Please give honest criticism!

[fisher318]

Hello,

I have been slowly but surely starting to climb my way up the ranks of the search engines. I am probably only averaging around 5-6 visitors a week through the search engines over the last 3 months. I know these numbers will change as my placements improve, however, I tend to get a lot of visitors click in and then right out.

I am hoping that I could get a few opinions and some feedback regarding my site, content, lead generation potential etc. Are there some simple changes that need to be made? Does my site need a whole restructure of navigational paths, or whatever. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance

http://www.lendinghandsmortgage.com/

[drumat5280]

When going to the home page i am immediately put off by the large ads you have on the right side. Then actually looking at the ads (which i never do), i notice they are not ads at all - they are links to content within your site.

My advice is to make them look less "ad" like.

[rogerdan]

H Jeremy,

Looking at your site, the first place that catched my attention were your picture ads. Immediately, I was enticed to click on the picture ads. However, after clicking on the ads, I noticed that I did not get what I expected it was; I wanted to know more about your claims on the picture ads before proceeding any further.

Furthermore, the impression I get was that you were only interested in getting my personal info. Personally, I would rather have someone explain something to me, before asking me for my info. Bear in mind that I am not a real estate agent and I do not represent the entire community.

Hope I did provide some views. No hard feelings alright

[fisher318]

Thanks drumat & RogerDan,

I appreciate the feedback! I put the ads there in order to let the site speak visually o those who are less apt to read the content I have provided. I think offering information specifically related to the ads is a great idea, a no-brainer at that.

It's great to have a place where other people can look at things from a different perspective.

And yes Roger Dan, I was only interested in getting your personal info, however, I guess a mroe subtle approach to generating mortgage leads would work better.

Your critique is refreshing.

Ok, so far 49 others have viewed this page, they must have thought my site was perfect, otherwise they probably would have left some feedback.

[Silicon Hills]

Don't use keywords with ALL CAPS. Speaking of keywords, you need top ranking keywords. A great place to start is at http://inventory.overture.com/d/sear...ry/suggestion/

You repeat the words "Loan Application" too many times on the home page.

Large ads are distracting. You'd be better off have banner rotation and link the banner's to their own page. Don't allow scrolling on home page.

[ResaleBroker]

Roofers notice roofs. Plumbers notice pipes. For some reason I notice pages that extend beyond my screen size. I have a 17" monitor and I have to scroll to see the full width of your page. I would guess that is because you are using absolute sizing. But that's just me.

[bsebastian]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the font style. That's the first thing that I noticed. I would change it to a more user friendly font like what you see right here in this forum. I believe its "Arial". Also, you have lots of bold print scattered throughout the page so its tempting to just jump around between bolded phrases that when read sequentially doesn't flow as well as your entire paragraph does. That's my 2 cents for what its worth.

Good luck.