Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello! Please let me begin by saying that I first asked for a critique of my company`s website [www.angelgirlinc.com] several months ago and since then have completely revamped the site, largely responding to feedback from the SUN community and other sources. That said, let`s discuss what the purpose of our company and its website it.

Angel Girl, Inc, sells children`s apparel out of a brick and mortar store in Federal Way, WA. We opened for business in February of this year and we`ve been recession minded since the planning stages, meaning we`ve designed this to be a business that will work even in difficult economic times. Are store sells everyday children`s clothing resale and consignment, we also sell brand new but very affordable school uniforms and formal wear. That`s who Angel Girl is, so what`s the website for?

You should know that we decided to narrow the focus of the product on our website to concentrate our market, so we currently only sell formal wear online with plans to sell school uniforms soon - but our website is designed to be a more niched focused boutique than our brick and mortar store.  That said, the goal of the website is to accomplish a number of things.

1. Provide a point of contact for our customers online in order to learn more about our company and what we do.
2. Establish a strong web presence through SEO and fresh content and grow our following online.
3. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, generate sales of our products.

You should be aware that I designed and administer this site myself. Between the design, implementation, ecommerce, redesign, SEO and online community building I would estimate that I`ve spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-200 hours working on it. I`m also connected the site with efforts on Twitter (@angelgirltweet), Facebook, youtube, a blog and more coming - all of which are found through our front page [www.angelgirlinc.com].

So the questions I have for you, the SUN community, are:

• What do you think of the user experience? Is it easy to use and clear to navigate? Would you want to return?
• Is the layout attractive? What would you change?
• Do you have any thoughts on the website in general? Recommendations or suggestions?

For your reference, since we`ve started actively driving traffic to the site we now average about 45 unique visitors per day (we`re aiming for much higher). About 30% of my traffic comes from Twitter, 20% from search results, 15% from Adwords, with the rest from a handful of other sources including direct and repeat visitors.

I thank you for your time in reading this and checking out our site, please feel free to be honest in your critique. Thank you and have a wonderful day!



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Josh Saint Jacque | Angel Girl Inc. | http://www.angelgirlinc.com | angel.girl.inc@gmail.com | 253.880.4048

I`m not sure what your SEO efforts were, but in your source code I really don`t see anything as far as SEO. Your page titles are rather generic, no meta descriptions, no h1/h2 tags, etc; many of the basics I don`t see implemented. Your textual content is also lacking, both in actual content and keywords. You need to get your basic onsite SEO in place and increase your content for any chance at decent hits from search engines.

Your main page isn`t helpful, in my opinion. Your top logo could/should be a link to your main page; your text on the top right is an ideal place for h1/h2 tags for SEO, but instead it is an image, and neither one uses effective alt text.

Your logo then appears again on the page, where you should be adding content and images for your products; instead, you seem more interested in promoting some feed, showing some update info that I don`t see as being part of your sites concept, and small text contact information.

So my first question, as a first time visitor is; why am I here, and what is this site providing? Where are the products that should get my interest right away? Why am I seeing bits and pieces of miscellaneous information instead of childrens` apparel?

It seems, in my opinion, that you are trying to work in your social networking and "We`ve updated" stuff before concentrating on your core concept, i.e., trying to sell clothing. Even though you`ve spent many hours reworking this, I would suggest getting back to your main idea, then working in your other widgets and gadgets.

I would also suggest a contact form instead of a plain email address, more information about shipping returns, guarantees, etc. Look at your site the way your visitors would look at it, and look at your competitors sites to see what makes them look professional and successful, and add those ideas into your site.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Hi Webline!

Thank you for taking the time to look over our site so quickly, I really appreciate it. I agree with your thoughts, I think I got soooo focused on attracting people to the site for reasons other than our product I forgot about sales - which explains our poor conversion rate even though we`re getting hits to the site.

I`ve already made some preliminary updates to site:

• Added SEO friendly titles and headers on our landing page with more to come on the product pages.
• Put a product emphasis on our home page - we still have the social/community/updated aspect on the left but first and foremost our product is center stage. I`ll be updating this in the next few hours but I think what you said is so important I needed to put something up there right away.
• And of course clarified the site`s purpose - to sell clothes!

I`ll be doing a lot of work based on your input. The funny thing is I think I had everything you said in mind before I made the site, but got caught up in other issues. Too much trendy stuff, I think I needed someone to pull me back to center: sales. Once again thank you, and I invite you to take another look, if you are willing, tomorrow when I have implemented many more improvements.

Thank you,



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Josh Saint Jacque | Angel Girl Inc. | http://www.angelgirlinc.com | angel.girl.inc@gmail.com | 253.880.4048

Is the black box on the home page supposed to be a video?


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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Hi Videography,

No, that`s a twitter feed.



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Josh Saint Jacque | Angel Girl Inc. | http://www.angelgirlinc.com | angel.girl.inc@gmail.com | 253.880.4048

OK, I`ll be more blunt.  All I see is a black square.




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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email