Mike Williams of Embers Fire & Safety is a good guy. He’s a hard worker, conscientious, diligent and honest. What he is not is a website designer.
I worked with Mike for several months at another fire safety company, before he decided to start his own. He has all the qualifications for it, but when I saw his website I knew it would count against him. These days, if a website is good not many people notice–but if it’s bad, everyone does.
The first thing I did for Mike was put his company’s name at the top of every page of the website, and I made it big and obvious. Then I made sure the images on the site were appropriate, free stock photos (a common mistake is to use the first photos that show up on a Google search, but often those photos are not legally permissible on business websites without buying the rights to them).
Then I made sure there was a call to action (CTA) on the home page and the services page, which lead to a way to get in touch with Mike. On the About page, I got rid of the bullet points and put the information in prose form, to make it more friendly and engaging. On the Contact page, I included an easy form for visitors to fill out.
Finally, I lined everything up in a pleasing way, got rid of a lot of unnecessary white space, and made the headers and footers uniform on each page.
There are still a few things I’d like to see Mike do on his website, such as including employee pictures and bios on the About page (take advantage of the small, local company vibe!); the Services page should be added to, with descriptions of what each service entails; ideally, I’d like an Information page to include links to information on the laws and requirements surrounding fire safety, etc.; and I’d really, really like to see an actual logo. Mike’s busy getting out there and getting work done, and as mentioned he’s not a website designer. But I’m here to help him any time.
http://www.embersfireandsafety.ca/
Home Page
Closer look: original and edited
About Page
Closer look: original and edited
Clearly Written 