Site Review: Epay.vg

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s that time again, time to put yet another website under the microscope for analysis. This week it’s Epay.vg, which is an international e-payment site. Think of it as sort of an international version of PayPal. Epay.vg actually offers a wide variety of services including debit cards, credit cards, and the ability to transfer money to several different countries across the globe.

My first impression upon entering the site is that it’s almost too simplistic. While I don’t like sites to be cluttered, I felt like I was actually waiting for the rest of the page to load. Design is often a matter of personal preference but one design aspect that’s much less subjective is the font color and size. Personally I felt the text was too small and not dark enough to make it stand out for easy readability. On any website you want the appearance to convey a positive message to visitors, however, on a financial site such as Epay.vg, that’s going to play an even larger role. Visitors to the site need to feel safe and secure and know that when they send money, it isn’t going to end up anywhere other than where they intend.

To help with that goal, I would also have liked to see the secure logos placed a bit higher up on the page in a slightly more prominent position. Those security certifications are pretty impressive (especially the Network Solutions for $1 million) and I just don’t think they are being utilized as much as they could be. Also, the green box towards the bottom of the page that gives all the benefits in quick bullet points should, in my opinion, be emphasized much more. Potential customers need to see what you’ll do for them and a quick bullet point list is a great way to do that. However, in it’s current location many visitors to your site might not ever notice it. All in all though, the site is professional looking and I don’t think the design would raise any concerns with visitors or detract from your message.

So, how are the rankings? Pulling some of the terms from their home page’s title tag, I quickly found that they were ranking fairly well in Google and excellent in Yahoo. Terms like “virtual debit cards” and “send money” find the site in the top 20 in Google while not cracking the top 100 for uber-competitive terms such as “debit card” or “credit card.” This really doesn’t come as too much of a surprise due to the incredible levels of competition of those terms, and in fact, I think it’s quite a good sign that the site is ranking well for the terms it does.

On a quick side note, #1 and #2 rankings for Wikipedia for “debit card” and “credit card” respectively? Really Google? A user edited website is really one of the top sources of information on those two terms? Give me a break. Searches like this show how completely ridiculous your love affair with the Wiki has become. It’s out of control.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let’s get back to search recommendations for Epay. The one major problem that jumped out at me was the lack of optimization on your internal links. Almost all of your links have the anchor text of “click here” or “read more.” That’s simply not going to cut it in an industry and niche as competitive as yours. You’re going to need every advantage you can get and your internal links are the only links that you have full control over. I’d suggest going through your entire site over the course of a month or two, either changing the anchor text of your links, or adding extra links with optimized anchor text. Any time in your content that you find one of your targeted keyword phrases, that’s an opportunity for an optimized link. Now you shouldn’t get carried away with this and instantly change every mention of the word credit card over to a link back to your home page but internal linking is definitely not something to be ignored. And actually, that would go for interior pages as well.

Last but not least, I’d suggest taking a look at some of the copy on your site. While your site is obviously international, there are a few areas where the grammar or English is just a tiny bit off. While this normally wouldn’t be a huge deal, again you’re in such a competitive industry that relies so heavily on user comfort and confidence that I think it might be worth your time to fix. For example, the first sentence on your home page starts off “An innovative way to online transfer money and payment processing solution.” Reworking that to read something like “Epay.vg is an innovative way to transfer money online and a leading payment processing solution.” could pay off when it comes to confidence in your product.