Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

 

My preference is to use htaccess to redirect.

 

~Roland

Hi Kate,

 

I can feel your pain as I`ve recently come out of a similiar situation.  I think the responses you`ve received here are good.  One thing that landed with me though was that you had your labels designed by one team & your website designed by another.  Have you gone thru any formal brand identity development or did you just have logos/labels designed?

 

Why I ask is because once you have your brand ID, that is something that would most definitely remain consistent with ALL your collateral.  Without that consistency, you wont ever fully be on the mark & you`ll spend more money on site redesigns & have to deal with ongoing headaches of wondering why it`s just not working.  I

 

Also, is this a team of programmers or designers or both?

 

Good luck.  I hope you find quick, painless resolve & get your site live asap!

 

 

Hi karen, first of all I am sorry to hear of all your problems and concerns. I have built 2 websites on my own using yahoo business www.mysticsoulscafe.com

and godaddy.com www.facialscents.com and I had one professionally built using and e-commerce shopping cart  www.tapestriesntassels.com   Which cost me around 2k.

I have started another business, organicngreen.com and I came here to start up nation to find a web designer, happy to say I did find what I was looking for with http://smartflexsolutions.com/index.php

I have no vested interest with them with the exception that they built the foundation of my site and the rest is all me. That is why I choose them, he told me that, they build the foundation of your choice and you get to fill it up. The cost was perfect around 600.00, and I have full controll of what goes in and out of my site, which is always changing. 

Smart flex provides good customer service too.

I have learned in all my years of website issues, that it is best to know your site and shopping cart. When I came to start up to find a designer, I got all kinds of prices up to 5k for a site...Yeah right! I guess if you are making millions of dollars, then you can spring for the big bucks, but it is not neccessary to pay that much to have a fabulous site. You can check out my sites, my organic n green will be up next week, then you can see how nice and professional smart flex is.

Ok, now for you, I would not pay them the rest of the money, I would cut my loses at this point...Both those sites are not appealing to me, JMO. But, if I had to pic, it would be number one. The pictures on both sites look amaturish, not anything I would trust to buy. I am only being honest. The lay out on the first one is most appealing, again, if I have to pic.

Again, it is of my experience that it is wise to have full control,  knowing how to add things to your site, it is better that way, I learned to the tune of 1k trying to figure out my professionally built site, I said never again. The reason being is things change and you want to be the one to change it, not pay someone to do it. It can be costly.

I hope this gives you some insight.

I suggest you don`t pay, get your money back if you can, if not then stay on them until they get it the way you want it, and put it in writing.

Dolby

The price you paid for the site, as you now are aware, was far too low to ensure quality. I will assume you off-shored the job, and in so doing, you automatically ran the risk of running into a language barrier. Perhaps, your web designers just couldn`t understand what it was you wanted. And, from here on out, no job goes ahead without all parties signing a contract. Right?!

 

My advice is to get the site up and running as soon as you can. Because a website is an organic entity, you will always be making changes and improvements to it. This is something you will learn how to do for yourself... and it`s kind of fun, actually.  Where you`ll really grow and improve is in your product photography and image editing. Especially the editing. Nearly every image I`m now looking at needs help in the basic areas of brightness and contrast. (That`s the commercial photographer in me coming out.) A lot of which can be cured by better lighting when the shots are being taken. You`ll want to explore `tent lighting`, where everything will be perfectly and consistently lit. If there`s a commercial photographer nearby, or a photo school, go introduce youself and ask for advice. Being one, I can say that most professionals are all to glad to assume the role of mentor and show how commercial product photography is done. Oh, give them a cake; a camera-shaped cake.

 

Also, you might want to lock up the domain name, www.shape-a-cake.com, just in case you may have to fall back on it ... and so no one else can grab it and give you competition.

 

As always, thanks for the input.

Christine - no, I didn`t have formal brand identity development.  The guy designing my label came up with a nice logo, the design of which I tried to have integrated into the website.

Roland - thanks for the information on the redirect.  I started a new post with a question about this.

Donald - good ideas.  I will check into the domain name.