I created this site for my wife and although it's a printing and design company, the domain name doesn't indicate that. The domain is www.EquineandCountry.com (please do not attempt to order, the site's gateway is in test mode) - yeah, she's a horse lover and rider and this was something she could do from home so......

Our worlds collide.

So this puts me into a jam. How do I create an index page that 1) Tells the consumer that even though the name is Equine and Country that she sells printing and design and 2) That it's not just for horse people. Anyone can order.

The index page has been killing me and I honestly sit at my computer for hours with UltraEdit and Photoshop open, staring blankly at them. I was thinking about highlighting the products and putting them onto the main page? Specials maybe?

PLEASE HELP! I'm at wit's end here and it's driving me nuts. I've never had this much of a problem developing something in my entire life.

P.S. If anyone is interested in doing this and getting paid please PM me. I'm at that point where I'm willing to pay someone to get it done.

Originally Posted by LanceUppercut

Our worlds collide.

Just a quick side note, do you watch Seinfeld? “Worlds Collide” – George Costanzia – ahh good stuff.

Sorry about that, anyways, if I understand you correctly it sounds like what you want to do is have to different sites so to speak under one domain name, here is the first problem I would see with that, I am not much of an SEO expert by any means in fact I know very little, but what I do know is one of the main factors in SEO is the domain name, so if you are looking to get business through the web for printing and designing I am sure that those people would never find your site. The second is that if you do get visitors interested in the printing and designing, you are going to confuse the heck out of them when they see a site that is half horse half design company. What I would do is just get another domain name, they are not that expensive and you could just divide the bandwidth with the site that you already have.

I hope this helps.

Originally Posted by Cheshire_cat

Just a quick side note, do you watch Seinfeld? “Worlds Collide” – George Costanzia – ahh good stuff.

Sorry about that, anyways, if I understand you correctly it sounds like what you want to do is have to different sites so to speak under one domain name, here is the first problem I would see with that, I am not much of an SEO expert by any means in fact I know very little, but what I do know is one of the main factors in SEO is the domain name, so if you are looking to get business through the web for printing and designing I am sure that those people would never find your site. The second is that if you do get visitors interested in the printing and designing, you are going to confuse the heck out of them when they see a site that is half horse half design company. What I would do is just get another domain name, they are not that expensive and you could just divide the bandwidth with the site that you already have.

I hope this helps.

I'm a huge Seinfeld fan so I completely understand. Friends and girlfriends need to stay seperated or worlds will collide.

I'm not too concerned about the SEO of the site right now since we already have a target market that she is associated with. Most of our traffic will be coming from word of mouth rather than Google or other search engines. I mean, if I wanted to I could create a ton of keyword enriched landing pages for each individual product and that would help the SEO product aspect. But right now I'm just having developer's block and can't figure out how I want to design the index page (content, not links, etc.).

I will worry about SEO in the future, I just want to get the index page complete. I might not be asking the correct question. When I refer to the index page I don't meant he entire look of the page. Only the content in the main body. Sorry if that was confusing to anyone.

Thanks for the feedback, Cheshire.

no problem, i think that may be the reason why not many posts are coming in as this is for reviews

The domain name isn't helping matters so totally ignore it for now!

I think your home page has far too much content on it, its way too busy. Instead of trying to do everything why don't you just simplify it? - this would make it a lot easier for your customers as well by giving them what they want.

My suggestion:

1. Keep the top nav and top account/basket links
2. Redo the logo and put to top left of the navigation
3. Underneath create three "feature" content columns - add info/link to each of your three top level categories, one per column - Print/Design/Web
4. Underneath the three "feature" columns add any other content that will be useful to your visitors - ie live chat/contact links, card logos

That's it very simply!

In my opinion, the page looks great!

The only exception is that everything is too static (visually). Some -little- improvements on that area could be useful.-

weblaw

I like the page too, but what do I know? *lol*

I'll have to check back for some products when its up and running.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I think I know what I'm going to do. First, I'm going to kill the redundant data on left navigation (Services, Order Flow, etc). Also, shrink the payment options and drop them into the bottom. This will bring the site up so the user doesn't have to scroll to see everything on the page. I would like for all of the information to be viewable in the browser regardless of screen settings.

About the "static" look of the page. I'm kinda old school when it comes to that and my mentor gave me a great example. He told me to remember what he said as he was talking to me and repeat it back to him. First he said a complete sentence and I repeated it back with no problem. The second time, he said a different phrase and waved his arms wildly as he said it. It was hard to focus on what he was saying because of all the movement. Since then I've been kindof anti-animation. I do intend to do a slow fading flash movie where the horse is now displaying different products. Similar to what you would see on NFL.com.

I'm also going to take the Google search off the top right (what was I thinking!?!?). Instead I'm going to put a site search. I don't want people leaving the site and AdSense isn't paying SQUAT anymore! Grrrrrr!!!!

I really appreciate the feedback from everyone! Once I have all the modifications done (this weekend), I'll be sure to repost so you can see how your suggestions have helped out.

I am no techie but would a subdomain not be the answer for the domain name, for the horse side you could use the equineandcountry.com and for the print and design you could have something like printanddesign.equineandcountry.com, you can still have the stuff on the index page you want put from a print and design client point of view, would printanddesign.equineandcountry.com not look better??

I agree completely with the Chesire Cat about getting a new domain. I don't think it's ever too early to start thinking about SEO.

However, if you're absolutely stuck on the domain, my advice is to lose the horse images. Even though I can read your copy that says you do design and marketing, the horse picture tells me that you are a horse website. In this case, the picture is more powerful than one thousand words. Put up images of your products, designs, sample work and make sure they appear above the fold, not below it. You can keep the horse as a logo, but maybe make it smaller. You might also want to add "Marketing and Promotion" to your name rather than in your tagline so it's more clear what you do.