Any ideas for how I can improve my website?
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M$11 Answers
Also, the website is rather cramped, all smushed into the upper left corner. These days, the majority of home computer owners have much larger monitors than the space in which you are working in, so expanding your site layout to a somewhat large size might not be a bad idea.
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M$
2. The center pictures are too big and a little overbearing. They add to the cramped nature and force content farther down on the page.
3. Side buttons are (again) too big. Look at another professional website, and you'll see buttons are very small. If you are attached to them, maybe make the wrapped version be the hover images to shrink their appearance a bit.
4. The pot at the top is "mystery meat navigation." We don't know what it's for until we click on it, and then it's actually nothing but decoration. The hover picture change adds nothing but confusion to the page, and the pots really don't add to the aesthetics. We like pictures of pretty, completed candy, not pots of cooking caramel.
5. Long columns of text. No one will read that far down. Consider moving content to other pages and possible reducing the text size a bit (using relative sizes, not fixed sizes, for the sake of those with vision problems).
6. Darken text slightly to improve readability.
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M$
My name is Rob. I'm a pro web designer and I have a few successful e-commerce sites in my portfolio.
There has been some great advice already, but I wanted to offer my thoughts in the hope that you find them helpful and importantly, that they help your business.
1)
You're Running A Business. You need to review your production process and goals.
I was going to place an order but read through your preamble here:
http://www.petescaramels.com/products.html
When I found out that I'd have to wait a month for my candy, I second guessed my purchase and decided that your competitive advantage (fresh caramels) wasn't worth the wait.
I suggest running a batch at least every 2 weeks. I would create a fun, countdown clock that would let everyone know when the next batch was going on. Since you're delaying production, I would also provide the fastest, free delivery I could find.
2)
Again, you're running a business. You need marketing materials that reflect the quality of your product.
It looks like you're really good at making caramels but that you're not very good at making websites. I don't say this to be mean and nasty, only honestly put forth that you have a product that far usurps your storefront online.
Just like brick-and-mortar stores, the look and feel of the store always has an effect on sales.
If you can afford it, hire a pro local web designer to redo your website. You can set a budget as low as $100 for a pro to come in and help you with this.
3)
Hire a professional photographer.
Your photos do not make me want to buy your product. Food photography is a funny thing and a local pro photographer will make their money back in sales.
This doesn't apply only to your new online development. You can use these pro photos is ALL of your marketing material. Think how great your local flyers would be with a large, yummy pro photo of a fresh caramel on the cover would look.
4)
The long, drawn out conversational tone of your text does not help sales.
You need short, clear descriptions along with an improved design around the products that people can buy.
The only part of your site that should be long or conversational are your FAQ / About Us sections.
So Peter, without getting down to the exact nitty-gritty of web layout and design fundamentals, I hope that this has helped you.
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M$
http://www.dreamweaver-templates.org/free-dreamweaver-templates.html
http://www.justdreamweaver.com/dreamweaver-templates.html
http://www.entheosweb.com/website_templates/free-dreamweaver-templates.asp
Here is a tutorial on using templates in Dreamweaver: http://www.entheosweb.com/website_design/dreamweaver_template.asp
I see what you are trying to do with your color combination's and the site does have the "feel" of caramel, yet it is very distracting and difficult to read.
Pick a primary color and use: http://www.colorcombos.com/index.html?color0=005B9A&color1=8D009A&color2=9A005A&color3=9A000D&color4=9A4000&color5=9A8D00&color6=5A9A00&color7=0D9A00
to find the perfect combos.
The copy is okay, but the format could use some work... I would try and make it more to the point and concise and format it for easier reading by breaking up paragraphs into three or four sentences.
Take a look at: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~webteach/articles/text.html
The graphics are a little overwhelming (the site feels top heavy and crowded) I would use the large graphic http://www.petescaramels.com/images/display.jpg as the top banner with the company name/logo layered over the top.
I would also suggest minimizing the button sizes and using a different (more legible) font or at the very least change the text to white.
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M$
- Get rid of the separate Products page and make it your HOME PAGE.
- You caramel roll-overs are cute, but hard to read. I didn't realize they were navigation elements at first. Just make these text links along the top/bottom of your page.
- List your 5 products with a) a picture, b) descirption, c) price, d) Order Now button. Set these product off with very similar looking blocks so it's easy to see these are products for sale - and what the choices are. Put Samples next-to-last and t-shirts last.
- Make sure you have a consistent logo/image at the top of every page. The logo should be a link BACK to your home page.
- Remove all text from products/home page that does not describe your product - move that to the FAQ page. You can have a short intro paragraph that describes what set's your caramels apart from all the rest. But then get right into your product descriptions and ordering buttons.
- Be sure to add reasonable margins to space images from your text.
- Reposition the NYT, Early Show, and Award to be the same size and similar text descriptions. These testimonials would probably work better horizontally across the page rather than vertically.
Good luck, Pete!
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M$
1) Change the font -- The text would be easier to read if it were darker. Also, the font would look a little more professional if it was something like Arial, Helvetica or Verdana. Is it Times New Roman? If so, it just ends up looking like a "default" font to me. But that's my personal opinion.
2) Add some space -- there aren't any margins or spaces between the text/images/columns. Spreading it out a bit will help the page breathe and flow much better, and with most people using widescreen monitors today, it won't be a problem.
I don't think I should qualify for "best answer" since I'm sort of reinforcing some previous answers, but hopefully that helps at least a little bit!
PS - I'm hungry! You should find a way to emit the smell of caramel when you visit the site!!!
Just personal opinion on aesthetic qualities. I am also an amateur web designer.
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M$This will in turn increase the number of visitors to your site and thus increase visitor retention and conversion rate. Conversion rate being the likelihood that they will buy your Caramel Candy.If you have some moderate skills in HTML seeing as it is you use Dreamweaver I recommend the following site Bravenet dot com where you will get all the web 2.0 tools I have mentioned above for free,it's a good service I have used it on many of my clients. You simply cut and paste the code onto your website source code exactly where you want it, and you have the option of upgrading later (to get premium service) ,
Additionally you should consider using a Free and Open Source Software e-commerce Platform like magentocommerce ,my favorite that I also use for most of my clients, to make your site not only more Professional looking but also easier for you to manage orders,invoices et al as opposed to just using the "buy now"button.
From those simple modifications then we can start talking about Search Engine Optimization SEO and Search Engine Marketing SEM , i,e enhancing the code side of your website to make it more visible to search engines and increase traffic to your site. That is my forte ,ask me directly for a more detailed breakdown of what needs to be done specifically to improve http://petescaramels.com/ good luck I hope you found this helpful.
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M$You can do some of this through the DreamWeaver editor, but Undo will be your friend as you go.
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M$
However, since that's not what you asked, I'll through out a couple simple things you could do to make your site better.
A) Think about what people want to do when they come to your site. Probably, they want to order some caramels. I could not figure out how to do that within the limits of my attention span. Give them a way to click on something and ORDER NOW.
B) Though you have a lot of content, you aren't really optimizing your website for important keywords. Do a little research into SEO and pay special attention to the title tags on each page.
C) More pics. You aren't really going to wave a magic wand and make the site look professional, which is fine. But if you have more pics on there, you'll give people more personality, which is why they'll be willing to buy from this kind of site. And title each pic. Explain what's there and why you took it.
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M$
find with google, you can found anyone.....
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M$Certainly don't visit http://www.rentacoder.com/ and ask professionals who design websites for a living.
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M$
Good points all around, so let me rephrase.
Find people who have well-designed sites and are willing to help.
Go to web design forums and post in the "I'm a n00b who uses Dreamweaver, please help!" section.
But that involves paying someone to do something that we could do on our own. :)
Also, I would think that advertising your own business instead of giving an answer could be considered unethical? That's just my opinion.
Especially since many at Rentacoder have English as their 2nd or 3rd language, and might interpret "candy" as a Brahma bull to be sacrificed to Vishnu by means of an elaborate Flash applet with varying levels of blood and gore.
Sweet, thanks!