Training Website Improvements...
-
Hi Folks,
I'm in the process of going over our corporate website with a view to improving on-page optimisation, layout, design and user experience and I would like your feedback on what you think I should improve or change with respect to SEO. Some of my ideas include:
- Restructure Home Page to Better Show Our Services
- Possibly Add a Slider to the Home Page (I know engagement rates with these are generally low)
- Restructure the Course Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation)
- Restructure the Events Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/event/2028/itil-foundation)
- Improve & Streamline the Booking Process
- AJAXIFY the Booking Process
- Improve Responsive Elements
I'm also interested in conducting user testing before I go ahead and make any changes.
What are your thoughts? What would you change? Thanks.
Gaz
-
Hey,
No problem. I appreciate you taking the time to have a look and get back to me.
I've fixed the issue. It was a JavaScript class selector problem but it's all sorted so thanks for spotting that mate.
Cheers
Gaz
-
Okay so the course thing and the special offer, any page that requires you to scroll down to see the complete list, and the click the next page, will always return to you to the top of the page not at the bottom where you actually clicked the next page button.
To replicate the Consultancy issue
Firefox (browser)
- From Homepage Click Consultancy link
- Click Training to bring up the accordion
- Click any option inside the accordion menu to expand it
- Re-click the accordion menu option to collapse it
- Consultancy text disappears
Sorry took me awhile to get back to this post.
IMG: http://i.imgur.com/fRndGJJ.jpg
Hope that helps,
Don
-
Cheers Dude,
Yeah, the special offers is an issue. I'll look in to sorting that or perhaps only show 5 at a time.
Which courses page are you referring to mate please?
The quiz had all the chrome removed in order to offer less distraction for those taking it. That was intentional.
Finally buddy, I can't replicate the issue you're having with the consultancy page. Seems fine to me bud.
Cheers!
-
Looks really good
Couple nit-picky things, on home page when you click special offers (page 2+) the page refreshes but doesn't bring you back to the special areas you have to scroll back down. Same for the courses page. Perhaps these are good places to use anchors. Also the Quiz page is still orphaned. Finally, when you're on the Consultancy page and you open the Training accordion and close it, the consultancy info disappears.
Cheers!
-
OK, you're probably getting bored with this now but other than including a course search on the home page I'm pretty much getting there now and I've made some more adjustments to the nav and fixed up the event and course pages somewhat. Still a bit more to do but we're getting there now.
https://purplegriffon.com - Home Page
https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation - Course Page
https://purplegriffon.com/event/2028/itil-foundation - Events Page
I've also improved the load time too and it loads in around 1 second now.
-
Thanks dude. I'm still updating and have now added further enhancements and fixed some bugs. I've also reincorporated the special offers. Cheers.
-
I like the accordion for training (your previous biggest navigation hog), I used this style for our jobs page myself.
I like the reduced footer size still too large for me but better.
I noticed your specials were gone from the home page, was that a low engagement item?
Your top navigation is gone on the Free Quiz page which makes that category an orphan
Looks very good overall.
Don
-
I'm slowly improving the layout and design. Let me know your thoughts.
https://purplegriffon.com/ (CTRL + R or CMD + R)
-
Hi Gaz,
I'm glad you found it helpful. I can certainly concede the point about the Google layout I am sure more people find that type of layout pleasant then not, or it wouldn't be so popular.
I think you really have a firm grasp on what to do and it certainly looks like it is going to require some thought. I kind of wish more people gave you some opinions to help you with your future development.
Best of luck,
Don
-
Hey Don,
Thanks for taking the time to look over the website and give me your opinion on it. I appreciate it.
You've hit on some great points in your feedback. That said, I actually like the Google page you linked. I believe there is an argument for using whitespace well. Whether I've achieved that is another matter.
In terms of AJAX, I wanted to make the booking process work on 1 page and reduce the amount of fields the user has to complete, with only those necessary for making a booking. I think this could be streamlined and made in to a faster process for the user. We all hate filling out forms.
The navigation is something that has been nagging at me from day 1. The problem we have though, is we have so many courses and categories, as well as non-course related pages that need to fit together. This needs some careful thought. I would ideally like to combine the 2 navigation elements and make them more straightforward to use. I really need to think about this one.
Fonts and typography is another one for me. It doesn't feel wholly consistent across the site and I feel that this could be improved somewhat.
Anyway, thanks again for your detailed feedback, I very much appreciate it.
Gaz
-
This may be not at all helpful, but I will provide my feedback.
Restructure Home Page to Better Show Our Services. It maybe helpful in your Special Offer section to show details about a particular course / program in a tooltip, then on the corresponding page give some course details, speaker info, training info, and syllabus rundown.
Possibly Add a Slider to the Home Page (I know engagement rates with these are generally low) I'm okay with sliders when done correctly. Keeping content fresh inside them and making them minimal click through. For example Amazon uses them but will only have 4 offers. Anything more then that I think they figured out is not going to get seen.
Restructure the Course Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/courses/itil-training/itil-foundation-training/itil-foundation) Yep agree, more content details as stated above.
Restructure the Events Pages Completely (https://purplegriffon.com/event/2028/itil-foundation). This is actually one of the more informative pages, I will touch on layout (personal opinion only) in closing.
Improve & Streamline the Booking Process & AJAXIFY the Booking Process I didn't find this at all distasteful. Looks good and is smooth. What sort of AJAX calls were you wanting to add? Examples, error checking?
Improve Responsive Elements I don't have much to add here the only responsive element I seen was the Google map.
Okay, now to my personal opinion. First I didn't look at any source code, I didn't evaluate it from an SEO perspective, I only looked at it from a personal engagement point of view. This is where I differ from the modern layouts that have become much more popular as of late. The site in essence reminds me of a Google page like: https://www.google.com/services/?fg=1 and to me that isn't a plus. I understand from a dynamic perspective and the challenges us web designers are up against when trying to make a site that is for all devices. However, huge areas of white space, larger ass footers, over-populated navigation is really a turn off to me. Most people now-a-days have larger 24"+ monitors and this drive to consume the whole screen makes the pages actually harder to read on desktops. Since, your field is IT related we can assume at least half of your users will be on desktops?
Overall, I think the site is good, I would move some things around like the huge map on https://purplegriffon.com/event/2028/itil-foundation and make it more of click to interact element. Bringing up the "Register for this Course" from the bottom of the page. I like the call to action buttons being consistent and very easy to find. Color scheme is nice and not at all off putting.
Well not for nothing but I hope it helps,
Don
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any Tips for Reviving Old Websites?
Hi, I have a series of websites that have been offline for seven years. Do you guys have any tips that might help restore them to their former SERPs glory? Nothing about the sites themselves has changes since they went offline. Same domains, same content, and only a different server. What has changed is the SERPs landscape. I've noticed competitive terms that these sites used to rank on the first page for with far more results now. I have also noticed some terms result in what seems like a thesaurus similar language results from traditionally more authoritative websites instead of the exact phrase searched for. This concerns me because I could see a less relevant page outranking me just because it is on a .gov domain with similar vocabulary even though the result is not what people searching for the term are most likely searching for. The sites have also lost numerous backlinks but still have some really good ones.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CopBlaster.com1 -
Schema for E-Commerce websites
Hi Guys. I am running a cleanup for the on page schema we use and will be moving the on page elements into tag manager. I have all the metas and schema for the products boxed off. My question today is what schema should I use for category pages. Granted there is Json-LD for aggregated reviews but I cant see or work out how or what to use for the category pages that have the lists of products on. Any assistance appreciated. Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JBGlobalSEO1 -
What are the Best SEO Website which you read daily
Hai Moz memebers, Can you pls suggest me some best seo websites that you people read articles everyday a part from MOZ
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_GB1 -
Website Ranks and gets de indexed ??
Hi My website is almost 3-4 months old . Whats strange is that as soon as it get Crawled it ranks for few terms for 1-2 days and all of a sudden gets de Indexed for these same terms or Rank drops like drops from page 5 to page 10 . Nothing shows up in Webmater tools under Manual Action . Assuming its a Algorithmic penalty, How to deal with this kind of stuff. Should I stop working on this site all together ? Or assuming its a New website, google does not want it to rank for medium or high volume keywords ? What keywords I am after have 300 -2k searches per month .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aus00070 -
Duplicate Internal Content on E-Commerce Website
Hi, I find my e-commerce pharmacy website is full of little snippets of duplicate content. In particular: -delivery info widget repeated on all the product pages -product category information repeated product pages (e.g. all medicines belonging to a certain category of medicines have identical side effects and I also include a generic snippet of the condition the medicine treats) Do you think it will harm my rankings to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deelo5550 -
Multiple Versions of Pages on One Website
Hi! My name is Sarah and I work for a brand design firm in Los Angeles. Currently we're working on a website redesign for our company. We have three pages of content that we want to add to the site, but are unsure if we will get penalized by Google if we add all of them since they may come off as too similar? The pages are: Branding
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jawa
Personal Branding
Corporate Branding Does anyone know if our SEO will be penalized for having all three of these pages separately, or should we just focus on Branding, and include Personal Branding and Corporate Branding as sub categories on the page? Thanks! Sarah P.S. I should also say, we will have more than just the three aforementioned pages. It's going to be a big site with around 200+ pages. (Half of them being services, which is where the Branding, PB and CB pages will be located.)0 -
Changing website providers
After increasing suffering down time from my current website provider, I am seriously considering finding a new one. My only concern is the effect on SERP. Does anyone have any experience with this and what to do and avoid?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Website rebranding, what should I worry about?
Hey guys, A client of mine will be doing a rebranding exercise, this include changing their brand name and their domain name. They are considered a well known brand within their industry (Their brand name shows up in Google's "Search Related to..." section) My question is: Apart from making sure all 301 are put in place,changing all the links to point to the new domain and doing PR exercise, is there anything else I should keep in mind / be aware of to ensure a smooth transition? Also can anyone come up with possible issues we might encounter during the move? Apart from having a significant drop in traffic and rankings? Thanks, Clement
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NextDigital510