Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello, here is my take:

Immediately your site is appealing. Its simple, its to the point, and its professionally done. The blue banner graphic is nice.

I like the copy on the home page about branding and how it’s important to all businesses.

One suggestion I have is to direct the customer to do SOMETHING on that home page. There is some information, but when are you going to make the sale? Most customers wont just give you the sale. You have to ASK for it. Tell your customers what you want them to do, most won’t look around and find all the goodies on your site all on their own. So direct them to the services page, to your portfolio, or better yet, tell them to contact you with their needs right then and there. So: direct your customer to do something on that home page.

Also, I like that you stress how a business owner can use the work over and over (on website, on stationary, business cards, and so on). I would probably stress the fact that the use of your services is actually an investment. How it will both save them money by being able to use the graphics more than once, and how it will make them money by branding and attracting customers.

Your copy is generally about general information about your industry. I would want to know why doing business with you is better than doing business with somebody else. Let us know on that homepage

About

It’s nice to know a bit of background on you. But really I would think that your customers are more interested in how you can help them. So I would probably stress those types of points.

So yes, tell me how much experience you have had, what big companies you have done jobs for. That’s information that will breed confidence. Also, what is your experience, 15 or 20 years? It’s not immediately clear, lets get that straight and clear and eliminate any ambiguity.

Somewhere I would like to see some numbers. Some facts. How have your designs increased sales of your customers? Do you have any evidence or numbers you might give us? Have the startup companies you have done work for been successful? If so let us know. That would be a big plus. Obviously their success is not based totally on your help, but we can all acknowledge that branding must have had SOMETHING to do with it right? Give names and numbers. People remember those easily.

FAQ

“graphic designer peovides solutions” – misspelling. 

I must say something about pricing. You gotta give the business owner SOMETHING to work with. I would be much more inclined to patronize your business if I have an idea of how much the work would cost.  You must have SOME general basis for pricing. Give it up… even a little bit. And be honest about it, and be confident in it. 

The startup kit link is not working.

One last thing: You kind of switch back and forth on what you are selling. You seam to go back and for with identifying the entity as the company and yourself. Are you selling the company or are you selling you. Personally, since you are a one-man show providing a service, and since its what your doing most of the time, I’d pick the YOU entity as opposed to the name of your company. YOU can come off as very likeable. And people do businesses with those who they like. Pick one identity and stick with it.

Ok that my input; hope it helps. Best of luck to you!

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

Learn to type as you talk at my Talk and Type Software page

I`d echo VictoryD, and add that the tabs along the top are really hard to read, with the blue on beige-ish color.

I can see several areas in the main page content that could be links, as action items. Overall, the site looks nice, and it`s understandable.

What bothers me, generally, is that I`m starting to see a wide overview of what goes into starting a small business. On the one hand, I`m involved with Kathy and we`re doing a startup. On the other, spending time on SuN has been an awesome experience, hearing about problems and solutions across the board.

I would say any small business needs a general access to skills in no special order:

• Technical know-how -- Computers, Web, software packages
• Engineering -- design and production, making the actual product
• Sales & Marketing -- getting out the word, selling the business concept
• Financial acumen -- understanding how money works, accounting
  
• Graphic design -- Images are fundamental to mail-order
• Writing -- the tons of content necessary to put a business into view.

Too many sites run into huge bugaboos with content or images. I think you should highight that, really explaining WHY graphics matter---more so than you do. I`m not sure this would be a good idea, but you might offer some sort of way to assess someone`s existing site? I`m not even sure how that would work, but it`s a thought.

I`d also like to see some sort of rate sheet. I`m tired of going to Web sites selling anything, and the cost is a total mystery to me. Either I have to ask for a quote, or wade through a whole shopping cart experience.

Now, I understand the costs of shopping carts and merchant accounts, and we have to use an "ask for a quote" ourselves. However, at least we put the price of the flags right on the front page. Don`t you think, or would you agree that knowing how much something costs can be a good sales tool AND qualifier?

I normally stay out of threads for people in the same business as me, but ...

Just to let you know, on my computer ... Firefox/Mac ... there is a big gap between that line with the navigation on it and the picture of the guy on the computer. Which makes his head cut in 2.

Never cut the header for reasons like this ... use it as one piece and float the navigation on top.

Craig,

I am interested in what you have to say regarding the shopping cart/merchant account issue. I just went live with my site which is a shopping cart. Although I am adding products every day, there are a number of items that I need to quote as custom projects since there are just too many variables.

I am not sure how I can simplify this except by promptly turning the quote.

I would very much like you to critique my site. www.promotionsdept.us
It`s been up for a week now, and I have had no inquiries. Am I expecting too much too soon?

Thanks!

Jack

Jack, what if you were to put up your site as a topic for a Web site critique? I`m sure lots of folks would have ideas, right? :-)

Craig... I took your advice and posted it as a new topic.


Thanks,


Jack