Please critique new site

[Kimberly9999]

Hello & thank you for such a constructive forum. I have been hooked since I found it and would like to post a site to be critiqued. I have just placed live recently & have not yet submited to any engines or directories - http://www.herkimercrystalsonline.com

In answer to the questions:
Is this site completed or under construction?
complete

Who is your target audience?
focus now is mineral collectors & jewelry makers, could expand to metaphysical audience

How important is it for your site to rank well?
important, plan to post on ebay & yahoo auctions after shopping cart is in place, hopefully a week or so.

How important is usability?
important

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)
sell, will also expand information

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
sure

Do you want design suggestions?
please

Thank you in advance for your constructive criticism.
Kimberly

[scottiecl]

Hi Kimberly! :hi:

Are mineral collectors and jewelry makers likely to be searching for "herkimer crystals"? This seems to be the dominant keyphrase on the page.

The commented line of text doesn't help anything and probably ought to be removed- it could be seen as spam if the code was reviewed by a human.

Nice, simple design! Easy to navigate.

Overall, I would say you could include more descriptive text that includes your targeted keywords.

[scottiecl]

Whoops! I just noticed some of your pages don't have titles- a title is very important to your page because it helps the search engines to know what is on that page. Try to use keywords in the page title where they make sense.

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Kimberly! :hi:

Yes, nice clean site!

You should put an "about us" link at the bottom of your page and tell visitors who you are and what you are about on that page. All you have is an email address which does not show lots of trust. I also tried to find a way to order the crystals, but had a hard time until I found you have to email you. When the shopping cart is built, make sure a visitor knows instantly and without question exactly how to order. Make it easy to do so.

Also what Scottie said. You should do lots of keyphrase research to find all of those niche phrases to target. Then write your content with those phrases in mind.

[Kimberly9999]

Hi Scottie,
Thanks for such a quick response.
In reply to:
Are mineral collectors and jewelry makers likely to be searching for "herkimer crystals"? This seems to be the dominant keyphrase on the page.
Yes, this and/or herkimer diamonds. I tried to speckle both phrases throughout. At this point Herkimer's are the only stones for sale.
The commented line of text doesn't help anything and probably ought to be removed- it could be seen as spam if the code was reviewed by a human.
thanks, i will remove

Overall, I would say you could include more descriptive text that includes your targeted keywords.
any suggestions? I have added more to the 'notes' line throughout the site. Isn't less verbiage better when it would only be making thing wordy?
Regarding the titles, don't think I forgot them on any of the pages but I will double check.

Hello ihelpyou & thank you as well,
I'm hearing you regarding the about us page. I will add one prior to submitting anywhere.
I agree with the order info. At this point I have placed includes on the pages with email info.
Guess it's not as complete as I thought :)
I have also just tested the weight of my pages, whew! Working right now on optimizing all. I have all 'a' and 'aa' pages reoptimized. One I cut from 76.75kb to 19.58. Seems I need to learn to balance quality of images with quanity of kb.
Any research on this? Like how long will most users wait to open a page they know will have enlarged pictures on?
Thanks again,
Kimberly :p

[Blue]

Hi Kimberly :hi: and welcome to the forums!

A few more suggestions/comments:

You could get rid of most of those Meta tags as they are really useless (keep the description, keywords, and http-equiv Meta tags).

You could externalize your javascript (if you do a search in these forums, you'll see how).

You could also externalize your CSS (though it's only a few lines of code so it doesn't really hurt).

And ,you have all your text on the home page as <h5> which is somewhat out of the ordinary. From a coding standpoint, headings are supposed to be just that. I would format the text via some CSS and use actual headings for each paragraph (with keyphrases in the headings).

I might suggest that you add a contact us page with a form that allows potential customers to ask questions about the products. Anything that allows for two way communication is helpful.

And what Scottie and Doug said.

Your site looks nice though.

[scottiecl]

On a site selling items that are one-of-a-kind, like you are, I would suggest having optimized images with a link to a full-size higher quality image if a user were interested in a more detailed look.

I know if I was going to buy one, I'd want to see it from several angles. (They are really neat, by the way. I actually might buy one for a birthday gift for a friend...very reasonably priced :) )

You could add phrases like, "This gem would make an excellent whatever, we suggest blah blah blah". Research your phrases on Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) using their free demo to get a good idea of the phrases you should be targeting.

This is a business where you are selling unique items so it is very appropriate and convincing for you to write a bit more about suggested uses for the stone and it gives you more text for the SE's to index. As Doug said, an About Us page would probably gain more trust from your viewers as well. (As long as you don't write, "We picked these here shiny stones up in a field and thought they were pretty so we are trying to sell them online...")

[aspwiz]

Hi Kimberly....

I think you could perhaps use the words 'Herkimer crystal' a little more on your homepage. As it is a keyphrase you need to be using it more that 2 times imo.

The homepage content could be a little longer i feel 200-250 words I think would be a good aim.

You could benefit from an H1 tag + H2 tag with a keyphrase.... All the content is in <h5> style... weird that. Consider using normal text controlled with CSS (external).

As others have said, remove all the meta info except keywords, description and content-type and externalise your javascript... there seems to quite a lot of it.

The Matrix page has the same title as the grade 'd' page.

Hope any of this helps.

[Kimberly9999]

Great suggestions, thank you all.
To recap,

remove excess meta code on the pages.
i will probably externalize the js & css on the index. have done so on all internal pages. This page could be worked better, as I used Fireworks to create the code for the logo/links cell & is still pointing to the prototype code.
Definately add more text and keyword herkimer crystals to home/index page. What is overkill, more than 5 times?
I have seen WordTracker listed in other forums & will give it a look. Also, I am using 8-10 keywords in the meta. What is a good rule of thumb? I would like to keep it to less, but all seem relevant and I have tried to use all keywords on a page at least once.
regarding the enlarged image pages, would you all wait 10 seconds for a page of this type to open? I have optimized many down to a 4 sec. load (56 modem), but am unhappy with the quality on some of the images.
You could benefit from an H1 tag + H2 tag with a keyphrase.... All the content is in <h5> style... weird that.
lol, I thought I was being clever! I know the SE's like the <h> tag, so an entire paragraph in <h> should be really important, right? :rolleyes:
I have corrected the matrix title pages, thanks
An about us page sounds like a must.

The crystals are truely beautiful, and reasonably priced :)
Thanks again all, I will be lurking around these forums to be sure!
Kimberly

[scottiecl]

Keywords- aim for 2 phrases of no more than 3 words. You can optimize different pages for different keywords so pick different phrases for your "about us" page, which is a good page for potential clients to land on.

Yes, if I was planning to purchase I would probably wait as long as it took to see a detailed view of the product. I would want the thumbnail to be fast-loading though.

Funny, if you get ranked well, the word "matrix" may draw some unintended traffic! :lol:

Don't abuse the <h> tags- as more and more webmasters do this their usefulness to the search engines decreases. And you really don't need to! A few good links in and the SE's will read all your text, <h> tag or not.

Give it about 2 months after you get a good link or two before you can tell where your site will fall in the rankings, then tweak your text if needed and keep getting those good links!

[jacobskl]

Kimberly,

Realize that I am a content person, therefore am biased about what I find worth visiting in a web site. Tehrefore, take or leave the following as you will.

As a browser who doesn't know much about Herkimer crystals, but who is married to a rock hound, I see the biggest missing items from your site to be information. I know you see this site as a shop, but the casual browser (read: buyer) is not going to stick around long enough to buy if there isn't content to tell them why they should buy and why they should buy from you.

I know you are adding an about us page. That is a good start. What about also getting some content pages (what people have done with the crystals/diamonds, where they come from, etc.)? Another idea is to add information on how you came to be interested in the subject, what you find interesting about the crystals, where more information can be found, etc.

As I said, take or leave this information as you will.

[Kimberly9999]

Scottie,
Yes, I have read that 2-3 keywords or phrases should be the focus. I think I should do a page by page with this approach. I guess it will be a good experiment to focus some pages just on "quartz crystals" or "gemstones". But, ALL pages are "herkimer crystals" and "herkimer diamonds". Won't it hurt not to use those two phrases on all pages?
Don't think too many users will keyword search for Herkimers using the word 'matrix', but it would be interesting to see.

Hi Jacobski,
You are right, an information page is planned, but really wanted to get the base store up first. There is so much good info about Herkimer's already on other sites, I thought maybe a direct link exchange with some of them would be a good approach. Still thinking about this. A jewerly page is also in the works . . . if only there were more hours in the day :)

Kimberly

[Blue]

Yes, I have read that 2-3 keywords or phrases should be the focus. I think I should do a page by page with this approach. I guess it will be a good experiment to focus some pages just on "quartz crystals" or "gemstones". But, ALL pages are "herkimer crystals" and "herkimer diamonds". Won't it hurt not to use those two phrases on all pages? This is the beauty of multiple pages, each targeting unique "sets" of keyphrases. You have more of a chance of getting targeted buyers into the site if you target more keyphrases.

The key is to only use a unique set of 2-3 keyphrases on a single page. That way, those searching for "herkimer crystals" or "herkimer diamonds" will come in to your site through the single page that is optimized for those phrases, say, your home page, while someone searching for "quartz crystals" or "gemstones" will enter your site on the page that is opt. for those phrases, say, your gemstones page.

By separately optimizing different pages with different unique sets of keyphrases, you are targeting more people, but those people are still within the scope of what you're selling.

[sytemaker]

could do with a bit of colour...

[Kimberly9999]

Just want to send a quick Thank You to all who took the time to review this new site. I have completed many of your suggestions. Still some work to do, like an "about us" page, but things are moving along.
Thanks again for a great forum.
Kimberly

[Daminc]

I just checked Google for the phrase 'herkimer crystals' and I don't think ANY of the sites in the top ten are optimised so Kimberly9999 shouldn't have a hard time in getting a good ranking.
There is so much good info about Herkimer's already on other sites, I thought maybe a direct link exchange with some of them would be a good approach.
If you can intergrate all the real juicy information to your site then there will be little point in anyone researching 'herkimer crystals' to go anywhere else, would there ;)