Site Review

Dad11

Hi there,

My friend got a website built recently. She just wanted a basic site as she does most of her business through Facebook. The address is www.accessoriseyourwedding.com can ye have a look and give opinions

tricky D

Why restrict doing business to Facebook? That instantly exculdes a massive portion of the market. It's like refusing a large fraction of your potential customers at the door of a real world shop for no good reason.

The banner background and lack of logo isn't good.

Then the slide show is a Flash animation when these days jQuery animation is the way forward.

The block of text has poor Sales impact. Much better to have short, snappy and easily digested bullet point style text of no more than 30 words. Text mentions 'we' a bit too much when what we can do for you is a better approach.

No products featured in the homepage.

No contact address.

No 404 page.

The script typeface isn't the most legible.

Gallery has no navigation from image to image.

Not being able to buy from the site isn't good, like too many sites in this market, so there's an opportunity there.

Only prices are in the special offers page so hard to figure out the bang for budget which is important.

'Book your Sweet Stand for your big day between now and December 31st 2011...' is out of date.

No delivery/how it works/timeframes etc. info.

Poor SEO - vital in such a competitive market.

Tables for layout is bad practice.

Spaces in filenames are better avoided.

Media999

Not in a million years would i buy goods from someone with a website like that.

First image that comes into my head is the person actually accepting that its good and approving it to be hosted online. For the love of god please just take it offline, save a few euro and pay someone properly to do it.

Dad11

I think she just wanted.a.basic website
as Budget.was.really small. Is it really that.bad.?

Media999 wrote: »

Not in a million years would i buy goods from someone with a website like that.

First image that comes into my head is the person actually accepting that its good and approving it to be hosted online. For the love of god please just take it offline, save a few euro and pay someone properly to do it.

Nulty

Dad11 wrote: »

I think she just wanted.a.basic website
as Budget.was.really small. Is it really that.bad.?

The bar has risen significantly in the past 10 years and from a professional point of view, the website probably doesn't represent the business in a professional light. Looks amateur, and gives the impression of an amateur business.

Squeeonline

Flash for a slideshow? really??

The images in the slideshow are stretched, which really doesnt help the very unprofessional look of the site.

For a site with exactly the same functions as yours has now shouldnt cost more than €750, and if you find the right person it could cost a lot less. It would be a good investment.

tricky D

Dad11 wrote: »

I think she just wanted.a.basic website
as Budget.was.really small. Is it really that.bad.?

Yes. To me, this is equivalent to having your bricks and mortar shopping presence in a portakabin, out of town, with no point of sale till or credit card facility.

The thing is that a good portion of the competition have poor presences too. That means there's a good opportunity available, if the proper investment is made.

Your business website should be invested in properly. Far too many start ups try to do it on the cheap and later wonder why it failed. Opening a decent real world shop costs a lot of money, so why be cheap in the Web world. While websites can be cheaper, beware of falling into the trap of under-investing by trying to do it for a few shillings. Cheap does not equal value.

carlmango11

Navigation bar is showing up as two lines on Chrome - doesn't fit on the page properly.

Also what ^^ they said

Really though a professional website like make customers (probably subconsciously) assume your business is superior. Especially if, as the others said, the competition is just as bad.

M.T.D

I am not commenting on the website although I would agree with the comments above.
The Facebook part bothered me. Your daughter is building her business on someone else's website (Facebook). Use face book to drive traffic to your website not the other way around, and if Facebook pulls the plug on your daughters page she would have nothing, no contact list, no business.

There are several reasons why you should use a business page for a business rather than a personal page, one is, it is against Facebook rules and they can turn it off. Get her to create a business page, and then try to get her personal "friends" to become business "likes", else her business could disappear overnight.

Dad11

Thanks. The website.was really cheap!! Thanks.for.feedback

M.T.D wrote: »

I am not commenting on the website although I would agree with the comments above.
The Facebook part bothered me. Your daughter is building her business on someone else's website (Facebook). Use face book to drive traffic to your website not the other way around, and if Facebook pulls the plug on your daughters page she would have nothing, no contact list, no business.

There are several reasons why you should use a business page for a business rather than a personal page, one is, it is against Facebook rules and they can turn it off. Get her to create a business page, and then try to get her personal "friends" to become business "likes", else her business could disappear overnight.