have someone proofread for you.
Your “About Us” page contains spelling, grammar and punctuation errors that could make a potential customer question your attention to detail.
Disclaimer: Since I’m commenting on someone else’s errors, it’s almost inevitable that I have made half a dozen errors in this post. Please don’t bother pointing them out.
KKBattousai ooops…dont’ I feel stupid! was sure i’d checked it in NS - think it’s working now, thanks for the heads up
TWDuke I found no spelling errors…perhaps your getting confussed by certain words spelt differently in Aust. and the UK?
Just FYI, I didn’t see any spelling errors on the “About Us” page, either.
My two cents: I’d try to cut out some of the words. Shorter, more concise sentences.
Triss, you can get a newspaper write-up “free” if you can come up with a STORY angle – not just a profile of the business, but a genuine reason for telling the story (which happens to be set around the story).
Tal I admire your courage asking for opinions here. I know it’s hard to hear criticism about something you’ve created.
I’ve been trying to learn HTML myself. All the comments and suggestions here have got me thinking… anybody got URLs for good, strong web design to show as examples? (Or should that be another thread?)
Ok - i’ve been playing around with some of your suggestions…here’s what I’ve come up with so far, although I feel the design is a little on the boring side.
www.anchorweb.com.au/temp/index.html?
- Removed the frames
- Took out a lot of the text and tried to make everything more brief.
- Ditched the flash intro
- Changed to white bg black text
Further opinions and suggestions most welcome
Ok then the most important thing will be better webdesign skills.
Therefore take a look at that and that, just to get some ideas.
Use following programs:
- Adobe Photoshop (tutorials here, here and here)
- Dreamweaver (HTML skills are essential!)
- Macromedia Flash (help -> tutorials)
Some random tips:
- don’t use frames
- less is more (plain & simple rocks)
- 100% waterproof html is necessary
- table borders are out
- PHP is easy & effective (mailscripts, statistics…)
- your symbols beneath the nav-bar should be in uniform colors. that’s too colorful & gay
hope that helped a bit (since I just posted what came into my mind without reading… [didn’t have enough time])
good luck!!!
Sorry but this site you just posted is shocking…you can’t read the text, it may look “pretty” but it’s absolutely no good if you can’t read it - even I know that much. It’s kind of funny that you say “less is more” when you link to a site that IMHO definately doesn’t follow the “less is more” theory 
- Frames are fine so long as you design them right
- Table borders - well that’s entirely a matter of what you like the look of IMHO…on the site i just uploaded…if you don’t have the table borders there the site looks extreemly washed out and bleh!
- PHP is fine if you can afford the hosting, my Australian webhost only provides the basics and I can’t afford anything more. I am however experimenting with PHP on some other sites I’m working on.
- my symbols…well - I do intend to change those - but there’s only so much i can do in an hour or two with no sleep…heh…will work on that tomorrow - that site is far from finished…i wanted to post it so that i could find out if i was on the right track of the feedback I was getting here
I use Dreamweaver & Fireworks for graphics. I’ve started learning Flash - been using it a little here and there…but again, here in Australia it’s a waste of time because it’s slooooooooooooowwwwww… and most of us Aussies are still on dialup
And now…being after 7am here in the land of Oz…it’s time for me to get some sleep!
For starters:
Why Chose choose a Professional?
Would you send an employee out with a home video camera to record your business a television advertisement? Of course not. While you could do the job this way insert comma you wouldn’t because you would rather portray your business in the best possible - em dash professional - em dash light…right? Your home video recorder and the skills of your employee in this area just wouldn’t be up to the task. This is exactly why you need a professional web designer to design your business website. True, you could have a go at it yourself, but would you really get that professional look your business deserves?
Who is Anchor Web Design
Anchor Web Design have be consistentbeen designing web pages since 1998. Our primary concern has always been to give you what you want. Too often today insert comma technology means poor personal service. Anchor Web Design are aware of this and our aim is to please you. What you want is what we provide. We are not about making money. We have not simply jumped on the “Internet Bandwagon” to make our fortune. What this means for you is quality personalised service.
Anchor Web Design have been a Victorian Registered business since February 2000. Although our target area is Gippsland in Victoria, Australia. sentence fragment We will design websites for use anywhere in the world. If you are outside Australia comma we have included a currency converter on our site for your convenience. non-sequitor All prices quoted within this site are in Australian Dollars.
Anchor Web Design always take the image of your company or community group into consideration when designing a site for you. This means your site will blend well with your existing stationary stationery and promotional products.
We aim to create fast loading pages but at the same time, present a professional insert comma clean look that can only be obtained by using the right software and skills that have been developed over time.
Community Group Discounts
Anchor Web Design will consider giving discounts to worthwhile community groups or organisations. Please contact us for more details.
Anchor Web Design insert comma while focused on Gippsland insert comma will design sites for anywhere in Australia or the world. Based in Sale, other towns serviced in Gippsland are: Traralgon, Morwell, Moe, Heyfield, Stratford, Maffra, Bairnsdale, Boisdale, Cobains, Glenmaggie This is confusing. After you just said you’ll design sites for anywhere in the world, why list towns?
My 2 cents:
Focusing on problems with your site aren’t going to bring you more business. Focusing on your skills and rethinking your business strategy are better bets.
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Skills – If you want to create websites for people, start by learning how to write clean, valid, accessible HTML and CSS. You might, but your site doesn’t show it. Learn about validation, accessibility and standards and why they’re important. Not only will this be a benefit for you, it’ll be a benefit for your customers if you have this edge. Start here and look at this, this, this, this and this. It’s not just important, in some cases, it’s the law. Any potential clients which must conform to governmental standards or which target a market which includes visually or mobility impaired customers will demand this ability from their potential website creator. This is basic, as basic as knowing how to use paragraph and break tags.
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Pricing – talk about pricing is normally frowned upon in public forums to avoid price fixing issues, so I’ll address this from a consumer’s standpoint. You’ve made an analogy about other professional needs for which you wouldn’t want an amateur, so let me give you an analogy: you’re charged with a crime. There are two attorneys for you to choose from. One charges by the hour and has a different cost for work done by his secretary and paralegal and breaks down the time he spent on your defense so that you can see that he exactly how much time he has dedicated to your case. The other says “I’ll defend you for $1,000, $1,500 if we have to make a plea agreement, $2,500 if we go to trial.” Which one do you choose?
In short, per page/project/widget pricing strikes me as terribly amateurish and makes me wonder why I’d pay as much for my simple site as someone who wants something much more in-depth and time consuming just so long as their information and mine can both be broken down into five pages?
Speaking of which, looking at things as “pages” I immediately feel boxed in. Instead of looking at what material I have to put online and the best way to build a site so that that material is put into an architecture that works, it looks like you’re going to just break it down into very general categories, divide each category into a page, type it up and charge me $50 bucks for each one. Ouch. Building web sites isn’t just about dividing data into pages. Web site architecture isn’t that easy and applies to small sites as well as large. This is something that you should learn more about if you want to provide professional services.
After all, what do you do when a customer wants to get off on the cheap and have only one page that comes in at a 245k page weight - without graphics - and scrolls and scrolls and scrolls?
For domain registration and site hosting, where is this registration and hosting being accomplished? Are you a registrar? Are you simply acting as a middle man? Are you offering hosting on your own servers? Are you a reseller? There isn’t a lot of information there, and when I look at your prices (especially looking at the kinds of sites you seem to be offering) as a consumer, I’m thinking that I could definitely get a better deal elsewhere. If I knew more about what you’re offering for those prices, I might feel more inclined to give you my business.