Changing site????

[LynnS]

I have been debating on a face lift for my site.Will probably stay with the same site but a different color.I did that over a year ago.I changed from a dark goldish brown.I was so tired of that. Went to a lighter blue. It seems so much more inviting. Updating gives some class to it. Not the same ole same ole site customers could get tired of.

I go on one site and have been for 4 years. Not one thing has changed on that site. A boring place AND it takes forever for the site to come up. We have dial up and I get so bored. I don't believe that is the reason it is slow since my friend says she has the same problem.

This is why I think change(to my site) could make a difference. Even if the coloring.

Do some of you make changes or stay the same??? Just a minor change not a whole new site.

LynnS

Edited December 25, 2009 by LynnS

[adillenal]

I personally stay the same. and I prefer shopping from sites that aren't different everytime I log in.

[Dustpuuppy]

A few minor changes here and there, might be a good compromise. Changing some small things every few weeks.

It keeps the site looking fresh, without looking like a major overhaul.

You don't want your regulars to come there and suddenly not be able to find their way around the site. Conversely you don't want it to become stale and boring. A few small changes here and there is kind of like a well manicured lawn. It just looks neat and fresh but not like it's been dug up and paved over.

The site you mentioned probably has some ads, pics, links or such that are being loaded from third party servers. Your browser has to go contact any of those servers and download those ads or pics, before it can load the rest of the page. Especially if they don't have the site set up to load those things last. If any of the servers involved is running a bit slow, you're gonna wait.

[Kitn]

I think a little change up is a good thing once in awhile.

[LynnS]

These ideas are great. I wondered what people would think and how they do their websites.

I guess like Dustpuuppy said I feel it is stale now after almost 1 1/2 years. Before that I had the brown(nasty looking color). I always stay with the same jars. Maybe what I need to do is change my pics.Update those. After 3 years and the same pics could get boring.That may be an idea.

I know when I changed over a year ago a customer said she liked my change. All I did was change the color.

I'll check over my wording and see if that can be boring.The other day I changed some wording around.

I also need to take some things off and maybe add a couple other things.

The one website I was talking about has about ALL they sell on first page. Then you can click on the left for the same pic but just one candle size for that page. FOREVER. I think that is why it takes so long. If you have 30 items can you imagine.Like your candles, lotion, soap, potpourri, etc. etc on one page.

LynnS

[Dustpuuppy]

A lot of people make the mistake of not realizing that some of their customers don't TeraByte download speeds.

One hint. If you have a static background that loads first, it won't have to reload for every page. Makes your pages seem to load in half the time, after they first come on.

[JimJuris]

I critique websites professionally. I also have a website that I created a little over two years ago. I completely revised it in less than a year. I am about to revise it again because I will be changing web hosts.

I have always created my own websites by hand coding them in (x)HTML. I have had 3 websites of my own since 2002.

When my web hosting time expires I will be using a template from pagebuzz.com. My website will have a completely different look when I change to a template.

I would like to recommend that you look into a template from pagebuzz.com and you may find a great one. They only charge $9.99 per month for web hosting, and that includes a shopping cart, excellent 12 per day/7 days per week, excellent custmer support, and something like 1,000 excellent templates.

Changing your photos occasionally is good. I do that with my website. That may be all that you need to do.

Having said that, I think being consistant can be good too. Look at Amazon, ebay, and big companies like that. They seldom change the look of their websites because that is what people expect to see when they go to these websites.

If you contact me privately, I will give you my opinion at no cost to you about weather or not I think changing your website would be a good idea. Keep in mind, that would be just my own opinion.

[grama]

I like to change background and color to sorta go with the season unless I get tired of it earlier!!

[Dustpuuppy]

I like to change background and color to sorta go with the season unless I get tired of it earlier!!

You could also just add touches, here and there, to denote the seasons.

If you have a border you could wrap Christmas lights around it for winter, then roses for spring or some such.

I've seen some sites where in the fall they would have a pile of fallen leaves racked up against the pictures. You could change that to a black cat curled up against them for Halloween, flowers for spring, a puppy for summer, snow drift for winter...

Technically, you'd just set aside a small space about a half inch square, next to each of your pics, assign each of those to load XYZ.jpg with your <img> tags. You then change the picture that you call XYZ.jpg. By changing that picture each season but keeping the same name, it would let you do a big dramatic change, each season with just a couple of mouse clicks.

You'd keep all these pics stored on the server. When you go from the cat to the snow, you go in and change the name of the files. the cat pic would be XYZ.jpg, you rename it Cat.jpg, then rename the snow pic so that IT is now XYZ.jpg.

You could do the same effect on top of the main pics. The cat would be laying on top of the picture, then the picture would be wearing a Santa hat... etc.

You could have a heart for Valentine's day, a flag for memorial day...

This trick, or your own version of it, can change the whole feel fo the site in about 5 seconds. It wouldn't affect navigation, so your regular customers won't be lost, every time they come in.

Everything is exactly the same... yet it's completely different. Always consistent but always fresh.

You could also use GIFs instead of JPGs, so that some can be animated. You'd want to keep them small, though, so they don't slow down the page when it's loading.

[blt212]

Sorry to hijack the thread but it is related to websites and how they appear on different computers. I just got a new laptop for Christmas and my site looks quite different on it than it does on my desktop PC. Is this just related to the monitor types. On the laptop the background is more robins egg blue and the links are hard to see where as on the desktop the background is more blue/green and I think the links look fine. Now I'm wondering about what the optimal colors are to use to cover as many variations as possible..

Thanks

Brenda

www.ctrivercandles.com

[Dustpuuppy]

Sorry to hijack the thread but it is related to websites and how they appear on different computers. I just got a new laptop for Christmas and my site looks quite different on it than it does on my desktop PC. Is this just related to the monitor types. On the laptop the background is more robins egg blue and the links are hard to see where as on the desktop the background is more blue/green and I think the links look fine. Now I'm wondering about what the optimal colors are to use to cover as many variations as possible..

Thanks

Brenda

www.ctrivercandles.com

In your case, I'd guess it's the monitor. Some laptops tend toward cheaper LED or LCD screens and rather cheap graphics cards. You might poke around and find some color adjustments, somewhere.

Some just don't do the 3 million color thing. They'll default back to the nearest color they can display. It's often better to stick to primary colors, when possible.

There's also a difference in how different browsers handle things. Something done with MS Frontpage will often not look right on a non MS browser. But colors generally stay the same.

I'm getting more of the blue/green and I'm on Firefox.

[JimJuris]

I just looked at your Ct River Candles on my HP laptop and all of your colors look great.

You can find the color that are considered browser safe by looking up browser safe colors, but I don't recommend changing any of your colors. There are 216 browser safe colors.

I would say that your background color is or is very close to browser safe color #336666.

At least that is how it looks on my laptop computer monitor.

Great looking website.

[Dustpuuppy]

I would say that your background color is or is very close to browser safe color #336666.

At least that is how it looks on my laptop computer monitor.

Great looking website.

Her BG color is #68838B, which isn't actually a browser safe color. (I peeked at her source code:naughty: )

It's rendering quite a bit darker than #336666 on my screen. Just checked with the IE browser and it looks a couple of shades lighter with it than with Firefox.

Blt212:

There's a chart here of the browser safe colors. If you don't want to change the BG color, you might change the alink and vlink colors to something with more contrast.

Other than that, the site, as Jim said, looks fine. It'll have to be your call, whether the problem with the visibility of the links is bad enough to warrant changing anything.

[blt212]

You guys are great...thanks for taking the time to check out my site and colors....appreciate the feedback. Since I'm using Voda, changing anything requires a republish of each page which is a pain. I guess there's a work around which mimics DWT but I haven't figured it out yet...so not changing is fine with me. I will check out the table though...didn't even know there were browser safe colors...I'm definitely just a novice at this website thing

Happy New Year!

Brenda

[Dustpuuppy]

Actually, I had forgotten about the browser safe color thing, until Jim brought it up. That and the fact that he didn't seem to be seeing what I was. It's been damn near 10 years since I did a web page.

I never got too much into style sheets but in your case it might be worth looking into. In this situation you might be able to just redo the style sheet, rather than each page. Don't know if your hosting company will let you do it that way. Might be something to look into, next time you do a major overhaul.