Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi Leila :-) Welcome to Startup Nation.

First of all, you have a really fun idea. I`m assuming you sell only the patterns, not the actual clothes? If that`s true, you might consider adding that option for people willing to pay more money.

The downside of the existing situation is that yes, you may have made a mistake in designing the site yourself. My first impression, made in that critical 4 seconds of arriving at your site is, "Ouch!" :-)

Your font is all italic, which usually is intended only for emphasis. So the entire site comes across as either a quotation from a book, or as if you`re manic and hyperactive. LOL! I`m supposing that`s not actually your personality?

The size of the text is too large: On my 19" LCD panel it was big, so I`m thinking that for the majority of viewers it`ll be huge! I like the theme of the two purples, but with such a huge font, in all italics, placed on top of your banner (at the top of the page), it just gets jumbled beyond easy understanding.

All the information you`ve crammed into the top banner should be spread out. Give people some room to breathe as they read and absorb the critical information points up there. Right now you have this:
Because it`s in the banner, it appears as if it`s a "tagline." Why not, instead, keep the banner clean: "Petite Puppy Patterns." You can come up with a quick tagline later, but then as your lead-in paragraph of the main content, say something like:
Get rid of the "thank you for your patience" notice at the top. Nobody cares. Maybe a few of your close friends have been after you to complete the job, but now you`re visible to the entire planet. They have no idea how long it took or the amount of work. All they care about is "what`s this site about, and what can I buy?"

On the technical side of things, you`ll want to put in page titles and do some other work that helps with search-engine optimization (SEO). That`ll help get your site indexed by big search engines, making it more visible to the people in the world. Although you say you`re helping bunnies and cats, your meta keywords are almost all about dogs.

So you have a bit of mixed message: Is your site about dogs AND cats? Or it is only about small dogs?

Yoiu might want to browse the community forums here, reading about what makes for a good Web site. There are a lot of critiques, and in those topics people have pretty much covered every possible aspect of design, layout, copywriting, graphics, and so forth.

Overall, you have a solid niche, and likely can build a good business. Think of your Web site as an actual, physical store. Each "area" of writing and pictures would be like real signs, made of cardboard, placed on an easel in this store.

I walk in the front door, right? What`s ON the front door? That`s your banner. Imagine my having to read all that stuff on the glass front door even before I pull the handle to come inside. See?

Nice idea and good products, but i am not really too thrilled about the site design. Nowdays, everybody in the we industry is moving away from the static websites to a more dynamic sites such as "web 2.0" sites. This direction would be best for the type of business that you are trying to put in place. I more interactive site that would allow people to by with a shopping cart and place orders without even contacting you. If you need more ideas i would be more then happy to give you some suggestions. You would need something more like:

http://www.glamourdog.com/dog-clothes.html

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Michael Jean-Jacques
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Buggrep.com

I`ll just add that althought Web 2.0 may be the way of things these days, in terms of Web design, you certainly can still do a functional site in plain HTML and other previous forms of development. It depends on the budget.

This current site can be fixed; it doesn`t necessarily have to be redesigned from the code level. It can be, of course...just doesn`t "have to" be.

Hi Leila,

 

That’s a great idea.  Do you make them for cats?  No, wait, my cat would consider himself too cool for clothes. 

 

Anyway, just a few thoughts after I skimmed your home page:

 

-         Typo in header:  Clothng Patterns

-         I wouldn’t center the copy, maybe left-align it.

-         Is using Singer in your logo any kind of copyright infringement? 

-         Typo, first graph:  acutally

-         Why is “treating you and your pet” in quotes?

-         Is there a way you could reconfigure the page so the user doesn’t have to scroll?  It’s a lot of info to digest.  Maybe feature your best outfit and then create another page for a gallery?

 

All in all this is a great first attempt.  You have lots of information that could either be reorganized or eliminated.  Hit the library; there are tons of good reference books on web design.  If you want to chat about the overall copy feel free to send me a private message.

 

Best of luck – I love the little cheerleader outfits.

 

Julia

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Julia

Thank you Craig and Michael, for taking the time to critique my site and for your input and ideas.

I`ve cleaned up my home page a little — got rid of the italics, made my fonts smaller. One thing I didn`t understand, was I making my page too wide?

I`m so very new at website building there are a lot of things I just don`t have a clue about. Such as what a static website is as compared to a dynamic site. Also, not a clue as to what Web 2.0 is, but I will research it.

Whoa ..... wheres my sunglasses....?

OK, just my opinion, first thing I think visually when I open the page is that it`s too much purple .... regardless of the colors you use, don`t use so much of it concentrated in one place that a visitor feels visually smacked in the face with it .... the colors themselves aren`t bad, just the usage of them. If it was me, and again this is just my preference, I would use more of the subtle purple, and the darker/stronger color for borders/accents. And, the page feels "top heavy", if that makes sense; all this dark on the top and left sides with no border or sense of structure on the right. Again, just my opinion.

The header .... the text doesn`t work where it is, or the color of it, the copyright should go to the bottom of your page, and the image in the top left corner just does not fit in. And, why have a different header and menu look for every page? I think consistency is important.

You should try to optimize your photos; some are pretty big for the size they are displayed, and will use more of your bandwidth than they need to, as well as slow down some users with slower internet connections.

I agree with Craig. I think you do good at getting your message across clearly and quickly, but right away you need to emphasize the main message/purpose more, and let the rest of the info follow as the visitor scans the page. Don`t try to say everything in one breath as the user is walking through the door, to use Craig`s analogy. Let them browse, window shop, and explore, and learn as they go.

Also try not to repeat the same message over and over; thats the feeling I get as I go through the main page. "We want you and your pet to feel special". Well, that`s all good and fine, and I already think my dog is special ( A pain in the ass at times :) ), but would you want a salesman following you, as a customer, and repeating the same sales pitch over and over? It just sounds repetitive to me is all I`m saying.

SEO ..... pretty much non-existent. You need to implement just basic on-page SEO for a start. WYSIWYG is terrible for good code. In fact, I can almost guarantee that your pages could be rewritten with solid, basic on-page SEO and proper coding and still be half the size they are now. In other words ..... smaller, correct, and more efficient. In more other words .... better performance for visitors and search engines.

Overall, not terrible for trying to learn as you go ..... but you do have a ways to go yet.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Rather than use WYSIWYG, which I tried initially, and which I found to be very unhelpful, I`d suggest you take a look at Mozilla`s "Nvu." It`s free, has all sorts of useful features, and creates pretty clean code.

For basic help and instructions, you can try these two sites:

I bought WYSIWYG and fell in love with it.  I had a functioning test site running in one day using WYSIWYG.  I gave up completely on Wordpress.  Maybe I like WYSIWYG so much because the interface is so familiar to my favorite application editing platform, Visual Basic.  The resulting HTML files all passed the W3C Validation with only one error.  No other web design program has ever gotten so much right for me in the past.

However, I will definitely check out Nvu....



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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

With Nvu, you get four "views." The one is sort of like a standard word processor. The next offers you highly visible HTML tags, so you can see just the tags in a sort of graphical format, as they`re placed in the text. That quickly shows you oddball tags and things.

The third offers only source code, line-numbered, in a plain text format. The fourth tab is similar to the first, but is "preview." It`s a bit buggy, and doesn`t actually show a true preview. However, there`s a "browse" option, which will open up your default browser and load the existing file. That shows a true representation of the page.

Setting aside the four views, Nvu also includes an add-in CSS editor, where you can pick and choose all the options. You then can save the styles either internally or externally. There`s a site-builder, offering a way to rapidly make changes and upload the whole shebang, but I haven`t used that much.

If that`s not enough, you can place the cursor in any line and see all the operating tags in order of importance on the bottom screen status line. Right click on any tag and you`re provided with a point-and-click option to adjust the tag`s inline styles.

Setting those styles by pick-list has been invaluable in teaching me how to use CSS, when it works, and where it`s not so useful. It truly is a WYSIWIG editor with all the interface advantages of a decent word processor.