Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Yellow Rose Lingerie & Boutique

Website: http://www.yellowroselingerie.com
E-Mail: shopyellowrose@yahoo.com

Hi Vicki
First off, congratulations on your website and I hope it blossoms :-)
A few things I would suggest to do:
1. Make your front page smaller.
What I would do is have a main picture with some explanation on the first page. and do the further explanation and pictures in other pages. Your front page should be eye catching and to the point, it shouldn`t confuse the visitor, instead it should guide him where you want him to go
2. Add a site index. for better bot/crawler navigation (SEO)
3. Add a navigation bar. I`m not saying you should work with frames or something sophisticated. just have a few permanent links on all pages (somewhere on top, below the logo, is what I would do). It should be short, containing a few links such as "My Cart" "Special offers" "Limited Items" etc... you should aim here for what the costumer would want combined with what`s more profitable/better for you
4. Too much links... although this is SEO wise, it sort of confuses the costumer.. I would try to work around it using a site index, or something imaginative

Remember, your visitors don`t always know what they want, and if they do, you still want to show them everything. navigation comfort and understanding of the site should be on your first priorities list

I don`t own an online store myself, but I have dealt with it in the past.
Please don`t take my advice for any sort of professional help, I`m just saying what I see is correct

All in all, I wish you the best of luck

Jmes



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My LookupPage

Hi Vicki ;-) Welcome to the forums.

A couple of things come to mind viewing your site. As with Jmes, I think you have too many links in your main-page content. It gets annoying, particularly when those links are either on the side menu...or should be.

Additionally, having your main content all in italics makes it harder to read, rather than easy. Italics are used for emphasis, or to indicate internal thinking during a story, perhaps to also indicate an outside observer point of view. Not for main content.

I really like the visual design. That`s a big problem for a lot of other Web sites. Your visual structure, logo and banner all immediately get across the idea that this is a lingerie site. Colors are great, and your main image of the woman looking toward the content is excellent

Your home-page Title could be better. Making it all caps is like "shouting." The question is whether or not you want a classy, elegant operation or just a store. Your page titles show in FireFox tabs, and are used in search-engine results, so those titles should be part of your advertising strategy.

You could change the main title to "Shop Yellow Rose Lingerie Online," and do just as well if not better. The 24/7 is redundant and makes the title longer than it needs to be. You don`t include "lingerie" in the title, so without knowing the site, "shop yellow rose online" makes no sense.

You also apparently have a sort of 2-way store, with the lingerie being one and the "bridal boutique" being separate. But you don`t visually show or highlight the two pathways. I see "Bridal Boutique" as an optional link, but you might consider splitting your right-side navigation menu in two.

You could highlight "Yellow Rose Lingerie," then have relevant menu options below that, then highlight "Bridal Boutique" and do the same below that.

In the Bridal Boutique "landing" page, I`d like to see the same size first image as you have on the home page, for consistency. In other words, taller, and narrow in the same measurements as the woman on the front page. That`ll help visually tie together the two "sections" of the site. Note that you don`t use italics on that page, and it`s easier to understand.

Oddly enough, your Page Source code view isn`t working on FireFox 2.x, and I have no idea why not. Perhaps some other developers will have some thoughts on the underlying coding going on.

Also, you could change the wording on your shipping to simply "Free Shipping" on orders over $100. Who cares if it`s "standard" or not? :-) Y`know? On your Terms & Services page, you can explain how you ship, and that if someone wants special handling, you`ll invoice them or whatever. But the biggest "bang for the buck" is to just say Free Shipping.

Finally, your images should ALL have "alt text" (tags) filled in. One of the best ways to get noticed and found is through Google Images. And the only way for that to happen is if search-engines can "read" your images. That can only happen if you have descriptive text associated with each image.

All in all, it`s a nice site. It always takes time to get found, indexed, then to move up in the "ranks." Often, it takes years. When you talk about wanting customers to stay on your site, that`s the "customer journey."

To build such a journey you have to examine the idea of what`s interesting on your site. What are you selling? Nobody buys underwear, and nobody cares about lingerie. What people buy is a fantasy...a story and an illusion.

Your copy writing is mediocre at best, and so there`s no particular reason for customers to "get involved" in your site. As it stands, it`s like shopping the Sears catalog for lingerie.

To keep customers on the site, you`ll want a better sense of intrigue, sensuality, erotica, imagery, and fantasy. Like a romance novel versus the blurb on the back of the book. Make sense?

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James Lindon, Ph.D. Patent Attorney
Lindon & Lindon, LLC
Cleveland, Ohio
Patents, Trademarks, Copyrights, Pharmacy Law, Litigation
[this is not legal advice - provided for discussion only]
Intellectual Property for the Individual and Small Business: Identify, Protect, Enforce, Defend.
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
http://www.LindonLaw.com

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Yellow Rose Lingerie & Boutique

Website: http://www.yellowroselingerie.com
E-Mail: shopyellowrose@yahoo.com

Your main page has 26 images and total 640+ kb is size .... the main page has 200+ W3C errors for validation, many of which should be easily fixed.

Your code is not efficient .... if you used a site builder of some sort, that`s to be expected .... you could easily reduce the amount of code by half by using external css and better coding methods.

Good basic SEO would go a long way, as well.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I don`t mean to sound dumb -- but I have no idea what your talking about concerning code, etc.  My site is one you build yourself with template, etc.  I just type and add images.  I don`t know anything about coding.

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Yellow Rose Lingerie & Boutique

Website: http://www.yellowroselingerie.com
E-Mail: shopyellowrose@yahoo.com

Vicki,
If you don`t understand SEO or Alt-Text, coding and W3C conformity, you have two choices. Either you can sift through the Web site forum topics here on Startup Nation, or you can hire a professional developer.

Technically, you do have the option of continuing with the templates and site-builder, but in that event you also have to accept the less-than-optimal results.

It`s always the same problem: do it yourself, and hope to build visibility and word-of-mouth, or hire someone and hope they`re professional and reliable.

To clarify, coding consists of html and css, and possibly dynamic scripting languages, to make your pages look and act the way they do. Code doesn`t always need to be done in an exact way to make your pages work, but in many cases the same layout/effect can be done with less and more efficient code, and SEO techniques can usually be added fairly easily.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons