My Catering Website

[Brunchies]

Hi,

I paid for a website to be designed last year - We have expanded this year and are re-investing all our efforts into the bsuiness to take it up a level.

We have new labels and are looking to gain new custom too via our wholesale side.

Could you look at my website and let me know what you think - Honestly!!
As am looking to change it.

Thanks
Sarah

[fisicx]

Would be helpful if you posted the URL.

[Brunchies]

It does yes!

www.brunchies-catering.co.uk

I thought it would show up as I have it in my profile!

[AstarothSolutions]

Always personal tastes but I find your logo is too big and what I assume are pictures of your products are not particularly appetizing

Your images are also missing alt tags which are important for a number of reasons including SEO

From the retail section: "We also encourage customers to visit our air conditioned unit for food or drinks if passing by" your unit? do you mean shop/ cafe? where is it?

Buffet page doesnt render properly in FireFox - the numerically numbered menus disappear behind the side images and beyond into the yellow side area.... also, why are some of the menus numerically named and others alphabetically (ie menu A and menu 1?)

There is nothing on the site about your prices... for B2B sales this probably isnt much of an issue but most B2C customers will expect some comment on prices

[fisicx]

The design of the site is a very personal thing. You become intimately involved and very familiar with its internal workings.

The visitor arriving for the very first time has an entirely different viewpoint. They are looking for information and in the first few seconds scan the page looking for that information. If we assume somebody lands on a page (not necessarily the homepage) what do they see?

On the retail page you tell me all about your lovely vans and fresh food and that I should wave you down if you are passing by. This does nothing for the customer. They want to know is you deliver in their area? Do you park outside the factory or come inside? Can I pre-order? Can I set up an account? Do you come the same time every day? What is in the various filled baguettes? Apparently you only sell flapjacks retail not wholesale.

How much do your products cost?

Some pictures of your products would be nice along with ingredients and allergy information.

And I'd get the designer back in to finish the job. 109 errors on the home page, ineffective page titles, descriptions and main header, no footer links and poor internal linking.

The site does not reflect what appears to be an excellent business you have.

[Brunchies]

Thanks for your replies.. I take all on board to revamp the website... I was thinking of better pictures as we now have new lablelling in and new wrapping - A lot more of a write up needs to go on - So thank you from a different perspective.

I used a internet tool to check the sites design etc and it came up also with items missing and a bunch of other things. I emailed the person who did the design who then said for £50.00 he would investigate the findings - Which I found hard to believe considering they are essential his mistakes....

How should I go about this do you think?

[AstarothSolutions]

I assumed that you used something like http://validator.w3.org/ ?

Unless it was stipulated that it was to be xHTML 1.1 compliant etc then there really isnt much of an obligation for them to create it as such.

As we develop in .Net and it has a few minor issues with validation we would only ever state that the template is compliant and not necessarily the complete site.

109 errors is fairly steep but it seems to be predominately the same error time and time again.

Ultimately you need to check the contract (assuming you had one) or any emails/ terms of references etc that were in the negotiation process to see if coding standards were mentioned... I will let a legal eagle answer the question of if it is implied that it will be up to a certain technical standard or if it simply has to "work"

The rendering issues in FF I would argue more strongly shouldnt be any extra as it simply doesnt work properly irrespective of the technical arguement but again the contract/ negotiations may have limited the browsers it was assured to work correctly in.

[fisicx]

You need to get the designer to do the job properly. The 109 errors just mean the designer was being lazy. Of more concern is the lack of even the most basic structural components, namely unique page titles, descriptions, main headers, opening paragraphs, internal linking, footer information etc.

As Astaroth suggests, get the contract out again and call the designer in for a chat.

You mention pictures - they will help but you need to fix your business plan with regards the websie first. Answer these two key questions and then think about what sort of site you need:

1. What do I want the site to achieve?
2. Who are my potential customers?

[JustOneUK]

Do you promote it via leaflets or local ads? have you got your website address written on your vans?

Just wondering how you get visitors to it....

James.