Making A New Website, Need Opinions!
Business By motherofgrace Updated 24 Jan 2011 , 2:23pm by leah_s
Hi everyone!
I have started my new website, my professional website, and wanted to see what you guys thought of it so far.
NOT FINISHED! still alot of work, but want to see how it looks half way 
www.sweetheartconfections.weebly.com
Dream It. Bake It. Eat It. (IMHO, it sounds like you're making & keeping the goodies for yourself. Unless your customers help with the baking...)
From a customer's perspective, shouldn't this be: Dream It. Order It. Eat It?
Like: Dream It. Order It. Enjoy It. a bit more.
HTH
Tell them up front about the shipping cost. It is extremely irritating to have to go through the ordering process just to find out the shipping. Once they find out and think it is too much, they just delete it and they are left with a negative feeling about your business.
Good luck on your new venture.
I recommend including more information on your home page...think of it like the "above the fold" section of a newspaper, you want to do everything you can to sell your business by highlighting your competitive advantages.
ok i added in the shipping, and changed the home page a bit. Let me know what you think
I'm also doing a site on weebly - very easy to use! Can you tell me how you got the "Find us on Facebook" badge? I've tried to use the "like" badge off of FB itself but I like the one's I see that are larger like you have! thanks
Looks good btw Can't wait to see the finished results
You can probably still consolidate the different pages quite a bit...for example: content from the Market Menu, Custom Menu, and Sucker of the Month would easily fit on the home page if you made the slideshow smaller and cut back on the existing copy. In fact, you may just want to remove the slideshow from the home page and instead include small pictures of each product next to where they are listed.
An important goal in commercial web design is to minimize the number of clicks it takes for customers to find out what you sell and how/where they can purchase your products. This information should be readily available in clear copy as soon as the customer loads the site. A few examples of missing info: your location, what your hours are, whether or not you have a retail shop, your phone number, which markets sell your products, etc.
Bturpin- I had a friend do that for me, I will find out
Jason- Thanks alot! I will see what I can do
I am a graphic designer and here are my tips on things to change:
On the gallery page - change the font, I know you're going for whimsical, but having too many fonts is distracting. Choose something a little bit more professional looking.
Gallery Photos - I don't know if you took these yourself or are having someone else take the pictures. They aren't too bad, but they could look a lot more professional. I think when offering an edible item the photo quality helps tremendously - if it looks homemade it makes people feel like it isn't as good of quality.
I also agree that you need to have a page with information about you and your business - a little more detailed. I know you have a faq page, but I think it'd help alot to have it on the main, home page.
there is no shipping, I only sell at farmers markets and trade shows
My advice is to not use weebly or any free web hosting. This is an instance of getting exactly what you pay for. Free hosting means that you share server space with a gazillion other free websites. You have more downtime than if you use a paid service. GoDaddy has a small package that's $5 a month and you get better uptime guarantees. I host one of my sites on web.com and several others on GoDaddy and one on Wordpress. If you're going to go the WP route, you'll still need to pay them for the dedicated domain, and really should buy the no ads package. And that's about the same cost as the GoDaddy small hosting package.
I use weebly and have no problems whatsoever. Most people that look at my website compliment me on how nice it looks and I've never had any downtime or anything. Its great for someone who computer illiterate, I found GoDaddy too confusing.
I use weebly and have no problems whatsoever. Most people that look at my website compliment me on how nice it looks and I've never had any downtime or anything. Its great for someone who computer illiterate, I found GoDaddy too confusing.
The problem with downtime is that you aren't necessarily aware of it. Unless you happen to be accessing your web site during the period of downtime, you have no idea how many customers you missed because your hosting provider was down.
ditto Jason. Unless you're running another program that monitors your page loading speeds and downtown you simply have no idea.
GoDaddy's WebSite Tonight is a bit confusing, but doable. Their hosting is cheap, and they can have downtown issues also.
You really do get what you pay for in hosting.
http://www.marketingtobridesonline.com/common-internet-marketing-mistakes-2-cheap-hosting/
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