Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Cody Crisp
Rugged Cross Woodworks
http://www.ruggedcrossww.com

For a first effort, the overall look isn`t too bad, although it does feel a bit "busy", and more imagery of your work would help.

Just wondering. What do you feel is the benefit of using all flash, other than looking "flashy"?



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

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Cody Crisp
Rugged Cross Woodworks
http://www.ruggedcrossww.com

Just my opinion .... use flash just where you need it ... not entire pages, just the needed areas. Even at that, you can implement AJAX image galleries that are really nice if wanted.

Get rid of all-image pages. Use html/css and a lot of text; images alone get you nowhere in search results ( and yours have no alt tag information, which is beneficial ). You need relevant, textual content for any chance at high search results, with solid, basic SEO added.

Refine your meta tag titles and descriptions, and don`t worry so much about meta keywords.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

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Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Hi Cody :-) Welcome to the community.

I have a friend who`s also in the wood-working business, and also is trying to get going online. With that in mind, I visited your site and have some thoughts.

First of all, rather than worrying about the glitz and "attraction" of technology, stick with the pictures. Think about it this way: You`re selling televisions at JC Penney, so you put up a wall of TVs. Do you think the walk-by customers are attracted by the lights and movement, or the wall of actual televisions?

You`re not trying to sell Web development, and Flash likely will give you a lot of headaches. The search engines don`t read much, as Webline and Roland have said, so it gets you not a whole lot in terms of visibility.

Far more important is the images. Without *seeing* what you make and are selling, I doubt anyone will bother to stay on the site as it currently exists.

Imagine walking through an artists and crafts show, where each person has a tent. You`re set up in a local town park, and it`s a fine summer afternoon. Lots of folks are browsing along, looking at a whole lot of tents in rows. Inside those tents are the products.

They come to your tent and see lots of signs and billboards, talking about how you sell wood furniture and unique small items. But they see no furniture, and no small boxes displayed anywhere. How long do you think they`re going to spend staring at your description of who you are?

I agree that having whole pages in pictures is a bit `busy` plus keep in mind that on slower computers and connections they might cause trouble, which might lose you some customers
Also, your pages lack a heading. e.g. the `buy` page is titled as `buy`. you should title it as `business, page` e.g. `RuggedCross, Buy Page`
You should also work on your meta tags, to be more crawler-friendly
Another thing I would add, is your home address and your phone number in the contact form. You`re selling custom products so that means you`re kinda like selling yourself..
In the buy page, I`d give your products a name, to be more easily referable. You do not present a catalogue with 50,000 products. so your items should be unique. not as "product#"
Additionaly, in your homepage I`d raise the `showcase` part to the top of the page. You want people to understand right away what you`re doing here, and you won`t get them with text
Lastly, I`d add a site map, for search engine crawlers (especially if you`re planning on later having a page for each of your products) and a FAQ or a Terms and Privacy sort of statement

All in all, Your site looks good, and quite user friendly. keep up the good work

Jmes




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My LookupPage

Thanks guys, I agree with pretty much all of your comments.  After taking a step back and looking at the big picture, I already have quite a "to do" list.  I am already in the process of making changes and I`ll probably come back again asking for another critique after I release "Version 2". 

As far as the reason for wanting to do flash development, it was also because I am more familiar with it than most other web design techniques.  I have been in application development for a few years, but just starting web development.  It may be a couple of weeks before I get a new version of the site ready, so feel free to keep browsing and giving more suggestions.  Thanks.

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Cody Crisp
Rugged Cross Woodworks
http://www.ruggedcrossww.com

I was a professional woodworker for many years and in fact it was