Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

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Tammy Richardson, President
Tape-Seal by Greystone Design, Inc.
Tape-Seal Stops Paint Bleed
602-677-1930 office
602-434-7182 Tammy`s mobile
jprichardson@cox.net or
TRichardson73@cox.net
http://www.PerfectPaintLines.com

Tammy,
I went to your web site and your product has potential [very high] the only problem that I noticed is your web site. I can tell by the looks of it that it was home made [you or john] created it with an html WYSIWYG program that Yahoo offers correct?
Tammy! for what its worth hire a web designer, your product has potential but due to the coding errors that I found on your site, your potential customers might be going elsewhere.

Now you may be asking yourself, Why should the coding matter? You wouldn`t buy a book with grammatical errors and faded images would you? The same applies to the web!, Im not saying that your images are blurred or that you have typos [so we would think]. but it shows in the coding.
The HTML code is just as important as the content that goes into the web site. It`s like having a Ferrari with a Toyota Corolla engine in it ,"it defeats the purpose".

My suggestion would be to have your web site redesigned by a professional, have him  SEO the site for you and you concentrate  on your end of the deal. I noticed that you will be attending an EXPO in May. You still have plenty of time to have a great looking web site designed for you "so you can show off at the expo".
Do-it-yourself SEO might not be a good idea either, it might end up costing you more down the road.
As for your blog question, here is what I don`t understand, why would you want it somewhere else rather than on your own site. Although, it is good practice to blog on others web site, it would be wise if you have a blog on your site as well.
Drive traffic to your own web site not others. One way to get the word out is through the expo. Make sure you have a few written tutorials or do it yourself tips on using your own product.
this would help you out a-lot.




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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

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Tammy Richardson, President
Tape-Seal by Greystone Design, Inc.
Tape-Seal Stops Paint Bleed
602-677-1930 office
602-434-7182 Tammy`s mobile
jprichardson@cox.net or
TRichardson73@cox.net
http://www.PerfectPaintLines.com

Your web gallery loaded quickly and almost made me want to buy the product - but we just finished painting the rooms in our new home.

I am not sure what errors that Egdar saw in your coding, but it loaded into Firefox (with HTML Tidy installed) and it did not detect any errors, but it did identify 18 warnings.  Egdar`s site was 0 errors, 1 warning.  Very clean.  (Amazon.com home page has 0 errors and 2,218 warnings).

Steve Mann



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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Steve,
If you run the HTML Validator tool you will see that she doesn`t have an encoding method. Default is utf-8 encoded. Once she fixes that problem we will be able to see all of the coding errors.
Also, Just because something displays correctly doesn`t mean that there`s no coding errors, keep in mind that most current web browsers are smart enough to know when to skip a line of code and move on to the next to avoid the browser from crashing.
As far as warning, well it is hard to create a dynamic web site without getting warnings. Sometimes querying php/database strings give you warnings when you use the & or ? in your code. That is OK since the HTML validator looks for HTML tags only and not at query (Database) tags.
As for her gallery it does load fast, and yes she has very nice pictures but she can use a nice picture gallery to compliment her design.
What warnings on my web site? Its fully vaidated both CSS and HTML go figure..




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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

Y`know that old expression "a picture is worth a thousand words?" Most people think of it as a way to reduce information into a more compressed form. But there`s another aspect to it: words require a lot of space in order to get across simple ideas.

SEO, blogging, and social networking are all "buzz words." They`re mostly there as shorthand for the speaker, not the listener who`s unfamiliar witih the terms and underlying concepts. But they all refer to a single concept: marketing.

Stop thinking for the moment about "doing it right." Instead, go back to basics. When you talk about your product, you`re not monitoring everything for its SEO content or it`s applicability to social networking. You`re just talkin` about this thing you guys have made, right? :-)

From what I`ve seen, a whole lot of entrepreneurs are trying to sell something someone else created. Because they didn`t make it themselves, they need all these extra things to stand out from the crowd.

You`re selling what you created. How come you created it? Because you really needed that thing, nobody else had one, so you made it yourself. Go back to how you felt when you hadn`t yet created the tape---remember the frustration? Get into how that felt for a moment.

What you essentially want is to empathize with other painters who *now* are feeling the frustration you *were* feeling back then. So talk about that. Show those people that you completely understand what they`re feeling. Then explain how you fixed it, and here`s the solution.

The main thing is to keep your grammar, spelling, and sentence organization easy to read.

SEO is only a process of including words that other painters (in your case) might use to search for a way out of their frustration. "Really straight lines in painting" would be an example. So use that "string" of words somewhere in whatever you write.

If you build a blog, talk about what matters to you. Talk about your daily experiences in painting. Then talk about how life has become marvelous, now that you no longer have to deal with messy straight lines. What matters is that you`re talking about what interests YOU....and hoping that other people might have similar interests.

You don`t need "social networking" as a confusing "thing." Just talk with people in your own way, when it`s convenient. If you like posting on forums, do so. If you want to go to local Chamber of Commerce meetings, that`s another thing. But if you don`t like it, then don`t do it. :-)

I strongly agree with CraigL, that a picture is worth a thousand words, but disagee a statement, you made "Forget about doing it right" I strongly disagree with this comment. As the internet continues to grow you have less than 3 seconds to convince your customers online. Remember the old saying "We all get 15 minutes of fame"? well on the internet that does not hold its more like "3 seconds of fame" which is why I emphasize that your web site should look good and you should concentrate on your content.
The design of your web site counts for 10% of your business, it`s your products and content that make you stand out.
I believe that there`s lots of room for growth for "perfectpaintlines.com" I would suggest using small video demos on how to use their product, a blog where they can post simple tutorials and DIY advise.
Remember she does not have to spend thousands on SEO if she uses a few simple tools to differentiate her web site from others.

I am a big believer that either you do things right the first time or you don`t do them at all.




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Edgar Monroy
Web Developer / Owner / Consultant
When starting your own business the need to "know-how" is greater than money!
http://www.nuevolution.net

My point is that when you`re the inventor, and you`re passionate about your product, worrying constantly about "doing it right" creates exactly the above problem---being overwhelmed.

It`s not that hard! Forget the doing it right, and just write whatever you want! You can always go back and edit it, later, AFTER you`ve created the content, discussion, and conversation.

I agree with both Craig and Nuevolution on the major points they made.

I think you did a good job of keeping the product label colors in the site; this helps keep things consistent and related between the product and the website. It may seem minor, but some products and their corresponding imaging/marketing look like they came from different planets.

As far as coding, I never recommend sitebuilder programs; too much garbage code that doesn`t do any good, bloats your pages, and hinders SEO. Like Nuevolution referred to, Notepad may be "old school" and time consuming, but it still creates the cleanest code that you have total control over. Your main page is 9% code-to content, not terrible but could be improved.

You have some css errors that should be fixed. Place "alt" text in your image tags.

The How it Works is always a good touch; I echo Craigs` comments about making it more personal to a potential buyer as far as "Been there done that fixed it".

Setting up a blog is not difficult. I believe you can go to Wordpress and set up a free one with your own domain name, or some hosting packages offer blog systems within a hosting plan. Probably the hardest thing to do is customize them if you aren`t familiar with coding. One good thing about them is that they can be crawled and indexed very quickly, from what I`ve seen much quicker than many websites.

I would suggest getting just your main site in order and nailed down before venturing off into blogs. You really don`t need to try to get two sites under control at the same time when you`re trying to learn the basics of what`s behind them.

Just my 2 pennies.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

OK, so Nuevolution, Videography, CraigL, & Webline thank you so much for all of the advice.  I think CraigL is right, for me and my personality.  While I need to take all of the other advice into consideration related to coding, I am feeling `overwhelmed` and need to get back to basics of marketing and PR.  Since my original post I`ve learned a little more about blogging so I`ll try to get that going in the evening time when I have a few extra minutes to focus.  I just really want you all to know how much I appreciate the advice!

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Tammy Richardson, President
Tape-Seal by Greystone Design, Inc.
Tape-Seal Stops Paint Bleed
602-677-1930 office
602-434-7182 Tammy`s mobile
jprichardson@cox.net or
TRichardson73@cox.net
http://www.PerfectPaintLines.com