Barry Tedstone — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:20:23 +0000

This is my first posting on this forum. I hope that you find my comments useful rather than too critical.

Site Critique

-Overview

Much of what has been written on the “Site Design” in the above reflects my feelings on the overview off the website.

In general the website needs to be redesigned to provide a professional look, Julia covers these within her post.

However just a few other points that should be considered when redesigning:

Links should look like links, changing colour on hover, consider using the title tag within the link to provide further information.

Your title tag is too long. I know that you are using it for Search Engine Positioning however, this has a negative affect. The weight of the keywords within the title tag is as important as having them there. Each of the pages Birthday Cake for example should have its title tag for example Birthday Cake Design UK – Cakes By Ann.

Finally the screen real estate should be used wisely. Visitors who come to see Cakes are not interested in the web design standards followed. I would remove the W3C logo, save this for your website selling your design services.

-Site Content

I will start with the obvious, it does not matter how high the site ranks within Google, if the content does not turn the visitor to a customer then the site has no point.

Currently as a visitor to the website I am not sure whether I can order a cake in the North West of England. Will the cake be delivered, do I have to collect? These questions should be answered or your visitors will be straight back to Google to find the next in the Search Results.

The home page is completely given over to Wedding Cakes. This relegates the other important aspects of the cakesbyann.co.uk business and makes the site confusing.

The home page should introduce the business and the product range offered and all pages should link to the home page.

Consider on the home page introducing Ann and the area of the country she can service. If it is the whole of the UK then say so.

Each area of the site “Wedding Cake”, “Birthday Cake”, etc should be treated as an individual home page introducing the section.

Treat the page as an entry page to the site (for example visitor arrives at “Birthday Cake”) directly from the search engine. Provide full details of the cake design service (custom designs, ready made designs). From this page you can link to a catalogue of cakes offered with thumb nail pictures. Selecting the cake can take you a ore detailed page, with a description of the cake and the ingredients.

This will provide an overall structure to the website; provide quality information to the visitor and help convert visitors to customers.

-Search Engine Optimisation

Once the website structure has been rectified you can then research the keywords relevant to the website.

You need to research your keywords, there is no point being top of Google for search terms that are not popular with searchers. There are many good tools on the web for researching keywords, none more than the PPC search engines.

For example:

Term (Searches E-spotting)

Wedding Cake (6873)
Birthday Cake (4134)
birthday cake design (1788)
wedding cake design (1378)
birthday cake uk (545)

Note that no searches were recorded for uk wedding cake either on e-spotting or overture over the last month. These cover Yahoo.co.uk and MSN.co.uk searches.

E-mailing Forms

The best method of e-mailing contents of a form is via a server side script, PHP, ASP etc as you can format the message.

However it is possible to mail the contents of a form to you using post method adding

action ="mailto:yourname@yoursite.com" enctype="text/plain"

to your Form Tag.

The Webmistress — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 13:05:41 +0000

Quote: How do I get the results of an enquiry form to come to me as an email

You need a script in place really to convert the input into an email. This may be something that your hosting company can provide or you can download a script in either cgi, php or asp but obviously you'll need to find out what scripts you can use with your hosting.

W1LL — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:46:58 +0000

Win XP, IE 6.0, 1024x768, 24-bit colour, 56k-modem.

- First appearance is that it looks very plain.

- Think about some sort of logo, and try seperating the different types of text (links, title, content, etc) with variations of colour.

- I reckon Arial/Helvetica/Verdana font would look better than Times New Roman.

- Think about a 1 pixel black border around the photo's. It will cleanly seperate them from the background.

- Never put a link on "Click Here" text. This is the first thing I learned in 'User-centered Website development' at uni. As soon as the user see's a link they read that, and with this text you are making them do more work by reading around the link aswell. It may not sound like a big thing, but you are making this site FOR the user.

Just my opinion!

- Will

Help with Dreamweaver forms

FPeter — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 12:27:45 +0000

Hi again all, a new day a new problem
How do I get the results of an enquiry form to come to me as an email
I have set up a form on a page, have all the text areas and buttons fixed out, can it be tested before uploading it to my website

Help please

Peter

The Webmistress — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 08:44:59 +0000

Follow what I said earlier about optimising each page for the relevant keywords, keep at least 2 paragraphs of text on the index page, think about your keywords - do you really need to be found for "UK Wedding Cakes" would 'wedding cakes' not be better (most UK people will use google.co.uk and tick the UK pages option) or more specifically be found for a more local search down to the county you are in and the locations you actually will deliver to?

DMOZ is just a bugger to get into! You have to be patient, wait for 6 weeks and then you can send them an email asking why they haven't listed the site.

If you are finding it hard to come up with a good design/layout for the site have you considered buying a template?

FPeter — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 08:28:03 +0000

Thanx Julia, maybe you could give me a little help right now.
If I cut out most of the text on my index page would my rating fall, I really don't like the design of my website at all and I think it puts potential customers off when they see all that text
I know we have good products and excellent prices but how do you sell if no one can see your website, and how do you compete against the sites that buy their way to the top
At present our website comes up on the first page in Google, AOL and netscape for the keyword phrase "UK Wedding Cakes", and I am terrified of changing anything that may drop us down
I have been trying for about nine months to get sbmitted to DMOZ but don't seem to be getting anywhere, any ideas.

I would appreciate the help, I really want to make a go of this business but I seem to be spending more and more time on the website

Peter

The Webmistress — Tue, 21 Oct 2003 08:16:30 +0000

IMO the first page to any site (I don't like or see the need for a splash page) should be the main important info on the company/products, with the other pages expanding on the information. That way, as soon as a visitor gets to your site (assuming they come in via the index page) they know what the site is for, what the main info is and then they can start viewing the specifics.

If you have any problems you need help with on DW just post it here as there are a few of us that use it and between us we should be able to come up with a solution for you

FPeter — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:27:57 +0000

Thank you Megan, I am having problems with Dreamweaver
I have only started using it and its a bit different to Frontpage
I am trying to get that proffesional look but don't know whether to have just a simple gateway page as the entrance to my website.
I still have all that text there because I was told that having your keyword phrases on your pages helped the ranking, I'm stumped
I will take a trip to the library and see what books they have
Thanx

Megan — Mon, 20 Oct 2003 13:39:57 +0000

I agree with most of what Julia said above, except for the bit about fonts. I don't think it's true at all that only verdana or arial are attractive choices for body text. Your choice of times on some pages actually doesn't look too bad. If you want to go with a serif, though, Georgia or Garamond are better choices. Take a look at our own Suzanne's blog. I believe that's Georgia she's using for a base font - doesn't it look nice? However, it is a good idea to make sure you're always useing the same base font on your site (I see the front page in a sans while the rest are using Times; text is also a different colour there). Actually, I would say that a serif font would be a more appropriate choice for a site like this - it's a little more formal, which fits with the "special occasions" nature of the site.

You might want to look into using CSS to set your font properties. That way they'll stay consistent throughout the site and you won't have a huge problem if you want to change them.

Another thing I've noticed here is that your larger jpeg's are really poor quality. It looks like they've either been expanded from a smaller version or really over-optimized in a graphics program. Best to re-do those so you can really show off the product. After all, that's the most important thing about this site, right?

Oh, I can't find a link to the home page here! That's an important thing to have. Most sites will also link the logo back to the home page.

As for the overall design, it could use some work. Try to avoid the impulse to center everything. YOu might want to look into purchasing a book by Robin Williams called the non-designer's deisgn book (I think that's the title). It'll give you some information on basic design principles. A more defined colour scheme and a solid logo could do a lot for this site.

The Webmistress — Sun, 19 Oct 2003 14:55:39 +0000

Don't feel like you are on your own in the dark - you have now switched on the light by coming here! We all have to start somewhere and these forums are a great place to learn and exhange ideas so stick around and you'll get all the help & inspiration you could ever want

Also, why not stop by the introductions section and tell us a little bit more about yourself.