Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi everyone,

This is my first post.  I would love some feedback on my new webstore, www.minutemanpen.com.

My store, Minuteman Pen Plus, LLC,  specializes in affordable promotional items that are made in the USA.  We custom print pens, pencils, frisbees, drinkware, calendars and some other novelty items.  I worked with a web designer and our goal was to make a more user-friendly site.  I wanted people to feel like they were really entering my store and not just seeing a big list of products.

I will soon be adding more items.

Any feedback, positive or negative, would be really appreciated.  Especially interested in thoughts on marketing and SEO.

Thank you in advance.

-Greg

I'm sorry to say, but i worry about your web designer if he's the one that made the background image. The file size for just the background image is 2.3MB... Other images are also very poorly optimized. Some images are saved as a jpeg that could be saved as a paletted gif, shaving off more KB. Other images are saved straight as a bitmap. The result is one of your images is 150KB but if saved as a jpeg could be about 11KB! In total your site is a few megabytes just to view the homepage.

From what i can tell, the bulk of the file size comes from your designer using 24 bit png to have the ability to use 8 bit (so to speak since png is paletted) shading for the shadows along the side. But to be brutally honest, this method is just lazy. He should be able to keep the current design but break it apart and design it to work with something like a gif (using no shadows for 1 bit transparency) or collapse the design completely and save it as a jpeg. I tested the latter myself and found i reduced the 2.3MiB (2355KB) image into 188KB with no visual quality loss.

Thankfully your actual html code content for the home page is only 7KB ;-)

As for the SEO... well, there is none. Nothing is truly dynamic, page titles are missing for products and categories, meta tags are blank on most pages and the ones that aren't are not too helpful, and what text you do have optimizes each page for useless keywords and phrases. For example, one of your product pages, a wildlife calender, is still optimized for minuteman pens... Not too useful for selling calenders, and even then the keyphrase "minuteman pens" won't bring hardly any traffic to any page of your site, let alone the calender. Ask yourself if people will search google for "minuteman pens" when looking for a wildlife calender, or custom pens, or mostly anything on your site... The answer is more than likely not, unless you "minuteman pens" brand is extremely strong.

The site design is also static and requires both vertical and horizontal scrolling. Vertical is fine and is to be expected by visitors, but horizontal scrolling is a big no-no with web design, and I'm having to scroll horizontally with a width resolution of 1280 for my monitor. It will be far worse where the majority norm for online shoppers is still 1024.

Thank you for the honest feedback.  I will be having a conversation with my web designer about all of this. 

How did you find navigating the site (aside from the issues you mentioned)?   Good, bad, so-so?

As for SEO, I still need to do a lot of work on that, so it isn't surprising there are issues.  Still learning about all of that!

Again, I really appreciate the feedback.  Better to hear the negatives and fix them. 

THanks!

Greg

Why don't you refer Google Webmaster Central Straightaway http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com

The best source that anyone can recommend you about getting SEO friendly, for a business expansion over the internet

Good if you put affordable promotional items in your webstore because cost effective promotional items is always good for branding and fits in every pocket. 

Promotional item stores are one of the best in understanding and properly conveying the message of your company to the ultimate customers. They generally custom print pencils and pens, bags, drinkwares, calendars etc. that help promote the company in the market.

Promotional Items

People love innovative sites nowadays. You can use a little improve in the overall design.

There is no-doubt on the need and importance of business promotional products. These help us to promote our products and services so that most of the people can know about these and business can expand resulting in best ROI.