www.littleriverroasting.com

arefsha · #1 (**permalink**) 04-07-2005, 05:11 PM

Could you guys take a look at my site. I've been looking over some of your reviews and I like your ideas.

http://www.littleriverroasting.com/

I still have some copy to write, but the layout is in place. Is it easy to navigate? Does it make you want to buy our coffee? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Drew

MktgPro · #2 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 12:43 AM

Drew,

I really like the design of the site. The colors are great! Had a couple ideas...

Not sure why you need the text navigation bar across the top. But, if it is going to be there, I'd change the text color. The black against the background is difficult to read. I'd make it the same gold color as the other text on the header.

This is just a little thing, but I noticed that if you put something in the shopping cart, then empty the cart, a screen comes up saying the cart is empty. At that point, you can't go to the home page. All the other nav buttons work, except Home.

I'd take a look at your SEO practices. Its confusing to me (I'm no SEO expert) that your home page is PR3, you have lots of pages indexed and links recognized by the search engines, but you don't rank in any of the engines for your keywords. I assume your target keywords are gourmet, flavored, specialty coffee, etc.

There's something going on there I'd want to explore. How do visitors find your site? Are you targeting local customers with offline marketing? Are there other keywords you rank well for? If so, I'd put them in your meta tags, and optimize your site content for those terms.

In terms of content, I can't say it grabs me. I'd put a bit more thought into who your audience is, and what message you want to communicate to them.

But, again, I don't think anything above would prevent someone from buying from you. The site is very attractive.

Hope this helps,

Kathleen

arefsha · #3 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 01:18 AM

Kathleen. Thank you so much for your site review. Your ideas are very helpful!

I just took over the site a month ago. The PR3 was already there when I got the site. I am new to SEO, but have been doing a lot of research. Hopefully the changes I have been making will help get us into the SE results for our keywords. I've been working hard and waiting patiently for these result.

Thanks again.

-Drew

crnindia · #4 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 07:09 AM

I found your site quite nice. It should do good. I only hope your coffee is also equally good.

dojo · #5 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 08:42 AM

i don't like the font style you are using. As a rule of thumb for web pages you should use a non serif font: verdana, tahoma, arial. I find your font so hard to read, I won't even bother to see what's written there. It's tiresome for the eyes.

You should also try some :lively" images too. You has a good idea with red and green since they are complementary, but the "versions" you chose are a bit dark and sad.

The page in not bad, still there are some details to work out. And use a smaller bevel for the buttons. 0 or 1. Anything bigger doens't look elegant ;)

dojo · #6 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 08:43 AM

i don't like the font style you are using. As a rule of thumb for web pages you should use a non serif font: verdana, tahoma, arial. I find your font so hard to read, I won't even bother to see what's written there. It's tiresome for the eyes.

You should also try some :lively" images too. You has a good idea with red and green since they are complementary, but the "versions" you chose are a bit dark and sad.

The page in not bad, still there are some details to work out. And use a smaller bevel for the buttons. 0 or 1. Anything bigger doens't look elegant ;)

Cheddles · #7 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 10:50 AM

Drew,

Overall a good cleanly designed site that still evokes the earthiness of agriculture rather than the slickness of many commercial food sites.

As others have already said, serif fonts are really hard to read on computers unless they are large (eg in headings and titles). Tahoma and Verdana work well.

The buttons to the left could be a little bigger to make it easier to read the text (and the green/red images on the coffee shop rollover aren't quite aligned). The large bevel would be more in proportion as well.

The gif image at the top of the page (lrrlogo1.gif) would probably compress further if you break it into three images, allowing fewer colours in each with no loss of image quality.

At 30k, LRRroaster.jpg could probably be cut down a lot (down to about 10k) with very little noticeable image quality degradation. That photo is currently about half the size of the page so reducing its size would dramatically reduce download time - a very good thing for your opening page.

If you want to retain the red/black colour scheme for your images and text then you might consider using a lighter shade of red to allow more contrast. With such low contrast (even on my LCD monitor) the logo is virtually unreadable, especially when shrunk on the coffee summary pages.

There is a typo in the second last paragraph on the home page (process is spelled "proccess")

Nice site - now I need to make myself a cup of coffee :)

cheers and beers,

arefsha · #8 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 12:20 PM

Wow. Thanks for all of the great suggestions. I've got my work cut out for me.

MktgPro · #9 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 12:40 PM

Drew, Try checking the home page in some of the free meta tag analyzers:

http://www.widexl.com/remote/search-...-analyzer.html

http://www.submitexpress.com/cgi-bin/analyzer/meta.pl

For some reason, they're not finding your description tag....

obiztek · #10 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 03:45 PM

Hi Drew,

Nice and focused site it is.

Side graphical buttons if you like than you can use the test link.It will reduce the size of the web page.Bottom black links are visble clear just change the colour

Are you targetting you website in the top search engine position also or you just want to have website for information

arefsha · #11 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 06:22 PM

I made a bunch of changes based on everyone's suggestions. I think it is looking better already!

What do you think about the new buttons? I made them bigger and changed the bevel. My graphic design skills are almost non-existent.

Thanks again for all of the great feedback.

-Drew

BTW: I am trying to target top results in SE. I'm doing well for broad terms on Google (ie Fresh Gourmet Coffee, Coffee Free Shipping, Fresh Organic Coffee). I'm still trying to figure out how to get better results for "Gourmet Coffee" or "Organic Coffee". I'm having less luck with Yahoo and msn...

MktgPro · #12 (**permalink**) 04-09-2005, 07:20 PM

Drew,

For "fresh gourmet coffee", here's how you rank:

Google #7
Yahoo! No
MSN #7
AOL #6
Not in top listings for Teoma, Alta Vista, AllTheWeb, Yahoo! Directory, Open Directory, LookSmart

What you need to do is make sure that the keywords you want to rank for appear in the title, description, keywords and content of the page. You might also want to do some keyword research, somewhere like WordTracker, to make sure you're targeting the best keywords.

I like the menu larger, too!

Kathleen

dojo · #13 (**permalink**) 04-10-2005, 07:58 AM

Better indeed. Glad you found our words useful ;)
Best of luck with the site.

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