Website Advise

[Dink]

Hello All

I am looking for advise or opinions on my web site. We have had a web site for five or six years now, with what I would consider marginal results. I try to at least annually do some major changes as well as add things throughout the year to try and keep it new and fresh. though time does not allow constant attention.

I am starting to plan for the annual update and thought it would be great if it were seen from a different perspective than my own. So if anyone has a little time and could take a look and provide your opinion it would be very helpful and much appreciated. You could post or message, whatever works best for you. thanks for any help.

The site is http://www.prorodeooriginals.com/

Dink

[RMB Custom Leather]

The graphic and intro are cool but too busy, it took a minute or so to see the site. Do away with the small window of text that you have to scroll down to read all of it, make it a full page with all the infomation on it. Put a manual scroll at the bottom of the pictures instread of the automatic scroll because it is difficult to stop on the picture you want to see. It is slow to natigate to each page, it takes a little for the next page to load I thinking it's because of the graphics but I am not an expert. Your site is very eye catching and the graphics and logo are awsome but I think if you slow it down some and make it faster you may get better results. I don't think any site is perfect and I am in need of an overhaul also hopefully it will be soon. Hope that helps.

[benlilly1]

I do agree about the scrolling photos (somewhat uncontrollable). The graphics are fine and very thorough descriptions. I was able to navigate from page to page fast though. I don't know if I'd change much.

[Phatdaddy]

I think it's great, loads fine and fast for me, the slideshow is fine too as long as you only move slightly off of center to the left of right.

I like it.

[Dink]

Thanks everyone for the input, I will see what I can do.

[Spinner]

Thanks everyone for the input, I will see what I can do.

Hey Dink,

check your PMs sent some specific info on the site.

Chris

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: Your PM inbox is full...I'll try again later

Edited October 21, 2011 by Spinner

[RMB Custom Leather]

Hey Dink,

check your PMs sent some specific info on the site.

Chris

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update: Your PM inbox is full...I'll try again later

Yea his PM was full when I tried

[Dink]

Spinner & RMB

Sorry about the PM problem I just went back and cleared it out. I am very interested in your thoughts so I hope you have some time to repost if possible, I appreciate the time you have already spent.

Dink

[BillB]

I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Remember that not everyone has access to high speed internet. I live in northwestern Minnesota and we have DSL, no cable, no high speed wi-fi.

2. Review the wording that you use from the point of a buyer and not a seller. For example: "Chaps are made in house using the best and most practical leathers and hardware available" is "best and most practical" from a sellers profit point of view, is it from a quality to buy point of view, or is it just simply availability in the local economy point of view?

3. Although I can understand you company policy of not putting prices on the website, you will have to understand some buyers, like myself are immediately turned off by that and will go some where else so I can at least determine if what I see in the pictures and an associated price range is worth my time.

4. What market are you going for: Professional Rodeo only or the local non-professional rodeo folks? The look and feel I got from you website, pictures, explanation and policies was that you were only interested in the Professional Rodeo folks. This might be limiting the response to your site.

Just my thoughts.

BillB

[Dink]

Thanks again to everyone for the comments, and any more that I may recieve. Though it may seem small the information I have gotten from all of you is a a huge tool for me.

Dink

[Ladykahu]

By using flash.. your are ruling out anyone with an "i" device (ipad, iphone etc) and most mobile devices as well.. flash just don't work well from a 'gadget'.

In a few years time I strongly suspect 'flash' will no longer exist because of mobile usage. (that was me wearing my computer tech hat)

Natalie

[Spinner]

hey Dink,

Sorry I didn't come back to this before, I received your PM and figured I would just post here to make it easier for you to track.

Most of the responses, especially BillB and Ladykahu hit on very important points.

1) Flash is cumbersome for mobile browsers, especially Apple products due to their dislike of Flash's security protocols. It also adds quite a bit of loading time to a website versus a website without.

2) Prices, or price ranges if you don't want to be tied down to a specific price, definitely help sales.

3) The font size used in the main paragraphs for the home page and a few others is too large. Yes, it makes it easier to read but it also creates the need for scrolling bars embedded in the middle of the page. From a usability stand-point, most folks won't use bars embedded in the middle of the page they'll read what they can see and move along sometimes missing important information. They will however use the browser scroll bars if the page extends past their screen. Shrink the font so the text all appears on the page. (Visit my website to see the difference)

4) CONTACT INFORMATION!!! In my current website I'm guilty of this too but I'm also in the midst of a rebuild and plan to fix this myself as well. Contact information should appear somewhere on every page, at least a phone number or email, whichever is preferred. This allows the client to contact you without having to leave the important pages that contain your product. I do see a 'contact us' link at the top right of the page(s) but it's small, dislocated from the rest of the navigation and is easily overlooked. If folks can't figure out how to get ahold of you easily they'll just as likely leave the site rather than dig around looking for the info. The page footers and/or headers are a good place for this info.

5) This one may be a touchy subject but it may also help someone else so I'll put it out there. Looking at the site footers, it looks like the site was "professionally" built for you by a "designer". However, they have neglected many basic website rules, especially relating to search engines. They also used a website builder template and didn't do any designing themselves at all aside from editing a few photos and following on screen instructions in the free builder. http://www.wix.com/ is the service being used. Hopefully you aren't paying a service fee for web space as the Wix accounts are free. This can be verified by simply clicking on one of your links and watching the status bar. You'll see the address change to "static.wix.com" or "beat.wix.com" when it's loading a page.

6) Speaking of the website guidelines, the photos are not optimized for search engine indexing. This means that when Google visits your website, it looks at the meta-tags (hidden tags in your site code) to identify keywords, descriptions, etc then it looks at the website text for the same things. If done correctly, they will match up and help the search engine determine how related you are to keyword searches. The site is fine in this area. However, the search engines also look at picture alt tags (the pop ups when you float over pictures) and the picture file names themselves. Every picture, graphic, background image, etc. should have related keywords or text used for the alt tags and file names to improve your rankings and 90% of the site doesn't employ this. Example: float over the first picture on the home page. The alt tag says "chaps_1". Right clicking and selecting "Item Details" gives an empty description box. At the very least, the file name could be something like, "purple_black_chaps" or try for more keywords with "barrel_racing_womens_chaps". Use underscores: _ in the file names instead of spaces (spaces are replaced with %20 in website address protocols) but in the alt tags spaces are fine. *Note - the alt tags were used exactly as should be in the "Pro Store" page photos.*

7) Normalize the website navigation. From the looks of it, kids chaps and chinks were added to the website later than the rest. Unfortunately, when it was done, the wrong size font was used for them and they were pushed over to the right taking up photo and text real estate. They should be aligned with the rest of the navigation links and if need be, reduce the font size on all the links to keep them spaced correctly and all in the same vertical line for consistency.

Hopefully some of this long winded post helps!

Chris

[Dink]

Thanks Everyone

This is excellent and extremley helpful info.

Dink