Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

When I first decided to have my site critiqued, I was going to say, "Hey,critique my site please", but after reading HDEAN`s post, I know what to basically ask for. Then I read iouone2 and now I`m paranoid. But here goes. I create custom made gift baskets for everyone and every budget. I created the site myself. I`ve had my site about 2 years, but in the last few months was not happy with it, so I changed backgrounds, added pages, and moved items around. The only page I didn`t change was my camping page. I receive almost as many hits on it as my homepage and it`s a bear to change. Anyway, what I`d like to know is, is my website appealing, user friendly, do you have any problems with pages loading, the works. Are there any specific keywords I should use on my pages? Anything you would add or delete? My former boss said she liked it and wanted me to help design hers, www.shredpros.net  and when she posted it to the web, I critiqued it and gave her ideas as to what she needed to do and found that some of the suggestions I gave her I needed to follow. So here`s my site www.myuniquebaskets.com Give it to me straight, but try not to be too harsh.

Thank You, Karen

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

kkrafts
"Treat every day as a new adventure"

You asked for it.....
Too many buttons on the left side of he page, and why the run-on words?  Your target audience is probably not going to take a few seconds to decode "Theartofgiftgiving".  Also, "aboutme" is there twice.  Finally, I had to search for the about and contact buttons - they are in the middle of the product offerings.  As is the "home" button.

I would have a separate "products" page and keep the home page more simple.

I also have a problem with the ad links - if they are paying for the site, at least delineate them with a horizontal line and a heading: "Sponsored Links", o something like that.  Just sticking them at the bottom of the page is confusing.  While on the subject of links, you should explain why the customer might care about the links on the links page.

Consider spending the money for professional product photos.  [Insert shameless plug here].  It`s obvious that you`re on a tight budget, but don`t dismiss the power of appearances.  (By the same token, I would take out the "home-based" references in the "About" page).  Your photos are "soft" - taken with a low-resolution hand-held camera, and your backgrounds and the lighting are inconsistent. 


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

Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

You use yahoo sitebuilder and paypal`s "buy me" buttons. So, you can have some design restrictions and your missing some of the benefits of an ecommerce program.

Your menu is all graphics without any alt image tags.. so search bots can not read your menu.  See what the "text" version of your site looks like: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:http://www.myuniquebaske ts.com/&hl=en&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-43,GGLD:en&stri p=1

Your menu does not appear.... not a good thing for a couple or reasons. (1) search bots can not see links to your site`s other pages (which hinders the rest of your site being indexed), and (2) impaired viewers can not tell what you menu contains.  So, at the least add alt image tags with the names of each link. The best solution would be to redo the menu to CSS / text based links.

Add a sitemap to the bottom of the page. This will help search bots find your other pages.

You should add alt image tags to all your product images and make sure each has a name... some just have a descrption under the photo.

Ooo, the large version of your images is ways too large (in actual size and file size). I clicked on "welcome to the office" image. The large imgage can be 500px by 400px at the largest... and provide the viewer with a good idea of the product.

Your menu - the order of the page listing is not intuative. Usually people expect the "home" page to be at the top of a menu list. Not sure what would be a good order for the links, but alphabetical may be good as any.

The "baby" page menu is different than on the home page (plus the home page is called "index" on the baby page).

In general I get the impression that products are haphazardly placed on a page. If you try to use a uniform thumbnail image size and maintain a consistant page layout throughout your site.. that will help.

I also suggest keeping the same background image/colors on all your pages... also implies consistancy.

~Roland

 

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

Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

Two things caught my attention (in addition to what`s been said above).

The first is that your "Welcome to our place here`s what we do" is down below the navigation menu to the far left. I have a 19" monitor, and it was still below the page. That`s not good. Put your personality up there where people can meet you, on the main page.

Think of how often you walk into a friendly store, someone meets you and says, "Hi." Your short welcome message is the same thing. But people should see it.

The second thing is that when I clicked on the two main images of the home page, they opened in completely separate browser windows. Why? These are ``Featured baskets of the month," and I`d assume they`d stay on the same site? And that you`d want to keep me on that site, not closing windows left and right.

When I see a small picture is a link (by hovering), I expect to click it and see a large image! Not some 10px larger tiny picture, but a big one...450px wide! I want to *see* the item, since I can`t go to a store to touch it, pick it up, and look at it.

I don`t expect to be taken to some whole other place seemingly different from my expectation.

I went to the baby button, clicked on the first basket picture, and wound up back on the home page. So I`d check your links. I can`t remember (Roldand would know) but there`s some sort of online application that`ll run an audit of all your links and tell you where they go and if they work.

Hi Craig, I expected to see you here. Let me start with Steve since he replied first. The buttons on the left side are my nav. bars. Give me some options other than my nav. bars. I redid all my nav. bars so that my home is on the top followed by, about me, and contact me. Then the rest in alphabetical order. My ad links are family and friends (no charge to them) but I did remove them from the home page. And I did explain briefly each link on the "other websites" page. As for pictures, are you in CA and how expensive are you? Quoted by you" [Insert shameless plug here]." Oh! and I also took out the "home-based" on my "about me" page.

Hi Roland, how do I put alt image tags and where do they go?  I fixed the baby page menu and background colors. I`ll be working on the images over the next week. I`m not to sure as to how to put the pictures on as one size and if clicked on, they go to a larger size.

O.K. Craig here we go. I just got your post, so I haven`t touched a single thing that you have suggested. I`ll look into the "welcome to my page, I think that when a page opens in a different window some people prefer it, so that when they are done looking they just close the tab. That should be a poll on SuN. Anybody out there listening? I would but I have alot of work to do. (On my site) O.K. Roland where do I go to run an audit on my links? Well, time to get back to work. Have a great evening and I`ll get back on here tomorrow.

Karen  www.myuniquebaskets.com

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

kkrafts
"Treat every day as a new adventure"

The issue of using a separate window to open certain links has nothing to do with whether or not people prefer it. Here`s an analogy, where you`re reading a magazine or book and you encounter a foot-note reference.

Suppose I`ve written this article and I say, please turn to page 2. Would you expect to do anything other than flip the page? Suppose I say, "article continues on page 14." Would you expect to have to wait until next month`s magazine to find page 14? No, of course not.

But suppose you`re reading this article and I reference James Dean, and have a foot-note mark. You now have an option: you can either turn to the footnote area right then, or you can continue reading and go back later.

So too with opening separate browser windows. If you intend for people to simply continue on their logical *customer journey* then you link to the next page, just like "page 2," or "page 14." At that page, you also have links to either the next logical page, or back to where they started.

But if you`re offering a side-note, like when you say, "Here`s a photo of an item. Click to make it larger," that`s like a footnote. If someone chooses right then to make it larger, it "interrupts" their customer journey. So you make it easy for them to stay on that path by closing out the extra window.

It comes down to how disruptive do you want to be in someone`s sense of comfortable travel through your Web site, your article, your book, your magazine, or any other place where you are a guide, they are a guest.

As for the comment on the navigation bars, I think the issue is there are too many of them. :-) 19! That`s an awful lot of buttons to keep track of. "Art of Gift Giving," "Bath Baskets," "Country Creations," "Other Web sites" all run together, making them disturbing.

But more importantly, there has to be a way you can consolidate this down to maybe 8 at the max?

Alt image tags are added to each image separately. I do not use sitebuilder, so I can`t tell you how to add them with your program.

You could change the HTML that site builder produces. Here is some HTML coding for images info.

As far an an audit of your links... there are a lot of programs that will check for broken links on your site. But the example that Craig listed is not a broken link... just links to an incorrect url. If you view your site with FireFox there is a tool that will list all thelinks on the page your viewing in the browser.

~Roland

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

Web Design | Best Beef Jerky | ecommerce articles | Follow vwebworld on Twitter

I just want to say "kudos" to you and others that actually, make their own websites. I guess I don`t have that creative side, to even think about attemptng something like that.

I, have been very thankful, for who we work with, and depend on. 

Karen, you definately get some expert advice here!

I would declutter the nav bar by compressing the products into one "Products" page linked by a single "Products" button in the nav bar.  Ad links are OK, but they should be explained.  If possible with relevance to your site.  (Better for search engines).

[Shameless Plug] - No, we just moved to Massachusetts and most of my gear is in a moving van.  Somewhere.  I don`t plan to have the business going again until September.  Look around for a photographer new to the business, or use guru.com to solicit bids from photographers.





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

Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Roland,
Thanks for the tip in Firefox...hadn`t thought of that.

What I meant wasn`t that there was a broken link, per se. But isn`t there a way to get, like, a map of links? I`m thinking of relational databases, where you can print out a connection audit and see where each file connects to each other file. Some sort of maybe graphical (primitive if need be) drawing that shows each link and its destination?

That would quickly show that an image was going to the wrong place, I`m thinking. That would also show broken links if any happened to be there.