My Site

[laciemn1]

Hello all,
This site has caused me a LOT of frustration. What do you guys think?


Untitled Document

It's jewelry retail online store =).

[Brutha]

-A page should have a title, "Untitled Document" isn't a good one
-I think the page would look better if you would center it instead of having it on the left side.
-I you want to give the impression of high quality I don't know whether pink is the right color. It also conflicts with the image that you try to produce through telling the history of the Rings etc.

[jamestl2]

What kind of frustration has the site caused for you? Are there any specific areas causing you trouble, or are you looking for just a generic critique of it?

Originally Posted by Brutha

-I you want to give the impression of high quality I don't know whether pink is the right color. It also conflicts with the image that you try to produce through telling the history of the Rings etc.

If you need some advice on choosing colors, look at this:
The Meaning of Colour in Web Design

[ellie]

As a web designer - hmmm in a nutshell it doesn't look very professional and wouldn't entice me to look further into it. I literally would see the front page and close it after 2 seconds. Now I am also a female and it's just too pink. You could have more subtable shades of pink.

I don't get the feeling that I could trust your site, as it looks amateurish. So I wouldn't purchase something from it.

Sorry to be brutal, but the site needs a bit of work. I would suggest you find a good web designer.

Of course there are many sites that don't have to have great web design (blogs, forum, ebook sites etc), but for a pretty/delicate product like jewellery I think you need a nice looking site which helps emphasize the product.

It can still be a simple looking site, infact it can be even more simpler than it is now. Let the jewellery do the talking.

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by Brutha

-A page should have a title, "Untitled Document" isn't a good one
-I think the page would look better if you would center it instead of having it on the left side.
-I you want to give the impression of high quality I don't know whether pink is the right color. It also conflicts with the image that you try to produce through telling the history of the Rings etc.

Yeah, good point on the untitled document thing. I'm surely looking to give the impression of high quality, I figured pink would be good cause it's jewelry and it's targeted at women(no offense to all you women that hate pink).

I do rather like pink and green together, but no one else seemed to like it and I want a professional looking site so I'll be taking your advice when I redesign it.

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

What kind of frustration has the site caused for you? Are there any specific areas causing you trouble, or are you looking for just a generic critique of it?



If you need some advice on choosing colors, look at this:
The Meaning of Colour in Web Design

Well, I tend to get very overwhelmed when I first start learning about doing things. The past month, I've been working on pretty much everything that involves getting a business started.
I struggled for a while trying to hand code the site, I had to learn to use photoshop and dreamweaver. I'm just generally frustrated because I feel like there's so many things I could be doing wrong and I have to do simply to exist and I've put all my savings into it.

The main problem I've been having is with the templates in dreamweaver. I'll edit something on the template and update the other pages and then notice that everything is completely off. I'll want to change buttons and have to completely redesign everything in photoshop, changing color schemes means a new logo, every little thing I want to change seems to cause some big problem. Then when I go to edit the pages, I can't because it's non-editable and I'll try to make that particular area editable and it ends up screwing everything up.

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by ellie

As a web designer - hmmm in a nutshell it doesn't look very professional and wouldn't entice me to look further into it. I literally would see the front page and close it after 2 seconds. Now I am also a female and it's just too pink. You could have more subtable shades of pink.

I don't get the feeling that I could trust your site, as it looks amateurish. So I wouldn't purchase something from it.

Sorry to be brutal, but the site needs a bit of work. I would suggest you find a good web designer.

Of course there are many sites that don't have to have great web design (blogs, forum, ebook sites etc), but for a pretty/delicate product like jewellery I think you need a nice looking site which helps emphasize the product.

It can still be a simple looking site, infact it can be even more simpler than it is now. Let the jewellery do the talking.

No need to apologize, I don't mind criticism. I won't be hiring a professional web designer, I'll just redo it myself until I learn to become a better designer because I have no money and I don't really want to do that anyway. That's what forums are for eh?

Yeah, I wasn't completely satisfied with the way it looked, but I spent so much time trying to get it to look right I just wanted to quit for a while. I pretty much chose the first color scheme I thought of(I made my logo and designed the site around it) but I can see how it's a bit obnoxious now, I've just been staring at it too long to notice.

[onrails]

Originally Posted by laciemn1

Hello all,
This site has caused me a LOT of frustration. What do you guys think?

Hi Lacie,

I like your site very much.
Somehow I can feel the effort and the heart you've put in it. (And the frustration too)

Ok, ellie's arguments are formally right. Don't expect too many customers now

But your site shows a part of your personality. It's very authentic. Something you won't find on technically perfect, expensive but soulless corporate sites or in some fancy mee-too blogs.

I think you're on the right path. Keep learning and working. One can buy a professional web designer but not authencity and heart. The people will feel the difference.

Good luck!

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by onrails

Hi Lacie,

I like your site very much.
Somehow I can feel the effort and the heart you've put in it. (And the frustration too)

Ok, ellie's arguments are formally right. Don't expect too many customers now

But your site shows a part of your personality. It's very authentic. Something you won't find on technically perfect, expensive but soulless corporate sites or in some fancy mee-too blogs.

I think you're on the right path. Keep learning and working. One can buy a professional web designer but not authencity and heart. The people will feel the difference.

Good luck!

Thanks a lot! It's pretty much impossible that I'll give up and stop working, so no need to worry about that, I just have a lot of areas I have to work on. I do want the site to show my personality, my initial target audience was the teen market and I figure since I'm a teen girl myself, maybe my personality would make the customers feel...I don't know, more comfortable?

I definitely don't want to look cheap and ametuer because I know what a big turn-off that is for me, so I'm going to work on the color scheme, navigation, and layout of the site a bit tonight or after Thanksgiving.

I'm going for a youthful, vibrant look but I want it to still look professional. It may be hard to pull off for someone inexperienced like me, but I'll get it right sooner or later.

[laciemn1]

Originally Posted by jamestl2

What kind of frustration has the site caused for you? Are there any specific areas causing you trouble, or are you looking for just a generic critique of it?



If you need some advice on choosing colors, look at this:
The Meaning of Colour in Web Design

By the way, thank you for that link, I scanned it and it's about to come in very useful for choosing a different color scheme. This site I read mentioned having 2 main colors and then a few others...I guess for things like borders or adding something extra to certain parts of things. I'm thinking about maybe a light pastel orange somewhere in there but I kept asking my friends, "do you think it's too pink?" and everyone said no, friends are NO good at critique :/.

[Frans]

To find matching colors, you can use this tool:

Color Scheme Generator

PS. Instead of using a Hotmail email address as contact information, I'd set up a contact page, so you don't need to display an email address.

[laciemn1]

Okaay, I've completely changed the site color scheme and most everything else except the content. I'd say it's better, just a little plainer than I'd like.

Accented Jewels

It was surprisingly easy actually.

[onrails]

The previous version had met your goals better - "youthful, vibrant look" as you said.

Also it was better because of bigger fonts. Teenagers read web sites different, they are lesser focused. Jakob Nielsen wrote about it in Usability of Websites for Teenagers.

Now your site looks more professional but it has lost something, it's not you. It tries to look "appropriate" somehow...

One advice more. Don't try to fix everything at once, work in small steps and then compare. So it's easier to return to the previous version. When you try to fix all at once you quickly get overwhelmed.