Finally - a website for you to see!

[katy111]

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Welllllll, we have since published a brand new homepage, if its not asking too much, can you all please look once more too see if this is an improvement?



(keeping in mind it isn't finished, the picture isnt a link as of yet, and also the navigation bar isnt what it should be, nor is the rest of the site - there arent even any banners on the homepage yet!)

Quick question, should we put a contact email address on the homepage? Or just leave it to our "contact us" page?

[babrees]

Site is completely down now

Personally I never put email addresses on sites (coz of spammers) but use a contact form instead, then I have a link to that form on all pages

[katy111]

We've took the site down to fix the problems with it.

Thanks for the advice with the links.

[mjp3000]

Quality of the design is very important, and as such, I would get your hands on some HTML and CSS training. I personally wouldn't pay for Dreamweaver training, but that's only because once you know HTML, 90% of Dreamweaver's features become obvious in how you use them. I'm not a fan of Contribute - found it bloated and no quicker than updating sites manually. Ditched the trial version after about 2 days.

Lynda.com do some good training for a low fee, especially if you subscribe monthly - it's the most comprehensive and best quality I've come across (for video training). Not as in depth as books, obviously.

Once you know the basics of HTML and CSS, it is easy to make simple, clean sites that look good and are well organised. Relying on packages to do everything means that when things go wrong, you won't know why. And if things need tweaking, you won't know how to do it. Much better to understand it from the bottom up.

If you really want nothing to do with the coding side of things, just use Wordpress

Good first attempt though - my first website was significantly worse than that, I can assure you!

[katy111]

Thanks for the advice we really do appreciate it.

Still having a problem with the links. Where on Commission Junction do I find the piece of code to make sure we get our commission?

Thanks.

[mainlime]

Log in to CJ. Bottom of the page, select the merchant from the dropdown, click OK. New window opens from which you can find links.

You probably want to do deep linking though (direct to a page on the merchant's website other than the homepage). They're not easy to find on CJ, seems to vary between merchants and some times not there at all. Usually it's easier to download the product feed and take the links from there but CJ manage to make even that an ordeal. If you can get the products you want on a different network I'd advise you to change.

[Affi Liate]

I could sit here all night saying what I don't like about this but thought I'd try a different approach.

What is more important are the positives. I'll re-word that; THE positive.

I am impressed at your efforts. You seem determined...

You have made it clear you are totally new to this.

You've made the effort totally off your own back (I'm assuming) and under your own steam - picked a niche, had a go at site building, learned deeplinking (sort of), done some network research, signed up to some merchants, blah, blah, blah

First thing: crack the deeplinking. Make sure you KNOW that the links you have in place will track, same with all future ones.

By doing what you have done with this effort (and I couldn't do that) you have learned a whole bunch of stuff.

I read some of the comments - sure I would look at some software such as dreamweaver/wordpress (or whatever the general consensus is). That will eliminate many of the time consuming design/coding bits you are clearly learning.

Get the aesthetics right before you go nutso with SEO.

Then think about the SEO side of things.

(I wouldn't really advise doing PPC personally, not untill you get the site looking more professional/appealing).

Don't forget you've put hard work into this and are ON THE LEARNING CURVE.

SEO: Once the site is as you want it:

Think about page names

/id10.html will do very little for SEO (even with good content on the pages)

/candles-holders.html is going to have more long term benefit.

Make sure the page meta sections are slick in terms of not too much, but quality content, keywords, informative relevant page description etc (often what Google will use in the results). Disclaimer: you may have already done this I aint got time to check...

From an SEO point of view you will need to get TEXT,TEXT and more TEXT on each of the pages. certainly the ones that relate to the higher search volumes in this sector.

Sure these things will take time BUT you are making the effort. Good on you...

Summary:

[1]Make sure the links are good.

[2]Get the design right

[3]Page names/meta sections nailed

[4]Page names.html

[5]Think how you can integrate some text for SEO

Keep at it, you've made a good effort with a large-ish project for a first attempt.

Good niche, great domain name, good luck.

Affi Ever After

[dave21]

Hi.

I really can't comment too much on your site since I don't have much track record in making money. However, I have a quick tip that might help out - ignore if not...

I'm a web application developer and work alongside a web designer. Now, as far as applications go, I can write what ever you like, but when it comes to design, I think this is something that you've either got or not - I err strongly on the not side.

However, something that my mate has taught me is that simple design is in fact quite easy. One of the first things is to do is to pick a colour scheme that is basic and where each colour complements each other. This isn't easy if you pick the colours yourself, so try using a tool like this:

[ws] Color Scheme Generator 2

3 colours is usually a good start and it can really tie a site together.

The reason why I made this comment is that although you have 3 colours in your design, 2 of the browns are maybe too close a match and you're not getting the contrast that you should have.

Hope that is useful.
Dave.

[katy111]

Thanks again for all the help and advice. We are working on everything you have said to us and are rebuilding the website. It really is appreciated.

Still having problems with our links though. We've got the links from the advertiser but can't find the piece of link to make sure it tracks and we get our commission from commission junction?

Thanks again.

[katy111]

hiya everyone, doing lot sof new things to the website at the moment trying to figure out dreamweaver, a little bit stuck so if anyone could help it would be great many thanks

[PrincessConsuela]

I haven't read through all the replies, but in case no one else has mentioned it
DON'T USE FRAMES!!!!! they are deprecated web techonolgy and make your site look old fashioned. Also they are very inaccessible and search engine unfriendly

Sorry it was just the first thing that jumped out at me!

[warren_p]

With regards to Dreamweaver, when I first started I bought a video tutorial from ebay for about £5 and it was really useful and I would have struggles with out it

[babrees]

hiya everyone, doing lot sof new things to the website at the moment trying to figure out dreamweaver, a little bit stuck so if anyone could help it would be great many thanks

Well done on what you have managed to learn so far! What are you stuck on?

I would agree with the above comment regarding frames. I would also suggest making all you pages the same colour scheme and layout to make it look uniform and more professional.

[findlite]

Hello,

I think you need a little re-think of the site:

- Design, like Travel Pixel said its a bit early 90's. Dunno if you could look it up on a 486 though lol! I think with selling beds you probably need a smart looking website.
- How about going local? Do some research on local keywords eg: "Bed Shops Gloucester". You might be suprised and local results have far less competition on Google plus the added bonus of mapping listings. If I was you id get stuck into a top mapping listing, top Adwords listing and a nice top local organic listing. Once iv gone with that id go for a local/slightly regional Yell.com priority listing.
- See if you can get a deal to send telephone traffic to a merchant and get your commision that way also. You can rent a local number for pennies at Home - Gradwell Dot Com - almost all area codes are available plus 0870 0845 and 0800, id go local though because thats your selling point from a personal view. My courier companies number is a rented Gradwell one, its memorable, looks good and as far as people are aware they are calling an office in Gloucester City.
- Adopt a mascot too, something cute and cuddly and make sure it goes out on all your company stationary. The good thing about being local too is that you can realy take charge of marketing and brand awareness and getting people to recognise the web address and your mascot.

[tbp]

As has been mentioned recently, you really need to get rid of the frames.

Theres absolutely no need or benefit in having them, and they can actually cause problems. Certain devices can't view them properly, but the biggest problem is with search engines.

They are fine when someone goes to the index page of your site, and the main frameset loads, and then calls in the each frame, so the user can see the whole page as intended. However, the search engines can get lost in them. Each frame is in effect it's own page, and these can be indexed by the search engines as such. So, say someone types in a keyword bringing up a page other than the index page. What they could get is a link from the search engine to just the content section, which will view as it's own page. That means that the user will only see the content page, and the whole framset won't load, meaning they will have no header, and no navigation menu, so can't move around the site.

In the next version of HTML, which granted won't be around for a couple of years, frames have been removed as they are now seen as totally redundant.

You have a couple of options. Either you can use PHP includes of .shtml (html equivalent so you don't need PHP or other server side language) to include the header file and navigation menu. This means that there is one file for header, and one for the navigation menu, but they are brought into the page. This means you won't get the problem with the search engines etc taking the user just to the content section, they will always see the whole page.

The other option is to use dreamweavers template system, which lets you define the page, with the middle section as editable. When you create a new page from the template, you can change the central section and it will automatically add the header and menu HTML. If you change the header of add a new menu option for example, it will automatically make those changes on every page of the site for you. Only downside is you are locked into using Dreamweaver for editing, so anyone who edits your site has to have it.

Either solution will work, and give you exactly the same results as you have now (although it will look neater as you won't have the ugly frame borders), but you won't have any of the problems that you have with frames and search engines etc.

It really won't be a big job to make the change, you can just cut and paste the existing HTML code that you have into the new format, so it's an hours work if that, and the benefits are well worth it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, if you are stuck with Dreamweaver feel free to PM me and i`ll see what I can do to help. For a while I used to provide tech support for Macromedia (the original authors before Adobe took over).