h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Congratulations, Az! Best of luck to you.

what a loverly page az, congrats to both you and noggin, and I hope it goes well, I will pass the link of your page on

Thanks everyone.

We also think the page is lovely . . . now waiting to see how sales go.

We got a sample package thingy of twenty different types of boxes for shipping last week - very funny when we tried getting some of them to actually look like boxes (they all came flat-packed). In fact, we gave up on one or two of them. But nice quality stuff - all recycled material.

~jwf~ pointed out that our 'ps message' at the end of our announcement email was perhaps not terribly clear. We asked people who did not want to remain on the mailing list to 'just reply' to the email and we would take them off the list straight away (though frankly, we will probably only send out new announcements when either a new collection becomes available or there are special sale offers).

Anyhow, ~jwf~ thought this might keep people from replying to the email who just wanted to leave a comment, which we hope isn't the case. Also, comments can be left on the website itself. In any case, if someone simply replies without a message we have assumed this meant they'd prefer not to be on the mailing list and have deleted their address.

I still would like to do something that shows the detail of the cotton lace inserts on a couple of the dresses (as Sho suggested) as I'm also not happy about how unclear that is in some of the photos. They really are pretty and take a lot of work to do, which is reflected in the price. But if people can't see the detail they may not understand why it costs that much, you know?

Well, continuing to work . . .


az

It's a good site, Az, clean, uncluttered, easy to navigate, has all the utilities one would expect. It comes as professional and un-gushy.

What particularly I like about it is the coherent look and feel of the site, not just internally but with the pictures and the clothes. It looks as if you have spent a lot on branding consultancy to achieve that coherence of theme and message, and it is a major credit to you both (and your web designer) that you haven't.

Interestingly, when looking at the site I did not 'notice' that all the clothes are white, even though that was very very obvious when I saw them in your flat. It might be worth considering, when you do come to doing coloured collections, keeping the main photographs white with small images of colour swatches acting as thumbnails for larger colour images of the clothes.

I notice from your metatags that you are using both American and British spellings of fibre/fiber which is good. Personally I felt that you could put more in your metatags, but that is a very individual choice - take your web-designers advice on that one. I don't know enough about how Google distinguishes between languages (over and above the language metatag) to advise whether or not it is worth having key words in more than one language. An hour or so spent looking at the source code for websites found on Googl's Spain site might be instructive. (Nice clean code, by the way with good solid consistency from page to page, which is harder than you'd think).

You could possibly get away with a bit more biographical detail, simply because how you came to design clothes like this is an interesting story, but I appreciate that that is a matter of personal style, and maybe not something you'd like to do.

Good luck with the Google rankings, and lots and lots of good luck with the sales.



Ben

Thanks for the comments, Ben.

Re: the meta tags, that was all done by Chris, though we did give him a list of key words to use. He is *very* meticulous about having 'clean code' and emphasised the importance of that, including telling us that we should never cut&paste anything onto our info pages that might have any Microsoft/Word stuff attached to it as that would 'mess up' his nice clean code. We can certainly ask him about adding more tags/key words as this was something also suggested by six7s.

As for colour options, we were originally going to offer three colours: the 'natural white' (more an unbleached/off white, not a pure *white* white), a 'café con leche' and a deep khaki green. Also, we had originally planned to offer three different weights of linen. We have sample lengths of all three colours (and weights), and they really do look good when you mix&match them, but since we have to order a minimum of 200 metres of each colour for production we had to pare it down to one colour and just two weights. So the styles that were designed for the heaviest weight linen are 'on hold' for now.

When/if we are able to offer more colour options we will probably just add a colour swatch page with a disclaimer about colours not appearing the same on all computer screens and, as you suggested, keep the photos in the most neutral colour (in the case of this first collection, the natural white).

Re: more biographical detail. Yes, this is a very good idea and it was also suggested by a friend of mine in Bristol who once worked for a company that sold clothes online. She told me not to mind if it comes across as a bit 'corny' because people actually like this sort of thing as it gives them more of a sense of dealing with 'real people' and not just a 'faceless' company. She suggested some photos of Seville (as my 'inspiration') and also of me and N in the studio, etc. She even said getting the cats in the photos would 'add a personal touch'. To be honest, this kind of makes me cringe a bit but I can see her point. So I may actually enlist her help in writing up some biographical stuff (as I'd be cringing too much to think or type properly ).

Anyhow, we appreciate all the feedback as it helps us to fine-tune the page for actual users - obviously we are too involved to see it as someone seeing it for the first time would.




az

One bit of feedback we got by email is something I'd like to ask people about here. Has anyone noticed that the page size on your particular computer means you have to scroll over to see the entire page?

Chris was very adament about this when we asked why there was a white margin (on our computers - one laptop, one desktop) on either side when we viewed the page. And he said this was to take into account that most people (and he showed us a statistics page to back this up) are still working with small screen monitors and so we didn't want to alienate them by making them have to scroll sideways.

The other thing he was adament about was not 'locking' the font size so that the page could not be changed by the user, for those who either preferred or needed a larger font. So while the page is designed to look best at Medium/Normal font size, people can choose to have the font larger if they want to.

But if someone is looking at the page with the biggest font size allowed (on IE - on other browsers there are no limits) yes, the page starts to look a bit wonky, though still without side-scrolling being necessary.

I think the comment was made by someone who keeps lots of frames open on their laptop, in which case I suppose scrolling becomes necessary? It's a totally valid comment, just thought I'd ask here if anyone else has found the same thing happening.


az

I definitely didn't have that problem, using 17" monitor.

Have you tried it using frames, Arnie? Noggin just did and found he had to scroll over after a certain point.

Meanwhile, the page is designed so that people using a 14" monitor can still see the entire page. Which is why on your 17" (I have the same size monitor) there are white margins on either side. Um, are there?

Noggin's opinion is that people using frames make that choice to view things in that way and they can make their frames as big or small as they want to, so it's very hard to accomodate everyone in this manner without shutting down options for others.

az

Yeah, I didn't use frames. I did have the white margins, but didn't notice until you pointed it out - they're not a detraction. I agree with what Noggin said about frames...if they've chosen to use frames, then they're scrolling horizontally all the time...

one problem with frames is that every one has different screen settings. a good website should be "liquid" adjustable to dfferent screens*, but I like a bit of space on both sides.

* at least between the 2 most used 800 by 600 and 1024 by 768. I have a 20.1" with 1024 by 768 settings. your website looks very well designed.

Liquid is a very nice option, pheloxi - it also costs a heck of lot more to have done. Here is a website that Chris has just done that offers not only liquid but also zoom options.

http://www.museoflamenco.net/


az

liquid should not cost more, but it might need more testing.

10% of your bugdet should go into usability, because will get more than 100 % return on your investment..
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030107.html

agian I think your webdesigner did good job!

b.t.w. I did not mean liquid thru a button, but "automatic" liquid. an extra button might be fancy if you create "usability menu".

Gordon Ramsey says food in restaurants should be simple (not too much in it). I think websites should be same! too mucl information can zap the surfer to the next website.

Yes, we are very pleased with the somewhat 'minimilist' design of the page. With just enough information for users to navigate easily.

But we'll be adding more 'information' stuff soon (mostly in the general info and shop news areas) using lots of our key words - apparently this also helps for Google pick it up, having lots of text.


az

Oooh! Just tried googling 'azahar natural clothing' and we come up first on the first page (for now anyhow) as a new online shop featured by our E-commerce provider (the software we are using for our shop).

"Exclusive yet affordable women's clothing in all natural fabrics. Retail and wholesale."



az

what also helps is friends to add a link on thier website.

oh do start a blog!

Business bites the blogging bullet
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4879160.stm
note the "English cut" about "London's Savile Row".


more about blog
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/

I have passed on the info to my friends who have a natural-fabrics clothes shop. Not having their e-mail address to hand, I printed them out in colour and posted them on. Hope something comes of it.

TC!

Meanwhile, Noggin has started a post on his new blog about 'web traffic', including input about the webpage in general. If anyone wants to drop by and leave a comment, it's here:

http://noggin.wordpress.com/2006/05/07/web-traffic/


az

Hid az,

I've been trying to follow the links to your website and I keep getting the following:

"Web Site Not Responding
The web site you have requested may be experiencing technical difficulties due to a busy or broken server.

Please try again by clicking the Reload icon on your navigation bar or, if that doesn't work, you may want to return to the site at a later time.

502 Connection Hangup "

Which is a total mystery to me; what the heck is a 502 connection hangup? It just doesn't like me?

I've been trying the reload button, too, but keep getting the same message. Hopefully it's due to your success, and that everyone is visiting your site!

Love your blog, BTW.

SC

<< Hid az,>>

would that be a slip of the Freudian style, then? -- sprry!

SC