I just had a site set up for my earrings

I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:10:19 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry
wrote:

I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance


Well, to start with, you may wish to use a different hosting service. I
managed, when I first clicked your link, to load the page, and see the first two
pages of designs. Then the site stopped sending anything. I closed my browser
and tried again. No luck. Tried again this time with internet explorer instead
of firefox. Still, no response from your site's hosting server. couldn't
connect. Now, maybe it's my own ISP (comcast) holding things up, but I'll bet,
since other sites loaded quickly enough, that your hosting service has too low a
bandwidth. The pages which did load also seemed somewhat less that speedy in
doing so. That could be either the size of your files, or again, your hosting
service.

About the only other thing I had time to notice was that if you're trying to
sell things, you might make things like price more visible. Never saw a price
listed next to any of the designs, even when clicked to bring up more detail. So
far, though I didn't see more than the first few pages and could be wrong, all I
saw was a showcase site, not an e-commerce one. If you've got an e-commerce
site in mind(you want to sell your earrings, not just show them), then you may
wish to include things like the price, and shopping cart icons easily available
along with the images. A whole seperate page for a price list might have been
there (didn't get that far into the site), but that's making people work harder
to buy your work.

As to the earrings, I won't comment too much. Nice colors, and I'm sure they'll
sell well, if your prices are reasonable and you can market them successfully..
Personally, I'm not so drawn to whole lines of earrings that basically only
string various interesting beads on wire. But that's just me. I'm a jeweler
who works metal to a greater degree than just bending wire around, so I've got a
bit of a bias about the simpler methods your work requires. That doesn't, of
course, invalidate your work, and I'm sure it will sell OK. I just can't say
I'm terribly excited or inspired... And I'm sure you already know that with
this level of technology in your work, you've got a LOT of competition from
commercial producers, as well as a lot of hobbyists and just slightly more than
hobbyist level jewelers. If you can elevate the technical and aesthetic
sophistication of your work a bit, you could do more to create a line of work
that would have some more in the way of a personal identity (yours), rather than
being just one more of a large pack of jewelry producers buying fun and
inexpensive glass or semiprecious beads, and hanging them, in some form or
another, from pretty commercial looking plain ear wires... Again, the problem
with doing this is simply that you've got so very much competition, from
beginner level craftspeople, all the way to the mass manufacturers in asia
producing costume level jewelry in very large quantities for pennies per earring
pair. If you can compete with these folks, my hats off to ya. Otherwise, I'd
suggest finding a way to make your work more unique, so it stands out from the
crowd. Usually this means you'll have to make more of the work than just the
wires connecting commercially purchased parts, and it may require you to do a
bit more metalsmithing too...

My two cents. Use it if useful to you. Otherwise, ignore... :-)

Peter Rowe

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 03:29:57 GMT, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Peter W.. Rowe,"
wrote:

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:10:19 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry
wrote:

I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance


Well, to start with, you may wish to use a different hosting service. I
managed, when I first clicked your link, to load the page, and see the first two
pages of designs. Then the site stopped sending anything. I closed my browser
and tried again. No luck. Tried again this time with internet explorer instead
of firefox. Still, no response from your site's hosting server. couldn't
connect. Now, maybe it's my own ISP (comcast) holding things up, but I'll bet,
since other sites loaded quickly enough, that your hosting service has too low a
bandwidth. The pages which did load also seemed somewhat less that speedy in
doing so. That could be either the size of your files, or again, your hosting
service.


Just out of curiosity, I tried it again (a few hours later). This time, the
front page loaded, and this time I tried viewing the pages from the last one,
forward. Again, after the third page had been viewed, clicking another (this
time, page four. might have been that same one that locked up last time), just
plain stopped in mid page. Was just starting to load an image, then jammed. As
I write this, it's still locked up. Wondering if you have a problem with HTML
code on page four, or something.

Also, I noticed on your first page you specifically call this a showcase for
your jewelry, not a sales site. Good enough then. Please forget my prior
suggestions about missing sales info, since I now see you had not intended that
purpose for your site. And that modifies, somewhat, my comments about your
designs too. If you're not trying to sell these and compete with others selling
earrings, then you're much more free to make whatever you like (presumably for
your own use?)

cheers

Peter Rowe

On or about Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:27:21 GMT, an entity identified as
"Peter W.. Rowe," proudly
proclaimed:

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 03:29:57 GMT, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Peter W.. Rowe,"
wrote:

On Sun, 09 Jul 2006 20:10:19 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry
wrote:

I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance


Well, to start with, you may wish to use a different hosting service. I
managed, when I first clicked your link, to load the page, and see the first two
pages of designs. Then the site stopped sending anything. I closed my browser
and tried again. No luck. Tried again this time with internet explorer instead
of firefox. Still, no response from your site's hosting server. couldn't
connect. Now, maybe it's my own ISP (comcast) holding things up, but I'll bet,
since other sites loaded quickly enough, that your hosting service has too low a
bandwidth. The pages which did load also seemed somewhat less that speedy in
doing so. That could be either the size of your files, or again, your hosting
service.


Just out of curiosity, I tried it again (a few hours later). This time, the
front page loaded, and this time I tried viewing the pages from the last one,
forward. Again, after the third page had been viewed, clicking another (this
time, page four. might have been that same one that locked up last time), just
plain stopped in mid page. Was just starting to load an image, then jammed. As
I write this, it's still locked up. Wondering if you have a problem with HTML
code on page four, or something.

Also, I noticed on your first page you specifically call this a showcase for
your jewelry, not a sales site. Good enough then. Please forget my prior
suggestions about missing sales info, since I now see you had not intended that
purpose for your site. And that modifies, somewhat, my comments about your
designs too. If you're not trying to sell these and compete with others selling
earrings, then you're much more free to make whatever you like (presumably for
your own use?)

cheers

Peter Rowe

I have Comcast too and Firefox.
I was able to view all 7 pages.
I agree with your assessment.

Frosty
--
Di! Ecce hora! Uxor mea me necabit!

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:17:30 +0000, Don T wrote:

I got all the pages -after being insulted about my browser "not" being
firefox- and nary a price to be seen anywhere. It didn't create any burning
desire to return either. Just another blah site.

The code told me to replace my browser with the newest Firefox,
and I _have_ the very newest Firefox running on the very newest
Ubuntu Linux. When I looked at the code, It doesn't even test whether
or not the newest is running. It's a bad idea to write only for
newest browsers, anyway. Web standards coding will degrade
gracefully to any browser, even a hand-held or phone.
http://w3.org
http://webstandards.org

If the op really wants to improve the technical aspects of the
site, I suggest a posting to alt.html.critique or alt.html
or alt.webmaster.
The people there will really thrash you, but you learn a lot.

Hi Vickie,

Unlike the others, I had no trouble viewing your site. It loaded
quickly, and I was easily able to browse with little or no delay
between pages. I have a Mac G4. I use Tiger, OSX version10.4.7.

I found your site to be set up very simply and cleanly. It is
attractive and easy to navigate.

What I noticed: Opening page. This was a little confusing. I thought
that this couldn't be a jewelry site, as the distant couple on the
beach in the sunset (?), had no relationship whatsoever to jewelry, and
that threw me a little. Just a suggestion... opening your site with
jewelry showing somewhere or some way might be a clearer message to
your customer base.

You also might think about geting some photography pointers or take
a class. The photos of your work don't look as good as they might in
the lighting and the setting departments. A lamp pointed at a piece of
work sitting on a rug, is not the optimal way to show off jewelry that
you have taken the time to hand make one by one.

Other than that, your earrings are seen clearly and there is a nice
variety in the styles. Hope that helps.

Best,

Lisa

"the single biggest problem with communication, is the illusion that it
has taken place"
-George Bernard Shaw


wrote:
I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance

On reflection one wonders if the site is not narcissism in action. "Oh look
at how pretty I am." kind of a thing. No prices. No link to prices. Just
exhibits of ear baubles. And, so far, no replies.

--

Don Thompson

There is nothing more frightening than active ignorance.
~Goethe

It is a worthy thing to fight for one's freedom;
it is another sight finer to fight for another man's.
~Mark Twain


"mbstevens" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:17:30 +0000, Don T wrote:

I got all the pages -after being insulted about my browser "not" being
firefox- and nary a price to be seen anywhere. It didn't create any
burning
desire to return either. Just another blah site.

The code told me to replace my browser with the newest Firefox,
and I _have_ the very newest Firefox running on the very newest
Ubuntu Linux. When I looked at the code, It doesn't even test whether
or not the newest is running. It's a bad idea to write only for
newest browsers, anyway. Web standards coding will degrade
gracefully to any browser, even a hand-held or phone.
http://w3.org
http://webstandards.org

If the op really wants to improve the technical aspects of the
site, I suggest a posting to alt.html.critique or alt.html
or alt.webmaster.
The people there will really thrash you, but you learn a lot.

On Mon, 10 Jul 2006 05:17:30 GMT, "Don T"
wrote:

I got all the pages -after being insulted about my browser "not" being
firefox- and nary a price to be seen anywhere. It didn't create any burning
desire to return either. Just another blah site.

Odd - For me, the insult was that my (very much up to date Firefox)
browser was "out of date." I second Peter's recommendation about
finding a new host. Also, all I saw was an empty frame where the Flash
would be if I didn't filter Flash. I didn't see any earrings, and
there was no link to another page.

BTW, Don, when you top post, and your reader inserts the signature
after your writing rather than at the end of the message, conforming
readers cut off the rest of the message on a reply.

--
Al Balmer
Sun City, AZ

On Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:25:32 +0000, Don T wrote:

On reflection one wonders if the site is not narcissism in action. "Oh look
at how pretty I am." kind of a thing.

Narcissism is a strong word to derive from a site
that has no text about the artist and only a single
portrait image. The prettiness or ugliness of our visage
is not something we have a lot of control over. The artist
appears young and the work will have plenty of time to
develop into something more distinctive.

I think many makers don't put prices on a site because
the site is not really being used for direct sales over the
internet -- it is just an introduction and reference to
the work.

wrote:

I just had a site set up for my earrings so wanted to know what ppl
thought of them..get some feedback ya know! Heres the link:

http://www.thevickiespot.com

thx in advance



I don't like being told that my browser is outdated, and being advised to use
Firefox, when I AM USING THE LATEST VERSION OF FIREFOX!

As far as the rest of the site is concerned, ... I better keep my mouth shut.

--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com