Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello to all the willing website critics out there!  I would like to submit my site(s) for your consideration and critique.

My website is Sara*s Pixel Studio (http://saraspixelstudio.com) and it is the umbrella company/headquarters for my three avenues of expertise:
-My Pixel Shoppes where I offer custom website design services
-My Pixel Creations where all of my graphics and pre made items are sold
-My Pixel Prints where customers can find full service professional printing

I designed all of these sites myself and it has taken me nearly two years to get this far in business.  Pre-January 2009 I operated under one website but things were very cramped and hard to find so I split them up into more visitor-friendly sites (at least I hope so).

75% of my business generates from these sites (the other 25% comes locally from word-of-mouth) so these sites are VERY important to my business and I wish to put my best foot forward.

I would love advice on SEO, organization strategy, copy and ideas for more products/services.

So essentially I`m asking for a 3-in-1 critique.  If you aren`t up to critiquing all three please feel free to just do one.  Thanks in advance!!

~Sara Brooks
Owner/Designer for Sara*s Pixel Studio


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~* Sara *~

Sara*s Pixel Studio

I`m not feeling particularly crumudgenly today - I couldn`t find anything on your site to take issue with.  Well done.  I would like to see fewer menu options on the drop-down, but that may just be me.  Also, you don`t need to explain the history of your sites on the home page because most new visitors won`t care.

What did you use to create the sites?  Also, I am curious to why do you recommend GoDaddy for the domain registration but not their hosting?  I have over 100 domains registered and hosted there and I am extremely pleased with their service.



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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Steve,
Thank you so much for your critique! 

For the home page and My Pixel Shoppes I used plain old HTML/CSS.  For My Pixel Creations and My Pixel Prints I use Zen Cart and put in my own graphics and CSS to match.

Typically the websites I design are hosted on sites that have the shopping cart built in (ShoppePro/Papa Shop) in which the customer only needs to buy a domain name, but I never considered their hosting for information sites.  I will add them to the hosting list :)

As for the menu drop downs are there too many different drop downs or just too many options under each?  What could I do differently?

Thanks again for taking time to review my sites!!!

~Sara Brooks



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~* Sara *~

Sara*s Pixel Studio

Overall I think the concept you have in place is good .... the one thing I have trouble with ( and this could just be me as I`m extremely tired ) is that all 3 of them have color schemes that are hard to look at for long .... the coloring and contrast actually make my eyes work so hard that after a minute or two, I simply need to quit looking at them .... and some of the text could be made slightly larger for ease of reading.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Thank you for your critique Webline!!

I recently upgraded computers and realized the color schemes were a bit bright and have slowly been working to correct them.  Apparently my old computer had a dim resolution or something.  Anyway I will try to correct this soon.

As for the text I`m having a hard time with the sizes.  14pt on one browser looks good but terribly small on another.  Any suggestions or particular problem areas?

Thanks again!
~Sara Brooks

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~* Sara *~

Sara*s Pixel Studio

You could try using em instead of pt. I think 1.0em is close to 12px; The decimals with the em usage give you a lot of control on the font size, so you could use sizes like 0.7em, 0.95em, 1.1em, etc. as examples.

Some people also set a fixed body font size in their css, then the classes for different fonts are set at a percentage of the fixed font.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Great!  I`ll try that.  Thanks!

~Sara Brooks


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~* Sara *~

Sara*s Pixel Studio

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Roland,
Thank you for your critique!

It shifts because of the black border I have set for the mouseover.  I couldn`t figure out a way to keep it from shifting.  Any ideas?

~Sara Brooks



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~* Sara *~

Sara*s Pixel Studio

GoDaddy can also be a total hassle trying to set up htaccess and url rewriting, if you ever get into that.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons