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View Full Version : OK, I'm being brave - here's the website!



Kermit
27-10-2009, 08:14 PM
Home - By Jane Handmade Jewellery (http://www.byjane.co.uk)

Do your worst.... but please be gentle :dontknow:

All advice greatfully received !

ben b
27-10-2009, 08:20 PM
very nice! the torn edges work well..remind me of my old art teacher hated scizzors everything was torn edges. Everything you need is there, and it looks clean and stylish. First critism would be, the title. This has not rendered well, the rest of the text is clean, and well defined. was this an 'image resize'...pulling the text bigger in an editor, or is it plain font...

oh, ive just had a look at source code...i think its a template you fill in...(1&1's eshop?) so you may not have much controll over the title!

Trudy
27-10-2009, 08:41 PM
Hi Jane

Welldone for getting your website up and running, its looking really good and you have some lovely pieces of jewellery on there :) :)

My one thing I would say and I hope you dont mind, it is just my opinion but I think £3.50 is quite high for postage to be honest...a lot of people offer free postage and I think it can put people off having quite a big charge added at the end.

Kermit
27-10-2009, 08:54 PM
Hello

Thanks for the comments.

Yes it is a template! I have tried to do my own completely using frontpage, but I end up getting lost as I don't really have enough knowledge to do it. I will have a look to see if I can alter the title though so that it looks better.

Postage - you have confirmed what I was thinking. Think I was worried that I would have to put my prices up if I offered free postage..... but if it gets people to shop then it's worth a go!

Keep the comments coming !=:-O

Emerald
27-10-2009, 09:18 PM
I do like the website very stylish, the photos of the silver on white seem to blur into one whereas the photos of the cufflinks really stand out and also clicking 3 times to get a decent size image is a bit of a pain very small minor criticisms that hopefully can be be asily adjusted.

I builld my P&P into my overall costings x

geti-titanium
27-10-2009, 09:32 PM
I can't claim to be a website designer by any means - but to me it could do with brightening up a bit with a few more colours. Maybe get rid of the big 'wallpaper print' (which does nothing anyway) and replace it with a close up of some of the jewellery . Also the 3 main jewellery images are too small, can't see much of those or what they are.

You need a physical address on your contact page to instill confidence to buy from you (preferably on every page as well with a phone number - not a mobile number either).

You have too many keyword in your keywords meta tag - every one of those words that doesn't appear in the text on the page that it refers to gives google a reason to penalise you.

Like Emerald says, add the P&P into your costings and display your products as having free delivery.

bustagasket
27-10-2009, 09:45 PM
you have a lovely collection hun well done!

Jayne
27-10-2009, 09:48 PM
Well done!! It's a nice site, the links work, like the colour scheme - v elegant :)
I agree with Ben that the title could use a bit of sharpening, if that's at all poss and it would be great if you could click on the pieces that you have on the first page to enlarge & purchase :Y:
J x

geti-titanium
27-10-2009, 09:49 PM
your prices are way too low IMO. I would whack them up quite a bit and include p and p as others have said. I think you are underpricing your work.

Right behind you on that one Jason, erm.. infront.... no, beside you, yes that's it :)

Wanting to sell your products by offering them cheap can actually have the opposite effect. Many people are put off by prices that are too low plus you need to sell a hell of a lot of £20 products to make any money once you take out your time for packing them up and materials - let alone manufacturing time. Don't try to compete with foreign import prices, you never will.

The Dragon
27-10-2009, 10:10 PM
I like what you've done and I agree with what Jason and Geti have said. My personal preferance would be for a little more text to go with each piece. A 'few' choice words will enhance your pieces, funnily enough the buying public expect a certain level on the 'description front' to go with the whole handmade, paying for quality thing. :Y:

I hope my website turns out half as well. [-o<

Kermit
27-10-2009, 10:15 PM
Thank you very much for all your nice comments :)

I certainly need to look at the whole pricing thing. I always struggle with how to balance what I can charge online to what I can charge at fairs. At the moment I do quite alot of small fairs which can do very well - but if I were to have much higher priced items I'm not sure if they would sell. But then maybe I need to review what fairs I'm doing.......

I have tried the google adwords scheme without much success. Have any of you ever paid for advertising in magazines etc ?? Would think they are expensive and wonder if they actually work....

Jane x

geti-titanium
27-10-2009, 10:21 PM
Have any of you ever paid for advertising in magazines etc

Highly over-rated in my opinion - I've advertised in jewellery trade magazines taking out full pages sometimes and with different styles of messages from the sublime to the ridiculous, with special offers, calls to action you name it - all had the same result - Bu**er all! - Save your money and go on holiday!

Di Sandland
28-10-2009, 07:37 AM
Tried magazine and local paper advertising for other things (tarot reading actually) - useless, useless, useless. Save your money.

A good formula for pricing - costs of materials doubled (or trebled) + cost of overheads + an hourly rate for your work. Its scary to start off with because it all seems too much for something you've made - but you have to consider what you could earn for your time if you wasn't sitting making jewellery!

Kalorlo
28-10-2009, 09:05 AM
I'd agree about maybe adding a tiny bit of colour to the design - the catseye aqua colour is lovely and grabs the eye from the photographs, maybe try having the current highlighted section in the menu be that colour instead? Just a little touch here and there will do it.

Aha, looking further, I see that further in you use a teal green for visited links in the body of the page. A little bit of that visible on the home page would be great.

Boo
28-10-2009, 09:27 AM
I haven't looked at the site in question, but this comment jumped out at me:


I certainly need to look at the whole pricing thing. I always struggle with how to balance what I can charge online to what I can charge at fairs.
I'm just writing a blog on why I include P&P in my web site prices - the short answer of which is that all selling venues have inherent costs, selling from your kitchen table might include refreshments and more of your time - fairs have table fees, travel and display materials, on-line you have PayPal/bank fees, post and packing. So I set my price for an item to include these costs, put a price ticket on it and it sell it at the same price in all venues.

It will cost me an amount per item just to sell it (averaging various costs over a year, I just apply a flat amount to everything), regardless of where I actually sell it. So the price is the price.

The difference between fairs and on-line is that you're more likely to sell lower cost items at fairs - so I have a lot of stock that goes to fairs with me, that I wouldn't bother photographing and putting on my site - I sell a lot of earrings around the £10 ticket in fairs.

snow_imp
28-10-2009, 10:42 AM
Nice looking site you have there - but I agree with the comments others have made about pricing and p&p - mind you, I'm not one to talk on that front as I still have a fit when I actually follow the "double materials" + other costs ideas just 'cos everything I've done recently seems to involve lots of sterling silver jump rings!

EmmaRose
28-10-2009, 01:49 PM
Lovely work.
Agree your prices too cheap.
On home page don't like the torn edges of images, on images that size feel it detracts too much from your lovely work. would also prefer, when looking at an individual product not to have to click again to get larger image if at all possible. looks like there is enough room for a larger image on the page.
hth
Em

Carl Martin
28-10-2009, 09:47 PM
Not that I am being greedy or anything but handcrafted is handcrafted and takes time, we aren't machines. :Y:

Totally agree with you on that one. Conveyor belts we are not.

As for the website:- I quite like it.. very different from mine. I am not a computer guru at all...infact hate the damn things...now they are machines.!
I've also created my website as more of an information portal as to what I do... which in all honesty is mainly teach, run workshops and when i have time ,, keep up with my commissions.