Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Although there are still freight issues, overall I think it turned out pretty good.  What do you think? www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com

I`ve changed a few things on the homepage (until) I get my website developer to actually do what Riham did, but until that happens, I hope it looks a little better... 

 

Thanks Marcy

-------------------------

Marcy Shuler
www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com
Scrapbook Furniture and Organizers

        The site looks great!  It is attractive and interesting and your products are organized well making it easy to navigate.  If I were shopping for your products and came upon your site, it certainly would keep my interest and I would stay and browse through it!  Good job! 

-------------------------

Beth Downey
BoxerHaus.com
The Ultimate Boxer Shopping Experience!
www.BoxerHaus.com

Are you sure you want feedback?

It reminds me of the line from "A Few Good Men".

"You want the truth?"

Ok, and again this come from a neophyte re: web sites...

1. Upon clicking on your `Source Code" ... you MetaTags are lacking. You have a total of 4 keywords. You may want to start developing a more extensive listing of "key words" that are searched often. (If you are not sure how often a "search term" has been searched in the previous month .. follow this link ... http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
2. If you eliminate the "Make Sure you Scroll Down .." line you products graphic will be more visible. (You`ll be able to move that graphic up).
3. Why have the info re: the "Freight Estimator" being wrong   .... just fix it .. or don`t use it.
4. Rather than having to scroll down to find certain areas.. why not have a navigation bar  ... on the left side?
5. Ratherthan using your email address on the site...access an email form. You`ll notice that you won`t get as much "spam" to your contact us email  address, as you are now. (note: you`ll need to set up a new contact address, as the spammers may already have your email addie.address.
6. Continue to submit you web pages to the search engines ... if you are not sure how to do that .. follow this link ... http://selfpromotion.com/?CF=webmaster@thegreetingstore.com

I`ll post more later, but hopefully this will help.

Marcy,

Truthfully, I think there`s way too much going on on the front page.  It seems jumbled to me.  Here are my comments.

• At first, before the photo loaded, I couldn`t even tell what you sold.  Half way down the page is "SSS offers customized storage furniture".  AHA!  That needs to be at the very top of your page.
• Also needed at the top: winner at the Southern Women`s Show.  Congrats!  That`s a really big deal!  Spotlight it!  (I`m from Charlotte and the Women`s Show is an annual tradition not to be missed!)
• All the multi-colored text confuses me.  Too many colors.  You can`t get my attention when I don`t know what to go for first.
• Your actual furniture info needs to go inside the website.
• Ditto about fixing the freight calculator.
• Size your homepage to fit on just one screen.
• I like the top nav bar - different and fun.
• Inside I think your pages are much better organized.  My only thing is that the font is a little small.
• There`s a really cohesive look on your interior pages that needs to be extended to your front page.  People aren`t going to ever see those interior pages if the front page overwhelms and confuses. 
• I`m thinking your IP address isn`t supposed to be showing at the bottom of your pages. 

Overall, I think the front page needs quite a bit of work, but the interior pages look good.  I like your logo and your colors are attractive to your buyers.  The graphic with the pop-up images is great!

I know it`s true for me that if a website`s front page looks homemade, I won`t go any further.  Ever.  Bring the great design and organization you have in your interior to the front and I think you`ll see a big increase in traffic :)

Best of luck!

Diana

 

-------------------------

"Whether you think you can or you think you can`t, you`re right."
paraphrased Henry Ford

Scrappy - I`ll try not to reiterate all of the stylistic advice already offered, but I will back up Diana`s point about visual consistency (in text and presentation) - the shift between background colors, font sizes, etc. doesn`t draw my attention, it makes me pass it all by.  Try to come up with something of a "style guide" for your site.  Limit yourself to a single standard text size/font/color, and two to four heading sizes and fonts, and use them throughout.  As a user, I`ll easily be able to pick up what content is highlighted and what is standard, and can intuitively pick it up in that manner.

From a search standpoint, not to contradict TJG, but I wouldn`t spend time on meta tags or search engine submission at this point - your first task should be to go through your site and come up with distinct <title> tags for all of your pages.  You`re already being indexed by the majors, but your not getting the full benefit out of those listings - go to Google and enter this in the search box:

site:scrapbookspacestation.com

You have 89 pages indexed, and even on the first page of results I see only 2 distinct titles for the 10 pages - no good.  I know each of those pages has something unique about it, and you`re leaving an opportunity on the table if you don`t go through and clearly identify each page in the title tag - as you can see, it affects how your pages show up in search engine indexes, and if you do employ distinct and preferably higher traffic keywords in those titles you`ll give yourself a better chance of ranking for those words and phrases.


-------------------------

chuck fuller

Ok... where do I begin... 

First, THANKS for all the input.  I`m all about learning! 

I want to say, that it wasn`t `me` who put the site together, I hired a company and originally, on the homepage, all there was, was the information about the furniture and the graphics.  I`ve learned how to add text on the homepage (and thought) it would be good to add more detail (explaining the different items on the graphics and the price) I guess I could simply put > Ultimate Pkg for $$ at the bottom of the graphics and leave it at that ???

As for the Diff fonts and colors (I guess that`s the scrapbooker in me) scrapbookers love fonts and colors.  I can easily change that back.

When you start talking tags, I have no clue what you mean by that, nor do I know how to change that??

I`d love to know how you found out how many key words I have listed?  and what can I do to fix this?

Sorry I`m so ignorant.  I really value all of your opinions.  I`ll try to (little by little) today (while I`m at my real job) fix the home page

As for optimization, I think, my website developer and also host, took care of that.  I believe it was part of my pkg??

The freight estimator... what a nightmare this has been.  I have to state that on the home page, because I don`t know how to add that info to the `store` See, this company told me at the beginning that their store would be able to calculate freight using weight and dimensions (since I have furniture units) well, after 4mon of them working on the site, they found it could not do the dimensions.  They wanted me to try and do an `average` well, I can`t do that... I`m selling furniture... a 30x80 table weighing 60LB is going to cost a heck of a lot more then a 10x10box weighing 60LB... so, it`s been since Aug of last year and they still can`t figure out what to do.  They state that it has to be a custom programming which can cost a lot of money, but I told them they should have stated that in the beginning! so... they are trying to figure something out for me and meanwhile, I`m taking orders via email/phone.    I`ve had to state that it does not work in Bold because people have tried to purchase and when the freight comes up with an outrageous amount, I`m sure they`re saying `screw` this and move on... So, knowing all this info, how should I proceed? 

AND, have I said THANK YOU...   You have no idea how grateful I am to have found this site! 

Thanks!!!

-------------------------

Marcy Shuler
www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com
Scrapbook Furniture and Organizers

Marcy - if you`re at your homepage, and you`re using Internet Explorer, in the menu options at the top of your browser you can select View > Source to open up the code behind that page.  Within that code, anyone can see which keywords were selected for the meta tag assigned to the page.

When I pointed to titles, I was referring to the text that is entered between the <title></title> tags within that same code - this tag generally goes at the beginning of the code behind your page (after the <html> or similar tag), and when a browser loads the page it pulls the text from that tag and places it at the very top of your browser.

By the same token, a search engine takes that as the literal title of your page, and when it provides a result from your site it uses that text as the link to your page.  So I was pointing out that within your website there are a number of pages that have exactly the same title.  It`s relatively easy to fix that tag, and you can see which pages are affected by going back to Google - go to this search result and you can see all of your indexed pages, their URLs and whether or not they have distinct titles.


-------------------------

chuck fuller

Chuck,

Thanks for all your input! My question though, is (how) do I fix it? (what your wrote below)  I found all the info going through source... do I need to pay my website developer to fix it? or is it something I can do?  Thanks Marcy

From a search standpoint, not to contradict TJG, but I wouldn`t spend time on meta tags or search engine submission at this point - your first task should be to go through your site and come up with distinct <title> tags for all of your pages.  You`re already being indexed by the majors, but your not getting the full benefit out of those listings - go to Google and enter this in the search box:

site:scrapbookspacestation.com

You have 89 pages indexed, and even on the first page of results I see only 2 distinct titles for the 10 pages - no good.  I know each of those pages has something unique about it, and you`re leaving an opportunity on the table if you don`t go through and clearly identify each page in the title tag - as you can see, it affects how your pages show up in search engine indexes, and if you do employ distinct and preferably higher traffic keywords in those titles you`ll give yourself a better chance of ranking for those words and phrases.

-------------------------

Marcy Shuler
www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com
Scrapbook Furniture and Organizers

Hello Marcy,

First, I agree to all comments above.

But, your website triggered something in me! I couldn`t wait to work on fixing the layout of www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com and here is what I got initially:

http://www.tittainment.net/scrapbook/index.html

This is a very basic fix and I sticked to the old design (which I must say is quite poor because it was done by a company, it is good if it was homemade only).

Compare the loading speed and layout...there are a lot of images and text used for no reason and some larger than usual (the background image you have now is 21 kb but mine is just 6 kilobyles).  Product highlights must be compacted and better in an inner page (as mentioned in another post above.). 

All in all, your homepage mission layout must be focused on presenting the most to the visitor without the need to scroll, just like a traditional shop display.

I have not added the original flash...just a snapshot...but I must say that I like the idea behind it but maybe it needs a few enhancments.

I have also checked your store....looks good but having a price and next to it ("email for price") is a little confusing.... did you try any workarounds?

I hope you will find my suggested fix helpful.....Let me know if you need a hand.

Cheers,

Riham.

Riham...

How in the world did you do that so quickly???? that was awesome!  I feel like I need to give you some money... would you mind if I emailed that to my developer and say "this" is how it should be?  (except, I do like my tags under my logo) I made those tags and uploaded them for the developer to use just for that reason... do you suggest maybe making them smaller? 

I love the way you divided up everything it`s great...

Thanks Marcy

-------------------------

Marcy Shuler
www.ScrapbookSpaceStation.com
Scrapbook Furniture and Organizers