Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Take a look at my site. I get a lot of positive comments from visitors, and a few negative ones.

http://www.kentuckybarrels.com

I`m no expert, but it seems to me that anyone could find what they wanted on your site.
It`s very functional. You tell the story clearly, right away of what your business is, in a good straightforward manner. Also, it`s all "above the fold" meaning on the screen without having to scroll down to see it all.

My only criticism is that it is not a very great-looking website. It`s all scrunched up, with the text extremely small in the top left corner. The text is also extremely small on the customers and comments page.  You might be much better off to highlight the best comments, and make the font bigger, which would get you more impact; less might be more.

There are a lot of design things you can do to make it more attractive. "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott has a great section about websites, and one of the things he says is that developing a good website is both an art and a science. He outlines many features that a good website should have, and you might want to read it.

Looks like you`ve got yourself a great business!  Congratulations, and I`m sure if you look for advice from web design companies, or from current books, you`ll get a lot of concrete ideas as to how to improve the look of your site.



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I am an entrepreneur blogging about my observations, experiences and the business resources I discover as I start my own business. Please visit me at "Light, Motion and Magic" (lightmotionandmagic.com) and comment about your experiences as well!

I have fount that my site does not load properly in IE. It works much better in Firefox. Why is that?  I don`t know. I used a WYSIWYG program called Nvu to make it.
Try looking at it in Firefox

Thank you

Dan Moffett
http://www.KentuckyBarrels.com

Hi!
I did look at it with Firefox. It loads and looks fine for what it is.  It`s just that good website design can do a better job of getting your customers to all the info they need without cramming it all onto one page.

That being said, if your customers are happy, if you are doing robust business, and you are not having problems with customers getting the info and orders through that they need, then maybe you don`t want to tamper with something that`s working for you.

Without spending money, I still suggest you start reading on the internet and in books all you can about the latest in website design. You can then decide what new ideas would work for you, and decide how to make the changes you want.



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I am an entrepreneur blogging about my observations, experiences and the business resources I discover as I start my own business. Please visit me at "Light, Motion and Magic" (lightmotionandmagic.com) and comment about your experiences as well!

Visually ....

1) Too many different types of graphics at the top .... you are not defining any type of style or consistency with the look. JMO .... take the graphic with the wooden style background .... if the rest of the page had a "wooden" background look, this would fit nicely ..... but it stands out too much, especially with the animated flags. Determine an appropriate style and keep it throughout the site.

2) Make the fonts larger .... most of us don`t keep magnifying glasses in front of our monitors.

3) Spread things out a bit. It is too easy to start reading one area and all of a sudden you realize you`re eyes have started reading something else.

Your coding ....

1) You have 2 meta descriptions.

2) You have a ton of unneeded, excessive code, as far as text sizes, background colors, etc.  For example ....

  3 consecutive " big - /big " tags with nothing in them .... several times
  9 consecutive " small - /small " tags for one or two words, several times again

3) Title and alt tags for links and images are nonexistent, as well as h1 and h2 tags.

You have a great concept with great information. You need to give it a facelift to make it user friendly, and streamline your code to make it search engine friendly.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons