Please provide a review for www.godaycare.com

[LauraDC]

Hello folks,

I've recently created a web site to reveiw daycares in Canada. The objective of the site is to help the parents while they are looking for quality child care for their little ones.

I'm not so much interested in how pretty the site looks; my biggest concern is whether or not the site is able to satisfy the objective.

Your review would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards.

P.S. the site is www.godaycare.com

[electroskan.com]

I'm not so much interested in how pretty the site looks

You needn't because it looks great.

I like the nice little table that you have at the bottom.

[LauraDC]

Thanks, electroskan. We put in a lot of effort into this to make sure that text is easy to read and the site is easy to navigate. The objective though is to help the children. If parents use the site then the objective will be met. Otherwise, it's just a pretty site.

I'm surprised how quickly the site went up in SERPS for some of it's most important keywords. I wish I knew what I did to make it "loved" by google.

[Datura]

Hi Laura, nice and fresh. The only thing that I would really like to see changed is the flower border dimmed a little bit. It is distracting and it becomes work to read the enclosed text. You might also think about reducing those flowers in size a tad.

I like the happy feel of the all over look

[electroskan.com]

I checked the page using w3c validator. it returns some errors.

[kaethy]

I find it odd that the day care address is a link and not the name of the day care.
I'm at work, where all the screens are set to 800x600 (can't be modified) & I have to scroll right.

Other than that, looks good.

[LauraDC]

Hi Folks,

All great pointers. I will change the size of those border flowers. They are a bit large, agreed. Yes, there are 4 html errors, which I'm going to fix today. The reason the site does not fit into 800X600 is because it was designed for 1024. Over 80% of people are now running their monitors at 1024 or higher. Supporting a lower resolution would go against the 80/20 rule. The site uses javascript extensively and I know some people like js blocked. Do I sacrifice the quality of the site for those 2% to be able to use the site? Unfortunately, that's life in web design and development.

Do you guys think people will spend the time to review a daycare? It does take a couple of minutes to do. I think the benefits to a child far exceede the 2 minutes to make a review. Any ideas on how to promote this type of a site?

[electroskan.com]

If I was a parent....maybe I would have done that

[Datura]

Hi Folks,

All great pointers. I will change the size of those border flowers. They are a bit large, agreed. Yes, there are 4 html errors, which I'm going to fix today. The reason the site does not fit into 800X600 is because it was designed for 1024. Over 80% of people are now running their monitors at 1024 or higher. Supporting a lower resolution would go against the 80/20 rule. The site uses javascript extensively and I know some people like js blocked. Do I sacrifice the quality of the site for those 2% to be able to use the site? Unfortunately, that's life in web design and development.

I agree with you.

Do you guys think people will spend the time to review a daycare? It does take a couple of minutes to do. I think the benefits to a child far exceede the 2 minutes to make a review. Any ideas on how to promote this type of a site?

Yes, it would be a great service for parents and I think a parent that is happy or unhappy with the day care would give answers and take the time to do so.

Promotion is always difficult. Newspaper ads, flyers left at toy stores, flyers left at the day care centers Maybe a collaboration with some health care providers. Think about where parents of these children hang out, where they might be exposed.

[LauraDC]

I might have to do some offline promotion. Doing it on little to no budget is never easy. I tried craigslist, and for the first time, I was very disappointed with the traffic. I thought for sure craigslist would work great for this type of service.

[lana77]

I cannot access your site - Forbidden 403
Does your site limit US traffic.

[Datura]

I cannot access your site - Forbidden 403
Does your site limit US traffic.

I am in the US and see it just fine I am in Safari

[LauraDC]

What is your IP. There are some IPs that I block, particularely because all they do is harvest data and skew my logs. Let me know what the IP is, send private msg of course, and I will be able to give you an explanation. Thank you for pointing it out.

[jantheman]

Hi Folks,

All great pointers. I will change the size of those border flowers. They are a bit large, agreed. Yes, there are 4 html errors, which I'm going to fix today. The reason the site does not fit into 800X600 is because it was designed for 1024. Over 80% of people are now running their monitors at 1024 or higher. Supporting a lower resolution would go against the 80/20 rule. The site uses javascript extensively and I know some people like js blocked. Do I sacrifice the quality of the site for those 2% to be able to use the site? Unfortunately, that's life in web design and development.

Do you guys think people will spend the time to review a daycare? It does take a couple of minutes to do. I think the benefits to a child far exceede the 2 minutes to make a review. Any ideas on how to promote this type of a site?

Hi Laura,

I think people will take the time to do this. When looking for childcare centres most people I know placed a lot of weight on word of mouth from other parents, and this is pretty much the same thing. If parents are happy with their childcare I'm sure they would take the time to review it online, just as they would if they have had a bad experience.

I think the site looks good, I like the blue against the brown textured background. Good luck with it.

[LauraDC]

Thank you very much. I do want to make this a success for alot more reasons then money. Having my first baby had really changed my view of the world and this site is the reflection of that.

I hope people will share the same passion as I do. I think the message is noble, the execution is also good, the only thing that's missing is parent participation. We'll see; it certainly is a good exercise in human generocity and willingness to make a difference.

[Alex Marchuk]

Not bad. The colors of your site would attract many people, just simply because it looks professionally done.

[LauraDC]

It's easy to come up with the color scheme when you understand who your target audience will be. I find that alot of people don't think that way, estecially the tech people. I did struggle with the colors abit simply because Im a designer/developer by profession. But it doesn't look to bad.

One thing I want to note here based on my experience is that neither the colors, nor the good looks guarantee the desired results. Mine are simple; to get the parents to participare by reviewing daycares, that's it.

Just cheched the DB as I was writing this and I got another review. Very happy about it!!! Thanks for the encouragement, Alex.

How do you folks feel about the navigation on the site? The goal is to have easy navigation throughout the site while not giving too many options all at once.

[electroskan.com]

I like the buttons, header etc and the way you integrated them in your forum

[electroskan.com]

One thing I would recommend is to make the logo at the top in the forum to link back to your site. At present it is not linked to anywhere, I guess

[sg707]

Very good idea!

Have you thought about integrating w/ Google Map? Not sure if Canada has google map. Just a suggestion.

[LauraDC]

Thats for the replies folks,

Yes, the site is integrated with google maps already. Every listings has a map, so do the review pages. Also, once on the listing page, you can search for nearby daycares. here is an example: daycare in toronto with review and google map. Click the "show nearby daycares" button to see nearby daycares plotted on the google map.

[Theros]

Some suggestions...

1) Not sure if the gray text above the actual site is too hard to read or if I'm not sure why its there in the first place

2) Again, really get rid of that floral border, it detracts from the rest of the site.

3) Matter fact, I don't understand why you don't just get rid of that floral section period, and move the table upwards. Or combine the existing review/find daycare section with the floral section, IE combine the text together.

4) There's no footer...why wouldn't the copy text be within the actual site's boundaries?

[LauraDC]

Thanks for the comments Theros.

OK.....got rid of the floral BG. I still think that having the border was a good idea simply because if "spoke" to the audience - mostly female. But since you folks don't like it, out it goes.

The copy at the top is not meant to be read. It's more of an SEO thing.

What's wrong with the footer being where it is? Again., there is nothing in the footer that you should be concerned about. I don't want to pollute the main body of the site with trivial things that no one cares about!!! Over the course of many years I've learned one very important thing about web development. If you give people more then they need, they won't use any of it. It's all about keeping your page focused.

How does it look now?

[ryanhellyer]

Nice site, looks very practical.

I found the text at the very top of the screen a little hard to read due to the textured background underneath.

[Datura]

Thanks for the comments Theros.

OK.....got rid of the floral BG. I still think that having the border was a good idea simply because if "spoke" to the audience - mostly female. But since you folks don't like it, out it goes.

How does it look now?

It is much better and clearer. The idea that it was a female touch is not wrong, but it was superfluous, you already have all the cute stuff in there for that kind of appeal.
The flower border was heavy handed and made reading hard.

Clarity always trumps embellishment

Good job Laura