Thread: My first try at publishing

Hi,
well here goes, please tell it as it is. All comments good or bad regarding everything from layout to keywords da da da da da da!
Have had a ball so far, and promise to take everything in the best light.
Our website is www.lochdesignsjewellery.com
Remember this is far from complete but think these pages are OK. Took me a full day of publishing, re-writing and re-publishing, over and over.

looking forward to your comments,
Jock.

Hi,
I love your logo! The site looks really good (I'm a novice designer too but obviously look at loads of other sites). I think the colours you have used are fabulous.
A couple of (minor) points:
The picture pf the blue stone in the bottom right (on purple background) doesn't have a "name" but all the others do (not sure of the correct terminology)
In the Contact Us page I would move the picture away from the bottom of the page
Give your pages a title
In the "About us" page - what's with the cows??? Is it a local picture - doesn't seem to have any relevance otherwise.
Finally - in my humble beginners opinion I think it is easier to navigate if the buttons are in the same place on each page.
Hope that's been helpful.
Otherwise..I really like the site and your jewellery and will keep checking back for the store to open so I can buy some!
Helga (see prev thread for my site)

Love the logo and the colors, don't know where the cows fit...but I love them too

What a lovely and well constructed site! I think you are doing a great job and your products are the star of the show! Your photos are just the right size to display your work. I love the personal photos, too...And even the cows are a good fit, as I think your intent is to show where you live ....the landscape, your surroundings, etc. People like to see the "real life" of the artist that handcrafts! I love that you put a pic of yourself in there, also.

The only thing I can suggest from a visual point of view is when you take the pictures of your jewelry, I would try to stick to only one or two background colors..like the cream and the teal....or the cream and the purple...I realize you have to choose what compliments the stones so that is a hard task...but sometimes when you put so many different colors on a page, it is not as pleasant to look at and it overpowers the delicate details of your jewelry. I have the same problem with my product shots and it is a real challenge! But it is not a huge deal.

I think you have done a wonderful job and I can't wait to see your other pages!

Originally Posted by SChajin

Love the logo and the colors, don't know where the cows fit...but I love them too

Cows?? what cows?
They must have been in the stables, all I see is an empty pasture.

Ditto above comments, don't forget to center your pages.

Hi,
Thanks for the reviews,
and i like that you like the logo, as it is all my own (lotsa) work.
As for the photos and layout, yes, I see what you mean, but, as I can't do much about the pics for around 6 weeks or so, please wait until I post the upgrades.
By the way, my son who now lives and works in
Scotland, was far more critical than my good friends at vodatalk!
will hope for more reviews,
Jock
PS my jewelry(jewellery) is better in real life!!!

PS,
forget the PS that was only my opinion,
Jock

Hi,
I enjoy your name as well as your site. Well done.
You should change your title of your home page from "home page" to "Loch Designs Jewllery Home Page". The reason is that this is the default description when one adds your page to favourites. Yes, I did!
You need to 'center in browser' your home page, and/or check the page dimensions are what you intended them to be.
I think the colours, pictures and pic border colours are great.
If I were to be really picky, your might get a classier look by showing fewer pictures, and with a picture border of 1 pixel.
I like the background colour, as I said, but there have been comments about colour clashes. You might find that for your product pages you will have to resort to the good old white background.
Great job. Good luck.

Thanks for all your comments, and I have made changes to 3 of the pages including the home page.
Will publish them and ask for more comment, in a new thread.
It's amazing what you can't see when you think you've got it nearly right!
Again thanks,
jock.

I do think you should keep all of your links (buttons) together to make one big navigation. It is confusing for me.

Hi, it's looking good although I have to agree with Jeremy on the buttons issue. I'm not keen on the white 'background' of your buttons either but that's just my opinion. Otherwise I like it. I also like the products you have on show. Well done and keep up the good work :o)
Karen

www.redgypsy.co.uk

Wow! Look how "unified" your page/pictures look now? Your jewelry really takes center stage since it is not competing with the different backdrop colors you had before.

Do you like it??? I think it is stunning! But you have to like it most of all! You will have to be careful with that dark purple, though , so it doesn't change the "color" of your stones...but you already know that!!! I think you could still use two different background colors in your product shots in your catalog pages when necessary, but I really think the one color on your home page looks more "elegant" instead of jumbled. But that's just my opinion.

I'm glad you kept the cows!!!! LOL Great job! Can't wait to see the finished site so I can shop!

Nice, looks very good now.
-Consider taking the parenthesis off Copyright © 2006-2006 (Loch Designs Jewellery)
-The "Links" doesn't work.
-The under construction message can now be taken off too.
-Nice view from your front porch, try to fit it in with your jewelry, i.e nature's inspiration or whatever = marketing.
-Notice on your NavBar that some titles start with lower case and others upper. Consistency is preferred.

Good work

Hi Jock,

You are off to a great start...vey nice jewellry too and I love your logo. Will be seeing more 'celtic' knots etc type designs... I think I have a nice celtic knot background somewhere in my image files...if you like send me and e-mail and I'll send to you...

You are duplicating your posts.
http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/cus...ut-thanks.html

Oops,
Sorry , thought I was doing the right thing,
Jock

No problem, you're doing good.

Hi Jock,
Still looking a good site.. Islandcrazy was right about the background colours to the jewellery! Glad to see the cows are still there - When's the store open? Christmas is a-comin'

hmmm, third mention of cows......
Now there's a marketing idea, hang a piece of your best jewellery/jewelry on a horn and take a nice digital pic. Combine the two elements sort of the inspiration behind the artwork.

Originally Posted by bill2006

hmmm, third mention of cows......
Now there's a marketing idea, hang a piece of your best jewellery/jewelry on a horn and take a nice digital pic. Combine the two elements sort of the inspiration behind the artwork.

LOL..took me awhile to find them...they are on the ABOUT US page...good idea on marketing though...might have to try with goats here in JA...lol

Hi again,
many thanks for all the input. unfortunately I'm in Bonnie Scotland at the moment, on holiday, for the next six weeks(lucky me) and I won't be able to make any changes to the existing pages in the meantime. I have noted all comments,and will tweak some areas, and will add more pages as I get the chance during our break. I will have some sort of a store up by mid to late October, I hope.
Again many thanks for the input, and bluevoda rocks!
Regards, Jock.

Very pretty jewelery mate! I love that site! Great job mate!

Beautiful jewerly and the site looks great.
I have cows here too .:)

Thought your site was well done, can't wait to come back to see the rest. Bill you are too funny.

Hi to all who have given so much help.
We have had a surreal experience trying to log on today!!!!
We think maybe you have been under attack, and it was a real relief to finally log on to Vodahost. In Australia we have been re-directed and misinformed something chronic( excuse the vernacular)
It was with some relief we managed to come here!
Anyhow( again the vernacular) we have managed with great difficulty ( please I hope that spelling is right) to upload our pages.
Please check out our site including all links, spelling, meta tags, and whatever help us poor mortals need! Please does the sitemake sense.
I do not yet have the store up and running, (only the store front page.)
Should I have links for the store categories from the index page? Help!
Love this forum, Love all the advice, Blimey!
Had a great time in Scotland. Oh Aye!
Will post some brilliant (in my opinion) photos for all to see soon.
Again many thanks ,
John (Jock of Loch)
www.lochdesignsjewellery.com

good job on the site but i need to ask was it intentional to have jewellery instead of the correct spelling jewelery?

Originally Posted by naghosthunter

good job on the site but i need to ask was it intentional to have jewellery instead of the correct spelling jewelery?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Jewellery

http://www.reference.com/search?db=web&q=Jewellery


lol :)

I love the logo too ... and your site is very nice and yes it makes sense, you get some real warm customer satisfaction from your links, taking care of the jewellry (various spelling of that word, lol) and taking care of customer satisfaction ....

you are doing a good job

going back to look for that cow .... lol

Yes and anytime you can categorize something and have its own page and a link to it is really good ...

Hi again,
I had updated yesterday and added pages. Had forgotten to publish links page so have added a short page. Seems to be a slight problem with the look of it?
Thanks for all input.
Jock

www.lochdesignsjewellery.com

PS the many spellings of jewelry, jewellry, jewelery, jewellery,is giving me nightmares!

i've published my page www.mitchellsdance.com and the site isn't coming up. what am i supposed to do now? all i keep getting is Index of / and all the images i've put on the site.
I put in a help ticket DAYS ago and no answer....

Jock: Very nice site. I to love the logo. Personally I'd like to see a nav bar on all your pages instead of having to keep going back to the home page. But that's just me. Other than that, Looks good! Congratulations on a job well done. Look forward to seeing your store on line.

PENGUINROCKS: Please start a new thread in the help area. You won't get help here on some elses thread. Just trying to be polite!

Hi,
Again thanks to all for your input. Liked the idea of the menu on each page, so now we do. See what you think, but any more changes will have to wait.
Am working towards getting the store working, but am struggling for time.
Still trying to decide on doing the whole site in BV or Soholaunch in a sub-domain! pressure -pressure!
Again thanks to all,
Jock.

www.lochdesignsjewellery.com

Much better, now I can get around better. You'll do great I'm sure. Let us know when it's online.

Your first page needs to be published as index

Save it as index and re-publish.

Hi Jock! Just cruising through sites and posts that I've missed the past few days. Great looking website! I liked Bill's suggestion about the cow as a marketing ploy! Udderly Great Jewelry???

Best Wishes For Success!

Poppi
www.newmexicorides.com

One thing I liked the most is the navigation! Even if the page does not have the side menu bar fully, you have given a Home button, which will direct the users back to Home Page. This is really good.

Look and feel & colour is amazing!

In the side menu, some buttons appear in Bold while some do not. Is there any specific reason for this?

Good job!

Hi,
To answer about the bold type on the menus, I felt that these were places I wanted the viewer to visit, as I felt the information in the pages was important for them to read. I suppose I felt that the bold type would encourage visitors to visit these pages.
Whether it works or not, I don't know! Whether it's too obvious, I would like further input.
Again thanks to all for without the input from you, I'd be at square one still.
Regards,
Jock

www.lochdesignsjewellery.com/

I love your site mate! I love your jewlerry to!

The site is nice. The color scheme is awesome. Keep up the good work. Good luck.
David

Jock,
nice site, I would go with the darker color on the nav fonts.
Nicely done.

Hi,
Many thanks for all your comments.
I will be opening my store soon, (i.e. one page at a time, with pendants being the first) and have decided to go with BlueVoda at this stage, as I love the flexibility, and my stock, as it's all hand made, is limited. I will run secured https:// pages for my store, with a dedicated IP address, and for the beginning use Paypal as a secure credit card portal.
As of now I consider this thread closed, as your valued input has enabled us to have the confidence to go the next step.
Will start a new thread which will begin "web store open finally, please review format" and please give your opinion on the format, as I know I'll need your input to make it the best I can.
Again, all my thanks, ( I think the expression is LOL)
Kind regards, Jock.
www.lochdesignsjewellery.com

Beautiful home page. The second page, the one when I clicked on store I think, it had a bunch of jewelry hanging on some horns. It is too cluttered and didn't do justice to the jewelry. Show the pieces one at a time or as a set.