My wife's business page

I designed and built it myself. For me, it was kind of a test to see what I can do. Give me some constructive criticism if you like.

And the reason I built her site before this one is because her's will bring me $$$. I'm gonna start working on DWB-the site full time this weekend.

What, your wife is more important than DWB? I find that difficult to believe. B)

It's a nice site, very right to the point. I guess I was a tad confused by the ordering process, but I've been spoiled by sites like Amazon where it's rediculously easy ::looks at empty wallet::

Plus, it's got pretty colors. I should send the link to my girlfriend and ask for her opinions since she is into yarn too.

Well, I guess I'll be the first piece of shit to say "why weren't there any pics of your wife on there?"

Sorry, that shit has been lacking since Scrooge left.

:lol:

I thought about saying that too, but I decided to be nice this time.


We need Scrooge back. But in the meantime, DK can make the crass jokes and I can have the unpopular opinions.

Good start, but I have some Constructive Criticism! ('member..the Man pays me to do this kinda' stuff). You COULD run with it right now, but with another hour or two of development, you could really help yourself out.

First impression is that it looks like a blog. Namely, the line "Welcome to Blonde Chicken" should be changed to something like "your place to buy yarn"-- in other words, a simple message that lets the audience know they can BUY stuff at this site. That's the main headline. You don't pick up a newspaper and see the main headliine as "thanks for picking up the paper".

While a nice design element, the "Add to cart" buttons don't really work. It took me awhile to find 'em. We're used to seeing goofy form buttons that say "add to cart"--like Amazon does. I don't particularly care for such buttons, but they work. Like that "view cart" button on the left? Make a similar one saying "add to cart".

If it was me, I'd just re-design the "buy-button.jpg" graphic. Same size, but make it look like there's a "buy" button aligned to the right.

Colors and layout will work. Looks like a simple layout, so you can add all sorts of stuff and it wont look funky.

I'm not crazy about the jumping text on the mouseover. Color change is good, but when the text jumps like that, my first impression is that something's broken. I lke the yellow mouseover box, but when you're in a certain section, you might want to make yellow box the default. Nice navigational help for the audience, too. Tells 'em "oh, I'm in the PATTERNS section", etc.

On the "ordering" page, you may want to make the email link stand out a bit more. Make a little column, similar to the left side of the Seda de Soya page, that sez "email us" or something. If you can make a general form to send email, that'd be ideal. General email links get you unregulated information. With no subject line, some might get lost in the shuffle. With a form you can specify what you want from each person.

Or, if you dont' want to go with a form, just add "?subject=WebsiteOrder" at the end of the mailto link. So you'd have this:
<a href="mailto:blondechickenboutique@gmail.com?subject=WebsiteOrder"">email us</a>

Also, your current mailto link is wrong...you don't need the "http://". Probably a typo. Copy the one I have above.

Here's a marketing tip, but decide which phrase you want to direct to your site. I'm guessing here, but maybe "buy yarn"? Or is it more specific like "organic yarn"? Whatever it is, you'll need to add that phrase to your main page's "<TITLE> tag. Nobody (aside from friends and family) is going to search for "Blonde Chicken Boutique". But people WILL search for "yarn" or whatever phrase you decide upon. This is the biggest problem I see for sites. I did a site for a business broker a few years back and asked him "what general phrase do you want to emphasize on your site?" He said "no excuses", since that was his marketing slogan. I tried to tell him, but he insisted on that. So instead of "buy businesses" or "business broker", he was optimized for "no excuses". Yeah...he didn't get alot of traffic or business from his site.

Thanks Stragand. I always appreciate some good constructive criticism

You'll also need your META tag keywords information. Roughly 10-12 keywords, arranged in order of importance.

Then you'll need your META description and summary. I think the limit's 256 characters on the description and about 40 on the summary. This is more of a written, general marketing copy. Like "Yarn from Blonde Chicken Boutique, a reliable online yarn vendor".

These will tie in with the marketing phrase I babbled about. In all three cases, the first ten characters should contain your preferred word ("yarn"?)

I forgot about the META stuff.

Maybe it's because my professor kept talking about how META was slowly going the way of the Buffalo.....