Case Study - Review Report For BMR Homes Restoration Website

Review Brief

Website: bmrhomes.net

• Homepage: A few years ago, when websites were created only for desktops, scrolling images on top of the web pages was very popular and effective practice. But today this practice is no longer effective because (a) scrolling images is highly inconvenient on mobiles and (b) the scrolling effect slows down pages and can damage your SEO. What you need is one static image with a powerful headline over it. There are enough inner pages to display the rest of these images.
• Below the top scrolling visual you placed a "services" title, which is not a good idea. First of all, the common practice is to create a "services" link on the main menu and add a dropdown menu with the list of services you provide. Secondly, you can definitely display a few featured services on the homepage, but not before the opening text. Thirdly, the title above such a presentation should be more than just "services".
• Search engines give high priority to web pages that include text in the above-the-fold area. Above-the-fold for a website refers to the content a viewer sees before scrolling down the page. It's prime real estate that receives the most attention from your visitors because it's the first thing they see. Besides the scrolling headlines, your homepage has no text in this area. To fix this problem you'll have to reduce the height of your main visual and add an opening text below the main visual.
• There is no need to place your phone number on top of the page. It makes the page look a bit like a brochure page. Unlike brochures, websites have footers and dedicated contact pages for this purpose. Also, there is no need to place the social media icons on top and certainly not to show them again below the main visual.
• If you want to create a section on your homepage that displays featured services, use cards. A card is a column with a short title on top, an image beneath the title and a short description beneath the image. Each card is linked to the respective inner page. Such a presentation can be much more effective than the 6 images you have now.
• "What we do at..." is not a good title. It's too basic. You should replace it with a powerful headline or statement.
• The text rows that follow are displayed just like in a Word document. If you think of it, it's pretty boring to read these long lines of text. Image how much scrolling mobile users will have to go through! What you need is to replace this section with short paragraphs and relevant images. Moreover, part of these texts can be used to create a separate "why us" page.
• There is no need to include a map on the homepage. Google maps are usually embedded on contact pages.
• On the top navigation menu take off the "home" link. The standard today is to use the business logo as the home link. Using both links for the homepage created duplication problems.
• Don't start the menu with "about". Users never read about a business before reading first about its services.

These are just a few preliminary comments. A detailed report has been created for the business owner.

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