I have a new website...

[FlouncyMcFlouncer]

... would anyone be so kind as to 'testdrive' it for me? I'd appreciate any feedback?

www.monkeybusiness-sockfriends.com

Ok...I'll begin with the negative. When I first landed, the main pic of Fairy Sparkles is sort of flickering...and is out of focus or something? This is kind of off-putting....as is the "ghostly" Help for Heroes thing over the top of it...I as a visitor am not sue where to look...at the Fairy Monkey...the Heroes thing...what. It's a tad confusing.

Also...you need, I think to have your main products instantly viewable... had to look around to find your "Products" button..that needs to be bigger or more prominent than your raffle prize.

Your monkeys and other things are nice though...I would be more inclined to buy them if they were made of more unusual fabrics...I know socks aren't that unusual generally...can they be made from ordinary fabric though? Using the same shaped pattern pieces?

Thankyou Mary.

I'm not sure why it's 'flickering' for you - it isn't doing it on my screen! The 'Help for Heroes' logo is actually part of that pic, it's the 'Monkey Business Sock Friends, handmade blah blah blah' bit that overlays it - and I can't seem to move it! I've been searching all through the settings for a way to move that part up. So that pic itself comprises a picture of the raffle monkey with a block of text and the logo, all together IYSWIM

Your second point - I wonder if it would be better if my 'products' page were my 'home page'? So that the page you land on is the products page and then you can wander around and look at the 'blah blah' bits if you're interested...

I've tried making the animals out of fabric but the main issue is stretch - there's a lot of stretch in a sock, so to make it out of another fabric you have to cut the pieces a LOT bigger to start with, and it's difficult to get the scale right. I do have hundreds of different socks though, but have only added a few to the site at the moment. I started off on Facebook as Monkey Business Sock Monkeys you see, so all my 'back catalogue is on there.

I think your home page needs to have a selection of products featured with a clear call to action...so your product page is not the home page but there is a clear BUY button so that people can click to see them in more detail.

Your raffle thing is nice but needs to be secondary imo....and the pic is "stretched" which makes it look unprofessional which is the last thing you want on a retail site as people don't want to put their details into a site they don't trust. You need to choose a pic with a different format or a higher resolution.

I work in web design but as a copy writer....so I'm used to considering the main points when dealing with clients. At the moment the raffle is your main call to action...which isn't what your site is about.

I have the Monkey Business Sock Friend box over the competition box. So I am not sure what that says. I agree the competition box looks wrong - it should be smaller. I also think that it should be underneath your welcome bit as you don't really know anything about the site you have landed on until you have read that.

I have a website and I was advised to make as much of it as possible visible without having to scrowl down. You have the space it you adjust the size of the competition box as it is quite spaced out lower down. Obviously it might not be possible to get everything you want on your home page into the same view but the more the better.

I would also put more info on about the products. How long are they? What are they made of and are they washable? That kind of thing.That is just my personal taste though. Not everybody is that bothered I know.

You also don't say anything about the cost of postage. If it is free (I went as far as checking out) you need to mention that on the home page - it is an incentive to buy.

Apart from that it is clean, clear and inviting. I hope you do well with it.

Thankyou both - I'm working on your suggestions , although I'm a bit of a technophobe and as it's a wordpress template site I don't know how much 'adjusting' of sizes etc I can actually do!

(Postage is free, and it does say that on the homepage in the welcome box, under the raffle pic - but as you didn't see it, I need to make that more obvious!)

OP, can you either take the raffle pic off completely, or can you make a table with no borders in whatever you're using to design the webpage, so you can control how far across the page it goes? The distortion really doesn't do your web page any favours. It's also far too big, I think, and distracts from your overall design.

On your products page, it doesn't look great that the pictures aren't all the same size - nor why personalisation appears to have been put in half way down, there doesn't seem to be any ordering (alphabetically, by price). I would expect to see this separated from the items to buy.

I wouldn't have confidence to buy from a site that looked like this, can you emphasise whoever it is who is providing your backend buying service? I'm sure it's perfectly legit but it doesn't look like a site you could trust with your credit card details. One of my fave yarn shops has a pretty workman-like website but has a privacy policy which is reassuring.

I would agree though that it's a nice clean design (raffle problem aside) - another thing that's nice on craft sites is an accompanying blog - I like this one on another of my yarn sites.

Good luck with the site!

Just had a brief look and can reiterate what others have said re: raffle being the main focus, pic being a bit stretched etc and also the white monkey isn't as eye-catching as some of the others (Hello Kitty one for example is v funky!) so one of them might be better as the first impression.

I would put a few colourful examples of your work at the top of the page with a 'click for more designs' then move the competition down or do it as a separate thing altogether, e.g. on the next page or something?

HTH

I could take the pic off, but there has to be a pic there of some sort IYSWIM. I can't seem to control the size of that 'box' in any way.

The same applies to the size of the pics on the products page - They just seem to come up different sizes and I can't find a way of changing that - I have just managed to order them by price descending though, with personalisation at the bottom..

The payments are processed by CashieCommerce via Paypal, which I did put in my welcome box - so the credit card details don't come anywhere near me, they stop at Paypal IYSWIM.

The 'What's New' page is the blog page, I just haven't put much on there yet...

I suppose that's the trouble with website templates, you're stuck with what's there to a certain extent, but they are so much cheaper than paying someone to do a bespoke one - we've been quoted £1200 for a small e-commerce site.

Could it be that the photos are coming up at different sizes because the originals are cropped slightly different sizes? If you standardise the original images to a certain width it may help?

We use Paypal for card processing too and have a logo to show it on the home page - you can probably get a button for that from PP merchant services.

Agree that the top picture looks not quite in focus somehow , a bit wonky, and the 'monkey business sock friends' box is transposed over the Help for Heroes box.

I am not sure how to buy anything? No 'Buy This' button? And I think you need contact address on there, not least for returns and some blurb about returns under the distance selling regulations.

When looking at the products, you have to click on 'learn more' - I think being able to click on the name of the creature or the picture as well would be much better.

Just had a look - will definitely be ordering from you!

I don't know what to do about the pics - I'm really useless with photo editing

I will look into the Paypal button thing thankyou...

To buy, once you click on 'Learn More' you get an 'Add to Cart' option.. I can't seem to turn the names into links...

I'll add the contact details when I can find out how to access the blue boxes at the bottom of the page (I didn't build the site myself, it was done by a friend, so although she has passed it over to me I'm still feeling my way around it).

Thankyou mumofjust1, that's nice of you to say that - I do have hundreds of happy customers already if you check out the FB page - it's just the website that I'm struggling with !

Popping out now to deliver some monkeys so please do keep the comments coming and I will be back later - I really appreciate all the feedback and suggestions.

Does having your own website give you anything over having an FB page?

If you edit your photos in something like Picasa (which is free) you should be able to choose a size which makes all the pics the same.

Can you link your fb page please flouncy?

Apologies about not seeing the free postage thing.

But perhaps if possible it should have a bigger box so everybody knows. Free postage is a big draw.

I had a similar problem with not being able to crop when trying to do the header for DH's business blog a couple of weeks ago. The picture for the header (a jpeg file) kept coming out way to big. I couldn't crop it to get all of the name in. In the end, I put the header onto a Powerpoint page with a background then copied the whole Powerpoint page as a file onto the blog. I was able to crop at will then. Does that make sense at all? I just wish I could show you it would be so much easier.

(You weren't FlouncyMcFlouncer this morning were you or have I gone mad?)

Flouncy your sock monkeys are fab. I agree with other comments that there are things about your website that need changing but you have got a good starting point to move from.

Sorry I can't offer any constructive help my DH is the techie in our family and he did my website (although it's not active yet).

tribpot having the website gives me the ability to take debit/credit cards which I didn't have with FB, and makes the 'purchasing' bit simpler - on FB people had to comment on the pics to purchase and with Fb being a bit unreliable at times it got messy..

mumofjust1 link to Fb as requested

Bertha Yes, I will try to make the postage bit more prominent. The Powerpoint bit lost me I'm afraid and yes, I've been FlouncyMcFlouncer all along

Thankyou BlaiddDrwg!

Weird, I could have sworn you were somebody else this morning.

Oh and sorry about the Powerpoint thing. It is hard to explain for an incompetent like me. Like I say, if I could show you it would be better.

The problem, you see, is that I, also, am an incompetent like you

I think we should stick to crafting. Much safer.