Hi

We have set up www.stillgorgeous.com which is intended to be an online magazine for women over 35. It was inspired by my teenage daughters horror at me not wearing a twin set and pearls once I hit 40 and so I wanted a place people could go and spend a few minutes looking at items relevant to their age group whilst also having a shopping directory designed for them as well.

As we were on a strict budget we decided to design the site ourselves whilst also creating www.gorgeousliving.com - an online department store built around affiliate links which is intended to provide sufficient income that eventually we can afford to have a custom made site designed for stillgorgeous. The two sites are linked together to maximise our chances of traffic - a cunning plan we thought!

Anyway, whilst we have a small but loyal following of women of a certain age it would be great to get some feedback from a wider audience (good or bad) and maybe some ideas of where we should take it now.

We are not so good with the whole search engine submission and ranking thing so any advice would be gratefully received!



Many thanks



Kathryn and Laura

I don't wanna be a nag but 'the looks' do make me think of a wedding site...

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Erick Schluter
Linkage, a nice websites portal
Amsterdam . Netherlands
http://www.linkage.nl

Dear Kathryn and Laura

Fancy meeting you too here! ;)

I like the site. It has a nice feminine feel to it and the personalised touch (your signatures) seems to reach out to your target audience which quickly establishes in the first paragraph, women over 35.

You do need a bit more content explaining what you are about. Are you Image consultants or are you giving a resource to women who like the retail therapy side of things. At the moment, the content invites you onto the site and encourages you to click on the other pages.

Judging from your navigation, visitors can either click on home, contact you, tell a friend or visit your sponsors. The navigation that matters (shopping directory, still beautiful, features and fashion forum) are at the bottom of the page out of view at first glance. I'd would say move these up to the top. The pictures would make a nice feature to the page (perhaps losing the border), but you may need to scale the images down a bit. It would also be good practice to include the navigation on all the pages.

Then you really ought to starting thinking about site promotion, taking full advantage of your page titles, use of keywords, alt tags on images etc. I think I've said before, don't stuff them with keywords but take advantage of your main keywords while making everything sound natural.

A site map would also be a good idea. A site map lists every page on your website and acts as a handy help page for anyone looking for something specific on your site (eg smoky eyed siren). Also search engines love it because it is a minefield of information for them.

BTW typo on the make up page, K-o-h-l pencil

I hope that this helps. Any further help, please feel free to PM me.

Best regards

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Deb Harrison
DVH Design
Essex Web Design

I agree with Debbie on your needing some text that better explains the goal of the site.

When a visitor hits your site you have 3 seconds to make them want to stay.

You need to use the header to better explain the purpose of the site. Using pictures and text to let people know what it is you do.

You need a logo that also tells something about the site.

Your first line of text on the page should tell me what it is you can do for me.

I would remove the counter from the bottom of the page along with the do your on site link at the bottom of the page.

I would add more text to the home page better explaing what it is you can do for me.

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