New website finally up and running!

[Brucker]

Hello all!

As some of you know, we have been slowly updating our web presence. Well now I am VERY proud to announce the launch of our freshly revamped website! There is still a ton left to upload, and I definitely need to go through it and polish it a bunch. But after months of hard work (WAY too long, what can I say, I am not a web designer) it is to a point I feel comfortable releasing it to the public.

Here is a link to the site: http://www.bruckerbrothers.com

Please take a minute to browse through the site and let us know your thoughts! Good, bad, or ugly, we want to hear from you!

Thanks in advance!

[alexb]

Looks good!

11th and Main? I must drive by your place several times a week. :)

Here's some feedback... Feel free to do anything/nothing with it. :)

Why does the link www.bruckerbrothers.com go to bruckerbrothersltd.com? When the website redirects like that it adds a level of discomfort when I'm surfing unknown sites.

I'd like there to be pictures on the gallery page. All I see are generic pictures on the list of albums page: http://bruckerbrothersltd.com/gallery/ I'd prefer it look more like this page: http://bruckerbrothersltd.com/builds/ with nice pictures and a little 1 or 2 line text description.

Why do the build pages have "test" in the URL? That seems weird.

I thought that on the redcone page you'd be talking about how you made the sign. Maybe you might say what kind of machine you used or what kind of metal or how easy or hard it was to make the letters because you are a kick ass builder and you want to make me a sign too. A lot of the site seems very geeky about machinery (I mean that in a good way) so I was surprised there was no discussion of how you made the sign on redcone. http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/test/builds/sign-for-red-cone-pass/

The 1937 Chevy page is confusing: http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/test/builds/1937-chevy-pickup/ Are you showing me what you started with? What you ended with? Did you make a new frame/panel/door/what? Can you add some text telling me why this is awesome?

On the trailer page (http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/test/builds/custom-flatbed-trailer/) and many other pages I don't think you're giving yourself enough credit. I've read when you expound about why you chose one angle over another or why you chose one material over another. I know you're smart from your posts on here. Why not add a paragraph explaining some of the awesome stuff you have done so I know as a customer that you can do that for me? Something like explaining what you did to make this a lightweight trailer instead of a heavy clunky trailer. How much weight did you save or how much material did you remove or something that shows off some of your smarts and experience building cool stuff so that I know you can build me cool stuff too. :)

The for sale page looks weird. Is it a blogger/blogspot blog inside a frame of your webpage? I see the blogger login box at the top of the page, but inside your page.

Really neat to look around. I'm interested so I wrote a lot today. :)

[alexb]

Oh, and I wish I had some more garage space. I know I need a drill press and a chop saw.... for something or other... Just no place to put them. :)

[Brucker]

Here's some feedback... Feel free to do anything/nothing with it. :)



Great feedback! Thank you so much!

The redirect thing didn't even occur to me. I have multiple URL's and point them all at one site.

The site in general needs a good polishing still. The pages with the /test/ are leftovers from when I was building the new site in the background and had a placeholder site up. I have actually spent a couple hours on the phone with my host tech guys trying to swap over to the new site. Guess we didn't get all the bugs and kinks worked out quite. A lot of the pages that are up have minimal information and photos are really themselves just placeholders. I will be filling in information as time allows. We have 100's if not 1000's of different projects under our belts throughout the years, and sorting through everything is taking me a lot longer than anticipated. The plan is to have every page be more detailed the the first parts of these two pages:

http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/test/builds/2001-isuzu-nqr/

http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/test/builds/1985-toyota-pickup/

Thanks again for the feedback. I will take it all under advisement

[alexb]

The plan is to have every page be more detailed the the first parts of these two pages:

http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/te...001-isuzu-nqr/

http://www.bruckerbrothersltd.com/te...toyota-pickup/

Cool. These pages with descriptions definitely show off your skills a lot more. Looks awesome. :)

[Chris]

A couple quick observations: You should have your e-mail address in the footer either a link or linked to a contact page. Second, the watermarks on every image are distracting from the image itself and unneeded. If someone wants to re-use your image it's not hard to remove it, there are ways to embed your copyright in the image itself if you feel a need to do so. Overall, it's looking real good!

[Brucker]

A couple quick observations: You should have your e-mail address in the footer either a link or linked to a contact page. Second, the watermarks on every image are distracting from the image itself and unneeded. If someone wants to re-use your image it's not hard to remove it, there are ways to embed your copyright in the image itself if you feel a need to do so. Overall, it's looking real good!

Thanks for the input! I really appreciate it.

What are the easy ways to keep others from using your photos? I am sick and tired of finding my photos on others' sites without permission or even any credit. Usually they are claiming it was something they built. Normally a quick email or phone call gets it taken care of. I just thought the watermarks would save me some time and trouble. I understand that they could be/are distracting. Hence why the couple scrolling (slider) photos on the main page don't have them.

And what's this about making it easy for people to get a hold of me? Must be nonsense. Why would I want that? ;)

Thanks again for the insight thus far!

[Cr33p3r]

Looks good bro, added it to my favorites!:D

[Chris]

I understand the re-use problem. I found out I have a brother I didn't know I had by seeing a photo of my truck on another site credited as "my brother's 4Runner" :lmao:

For invisible watermarks check out Digimarc Corporation which I have never used but understand is very effective by embedding into the image and not being able to be removed. However, as I wrote this I realize that as long as we can take a screenshot that can be bypassed. I'll have to look into that aspect so maybe your solution is the only real protection.

I paused long enough to find this: http://picturephotosoncanvas.com/photoshop-tutorial-how-to-invisible-digital-to-watermark

The reason you want people to easily reach you via the site is so you can get more SPAM! (only partially kidding)

[Jackie]

I didn't spend a lot of time on the site, but I did some initial testing and made note of a few things you might want to address as you build out the site:



Consider aligning your text to the left instead of center. It makes the page look cleaner IMHO. But others may like it centered, so...
Mind your use of capitalization in your bullet points on the Services page. Stay consistent. (And I would use bullets - but that's just a preference)
I think you need to trouble-shoot the navigation on the IE browser. The buttons appear all squished so you can't read what they say. I hate IE, but a lot of people still use it.
I noticed by looking at your source code that you don't have the Google Site Verification script on there, nor do you have Google Analytics set up. (That's only important if you want to run reporting and/or take out google adword buys)
You need to add some very important meta tags to all of your pages if you ever want to get found. Page titles, key words, description and canonical links are very important
While you work to improve your descriptive copy, I would keep key words in mind. If I am in the market for new rock sliders or a roll cage and I live near Longmont, what would I type into google? Use those words and include a link to your web page that talks about that specifically.
Make sure to cross-link your pages wherever possible. Google likes that a lot!
I think you can make your pictures a lot bigger. You know how we all love pictures!!! On an iPad they look really small
Perhaps you could just type (C) BruckerBrothers in the bottom right corner of your photos to help with the picture theft. Also be sure to write a copyright notice in the footer of each page
Your link for "About Me" did not work for me



That's all for now. I can look at it again later and will gladly point out anything else I can think of.

Nice job!

[Brucker]

Looks good bro, added it to my favorites!:D

Thanks for the kind words

[Brucker]

I didn't spend a lot of time on the site, but I did some initial testing and made note of a few things you might want to address as you build out the site:



Consider aligning your text to the left instead of center. It makes the page look cleaner IMHO. But others may like it centered, so...
Mind your use of capitalization in your bullet points on the Services page. Stay consistent. (And I would use bullets - but that's just a preference)
I think you need to trouble-shoot the navigation on the IE browser. The buttons appear all squished so you can't read what they say. I hate IE, but a lot of people still use it.
I noticed by looking at your source code that you don't have the Google Site Verification script on there, nor do you have Google Analytics set up. (That's only important if you want to run reporting and/or take out google adword buys)
You need to add some very important meta tags to all of your pages if you ever want to get found. Page titles, key words, description and canonical links are very important
While you work to improve your descriptive copy, I would keep key words in mind. If I am in the market for new rock sliders or a roll cage and I live near Longmont, what would I type into google? Use those words and include a link to your web page that talks about that specifically.
Make sure to cross-link your pages wherever possible. Google likes that a lot!
I think you can make your pictures a lot bigger. You know how we all love pictures!!! On an iPad they look really small
Perhaps you could just type (C) BruckerBrothers in the bottom right corner of your photos to help with the picture theft. Also be sure to write a copyright notice in the footer of each page
Your link for "About Me" did not work for me



That's all for now. I can look at it again later and will gladly point out anything else I can think of.

Nice job!

Wow, thanks for the detailed input! I will go over all this tonight.