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3K views 26 replies 17 participants last post by  sandhill 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
I finally attempted to make my own website. This is in its preliminary stages. I have the pages done but no work on it yet because my one and only camera bit the dust. Hopefully I will have a new or newer camera by this weekend to start taking some photos.

http://www.penmanchip.com

Please tell me what you think. Be honest, but not brutal, ok? :)
 
#2 ·
Looks real good. I especially like the background.

The only suggestion I'd have at this point is to reduce the number of pages it takes to show the types of wood by adding 2 or 3 columns per page. Also it would be nice if the size of the wood photos could be increased somewhat.
 
#5 ·
Without spending too much time looking I noticed one thing for sure. The logos and the picture look like cropped pasted .jpg's. If you know how, it would look much nicer to make the circular logo Circular without the white b/g and the same with the one on the right. Only you'd have to change the color of the text on that one. I believe you'd have to create or find backgroundless .gifs. The picture's fine but its overhanging the background on the top and maybe add a shadow or something to make it look like a photo on the background? It's a little hard to tell that the buttons at the top are buttons. Maybe bigger text? or even make them have some sort of border around each of them so they are well defined? Also the Search looks kind of out of place. It also is over hanging the background that it is on which makes it look like an afterthought. Kind of like, Hey I forgot to add the search, and then popped it in where ever. These are merely design issues because I can see that you know plenty about the craft. Otherwise, nice.
 
#10 ·
Chip - for the front page (home) I'd put a picture which shows a collection of your pens - which will make a person the clicks on your webpage immediately SEE what it is that you do, and get a "wow" effect that will make them more interested to read more about you and browse the rest of your site. currently the front page is text only - and requires one to scroll through the page to read it all. most people won't be held on your site by that, and will click away.

think more visual

the writeup on what's currently your home page can be posted in the "about us" page, or "shipping/purchasing faq" page of some sort.

other than that- you've got a good start.
 
#12 ·
Looks better. I agree with purp, that message doesn't grab attention. It could go on an about the site type page. I like the old font on the header. You've opened up yourself to so much critisizm that you will so many differing opinions on it but looking way better.
 
#13 ·
Purp,
I agree. I will move that message, and as soon as I get a camera I will start taking photos of my pens and stuff, and make a kind of 'collage' for the home page.

Thanks again everyone, keep looking, it will keep evolving.
 
#16 ·
I have ran several websites over the past 8 or 9 years, and a few of the things I have learned to avoid are present on your site.

First, the page counter needs to go, it is common on amateur websites and should be avoided on a commercial venture site.

The header text seems a bit odd… i would recommend something a bit blockier, and a more complimenting color to the background. Perhaps a darker shade of green outlined with a lighter color to make it stand out.

I am not sure if you have pictures up at all for the front page or the pens themselves, but I cannot see anything on the front page other than the background, links and header.

Your pages take a while to load. Without pictures, your front page loads 920 KBs of data… when you start adding pictures of your product, that is going to really slow down your site.

They say you have about 3 seconds to capture the attention of a modern day web user. If you can't load your page on slower systems within that time-frame, you will lose potential customers.

You are using lots of Javascript which looks nice, but some browsers will not work properly with it, and some users will have it turned off not allowing them to see the links.

I also noticed you are using images for the complete background. This is probably where a lot of your data loading is coming from. I would recommend looking up some sites that specialize on CSS design, and research methods of applying those techniques to your site. The loading time of your pages will go significantly faster with browser set background colors, and minimal images for your background. I have used www.CSSzengarden.com for inspiration in the past, and you can reverse engineer most of their pages to suit your purposes.
 
#18 ·
Carl, I have done this myself using Serif X4 software. It's my first stab at a 'real' website! :)

Interpim, thank you so much for sharing your experience. I will look into CSS but I don 't know if the program I have will handle it.
 
#19 ·
A couple minor notes/suggestions:

On your links page add

target="_blank"

to all of your links, this will cause the links to open in another browser window or tab, keeping your user on your website.

On your pages you might want to add some padding on the left side of the page. On the FAQ page, the yellow text over the light strip on the left of the background, could be a little hard to read for some people.
 
#20 ·
I'll throw in a few thoughts.

I like the general Victorian theme, it should go well with what you are trying to sell. I like the font for the header text and the images below it. I think the color scheme might be too busy though, it may be hard to really make your product stand out with so much going on visually.

I would also replace the buttons with a drop down menu system, I think it looks cleaner and the buttons just sort of scream '1999' to me and I am not much for the 2 layers of buttons. I would also pull the hit counter as others have suggested. You should add some stats (like google analytics) if you haven't already, that will give you much better data on who your visitors are.

You might also think about changing your menu links to something more friendly to search engines, maybe replace types of wood with specific types of wood, this may help with in search results for those specific terms.
 
#23 ·
I to have been building web sites and have been doing a lot of e commerce in the last year or so in fact my only source of income is selling on line. I belong to a group that deals with only selling from there Internet sites. I have had them critique many of my sites and learned a lot. First of all if you are going to try and sell from it loose the dark colors and the graphics it takes to long to load when you use lots of graphics. Look at what is being used to sell on and do the same, why reinvent the wheel? Do away with links to other sites you don't want to give people a reason to leave your site, use relevant content and make it interesting it will help you with search engines. Page counters are a big no, no and do nothing for you. Your pictures must be of the highest quality. You need a site map and an about me or us page. Also give thought to what payment gateway you will use PayPal is good for first timers. Build a following by using social networks like Twitter, YouTube and face book it will help build your back links. Check out Marks site http://thewoodwhisperer.com/ in his case the links to other sites generate income for him so that's OK for that type of site. You have a lot of work to to so I will stop there. Good luck and don't get discouraged.
 
#26 ·
When you say right click? Why are you right clicking? and on what link? What I am pointing out is why go through building a whole web site when it has been done by professional programmers for you. The site http://www.ccwoodturners.org was built from a program called Joomla the way you can tell this is by adding tp=1 to the end of the URL this will display the page showing the modules and there lay out sometimes called frames. Here is an example of 3 sites I build about 6 to a year ago using Joomla and I am not in any way a programmer http://www.1choice4yourpet.com/ http://sandhillwoodworks.com/ http://woodworkerslist.com/ Joomla is free and stable and it keeps things clean but yet you have the ability to be creative, there are thousands of templates for free or purchase. I paid $45.00 for the pet site and loaded all the plug ins modules and components the others were free. I just built the sandhill web sit with a shopping cart, shipping options and a payment gateway. Hope this helps
 
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