New Site - Needs Critique

leilamw001

I`ve recently started my own website, building it myself...which might have been my first mistake. But, I`ve learned a lot in the process and consider it a work in progress. I would love to have your opinions on it if  you have the time.
Thank you so much!
Leila


Petite Puppy Patterns
 

buggrep

Nice idea and good products, but i am not really too thrilled about the site design. Nowdays, everybody in the we industry is moving away from the static websites to a more dynamic sites such as "web 2.0" sites. This direction would be best for the type of business that you are trying to put in place. I more interactive site that would allow people to by with a shopping cart and place orders without even contacting you. If you need more ideas i would be more then happy to give you some suggestions. You would need something more like:
http://www.glamourdog.com/dog-clothes.html

Juliaann108

Hi Leila,




 





That’s a great idea.  Do you make them for cats?  No, wait, my cat would consider himself too cool for clothes. 





 





Anyway, just a few thoughts after I skimmed your home page:





 






-         Typo in header:  Clothng Patterns





-         I wouldn’t center the copy, maybe left-align it.





-         Is using Singer in your logo any kind of copyright infringement? 





-         Typo, first graph:  acutally





-         Why is “treating you and your pet” in quotes?





-         Is there a way you could reconfigure the page so the user doesn’t have to scroll?  It’s a lot of info to digest.  Maybe feature your best outfit and then create another page for a gallery?





 





All in all this is a great first attempt.  You have lots of information that could either be reorganized or eliminated.  Hit the library; there are tons of good reference books on web design.  If you want to chat about the overall copy feel free to send me a private message.





 





Best of luck – I love the little cheerleader outfits.





 





Julia

Webline

Whoa ..... wheres my sunglasses....?
OK, just my opinion, first thing I think visually when I open the page is that it`s too much purple .... regardless of the colors you use, don`t use so much of it concentrated in one place that a visitor feels visually smacked in the face with it .... the colors themselves aren`t bad, just the usage of them. If it was me, and again this is just my preference, I would use more of the subtle purple, and the darker/stronger color for borders/accents. And, the page feels "top heavy", if that makes sense; all this dark on the top and left sides with no border or sense of structure on the right. Again, just my opinion.
The header .... the text doesn`t work where it is, or the color of it, the copyright should go to the bottom of your page, and the image in the top left corner just does not fit in. And, why have a different header and menu look for every page? I think consistency is important.
You should try to optimize your photos; some are pretty big for the size they are displayed, and will use more of your bandwidth than they need to, as well as slow down some users with slower internet connections.
I agree with Craig. I think you do good at getting your message across clearly and quickly, but right away you need to emphasize the main message/purpose more, and let the rest of the info follow as the visitor scans the page. Don`t try to say everything in one breath as the user is walking through the door, to use Craig`s analogy. Let them browse, window shop, and explore, and learn as they go.
Also try not to repeat the same message over and over; thats the feeling I get as I go through the main page. "We want you and your pet to feel special". Well, that`s all good and fine, and I already think my dog is special ( A pain in the ass at times ), but would you want a salesman following you, as a customer, and repeating the same sales pitch over and over? It just sounds repetitive to me is all I`m saying.
SEO ..... pretty much non-existent. You need to implement just basic on-page SEO for a start. WYSIWYG is terrible for good code. In fact, I can almost guarantee that your pages could be rewritten with solid, basic on-page SEO and proper coding and still be half the size they are now. In other words ..... smaller, correct, and more efficient. In more other words .... better performance for visitors and search engines.
Overall, not terrible for trying to learn as you go ..... but you do have a ways to go yet.

Videography

Rather than use WYSIWYG, which I tried initially, and which I found to
be very unhelpful, I`d suggest you take a look at Mozilla`s "Nvu." It`s free, has all sorts of useful features, and creates pretty clean code.


I bought WYSIWYG and fell in love with it.  I had a functioning test site running in one day using WYSIWYG.  I gave up completely on Wordpress.  Maybe I like WYSIWYG so much because the interface is so familiar to my favorite application editing platform, Visual Basic.  The resulting HTML files all passed the W3C Validation with only one error.  No other web design program has ever gotten so much right for me in the past.However, I will definitely check out Nvu....