Website Comments and Input (Sage Creek Custom Knives)

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Hey there!
I'm really impressed with the layout of your site. It is extremely easy to follow, spam free, and loads quickly. I think that the only thing that keeps you from standing above the competition would be your design. You could add a little bit of color (or even keep a dark color scheme), with a simple design that might add a little bit of separation from your links and main content area and header/footer.
Either way, great site, great product!
Best of luck to you

On the good side, you choice of colors stands out and makes your text easy to read. On the down side, I think you would do well to put more images of knives on the home page. You are in the business of selling knives, but there is only one knife on the home page. Is that your best selling knife? Do you only sell one kind of knife?

Thanks for the suggestions so far and keep them coming. I only put one knife image on home page because I didn't want it to seem too cluttered, plus I thought that the one image of a knife would be enough to give viewers an idea of the knives.

On the navigation there are several different type of knife catagories listed so I guess I felt that the fact I sell different types of knives was obvious.

So Keithleslie any ideas how I might go about adding different knife images without making the home page look or feel cluttered.

I do appreciate the suggestions and I will take another look at homepage.

This site is nice and clean. On some pages you have a header image of a knife, and on others, you don't. Maybe you should keep the consistency? Also, the header image that is on those pages, is the same on each page.

Adam

simple and easy link to navigate
looks very clear for the text bcos u use the contrast color
for knife image, if u can take a picture hand pick that knife
good job for u

Hi Tianna,

Sorry it took me so long to get around to reviewing this.

I'm not really sure that this is a huge improvement over designs you've had in the past. I went to to [url="http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sagecreek1.com/"]Archive.org[/url] to take a look at what had been done with this site in the past. I thought the early-2005 designs with the green background had the most potential. Black is a tricky colour to use as a background because it brings a really dark feel for a site. Sort of like a theatre, which is appropriate for some sites. But not for this one IMO.

The graphics and design here are quite simple and a little weak IMO. The early-2005 design was a lot better in that respect. It's okay to have a simple design for something like this, but the current site almost has no design at all. Try to work on your graphics and spice things up a little bit.

I also feel that the text on the front page could be more engaging. Talk about the benefits to the user and try to make them stand out in some way. Use headers and lists to break things up, and maybe some special formatting to pull out some key points.

The navigation on the left should be broken up so that you can easily pick out the product pages from the other site information. Even a line break after "Other knives" would be helpful. THen people can see that the top section is what they use to find the products on the site. Then they can use the other links if they need additional information. Put the "Marvin Poole" link at the top of that section and call it "About Marvin"or put it inside the "About Sage Creek" section. Most of what's in there could be cut down to a few short sentences. Keep the text down to what people really need to know. It's important to realize that people usually don't read text online. They skim through to find the important points. So make it easy for them and print only the important parts.

Hope that helps,

Megan;211402 wrote: The early-2005 design was a lot better in that respect.
...
The navigation on the left should be broken up so that you can easily pick out the product pages from the other site information.

I agree with Megan here. I like the simplicity of the design though. It gives a nice 'home made' feel to the site which for me emphisises the fact that that these are hand made, not mass produced commercial knives. It also implies a level of quality in the product in my opinion.

I don't like the black and green colour scheme however. For me it looks a wee bit 'tacky' and reminds me of those Warez/Game hack sites you see alot which imply a false level of 'dodgyness'. As Megan said the early- 2005 desig n was much 'friendlier'.

The links do not let you open them in a new tab/window. I like to open several tabs at a time when looking at a site. Being constrained to one page is frustrating and makes me want to click back to google. I can see the benifits of the way you have it at the moment but perhaps you could change them so that theyopen in the same page or a new tab.

pisstaker;211414 wrote: Just goes to show that if you actually have something to sell on the internet you dont have to clutter your place up with adsense and flashing banners.

I totally agree. I hate going to a website and finding it's header/sidebars crammed full of flashing adverts.

At least that's just my two cents. All the best.

Hello,

I have taken some time to follow some suggestions I received here and have make some changes to my website. I would appreciate your comments and further suggestions.

Some didn't like the blackground and other suggestions was I needed to show pics of the knives sooner on home page.

This is a new style I am working on and is not published for main viewing yet http://www.sagecreek1.com/hometestpage2.html

To see current home page go to http://www.sagecreek1.com

Please let me know what you think?