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Creative Mortgage Financing Re-Design (FAIL)

Posted in: Blog, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design by VSHoward on January 1, 2010

I don't usually do this but I put a bid in for this job last year and I have to say... they got what they paid for! As far as I can see this site will do them no good and if I remember correctly it does not look like what they envisioned either.

http://www.creativemortgage.net

What's wrong with this site?:

• Will never be indexed correctly with Google or any other search engine. Why you ask? The navigation is in Flash. Google and other search engines will not be able to read it to find the other pages.
• No sitemap.xml file... so it wasn't submitted to Google, Bing or Yahoo for indexing. At least this would help minimize the damage of the flash navigation.
• Umm... Title Tags!!!! This is a train wreck. I can't even begin to tell you how bad this is for SEO best practices.
• Music plays when you hit the landing page. Many studies have shown that this annoys the hell out of people! Don't ever do this! It's like hitting a MySpace page... Ugh!
• The design... gasp! What can I say... the design is not consistent across the site! Some pages have a white background, some pages are left aligned.
• The designer used tables (tr,td's)... although many do, I prefer div's and CSS. Lighter code which means it loads faster and easier to update.
• Email address given on contact page (not masked). Can we say SPAM! Oh, and the big email image (animated Gif)... so 90's and completely unprofessional looking.
• Typography???... GASP again. Times New Roman... eeekkkk! Not to mention there is like at least three other font faces used within the design.
• Text embedded in images... hmmm, Google or any other search engine won't read this either. Should have been a background image with the text positioned over it.
• Forms page... I see your email address again! They must really love SPAM.
• No CMS... means they have to contact the person to update the site for every single edit. Maybe I'm making the mistake here and missing out on some $$$... but I don't want to be bothered with updating a sentence. That's just a waste of my time.
• No analytics integration... Really? It's FREE from Google! I guess they don't want to measure the success or failure of the new site.

I could go on and on, but it's obvious this web designer is a newbie. No CSS used and I can see that they used CoffeeCup software to edit the flash. I didn't even know they still made that crap.

I can say with confidence that when I started out I probably did just as bad as this so I won't fault the designer (newbie) too much. They would be wise to learn CSS and utilize a CMS framework like WordPress or Joomla. Unfortunately, the real tragedy here will be for the business owner. First impressions on the web are very important and this site only give a bad impression. My prediction... this site will NOT help increase business or give them the first impression they are seeking. In fact, I bet my post will rank higher for the term "Creative Mortgage Financing" than theirs in the SERPS. I'll let you know in about a month...LOL.

I almost want to call them and ask them if they're ready for a re-design again!

Update 2/21/10

So I went to check on this site today... Interesting that the only result in Google for them is #8 and it's not even the new site it's a page from their old site: www.creativemortgagefinancing.net/index2.htm. Total failure!

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