Web site procrastination

I have had a web site for over 10 years. There have been several
variations over that time. In the past I have had professionals
develop my site. A few weeks ago, after much frustration with a 4
year old pc I decided to make the leap to a new iMac desk-top and
couldn’t be happier with the change. The new Leopard operating system
includes a web site creating program called iWeb so I decided to take
a fling at it and in a few hours created a new site. It is still in
development but I think that it is worth taking a look at. It is
temporarily located at http://web.mac.com/joelsimac, please take a
look and send me your comments.

Joel

Hi Kim,

Can you share any ideas for initiating traffic to websites, please?
My website is “live”, but I haven’t done anything about marketing it
yet, and I’m particularly inept with technology.

Thanks in anticipation,
Morna
http://www.mcbead.co.uk

Hi Morna

I haven’t tried it out yet, but several people have recommended to
me that I list items for sale On Etsy (www.etsy.com). It is a retail
website (like Ebay without the auction) which sells jewelry and
wearables for a very small commission fee and people (young people
especially) are shopping on Etsy.

The company that I use to keep my website up is called Homestead.
They have a new program coming out which is an advertising add on to
the monthly service. They say that can maintain it so my website
listing comes up on all the search engines. It would be listed in the
vertical sidebar on searches like Google. I’m thinking on it, but I
don’t know how effective it will be. Does anyone ever click on
anything in the sidebar? It’s relatively inexpensive though (60 a
month) so, maybe I will try it out (then again, if use Meta Tags
correctly, I don’t need it)…it’s all very new to me.

I noticed that you also sell beads. Businesses often list items on
Ebay and, in the description of the seller, you can put links back to
your own website.

On the more difficult-to-accomplish side, I have noticed designers
selling their items through major retail sites (ex.
www.fragments.com www.clay-pot.com www.sundancecatalog.com
www.guild.com) to become well-known. People shopping on these sites
would see (for example) a ring made by you. Often, if I like a piece
I see listed on one of these sites, I will do a google search on the
designer’s name. Hopefully, their website will come up in the search
and I can see their whole line. Now, if I choose, I can select from
anything they make, not just the ring. It is extremely important that
the prices on the retail sites exactly match the prices on your own
site.

I’m sure you have heard people say that an ecommerce site really
should be kept to “3 clicks”. In other words, keep navigation on the
site super easy for the customer.

There are other things, but you and I are in different countries, so
some things are not going to be useful to you. Best of luck with
your new site!

Kim
Kim Starbard
http://www.kimstarbarddesigns.com

Hi Joel

I like this site much more than your other one. The pictures are very
beautiful. The only question I had…I was wondering why you chose
to have your bio on the front page? Usually, the front page is a much
bigger picture (the belt buckle is awesome and I like your “marlena”
ring very much) and the bio would be near the last page of the site.
Also, I have seen (and I don’t know if you want to do this kind of
thing) sites where the work is mostly custom and one-of-a-kind (like
yours) and the artist will tell a small “story” about each piece.
It’s just an observation on my part. It’s something I have seen done,
but I don’t know that it is effective.

Best of luck with your site, your work is very beautiful!

Kim
Kim Starbard
http://www.kimstarbarddesigns.com

Happy New Year to everyone on Orchid. May this be our best year
ever.

I am about to do an update on my website and would like some advice
from all of you. I do not depend on my website for the major part of
my work but I would like to improve the results that I receive from
it.

I have had a website for over 10 years but the one I now have has
been open for about 2 years. I have noticed that my traffic has been
steadily increasing but the amount of time people spend there has
been about the same or decreasing during this time.

I do get special orders from the site and occasionally sell pieces
but that seemed to start decreasing this year as well.

Sometimes as website owners or store owners we just do not see what
other people see so please take a look and be open and honest. Tell
me what you see.

Is the layout wrong? Is the jewelry wrong? Are the prices wrong?
what suggestions do you all have?

Thank you.
Greg DeMark
www.demarkjewelry.com

Hi David

I use Homestead (www.homestead.com) for my site. They initially
spent about 30 minutes on the phone with me to get me started and,
after that, I could navigate it pretty well. I like that it takes me
only a few minutes to take a picture of a piece, resize it in
Photoshop, and upload it to the website. I think right now though,
that my site is too small. I need to upgrade to the next size up. My
site absolutely doesn’t have anything fancy in it, but, if that’s
what you would like, you can design your site in a website design
software program, and upload it to your Homestead site. Once uploaded
to the Homestead site, you can do all the regular maintenance
(changing pictures and such) quickly and easily.

Good Luck!
Kim
Kim Starbard
http://www.kimstarbarddesigns.com

Joel,

Very professional looking. I started out about the same time, but
have never had anyone else code html for me, though I’ve accepted
help with perl scripting. My early efforts were lame, but having
control over it myself is much better than having to wait for
someone else to get around to it. I can do my own procrastinating,
thanks… :slight_smile:

Loren

Very handsome, Joel! You did this in “a few hours”?!?

I only wish the larger views were, well, larger. I still can’t see
the deails very well. Love the colors and textures. Very classy.

Noel

Joel -

I really like your site. My husband and I are in the process of
looking at new computers. We purchased our current pc in 2000. We’re
trying to decide between a new pc or to make the step to the new iMac
w/Leopard. Are you going to put a shopping cart on yours? I’ve been
looking at a lot of them and trying to decide on that too. One
shopping cart that sticks out to me is www.volusion.com.

Thanks for sharing your site.
Holly

You can also purchase a template and customize it yourself. Here are
only a few sites.

Holly

I looked at many of the web packages (where they provide a template,
shopping cart, AND host the site), but quickly found that most were
missing the functionality I wanted such as a quality, fully
customizable shopping cart, backend functions, forms, etc. The
template would be customizable to a point, but not to the level I was
looking for. So, having ZERO experience with much more than simple
HTML, I jumped feet first and purchased a php template for
Dreamweaver and learned as I went.

Do you want a shopping cart or simply a web presence? If you want to
showcase your work and provide without a shopping cart,
there are many VERY affordable, quality templates available from
about $35 USD or so. Templatemonster.com has some really nice ones
(as well as shopping carts). Liquidweb.com is GREAT for hosting.

Good luck!

Is the layout wrong? Is the jewelry wrong? Are the prices wrong?
what suggestions do you all have? 

I would like to recommend two books:

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Price $24
http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books/us/product/0321344758.htm

and

The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better
Price: $9.56
http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books/us/product/0743227905.htm

Short, not overly techy, and extremely helpful in improving your
website.

Elaine
http://www.CreativeTextureTools.com
Helping You Make Your Best Impression in Clay

Has anyone here had experience with pre packaged web sites? 

I use http://BlueHost.com The folks there are extremely nice and
helpful and they do a very professional job.

Doc

Its good to see so many people doing your own sites. You know your
product, image and client base better than anyone. To keep a site
fresh and your pieces up-to-date, it is best to have it under your
own control.

Even if you have someone set up the site or buy a template, the
capability to keep it updated is very important. (Loren :wink: said it
best - you can do your own procrastination).

As far as site building packages, I really think that as long as the
software doesn’t add a lot of garbage to your HTML and you can
understand the software your are doing fine - I have used FrontPage
(now obsolete) since 1994 or so and still use it. But that doesn’t
mean its the best, its just the one I know the best.

Your pictures are critical and you can tell best if they represent
your work. I had an article published and the graphics came out
nearly neon on what was softly colored material. A member of Orchid,
Gareth Eckley (who makes Cameos) has written a great article on
organizing your photographs with I have not seen
anywhere else.

http://www.jewelryspectrum.com/business-side/19-organizing-photos.htm

(If any of you have any articles to trade for a permanent link would
love to have them)

For the marketing - getting those quality incoming links is
important. I am talking about links from Orchid, publications, your
suppliers, accessories sites, fashion sites, museums, galleries, etc.
Trading links with other jewelry artisans is probably of limited
value.

Writing articles is helps get quality links and establish yourself.
From just 20 articles on one article directory, I have 140 incoming
links.

Nothing is going to be fast with the marketing - you can do SEO very
simply, and has become almost a throw away term these days.) I do
have a link to a free course that covers it very well - the woman who
teaches keeps up-todate.

Louise
http://www.jewelryspectrum.com/showcase.htm

Just a comment and a bit of a pep talk from me on this. I know that
there are those who like writing in HTML to this day, and I have no
arguement with them. For thos who don’t and don’t want to describe
every font and color in code, it is EASY to do a simple web site
these days. The learning curve is short, and the tools are many. I
personally LOVE Dreamweaver - drag the little arrow across to another
page and Bang!, Linked! Stuff like that. We have domain and hosting
for something like $9/month, as I recall, as part of our ISP service,
too.

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com

Joel

What you have is very attractive; but I would think the bio stuff
would come latter. Have I missed something? Is there only the one
page?

KPK
www.kevinpatrickkelly.com

Joel,

Wonderful site! Makes me want to get a Mac. Of course you have
extremely good photos too which have nothing to do with a Mac. I
like the way you have set up the site - the navigation is very good
and the colors set off your jewelry wonderfully. Thanks for sharing.

Jan
www.designjewel.com

I like it Joel! I like the Studio Shop Photo, your pictures are very
nice, I like that you told about each piece…it’s clean plus it has
a rich look to the site. It was a great “take a fling at it” move!

Dawn

For the marketing - getting those quality incoming links is
important. I am talking about links from Orchid, publications,
your suppliers, accessories sites, fashion sites, museums,
galleries, etc. Trading links with other jewelry artisans is
probably of limited value. 

Louise touches on it, but I’ll spell it out. This is from a talk by a
senior SW engineer at Google, BTW - not me. Search spiders of all
kinds will find things on your page and add them to the database -
that will likely happen within hours if you put up a new site. There
will be keywords on your site, whether you put them on purpose or
not, and sites are ranked, meaning which comes up on the top of the
pile, to some degree by that. The #1 thing that Google uses to rank
your site, though, is how many other sites link to yours. The
thinking is pure popularity. Google claims to be egalitarian, and
claims to rank purely by “truth” - that is, if it’s popular, it’s
popular and they don’t make decisions. You can believe that or not,
personally I do to a degree. The more sites who think enough of YOUR
site to put a link to it, the higher your ranking, because it’s
assumed that you are popular. The complexity of such a search
algorithim is pretty mind boggling, but that’s beside the point.
This also means that there’s only such much you can do - you can
exhange links and all as much as you can, but you can’t make people
like you. With the thousands (millions) of sites devoted to jewelry,
you’ll need thousands of people linking to you - linking to them is
nice, it’s when they link to you that it counts - to come up in the
rankings significantly. That’s not say don’t try, just that it’s a
long road, and the nature of it all means that you need to be
genuinely popular - not something you can manipulate, really.

I also have used FrontPage since the beginning. FrontPage now has
Microsoft Expression Web which you can upgrade to I believe for
around $99. I’m considering it. They have a free 30 day trial.

Holly