Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Thank you for the support in the past! I`m up and running and would love a website critique on all aspects of the site. Thank you!

Take on Life

First of all, after reading your story, I want to say it`s pretty inspiring what you`ve gone on to do, and understand the personal aspect behind this. Hats off to you.

You have a simple message, and the site works because you don`t make it more involved than you need to. In other words, there is no huge bulky overly done site to get across the nice little message of "Take on Life". The code is clean and efficient, and validates as well. Great job.




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

M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I like the clean look, sparse and to the point. On my system it seemed that the "shop" page loaded very slowly, but that could be just today`s DSL connection.

What I`d like to see in the first sentence on the first page is a better connection to the expression. You can do that I think by moving the "Are you taking on life?" from the bottom to the top. Let it be its own paragraph.

From there, the "Take on life" is crystal clear.

I really like the graphic of the lemon! Excellent symbol! :-) I`m thinking that if you had some easily readable text on the tee-shirts, it would make a more appealing product for "the masses."

Maybe something like "Life`s an Adventure!" That gets across the connotation of "taking on life." Then people can see the graphic of when life hands you lemons, make lemonade. But it`s all part of the adventure. Y`know?

Thanks everyone for the positive comments!



Thanks, I`ll look into this.



I tried moving the last sentence up to the first but it just didn`t look or read write to me. However, I agree that the first sentence/paragraph needs to be written better. I`m working on this and getting some feedback and should have revised copy over the weekend.



Thanks. I`m getting ready to print a new shirt which has "Take on Life" much bigger beneath it. I really want to create a brand and identity around those words so I have mixed feelings about adding additional phrases.

Thanks again for the feedback!

The problem, language-wise, is that "Take on Life" is ambiguous. It might be, "What`s your take on life?" Context being how do you feel about this thing called life.

Or it might be "embrace life" with courage, confidence, and gusto.

It`s that momentary ambiguity that`s causing me to burp. :-)

I agree with CraigL that the "Take on Life" phrase is not descriptive enough, but other than that the site is great.  Simple, not cluttered, easy to navigate.  The lemon logo works perfectly.  The story is inspiring and I wish you a lot of success.  Keep up the good work.


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

Just250.com
Home of the $250 website. We offer web design, graphic design, and SEO solutions for you so you don`t have to worry.

I get it now. The ambiguity was actually intentional since I understand the phrase could be looked at two different ways. Its intention is to "embrace life" as you mentioned. I did not however want to exclude those people that like it as "my take on life." Perhaps I need to rethink this. Thank you for the input!

Thank you!

Craig, it has taken many revisions but I think I have finally landed on the perfect wording on the home page. Check it out, I really like it!

LOL! Oh great! Now I can call my mom and tell her that I`m ruining people`s lives by suggesting they work far into the night. 

Nah...I know what you mean about revisions. I`m not so great at writing something, but I can edit the hell out of something!

I reviewed your front page, and now there`s an interesting contradiction. Your content is fine up to the last sentence. You`ve said that you understand that the phrase means different things. You`ve explained both meanings.

Then the last sentence says: How are you taking on life?

That locks in your own view that "take on life" is an action not a contemplation. If you ended with "What`s your take on life?" then you`d be locking in the contemplative aspect.

I`d simply remove the last sentence and leave it with, "Love more. Laugh more. Take on life." Make sense?