Hello, I need help! I have a fishing website that I built, using Wordpress and the Mandigo theme, from a crappy cookie-cutter site I bought on Ebay back in March for 40 bucks. I know nothing at all about web design, and know only very basic HTML. Everything on my site I did myself, putting in literally hundreds of hours and reading tons of material on building and running a website, as well as SEO, linking, social media, marketing, etc.
Even though my Alexa ranking has dropped from 8 million + to 379,893, I have come to the conclusion that unless I make some drastic changes to my design, no matter how much great content I put on my site, I'm not going to keep a visitor on it - most visitors probably leave instantly when they see how unprofessional it looks. My statcounter "visit length" column has many zeros in it.
That being said, I am now reaching out to you web professionals for advice. **I have ordered a new logo for my site, should have it by the end of this week. Should I keep the current theme and save up for months to pay a semi-pro designer? Or maybe go with a new theme, and then get a designer? My host has agreed to install a new theme and upgrade my wordpress from 2.7 to 3.0, (for an undisclosed fee), but I'm afraid they will screw everything up (worse than it is now). Whatever I do, my funds are massively limited. What simple changes could I make (that a newbie can do) to make a big difference?
Scott Rogers
bigfishingshop(dot)com