Website Advise

[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