My new website requires some more touch ups. What are your suggestions?
http://detroitmichiganmagician.com/

Very nice. your menu structure is logical and easy to navigate. the site is straightforward with good content and few distractions.

be sure your contact information at bottom is big enough. I would also have a link for your email address right there, unless you only want them to use the contact form.

one issue to consider with flash is being included in search engines, so you might think about tags in the html frame, not sure if you did that or not. you are going to want to be found so think about any links from other sites you can get, or regional directories.

great job!

Thank you, Bill.

It wouldn't load for me.

I took the time to put both Detroit Magician and Dynamike into a google search.
Neither brought up a link to your website.

Are you known as Dynamike in the Detroit area.

As a better magician than marketer this is not my area of expertise, but I would think being able to be found in a search would be useful to you.

Thanks for all your energy here on the Café.

Harris

Dynamike,

Aesthetically, it looks good, imo. Clean and straight-forward.

Unfortunately, it looks like you may be in the same boat as I was (and sorta still am). I re-did my site a few months back, and while I like the look of my site, it was only after it was done, that I learned about how it coulda been done better. The designer I had build my site, is a friend of mine, and he built it almost entirely in Flash. And that's what it looks like yours is done in. My guy is a good designer, but he is also a young dude who was excited about using all of his Flash knowledge. Unfortunately, he didn't realize that it becomes almost invisible to search engines when doing it this way. I have done some things to help my site show up in searches better, but it will never be as optimized as it could have been, had it been built with some HTML.

I plan on redesigning my site again next year, and will use this new knowledge when I have it redone once more. Experience is what you get right after you need it, right?

What I kept telling my guy, is that "yeah, it looks pretty and all - but if no one can find it, what good does that do me?".

BTW - I would change the page title, at the top. Right now it says "main_Flash8_final" - you can make that say "Dynamike" or whatever you want (not sure of the technical process, I just know mine said something like yours on top, before I had my guy alter it).

Again - I think your site looks nice now, but my advice is simply to think about Search Engine Optimization! A pretty site with no SEO consideration is like the "tree falling in the woods" question - if no one is there to hear it, is it making a sound?

I agree with you, Danny. I did learn about that in the "Tricky Business" forum when I was asking about SEO. I will hate to lose the flash. But it is about the "money", not the "looks".

I will see how it does in a couple of months after I summit it in all the right places. I might not have a lot of competition in my area. It it fails, I will have it switched to a HTML.

You don't have to lose it completely. Flash is great, when used as a compliment to the site. But as I learned a bit too late - it's not so hot when used for the creation of the entire site.

But as with anything, we learn and get better. I've taken the steps to get my site to come up high in the searches, despite the fact that it is Flash. But as I mentioned before, I will likely rebuild it next year again, and place SEO on the top of my list.

Good luck with your site and business Mike.

Thank you for showing your concerns my friend.

Hi Dynamike,

I thought your site was very nice and easy to navigate and has some things worth
looking at. Very well done, I enjoyed the videos and seeing the pictures.

I only found one pet peve.

When I selected your menu option to change to different section on your website, I
then attempted to scroll down using my scoll wheel on my mouse. It didn't
work!!! I had to either move the "focus" outside of the flash or use the scroll
bar.

Small issue, and I am not sure if it matters to you, but might make potential
visitors think that your site doesn't "work" if they don't understand what is
happening.

Hope this helps.

I don't really know about flash stuff - but I liked the site. Very professional looking. Great videos too. Man, how many outfits do you have!!!

What was that dove to rabbit illusion (looked a bit like a microwave!). That was great!

Mark

I thought it looked really good.
My one thought, which is only a thought ...I am not very good at marketing, so I may be wrong, is that there wasn't a lot of yoour personality in the site. I've been watching your videos, etc. the last few days and you have a great unique personality and awesome graphic things, like your backdrop. I wonder if including some more photos, or maybe something like the picture on your backdrop would give people a better sense of how fun it would be to have you at their party/show/event.
Again though, I did like it. I thought the flash looked really cool.

Thank you very much gentlemen. I appreciate your time. Yes, I am working on more photos Seadog.

Mike
You need your phone number on the top of your site .This is so they see it the whole time.I would get rid of the contact form no one likes to fill it out just have a link to your e mail address and your number again.My e mail address gets linked to my aol account so I do not have to log on to an other site to see if anybody sent me anything.Exampel info@berniesfunhouse.com gets sent to funhouseny@aol.com This also helps me not have 100 emails of spam. Don't show your aol address it should be info or Mike @detroitmichiganmagician.com it looks better.

Posted: Oct 3, 2009 12:36pm
On the very top of your page it has ...Dynamike....Master Magician. This is where you put Detroit magic childrens entertainment ECT... It helps goggle find you better look at my site for an example Their is more typed in that spot than you can see.Also it is hard to read about you the font is small and dark. I would also put something different where you have children specialist maybe change it to childrens magic at its best or something like it .The set up of your site is good

Hi, Mike. Great website! love the look of it. I have some experience in book editing, having worked on several books, both fiction and non fiction. This being said, my eye is drawn to sentence structure and spelling. If I may point out a few things that I noticed, some are misspellings and some are just different choices I would have made.

First paragraph I would change the last word "colorful" to "memorable" or something a little more powerful.

Second paragraph-"Equally adept at closeup and stand- miracles." I assume you just forgot the "up" in stand-up".

Last paragraph: "...has a number of different shows to suit your budget and your event." I would have changed that slightly to read, "to suit any event and budget!"

Under your "closeup package description it reads, "...must be a close distant to Dynamike as he perform magic...". Maybe "must be within close proximity" or "range" and perform needs an s at the end.

This all may sound nit picky but even the simplest of misspellings can turn a customer off. And don't get me started about the postings on this board! Many don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose", "no" and "know" and of course, when to use to, too or two!

Hope this helps. Feel free to consider me a pretentious A-hole. I know I do!

BigMagic,

Dynamike is actually having me (similar writing background to you) touch up his content. I completely agree with you!

Alexa

Cool! I'm glad I'm not alone in my pretentiousness!

Yes, I do see what you are explaining, Bernie. I always like your ideas. I will look it over carefully.

Thanks for your suggestions, Bigmagic. I can see why those are important. And yes, Alexa was the first to offer me help with the grammar.

The following videos are going to replace the present videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEz2bqrp9Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dMCYfKnTUM&feature=related

Dynamike, I finally got around to looking at your site, and I love it! You've given me lots of great ideas, not least, to make the Google keywords into a "game". Man, that is f*****g genius! As many real keywords are spelled wrong, this makes SO much sense! Great, the kid can check the spellings (free education), the mom gets a 10% discount (off your prices which you racked by 10% before offering this deal), your website has as many keywords as you can imagine, and you get loads of Kudos for the "free education" and the discount!
Obviously, we have to consider SEO - my website is built pretty much with that in mind - but I forgot the obvious "scroll box" to keep the homepage short and sweet - the bottom of my homepage is loaded with a virtual thesis containing masses of keywords. I hope my customers are too interested in the pics and vids to bother reading all that cr*p. Scroll box is of course, much simpler.
Overall, I REALLY like what you've done....I'd like my site to be that simple, yet to have the same power of SEO that comes with "text rich sites", which Google likes.
Of course, you should have a link to you "Linked In", "Facebook" and "Twitter", as well as other networking sites, if you want to raise your site even more.
Potty

Enjoyed your site, thought it looked great. Maybe add a favicon, maybe a promo pkg. The graphics were sensational as was the content.


Only one thing bothered me, seeing the kid with a "Tiger" shirt brought back bad memories from a nightmare I had a few days ago, but that's my problem - thought I was over it.

Potty, I might have the "fun" shortened or change all around. People have told me it is called "stuffing" but is ok. Some told me it is something else which Google will eliminate my site for. They told me it is ok for now because it will not picked up because the page is in flash.

I am already with "Linked In", "Facebook" and "Twitter". The problem is understanding those websites.

It will take time after the website is submitted. Approximately 6 weeks.