Critique my writer's site

[RedStringSoul]

I just revamped my freelance writing site and looking for opinions. Please let me know if there's anything I should add (or take away), etc.

URL is here (http://wp.me/P1BiIn-l) :)

[veinglory]

The site seems business-like and functional.

[garnerdavis]

I agree the site has a clean, professional look. Whether such a look is appropriate for a freelance writer, I can't comment on.

However, a comment on your About page -- This sentence sounds awkward: "Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications Management and built her career high tech industry providing concierge level desktop and server support services to top level Fortune 500 executives."

[FocusOnEnergy]

I agree the site has a clean, professional look. Whether such a look is appropriate for a freelance writer, I can't comment on.

However, a comment on your About page -- This sentence sounds awkward: "Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications Management and built her career high tech industry providing concierge level desktop and server support services to top level Fortune 500 executives."

I'll piggy back on this. I noticed that every page except the About page is written in first person, while the About page is written in third person. I'd recommend changing the POV on your About page to be consistent with all of the other pages.

A recommendation, because I see this a lot and it affects the indexing of your pages on search engines-use a title for your page so that the url is http://www.michellemista.com/AboutMe and not http://www.michellemista.com/?page_id=5

From a design standpoint, although what you've put together has a very clean, classic, and thankfully uncluttered user interface, it breaks one of the most basic standards-where the top-level navigation goes. This affects the usability of your site.

There are two standard locations for top-level navigation. Either horizontally across the top under the banner, or vertically on the left side. Second level navigation and blogrolls, etc., is often found vertically on the right side (although left is preferred from a usability standard as we read left to right), but putting top-level navigation there violates one of the most basic standards for web site design.

Other than that, many kudos for the clean, classic, uncluttered and monochromatic design. I'd like to see more with designs like yours :)

Focus

[RedStringSoul]

Thanks all for your input!!


However, a comment on your About page -- This sentence sounds awkward: "Michelle holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications Management and built her career high tech industry providing concierge level desktop and server support services to top level Fortune 500 executives."

Oh ugh, how'd I let that one get past me? Thank you for pointing it out!

I'll piggy back on this. I noticed that every page except the About page is written in first person, while the About page is written in third person. I'd recommend changing the POV on your About page to be consistent with all of the other pages.

A recommendation, because I see this a lot and it affects the indexing of your pages on search engines-use a title for your page so that the url is http://www.michellemista.com/AboutMe and not http://www.michellemista.com/?page_id=5

From a design standpoint, although what you've put together has a very clean, classic, and thankfully uncluttered user interface, it breaks one of the most basic standards-where the top-level navigation goes. This affects the usability of your site.

There are two standard locations for top-level navigation. Either horizontally across the top under the banner, or vertically on the left side. Second level navigation and blogrolls, etc., is often found vertically on the right side (although left is preferred from a usability standard as we read left to right), but putting top-level navigation there violates one of the most basic standards for web site design.

Other than that, many kudos for the clean, classic, uncluttered and monochromatic design. I'd like to see more with designs like yours :)

Focus

I wish I could take credit for the clean design but this is a free theme that I used. :) I hadn't thought too much about the navigation. I figured since I didn't have many pages on the site that the side navigation wouldn't be bad but you brought up a very good point. I switched themes to a similar clean theme but with the navigation up top. I also cleaned up the permalinks and will be working on the wording for the about page.

Thanks again!