Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I would recommend staying away from a 100% flash site. Flash is harder for the search engines to index and most have not implemented the technology to do so fully yet.

HOWEVER flash in moderation is a good thing. Yes i do think your greeting cards should be done with flash as this will allow you to maintain a consistant look and feel across all browsers and operating systems. which if you tried to do all your cards as HTML you`d drive your self wako trying to make them all look perfect. (4 words "IE for the mac"). It`s not uncommon for peopl to place flash nuggets (little pieces of flash) on a page to highlight areas or to spice up a page. If this is thoughtout before you do it then the affects are good. But just hapazadlly throwing flash around will cause your site to look cheap and corny very quickly.

As for hosting since flash is just another file like a .gif, or .jpg then any host will work. Find a reputable one within your budget but don`t go for the cheapest guy on the block. Small and local firms can be either a dream or a nightmare depending on there level of commitment to there business. After your first few support issues you`ll know if you`ve got a winner. avoid signing in contracts which require you to be a customer for X months etc with shard hosting, on a server deal this is standard practice for the best deals. Off the top of my head i`ve heard some great things about 1and1.com for hosting. cheap and good support but there support is a bit slow.

As for building your greeting cards yes Flash MX (or Flash 8, the newest version) will work fine. Remember that when you buy books on flash there are two types. Those which show you how to use the program, and those which show you how to create flash movies. Most people by a book thinking it will show them how to create flash movies but it`s really just a great book on using the flash program. besides the flash MX there is also another flash toolkit out there which is a bit simpler to use, and not as feature rich but is effective and a bit more coste effective for starting out. You can learn more about it at http://www.swishzone.com/ and the current version is called swish max (i think). They have a lot of flash related products!

hope this helps.

Thanks BizAtTheBeach! i hope i can keep the masses happy and informed!

first off your domain was mistyped in the prior post. I`d recommend editing the code so people can find you :) for reference here`s the URL i used: http://www.continentalprintingsupplies.com/

I didn`t see anything initially which jumped out at me as a turn off for your site, which is good because it means i didn`t want to go find a competitors site! But of course i have a few ideas :)

1. if you can try to get the content here: http://home.earthlink.net/~keanweaner/ to appear here: http://www.continentalprintingsupplies.com/ This will save your visitors 1 click and give them information immediately, it`ll also help you with search engines and ensure your clients don`t index your old page and continue to visit it even after you`ve moved everything to your domain because business is booming!
2. the pebble background is nice but on some monitors i fear it might be either a distraction or a hindrance. i recommend change it to either a solid white background, or a very light gray background. Don`t go with a dark color. The human eye will typically focus on the lightest portion of a page first so this should be where your focused content is.
3. Your site is what`s know as a brochure-ware site. Meaning that it`s typically 1 - 10 pages and talks about your business but doesn`t "do" a whole lot. (meaning people can`t buy stuff etc). There is nothing wrong with this kind of site and it`s great that you have something! Most businesses don`t even have this much. The key with a brochure-ware site though is  you need to grab your audience and get them to contact you offline. So i would recommend adding some content to the site (pages if you can) which do the following:
1. tells about your company
2. How you ship products
3. The types of products you carry
4.  an FAQ area with some common questions you`ve received about the business etc
   
5. Be sure to place your email and/or phone number and/or location address on the site where it`s easy for someone to find.
6. Remember the goal here is to get them to contact you for more information and possibly a sale. So anything else you can think of which might be of interest to your buyers should be put up here.
4. Your link to biggestbook.com threw me for a loop until i figured out WHAT biggestbook.com is. I think you could do your customers a great service by explaining to them why you are linking there and then link to. (kudos on opening it into a new window!!!).
5. Do you have a catalog yourself? or do you solely use biggest book? If you have a catalog give people a way to order a copy. If you solely use biggest book put some type of marketing spin on it. Something like "we use biggest book versus publishing our own catalog to lower costs and ensure we bring you the best prices available".
   

Remember your web site shouldn`t be an afterthought. If you`d like to see business come in from the web site you need to think of it as another sales rep, so train and prepare your site much like you would any other sales person :)

Overall though you have a nice site. it`s clean and uniformed and you didn`t go all wacky with icons, images and differently styled text. good job!

Jonese,

You are unbelievable! Your advice is amazing. Keep up the awesome work!
That being said, I have a site that I have hosted with webmasters.com, I also used a lot of the tools they give you for free to build my site. I of course used DreamWeaver to edit some things in the Flash sections and so on. My first question to you is, What is your initial impression of my site? Second, In the Flash header at the top of every page there are two icons embeded. One for emailing, I assume, and one to go back to the Home Page. However, I can not figure out how to get these to function. Any advice? You are very much appreciated. Thank you and Best Wishes!

I guess I should put a link to my site in here Huh?
www.executeksearch.com

Hello All,
This was mentioned quite some time ago, but there was a
comment about "cart abandonment rates." I tell you my wife
and I are guilty of this action on site we have visited. Something
we are unable to get totals (shipping cost and all) until you are
at the last step of check out. That`s really what I am after, is a
total cost. Therefore, after finding the total cost, I may abandon.

My site is guilty of this too. Unfortunately you must login as a
customer in order to set up the parameters such as ship to
address. Then the site can apply shipping cost totals. This may
be an unsolvable problem and reason for "cart abandonment
rates." Just a thought.

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

Vincent Wilcox (a.k.a. KRAKR)
Drummer
My band: Letters Make Words

Ok here goes: (also for some reason the link is broken, probably something to do with the forums. a quick copy past though fixed that)

1. Man that flash header loads slow! I`d find a flash person (maybe here on the forums) to see about speeding that thing up a bit, I`m sure all it needs is a bit of optimization of the image assets (if you need a freelance guy to do it PM me and I`ll give you an email.)
2. Your menu is flash, yea that`s "neat" and interesting but if you get one of the 2% of the population who doesn`t have flash installed you`ve just limited the way the can visit your site. I`d figure out a way to turn those into images with a roll-over state (changes when you mouse rolls over the image). Also it loads slow as well. remeber you have precious seconds to keep a visitor on your page (yes seconds, about 15 - 20 if your lucky)
3. Your site is only 707 pixels wide, you`re WAY to small! 15-25% of Internet users are on 800x600 and at most (not all) are at a resolution higher than that. Even with the 800x600 visitors you`re wasting 53 pixels of space on your site, and your making it look abnormally small on those larger screen. I`d figure out a way to stretch the site to at least 760 pixels, and in a year or two look at going bigger. (i really don`t recommend many sites go above the 760 width).
4. You have a background image for your site which is a sliver image (small thin image). This image has to be repeated multiple times both horizontally and vertically to achieve the look of your page. I would suggest you dump the image and just use a solid background color vs. the background image.
5. Your pages are all named index-x with x being some number. This is fine and not "wrong" but if you change your page names to real names it will also help your search engine ranking (yes the name of your files play a roll in that magic we call Search Engine Optimization!). my recommendation is as follows:
1. index-1.html ---> aboutus.html
2. index-2.html ---> jobseekers.html
3. index-3.html ---> employers.html
4. index.4.html ---> currentopenings.html
5. index.5.html ---> corporatenews.html
6. index.6.html ---> contactus.html
7. index.7.html ---> privacypolicy.html
6. Not all your pages have title tags. go back and make sure each page has a title setup. i would recommend that you do the following: PageName - REALLY brief description EG: Contact Us - Contact the team at executeksearch today!
7. Figure out how to get your contact form fit into your web site template, as it is now people might be a bit turned off.
8. move the google ads either dead center or figure out a way to incorporate them into your template (remember those 53 pixels we were talking about!)
   

ok now a bit about each of your pages:

about us page:

• more content! this is your time to shine. think of it as your elevator pitch to the world. over 70% of people who visit a site for the first time and know nothing about a company will typically go to the about us page. Talk about your company and services and be sure to link from within your content to key pages on your site (ie if you talk about employers link to the employers page). These embedded links work much like those shelves at the check-out aisle. There it`s an impulse buy, here it`s an impulse click!
• Make your service points a bullet list, if you can use graphic vs. the normal bullet point.
• make the "call or email today" a hyper link to the contact page
  

Job Seekers

• All your links go to the contact page but on the contact page you don`t talk about those items. This will confuse users. I know content is hard to write but the more content and pages you have up the better chances you`ll have of driving in traffic.

Employers

• Good content here, but i wouldn`t link to the about us page in your read more link. This should go to apage which then talk in great detail about the services you offer for employers and be the pitch that gets them to sign-up. Each service should in essence be it`s own page as well.
• Again all your sidebar links go to the contacts page. work on getting some content. turning each of these links into a separate page will be a lot of work but it will really help in boosting your search engine visibility if you can get some good content on those pages.
  

Current Opening

• give the user an expected timeframe as to when they will be able to browse current openings. Even if it`s as vague as spring of 2006. This might be just enough for them to remember to come back.
• Provide a link to your contacts page so they can "call and speak to a recruiter"
• Give examples of past job openings so people know you`ve actually placed people. If you don`t have any make some up for now.
  

Corporate news

• get your calendar into your template, or make it a pop-up window (around 400 - 500 pixels wide should be large enough)
• you have a blog! great! promote it on the front page and if you can get the RSS feed higher up on the page so people don`t have to drill down to subscribe.
  

Contacts page

• more meat here. you have a lot of pages pointing here right now, so you really need to look at beefing this page up. also there is no phone number yet you keep telling people to call (yes i know it`s in the left sidebar but that can be easily overlooked.)
  

Execupool and Execufile

• not much to say here, maybe a little more meat but other wise these are two great pages!
  

So what did i like?

your colors. very professional! and you are obviously starting to develop a brand. I`m pretty sure this is a template web site (probably bought from templatemonster.com, which is an AWESOME site) but you`ve done a great job in making it your own. I would really find a flash developer to help you out with that header. you can try to open the .fla files which should have come with the template and see if you can figure it out but trust me flash is a different kind of animal all together!

I recommend you pick up a book on dreamweaver to help you with getting your site in order and for continual maintenance on it. One i highly recommend is by a great group of people called sitepoint. you can find their book "Build your own standards compliant web site using dreamweaver 8 at this url:

http://www.sitepoint.com/launch/3d0e01/3/26

and all their wonderful books at

http://www.sitepoint.com/launch/3d0e01

Kathy,
Thanks for the kind words! i checked out your page and you are off to a good start. Your product looks very professional from the pictures and your copy is well written.

The only thing i would do right now is try and take the time to link directly to your e-bay auctions. giving people the ability to click right to it will help a lot! Also place those links near the top, and if you can a picture of the design on sell would be an added bonus.

I`m glad to hear you have a sitemap. This is a VERY important piece to any website. In my day job the sitemap is the road map for every site we build. This is the one document which gets done before anything else is coded, designed, or even thought about!

Keep up the great job and let me know as soon as you have more to show!

Jonese,

Holy Cow! I had to copy and paste that into a word document (3 Pages!) so that I can print it out and check things off as I get them done. You are awesome! Honestly, I will be busy for awhile now so thank you! And I guarantee you that if you need anything from me EVER do not hesitate to ask. Thank you again. You are a true asset to this forum. You should be on Start Up Nations Pay Roll!

you`ve hit a nail here. many people will dump there carts because they just wanted a total amount to compare it to another store, or just to see. this is why giving them the amount up front or earlier rather than later is a good practice.

I`m kind of torn on the whole sign-up before you can add to cart issue myself. i love the idea from a site owner`s perspective because you get information which you can then use to market with, but from a consumer side i hate having to fill out all that information just to get pricing or to build a list of items.

now i don`t have any problem giving basic information to get started (name, email and maybe address) but full blown information is always a bad thing to me.

Great thought iouyou2!

Well if the brothers ask for help i me be up for it :) Waddya say jeff and rich?!