Review of TopClickMedia.co.uk

By Jennifer Mattern on September 21st, 2007

Please note: The following review is a review of the company’s website, and not of their services.

Top Click Media is a UK-based Web service provider, specializing in Internet marketing, pay per click, and Web design. Their primary service is optimizing new or existing Adwords pay per click campaigns for clients. Here are my thoughts on the company’s website:

Highlights

The following are some of the best features of TopClickMedia.co.uk:

The site’s top-level navigation is easy to follow.
Information on the site about the company and services is pretty inclusive.
The company offers the ability to request a free quote online.
The site offers full contact information (unlike a lot of Web-based service providers).
There’s a lot of information available from clients (accounts of their experiences in testimonials).

Suggestions

The following are some suggestions I would make for possible changes and improvements to the site, to increase the effectiveness of the copy in driving sales:

The blue in the header gives the logo and company name a bit of a “washed out” feel. I’d darken the blue or change the color entirely unless that shade is vital to the company’s branding efforts.
There’s a lot of text on most pages (more than most Web readers would tolerate). It’s also in small type and often large paragraphs. I’d suggest breaking the text down a bit into shorter paragraphs or more pages.
On pages with quotes, sometimes very long quotes are italicized, which makes them a bit hard to read. I would suggest losing the italics (not really proper quote form anyway), and instead indent the quotes.
On the home page, after the copyright notice, there’s a huge selection of text. I’d lose it completely. I’d have to guess that it’s there for SEO purposes, as it’s certainly not effective for readers. At the same time, if I were hiring an Internet marketing company, I would expect them to know that inconveniencing or overwhelming visitors isn’t acceptable just to appease search engines. You have to find a balance. The information there belongs on an About page; not the bottom of a home page. It’s perfectly fine, however, to include a short paragraph or two about the company near the top of the home page if you can make it work.
I’m not sure why the menu items are lettered. It’s not visually attractive, and is actually a little bit distracting. Removing the lettering would be a definite aesthetic improvement.
I would normally tell a service provider to try to add something “extra” to their site to bring in repeat visitors (whether it be an industry blog, articles, or free resources). In the case of TopClickMedia.co.uk, they do have a series of useful articles on topics like SEO and PPC management. However, they’re not easy to find (buried in links near the footer). I would remove them from that location and feature them from a collective “articles” page directing to each (an “Articles” link would have plenty of room in the menu if the lettering is removed).

Overall, the site is fine and more comprehensive than a lot of service provider sites. I would just recommend a bit of visual “house cleaning” to help ensure that visitors are going to be able to sit through reading all of that information, and hopefully improve conversions from visitors into clients.