Going Live Any Day Now!

[dealwititp]

Hi all,

I would appreciate your feedback on my new store. I'm going live in about 2 days. DWP Music Services provides a variety of products and services especially for independent musicians who want to manage their own music careers. The site is about 70% services, 10% products, and 20% information and resources. Instead of asking visitors to "create an account", we encourage them to "join our support network". By joining they will have access to tons of free resources in our Members Only area.

 

I've utilized over 20 different contributions and managed to get them to work together. Check it out and let me know what you think.

 

Thanks in advance,

Walt

 

DWP Music Services

 

P.S. - Please be kind. :'(

[leandroc76]

The content is a great idea, I like what you sell and give away.

 

The "best sellers" list is overlapping the "we accept" box in Firefox

 

 

However, I would size the box header graphics down a bit using Photoshop . They make things a bit bulky looking.

 

Other than no FAQ, everything looks good. Nice job.

[leandroc76]

One other thing, The header has a statement aligned to the right that says "It's Time To Take Control Of Your Music Career!" should be anti-aliased font or the same font as "the independent musians one-stop"

[dealwititp]

Thanks for your input Shawn. I'll definitely work on your suggestions about the header. I'm working on the FAQs as we speak.

[hubcat]

I just mentioned this to someone else, but my personal pet peeve is when someone has large amounts of text that aren't justified. It looks a bit sloppy and unprofessional. I recommend you justify all your text - especially on the home page. Just create a new class in your stylesheet that is justified and then use that.

 

Just a suggestion.

Adrienne

[hubcat]

PS - I agree that your infobox headers are a bit too big. Try downsizing the font a little and recreating them - it will look a little cleaner.

[Guest]

I love the idea.

 

It's a great service, and has the potential to be quite rewarding.

 

Lose the big info boxes. It is just not professional.

 

Add some samples of work you've done to each product. The posters, etc, need to have more than one example. You can put several in one image if you need to.

[dealwititp]

Thanks guys for all your input. I think I will take your advice about resizing the header boxes.

[dealwititp]

Okay, I made a few changes as suggested in this thread. Resized the top header and the infoboxes. Still not quite sure how to justify my text. I tried a couple things with my stylesheet, but that didn't turn out right. More input ideas, and criticism is appreciated.

Thanks,

Walt

[dealwititp]

Hi all,

I finally figured out how to justify my text on the opening page. I would love more feedback on the store. Do you think this is something that would appeal to singers, songwriters, and musicians trying to make it in the music business? Ideas are welcome.

Thanks,

Walt :)

[Flyer5]

I just mentioned this to someone else, but my personal pet peeve is when someone has large amounts of text that aren't justified.  It looks a bit sloppy and unprofessional.  I recommend you justify all your text - especially on the home page.  Just create a new class in your stylesheet that is justified and then use that.

 

Just a suggestion.

Adrienne

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Hi

Interesting point, but isnt fully justified text hard for dyslexics to read and not recommended for sites that want to adhere to the dda guidelines?

 

just a thought..

[dealwititp]

Hi

Interesting point, but isnt fully justified text hard for dyslexics to read and not recommended for sites that want to adhere to the dda guidelines?

 

just a thought..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I heard this about this, and I should know because I'm dyslexic. What are some other people's opinions about justified text?

[Flyer5]

I heard this about this, and I should know because I'm dyslexic. What are some other people's opinions about justified text?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Do you find your front page hard to read? I also understand that its difficult for dyslexics to read colums wider than about 80-90 characters?

 

What about background colours, do they play a part for you?

 

gav

[dealwititp]

Hi everyone,

I'm still looking for opinions about my store. I haven't seen a lot of osc stores that deal with as many services as my site does. As I posted earlier, the store is about 70% services, 10% products, and 20% free information and resources.

 

Does anyone else have a service store and how effective are these stores in attracting new clients?

 

This site was built for independent musicians who need a place to record, CD mastering, flyers, posters, etc. I own recording studio, so I'm mainly looking to attract business within a 40 mile radius of my facility.

 

Please give me feedback on whether this site would be appealing to musicians.

 

Check it out!

[radders]

The site looks really good and I applaud your aims! The justified text works great at 1024px or wider. On lower resolutions it looks odd. It depends on your users.

 

Your images looked slightly distored and I tried to check them out to see if the image sizes were too big but I had a problem with the right click on my browser. I tried to fix it by closing some of the extra windows I had open but that didn't seem to fix it so I gave up and left the site. Have ou installed someting nasty or is it just me?

[Chance]

You have gigantic blocks of text on your index page. What successful shopping (or even service) sites have full paragraphs of text? The attention span of your average internet browser is about like that of a goldfish- 20 seconds. Most people can't even read one paragraph in 20 seconds, much less the four you have on your index page.

 

You need succinct, quick blurbs about your products and services to catch attention, and then get descriptive on their respective info pages. 1-2 sentences max, and to be honest, bullet points or sentence fragments would work better.

 

The number one rule of writing, be it a novel or marketing language: Remove unnecessary words.

[dealwititp]

You have gigantic blocks of text on your index page.  What successful shopping (or even service) sites have full paragraphs of text?  The attention span of your average internet browser is about like that of a goldfish- 20 seconds.  Most people can't even read one paragraph in 20 seconds, much less the four you have on your index page.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Great point Jason. I'm considering the use of a quick flash presentation index page to get to the point.

 

The purpose of this site is to educate independent musicians about the business, that's why it's so content heavy. Also, the content rich pages seem to work great with the search engines.

 

I know that the large number of visitors won't read the all text, but that's why I also use pictures to take them to what they are looking for. My goal is to find a medium between the intellectual buyer and the visual buyer.

[dealwititp]

Okay, I've listened to some good advice from community members and decided to restructure my home page. I removed the block text, made my info boxes smaller, and added an animated character that tells the visitors the same info that I used to have in writing. This is really cool. I think everyone should have something like this on their site.

 

Check it out!

[Guest]

Well I'll give you my two cents as both an independent artist and past owner of a "service" oriented site.

 

First of all, service oriented sites do just as well as anything else. The cart is just a way to pay, if you have good service people will come and keep coming and spread the word. There are many businesses that are successful and offer just what you are, they just might use a different payment script or shopping cart.

 

As far as the value of your services, they are good services to have. I would recommend beefing up your Sample CD list though because they are not only huge money makers but valuable beyond belief these days. I have about 45 sample CDs I use for my productions and I'm just small time. The most I've paid for one sample cd is $115! :)

 

You could start by contacting www.buffedbeats.com and seeing if they would give you volume discounts for their CDs. They sell entire songs.

 

I would also recommend finding out who www.Ilio.com's suppliers are and definitely!!! Definitely!!! See how you can sell Sony sound Sample CDs. They are cheap, high quality and you don't have to pay extra to have samples you can adjust the tempo without compromising the tone.

 

What I would suggest for your store though, is a face. I wouldn't use that oscommerce as a face like that. I'd build the business concept up around the actual cart. and have the cart only serve for product payment. I did that with my site and I think it will work better with yours.

 

www.zawadibooks.com

 

That way, you can have nice general HTML files they can navigate around in and find out about your company, services and products, then when they click to buy, they go through the cart.

 

Hope this helps,

ZB

 

 

 

 

Hi everyone,

I'm still looking for opinions about my store. I haven't seen a lot of osc stores that deal with as many services as my site does. As I posted earlier, the store is about 70% services, 10% products, and 20% free information and resources.

 

Does anyone else have a service store and how effective are these stores in attracting new clients?

 

This site was built for independent musicians who need a place to record, CD mastering, flyers, posters, etc. I own recording studio, so I'm mainly looking to attract business within a 40 mile radius of my facility.

 

Please give me feedback on whether this site would be appealing to musicians.

 

Check it out!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I'd also like to add, you have noooo samples of your work on your site. That will kill sales. If you do music production, you need samples on there. If you do CD mastering, you need before and after sounds on there. And when you get your design section going, make sure you add samples. Also I wouldn't go live without having something in the design section, even if you have to make up "dummy" samples to show what you can do.

 

ZB

Zawadi Books

[dealwititp]

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I've gone live and the response has been great. I'm averaging two sign ups per day and I have had five orders so far, and we haven't even launched our ad full campaign.

 

Many thanks to Zawadi Books for their excellent advice about stocking my store. I will definitely consider your advice. I am mostly a service business, but I'm looking for more great music related products that I can sell on my site. Can anyone advise me on how I can secure suppliers of music equipment, blank media, or music software?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

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