Website Reviews with Alyssa Phillips Downey, AMPD Designs

    1:07AM Jun 6, 2025

    Speakers:

    Liz Kantner

    Keywords:

    Website reviews

    AMPD Designs

    homepage optimization

    SEO

    accessibility

    header hierarchy

    text legibility

    product descriptions

    call to action

    background colors

    navigation simplicity

    image descriptions

    alt text

    user experience

    brand strategy.

    Here we go. All right, thanks for being here today. I'm excited because we have Alyssa, who is getting over a cold, so she feels good, but even though her voice maybe sounds I think it sounds fun. Anyway, Alyssa is here. I'm going to have her introduce herself, and then we're going to just dive into little website reviews. And yeah, thanks for being here. Feel free to drop questions in the chat. Hey, Alyssa,

    oh my gosh, sorry. I'm so excited. Yeah, I feel fine, but I sound like I'm about to, like, die, so I apologize, but I'm really excited to chat with everybody. Yeah, I'm Melissa Phillips. Melissa Downey got married last summer. I'm still in transition of the last name phase, but I own amped design space in Asheville, North Carolina, and I do web design and branding that is bold, fun, colorful and deeply rooted in your business strategy and goals and core values while looking beautiful too. So yeah, that's what I do,

    awesome, and we didn't talk about this. But do you want me to share my screen with the websites? Or do you want to navigate?

    I'm happy to share. I have a mop. Oh, cool, perfect.

    Yeah, you should be able to share. I changed all the permissions, so everything should be good. So we're going to go through the list of people who asked. I know some of them are here, some of them aren't, and then, if we have time, we can see what we can get to but again, feel free to ask questions in the chat.

    Yeah, if you have, if anyone has any questions in the middle of anything, just feel free to stop me and yeah. So we're gonna do some website reviews. Mainly we'll focus on your home pages, with maybe a few little tips about your shop pages and about pages and some other stuff on your sites. But a lot of the homepage info can also be applied to other pages of the site. I also think as we start talking through a few sites, they'll start to be a few things that are kind of trends with everything that I think you'll all be able to apply to all of your sites. And I'm going to talk about some things that will help you just get found, like in Google Search, stuff like that, but also provide a really good experience to people once they land on your website. So like, encourage more people to click the Buy button, make it really easy for them to find the information they're looking for. Feel comfortable trusting you enough to take the next step and bite me. I also just wanted to say, as we're going through these reviews, I'm gonna point out some things to fix on your websites. Please don't feel bad. Don't feel like you've done things wrong, or don't feel like you know you've made bad decisions, or like this is scolding you or anything like that. Like there is, there are so many things to keep track of when it comes to websites, and this is stuff that I do every day as a web designer. But this is not just like common knowledge. So this is all about education, not like telling you that you did anything wrong. Okay, so with I'll just share my screen. I'll just go right into the first one. Sounds

    good. I love that you preface with that, because it's sometimes hard to not, like, internalize everything. Like, oh gosh, I'm doing this. Like, totally wrong. Or this is embarrassing, but it's fine. Even your mini website review that you did of my website, I just made updates, and that was months ago, so sometimes it just takes a minute, and sometimes you can be in marketing and still not be doing all the things. So yeah,

    yeah, it's definitely and also like it's so hard to when, when it's your own business and your own site, I feel like it's even harder. So yeah, so hard. Okay, so awesome. So the first one that I have up here is Christina Cober. Also for everyone who submitted your sites, thank you so much. I know that's a very vulnerable thing to do, so I really appreciate you sharing your sites. Okay, so the first thing that I want to mention is that I love how the headline is very clear, like this specifies exactly what Christina offers, simple, thoughtful jewelry and where it's made. And then we have a very clear button that says, shop personalized jewelry. So there's like no doubt about what this site is for or where this button is going to go. And I love that we dove right into it. And I also really love how Christina's site is breaking up the sections of the homepage with different background colors. So, like, we have the light pink, white, then yellow, then White, and it kind of helps visually break up the information, so it doesn't just feel like a wall of info. So those things are really, really great. So the first thing that. We can adjust here to make the site work even better, is this intro sentence on the top of the homepage. Let me try and explain this, and then I'll show you like an example. Are you all familiar with like when you're editing your website, you can change the text styles to things like header one, header two. Paragraph one, paragraph two, that kind of stuff. Okay, I see some people nodding. So the very first headline on every page of your site should be the header one textile. And I have a way to look at the code of the sites here, I can see that this is not header one. There's a it looks like h2 there's a header two above the text. I'm not quite sure why, but the actual text needs to be the header one textile, and let me explain why. So I'm going to do this a little demo on my own site. So I use Squarespace, but you can apply this on Shopify, Wordpress, Wix, whatever you use. So we have this little drop down that lets us change the design. And a lot of times, people tend to use these just to, like, change the design, to make the text look the way that we want to look. But it's actually not really for design. It's actually really important for SEO and accessibility. Are you? Have you all like heard the term SEO, or have so we

    actually had CAMI chat with us a couple of weeks ago about SEO, so we have a little bit of knowledge there. Perfect.

    So, yeah. So when Google is like scanning your website to learn what your site is about and show it to people in Google search results, it scans the headers first, and so the header one at the top of the page, that's what tells Google what the page that page is for. So it's really important that the very first headline at the top of every single page of your site is header one, and very clearly explains what the page is for. So that's why I really love that Christina's site says simple, thoughtful jewelry, handmade in Georgia, because that's really searchable, right? Like people might be searching for handmade jewelry in Georgia or something like that. But it just needs now, we just need it to make it the header one text style, so that Google like reads that first and there's a higher chance of it now showing up if somebody searches for that in Google search results. And then the second piece of this, this is going to be kind of like a running theme, I think, on a lot of websites. So hopefully this will be helpful for everybody. The second piece of this, this is that when after we have that header, one at the top, every other subhead on in the other sections throughout the page, need to use like header two, header three, header four, in order of hierarchy of importance. So on this example page here, I have header one at the top, then the next section, I need to use header two for this sub head here, and then this sub head here is header three. So we're kind of going in order of importance. And so then going to the next section, and we can use, we can use header two again, and then we can go to header three again. But we can't use header one again. Header one has to be the only thing at the top. And then the others, 234, are just an order of importance throughout the page. So Christina site, we would have header one here, and then this should be header two. This we could have a header two here that says, like join the email list. And then this could be header three. We would want this to be header two or three. So does this make sense? Okay. So, yeah. So again, we're looking at the homepage here, but this applies to every page of your website. So like, for example, if we go to the About page here, we want this text who we are to be header one. And it is here, I can see it has the h1 which means header one. So that's perfect. So we've seen that fixed on the homepage. Okay, so, okay, what else we have? I also wanted to say, don't be afraid to use larger text. I think especially with jewelry, it's so delicate and elegant. A lot of us try it's like, we associate that with, like, small, minimal, very simple. But it could be helpful to have a little bit more variation in size, especially between the sub head the headlines and sub heads and the body text, like here, just to help it be more easily scannable. If somebody is just like skimming the page, then those headlines can stand out more. Um, and just, you know, making the text a little bit larger isn't going to make it feel clunky or less elegant by any means. Um, and then see, we have shop by collector. Question, and this is fine, although I do think ideally, we would either have like a button background behind rings, necklaces, bracelets, so that that text is a little bit more legible, because this can be hard to read on top of the photo, or just put like rings, necklaces, bracelets, underneath the photos as buttons, just to make sure that again, if people are skimming or if people don't have very good eyesight, they can read those. And then I also love that you have this call to action at the bottom of the page that's reminds people, like, after they've scrolled all the way down the homepage, you're reminding them to go to the shop page. So that's really great that you're we're just like, hone in on the shop page throughout everything. So okay, any I don't know if Christina

    is here, Kristen is here, but that's great. And I just want to add with the text size, that's something that I got feedback on recently on my site, like it's too thin. So I just like, went and up the boldness of all of it, and I think I could even do it a bit more. But you had said in your presentation too that, like thin text was a trend for a minute that isn't actually very accessible and easy to read for people. So that's something to think about. And then Elaine here saying, Do you have an opinion on text format on pages centered or left aligned?

    That's a good question. So generally, I would say, like large paragraphs of text should be left aligned. There's a lot of research that shows that left aligned text is easier to read than center text. If it's just like a sub head like this, that's fine. That can be centered something like this would technically be more readable if it's left aligned. It's just kind of like a poem. So that's why I didn't really point it out, because it's not really, it's not like a, you know, about about the company, or something like that. But, yeah, generally, generally, left aligned is more legible. Like this is great for our paragraphs. Okay, awesome. So we can move on to the next one. Unless anyone has any other questions regarding regarding the site.

    Think we can head on. I think next you have Palm Sunday. Okay, Lauren's here. Oh, great. Okay.

    Okay, so, okay, so this site, so we already talked about the importance of that header, one at the top. So, Lauren, we just really need that header at the top of the site. So honestly, this text here could be the header one. It could say something like, you know, you could try if, and you said, can we just talk to you about SEO? So it would be good to get some like, keywords into that header. So some, maybe some things that kind of describe what people might be searching for if they're looking for pieces like yours. So something like, you know, jewelry made from responsibly sourced gemstones and recycled materials, or something like that, which also speaks to what is, maybe what is unique about your work. And so I would recommend having the header one be above these three boxes, and it can still be narrow. It doesn't have to, like, take up a huge amount of space. Like, it can just be, like, you know, it can really just, it can be kind of, like, the same amount of real estate that this takes up, but it's like, above these so that the first thing people are reading is what, what they're getting here, and then the three buttons here, same comment as with Christina's site, I would recommend that we have, like, shop earrings, shopping, shop gifts as buttons either below or they have, like, a little background, just because it can be hard to read text on top of a photo and then throughout where we have, you know, the paragraph text and the pricing, item names is very small, I would recommend that we bump the text up a little bit it. You know, we can't assume that, like, everybody has impeccable eyesight, and want to make sure it's really legible. And then let's see so your homepage. There's also a lot of options here, and I know can be really, really hard to like, narrow in on, like, what to focus on, especially when you offer like so many different beautiful things. But I do think this could feel like decision fatigue for people, and kind of like, not quite sure where to start. So I might consider just thinking through like, what are like? Maybe three of the most important. Important categories or most important collections that you would want to highlight, if somebody is not familiar with your work, and focus maybe only on those on your homepage. I think having a section like this is like, stop earrings, stop wearing, sweat gifts like, that's fine, but then after that, maybe we have something like the new parable. I don't know if this is new, but like the Paradiso collection, but then you're only going to show one piece, and you'll have, like, a short description of it, because if they want to see all the pieces of every collection, they can go to the shop page and see everything. And then let's see, let me see the other notes here. I

    feel like I'd love a picture of Lauren on the page too. Um, somewhere. Yes,

    I had that in my notes, and I was scrolling down to this because I couldn't remember if it already was one. Um, yeah, I think there. It'd be great if there was kind of a an about the company section, which could be combined with this process section. It could kind of be like this in the process section together. And I also love to see a photo of the maker. I think that, like adds a personal connection element. So that would be great. And then you have a section about your sources. I actually think this is great and something that might potentially be really unique about you, because I don't see this on many other jewelry sites. So I think that's a great thing for the homepage as well. Or at the very least, I don't know if you have like a page, never mind. I think this is great. And then at this point, you could consider, like, adding another small call to action at the bottom. This is like, shop, shop all, or something like that. Okay. And then on your SOP page, we have, I noticed that the header at the top so I see that it is header one, it has the h1 but then the text is actually in another tag called span, and I've never really seen that before. I'm not sure. I don't actually know if that's an issue or not for SEO, but I am wondering if it's if there's, I'm just wondering what's going on, and if there's a way to to just have it tagged as header one and not have this span tag. I don't know if it's because it's like, styled differently, or it's like, forced into a different font, or something like that. So just want to note that. And then, yeah, oh. And then lastly, your about page this, I agree with Liz comments about if you're comfortable sharing a photo of yourself here as well, it'd be wonderful. And I love how we talk about the intention. But one really important thing for SEO is that we have actual real text on the page. So I can see that this is an image of text like, we can't, like, select the actual text like I can, you know, select the about text like this. And that's really important, because if it's just an image, like Google, can't read that text and understand what's on the page and use it to show people your site and search results for accessibility as well. If somebody is using something like a screen reader because they have vision or mobility impairment, it can't read the image. So they wouldn't be able to read anything on this page other than the word about, and then also on mobile view. If we look at, like, what it would look like on a phone, it's tiny, so if we have real text on the page, then it will resize accordingly on the phone view. So that this is a really easy fix, like, you just have to find this file and like, copy, paste text onto the page. Okay, so I think that's everything. But do you have any questions? Lauren,

    no, that was all really helpful, and definitely makes a lot of sense. I had no idea that header one was so important, or just like how the font was tagged in Shopify, it's kind of difficult. You can't change it the way that you showed how you changed it on Squarespace. So I just got to figure out, like, how to do all that.

    Okay, gotcha? Yeah, I I saw the header one there. So I'm I was trying to do some research on this before the call. I think it should be okay that this pan is inside the header one, but yeah, this might be something to take a look at if you can. Okay, thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Okay, um, so I'll go to the next one. Also, for anyone who came in after the intro, I just have to apologize for my voice. I. Yeah, I sound like I'm about to die, but I'm fine. I'm just getting over a cold. Okay, so Sandrine,

    yeah, and Sandrine is here. Okay, awesome.

    So with this site, I noticed so that we have the header one here, but it's actually wrapped inside a paragraph, so the P that means paragraph, so it's like we have the paragraph style, and then the header one is inside it. And that actually is not good for SEO. It needs to only be the header one. So I'm not sure if you can kind of maybe reset that and just have it be the header one. And then let's see, I also recommend just having to shop now and just remove the Discover more button, just because it's it's only two options, but it's still, like, always beneficial to focus on, like, the most important thing that you want people to focus on so I would probably prioritize job now, unless there's some reason that you want to focus on limited edition pieces, and then, if so, I would maybe add like, a short description underneath the header that says, like, you know, don't miss out On our limited edition pieces or something like that. Okay? And then I also, so we already talked about this, but every other header on the page should be header 234, in order of importance. And I noticed that these are all header one. So we we shouldn't be using my header one again. So these need to be something else. And then let's see. So again, I think the text is a little bit too small. I think we can bump that up a bit. I know that that, like tiny, elegant text, is really trending for a while, but it is really hard to read. And then let's see. Okay, this who we are, section, I would also say so all three of these links, they all go to your about page. But at a quick glance, it can feel like too many decisions. So what you could consider is just having, maybe who we are be like the sub head at the top here, and then you can have this little paragraph here. And then you could use, like, the header three or four for our process and responsible sourcing. And then just have one button at the bottom that's, like, learn more about us, or something like that, just to sort of make it feel a little bit more digestible.

    I might sorry to, like, chime in here, but I might also do one of these two images as, like, just a jewelry shot, just to kind of have more clarity on what you make, rather than having the two model shots.

    That's a good idea, too. Thanks. Liz, yeah, sure thing. And then let's see. Okay, I this, actually, this is a great example of what I was talking about with having the buttons like the background behind the text as buttons. The only thing is, when you hover over them, the white text is a little hard to read. So I don't know if you're able to adjust this in your site styles settings, but if you can make the hover state like green text even would be easier to read, since your photos all have white backgrounds that would that would be great. And then again, maybe just like, a little bit larger text size. And then let's see. Another thing that you might consider is, like we saw on Christina's site, we have, like, alternating background colors between the sections, and that also helps it just feel a little bit more digestible. It helps people who are skimming, just like visually break up the sections of your site. So after we are done with the who we are section, maybe the shop by category section has, like, a slightly darker background, like slightly light gray. I can't tell if this is off white or white. I think it's off white. Yeah, it is, because this is white. So maybe stop by category has, like, bright white, and then we go back to the Off White, and I go back to the bright white. And then you could even use the dark green as a background color in some places, just to, like, help visually break up the sections, I would say also. I was also going back and forth on whether or not the homepage feels like a lot. I guess you know you know your business better than I do. This is my first time looking at your site, but I would consider if blog posts really need to be on the homepage, or if they could even just be moved down further, um. And then the our initiative section, I questioned if this was the right headline to describe these things. Things like the loyalty and the gift cards, these things go together because they're customer focused. So something like, I don't know, like customer perks or something, but then Wholesale is kind of like its own thing. So I wonder if there's, like, another way that these could be broken up, or like, maybe wholesale gets highlighted by itself, and then, let's see, I

    would probably move wholesale to the footer. Footer, yeah, that's what I would do. I don't think you need a block there, because if somebody's going looking for wholesale, you're probably sending them a direct link. It's less likely, I would guess, that a store would just be browsing and be like, Oh, wholesale kind of thing. That's just my opinion.

    They might like. If they know they look to shop wholesale, they probably would look to the footer as well for the wholesale link. Okay, and then let's see. Oh, okay, then shop the look. I did question whether this was necessary. I know it's like fun, but I wonder, is it here just because it's cool, or is this actually like serving a purpose? Would it be better to just like, highlight featured products rather than like, have this extra step of I think it's unlikely that people will scroll through this as well. Um, like. They might play around with the first one, but then I don't know that they will scroll through all of them. So maybe just considering if this is the best way to highlight products, um, and then let's see love testimonials. I love that you have those on my homepage. I might just add a little subhead above it. This has something like what our customers have to say, or like our customers love our pieces, or something like that. And then press. You can say press. I don't think you have to say press logo. And then let's see, yeah, okay, that was it for the homepage, and then on your shop page, as products. And I wondered, as I apologize, if I'm just my first impression is wrong, but I think we only have jewelry, so I would need to say jewelry, or shop jewelry, um, and then for the individual products, again, like text size is very, very small, so definitely bump that up, um. And then I would also consider actually, okay, I really like this one. I noticed a lot of them said description with the drop down. And I was gonna suggest maybe you have, like, description specifications shipping. But this one does have that. So that's exactly what I was going to recommend. But I think some, maybe some of the other ones, yeah, this one says description, and then, like, these are hidden in here. So I would maybe do description and then specifications and shipping as drop downs for all of them. And then I would also maybe pull out, like, one or two sentences from the description and have it above the drop downs, just so that, like, they can read a little bit about it without having to click these. And then, like I the reason for having like specifications of shipping be their own drop downs. If they don't click description, then they're not going to see this at all, but they might be looking for this info. So okay, let's see. Yeah, I think that was everything. Do you have any questions?

    Any questions? Sandry,

    no, I think that's pretty thorough, and I appreciate it, because obviously there are some things I need to tweak in the website. And I'll listen again to the recording to make sure you don't miss anything. But I really appreciate it.

    Yeah, of course. Thank thanks for submitting your site. Thanks, Andreen, okay, let's go to the next one. Okay, Emily's site.

    I don't think Emily is here. Okay. Anyway, you

    want me to still do this?

    Yeah, if you don't mind. Okay,

    so this was the same thing. This header. This needs to be header one. I think I looked at it and it is not, yeah, it's header two. So this needs to be header one. And then I love that we have the box behind the text for this. This top text here, it makes it ensures that the text is legible, because sometimes text on top of a photo can be hard to read. So I really love that Emily made that decision, a design decision, and then we don't need home in the navigation. I think most people know to click the logo, actually. Yeah. Your logo goes to home. Most people know they can click the logo to go home. And then we can just simplify the navigation a little bit more. And then I would say, on the homepage, it's actually pretty short, like we don't need to crowd up the homepage with tons of information, but if anything like you could consider adding a shop by category section to the homepage, because I see we do have categories. So we could have like, you know, rings, earrings, necklaces, is like a grid of three on the homepage. I also wanted to say, even though it's kind of all focusing on this brownish color, I actually love the way that the white with the black borders, like, makes everything pop out. And I love the pop of red, but I know that it's gonna go away on June 22 and I'm almost wondering, like, is there any other places, are there any other places that the red could come in, like, maybe the names of the products, or like buttons or something? Because I think it adds a little bit of interest, instead of all just feeling like this, kind of like beige color. And then let's see, yeah, on the other pages, like the about page, for example, Meet Emily. It just needs to be the header one, and might consider moving it above the photos as well. And yeah, same thing throughout, like all the other pages of the site. We just need to have the header one at the top and then the other subheads just following that hierarchy, like we talked about. So yeah, any questions about Emily's site?

    I just love that she has joyfully handmade and she has this photo of herself looking so joyful,

    yeah, yeah,

    yeah, they're really nice.

    And there was a question about left blind versus centered. This is one. I do think this would be more readable left aligned. It's not like a ton of text, but yeah, yeah, a lot of research does show that left mind is easier to read. Okay, so next we have Jade Rogers, and

    Jade's here, and Jade lives in Asheville. Oh,

    yay. Okay, so we do have the header one here I did see, and that's great, although the text here, I think, could include more like, searchable keywords for exactly what you offer. And that could be as simple as adding something like, I think, like, if you just add vintage, vintage, what did we what did that say? Vintage fine jewelry? First, salty, juicy, Sun drench days, then we have, like, exactly what it is as though, like, searchable header, one for Google and like, for somebody who just lands on the site and just sees this, they already know that they're, we're talking about jewelry, before they have to scroll down. So that would be my recommendation for that. And then same comments about the header hierarchy shop, our favorites just has to be header two or three or four. But we can't use header one again after the top of the page. And then here I would maybe consider having like, the name of the product underneath each product with, like, some sort of hover effect. Like, maybe when you hover over these, they get slightly more transparent and or, like, if we have the name of the product under, it changes color, or something like that. Just so it's really clear that you can click on these and they won't go to a product, because right now it just looks like a gallery, and then okay, in the drop down here, I would also recommend we just say like spring 2025 collection, as opposed to SS 25 because just for Someone who's unfamiliar with your site or jewelry in general, they may not know what that means. And we just want to make sure we're like more like, super, super, super clear. Sometimes I know like we are so like in it, it seems so obvious, but to other people it might not be as obvious. And let's see, oh, yeah. I also question if more is confusing. I wonder I'll be here. It's like, I don't know if you see your analytics and you see, like, how often people click more. But again, just like, lack of specificity as to what exactly that means. So I don't know if that could say, like, uh, something like, I don't know. These are mostly Okay, see, pendants, brooches, maybe, like, guessing

    it's because it's like, brooches and cufflinks.

    Like, is there another more specific word that those could be wrapped in? Is kind of what I'm wondering. Yeah. I. Yeah, some wearable, wearable art. I don't know that. Just something to think about, not necessarily like a must change, but just a thought, okay, and then let's see, oh, okay. On the flat page we also have so we need that top to be header one and then the products. I also noticed that your product URLs, they add this little string of numbers at the end. And I think this happens a lot when we like duplicate a product and then change the info in order to create a new product. And if we, like, forget to change the URL. Sometimes the website platform was like, at a random string of numbers. So we definitely want to make sure to update those so that they they are clean in it. They don't have that. And then, let's see, I also wondered, I was like, on the fence on whether or not your products could use a little bit more info in the product description. Like this is, like, exactly what it is, a question about that. And the photos are great. I love that we have, like, the photo the product, and then you're seeing it on somebody, so you can, like, see how big it is and what it looks like to wear. But yeah, I wonder if it could just help, like, kind of build that trust, like, especially if this is maybe the first time someone's looking at your site, just help, I feel like a little bit more legit, a little bit more trustworthy. If there's like, a longer, more in depth description, even if it's like, bullet points about materials or sources or something like that. Um,

    yeah. You could put the measurement of the hoop as something extra, and then just like, a little, like, easy to wear everyday hoops, something that's a little bit more,

    yeah.

    And then, yeah, same comment as we've been talking about, like, we need to have a header, one at the top of the about page that just says something like, about Jade, or about the jeweler, or about Jade the jeweler in Asheville, or so you know, something searchable, and yeah, that goes for every page of the site. So, yeah, any questions?

    Yeah, Jade. You might want to also add, like, upcoming markets, because I know you've been doing some of those, that'd

    be great.

    Thank you so much. Of course, great

    advice. I appreciate it.

    Thanks for submitting your site. Okay, sorry, oh my gosh, yeah. How

    are you doing over there? I feel fine. I had this a couple of months ago where it's like I was talking and I felt totally normal, but

    I've Yeah, I sound like I'm gonna die as

    long as you feel okay, we're fine. Okay, um,

    I'm so sorry.

    Okay, and Emma. Emma's

    here. Okay, awesome. Okay, so, okay, first of all, like, I've never seen jewelry like this before, so this is just so cool. I had a lot of fun looking at your work. And so the first thing I wanted to note was there is actually a lot of research that recommends against carousels, which is this like slideshow at the top of a homepage for a handful of reasons, I actually have a little, what do you call it? Little page that I send to my web design clients about why we should not use carousel and I'm just going to pop it in the chat, and you can save it for reference if it's helpful. But they, most people, tend to, oops, not look through all of the slides. So if you're like, they're missing information, like they're going to look at the first one and then scroll and then they're not going to see the other info. It also, if they're moving too fast, it can be hard for them to, like, take in all of the information as well. Anybody that has like, issues with motion, it can just feel jarring as well. And it also can cause some SEO issues because of the fact that we only we need to have that one header one. Then a lot of times we'll have like, three headed ones, because we have three headlines, and we can't, we don't want that. So anyway, all this to say I would just pick, like, one most important thing to go at the top of your site and then wrap the other stuff into the rest of the page. So I would have your header one say something like, I don't know, like kinetic jewelry that moves with you, or something like that that describes what it is. And then when you adjust that, we saw some good examples already of like a background behind the text, and that would be helpful as well, because the text on top of a photo can be hard to read, especially when like elements of. Photo are light colored. And again, like, even if we think it's legible for other people using your site, it might not be. Another thing you can do, oh my gosh, I'm sorry my voice sounds terrible. I wanted to show another example of let me find it real quick. Another thing you can do with so I know, like, sometimes we don't want to, like, just put a big box on top of the photo, because there's concern about, like, hiding the beautiful photo. But you can do something like this, where it's like, slightly transparent, so you can still see the photo through it, and yours can still be, like, smaller in the corner, but that way, like you're making sure the text is super, super legible. Okay? And then let me go back to your notes, okay? And then this section that is custom design, or where was the customer sign? Oh, here it is, okay, the section about custom design. So I noticed that custom design was one of the slides here. And I do think that'd be a great thing to highlight on the homepage. So I think this just needs, like, a larger headline that says, like, custom designed to be spoke to Lori or something like that, to make it, to make that clear, because it's only listed on the button. And then Categories section here be great if we had a little subhead that said, like, shop by category, or shop our category, or something like that. And then this wedding and engagement section, I mean same comment about the text on top of the photo. And can solve that by either just like, moving it off of the photo, or same solution with, like, a slightly transparent box behind it, and then, yeah, I think it's great with, like, the alternating between the photo backgrounds and the white backgrounds that helps break up the sections. But you could also consider like, maybe using this slightly like purpley GRAY Like, maybe use this purpley gray color a little bit more throughout, if you're looking for like, more variety and background colors to break up the sections again, and yeah. And then the same comment that I've kind of been saying to for most of the sites is that we need the header, one at the top of the about page, and every every other page of the site as well. Yeah. Any questions. Emma, any

    questions. Emma,

    no, that's all super helpful. That's great when you talk about adding like header ones, I guess different for like every website build like. So I use the Shopify template to do this and kind of just fill in the text like give me okay, is a header one like a specific formatted thing, or is it just, Does that just mean a text at the top of the

    page? Yeah, so Emma came in late, okay, if you

    talked about that before I watched the recording.

    Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, in the Yeah, in the recording, yeah. I do go over it a little bit, and I'm not super familiar with the Shopify templates, but if there is a way to change that at the top of every page, that would be the ideal solution. Yeah.

    And the reason why it's important, just like the abridged version, is that for SEO purposes, that's like the first thing Google pulls.

    Yes. And another thing I meant to I forgot to mention, though, another reason why that's important. I think I mentioned real quickly, it's also important for accessibility. But let me go back to my demo page. So are you familiar with like, web accessibility, or have you like, heard that term come up? So it's basically like, you know how physical spaces have ADA guidelines for like, you have to have a bathroom and you have to have a ramp and things like that. It's like your website also has guidelines to make sure people who have like, vision impairment or mobility impairment can use your site. And so if people are using a screen reader, which reads the site back at them, they have the ability to read the page headlines first, so it will just like read it for my for this, for example, it would read demo page, headline, mini logo and brand. Website, identity, package, what's included in the mini package? One page. Website package was included in the one page. And then they can from there, they can be like, I want to go back and read about the mini package. So it's basically like skimming the page for them. So the that's why we need to have those header the header one at the top, and then the headers in order of importance, because it's going to read it in that order. So if it's all like, all over the place, then the screen reader, like reads the headers out. That person listening to it is going to be very confused. So that's why, that's another reason why that is important. Yeah, I do

    have a question about accessibility with when I was like, building my website a couple years ago, I remember finding articles about people being sued for their website not being accessibility compliant, but it seemed like all the rules for that were kind of subjective, like make it easy to read. So do you have are there any best practices for, like, things we must include,

    yeah, and that's I want just give a disclaimer that I am not an accessibility expert. I have, like, I've done an accessibility course, and I have, like, some foundational knowledge in it, but there are definitely people who specialize in this and can give much better advice. I actually have a colleague that does accessibility audits. I'm happy to share that info if that would be helpful too. But I had a conversation with my colleague about this. And, like, yes, that happens. I mean, there's no way that we can guarantee that it won't happen, but the chances for like, the average small business is probably pretty slim. At the same time, that doesn't mean that like, we don't want, like, we don't want like, obviously, we don't want to just ignore accessibility standards, but some baseline things you can do are that heading structure. We want to make sure the text is legible. So that's why I keep talking about like, text on top of a photo. It needs to have enough contrast. That's another big thing for accessibility. And all the sites we've looked at so far, the color of the text on top of the background has not been an issue. But there actually, I do have this up here. There actually is a contrast checker that you can use to make sure that your text on top of your background has enough contrast. So for example, like this, obviously you can read, but it has to have a ratio of it 4.5 in order to pass accessibility guidelines. So that's another, like, really, really important thing. But like, easy fix, I actually didn't see any issues with that. Most of those two looked at, just like the photos, and then like another big thing that is important for accessibility is images of text. So we looked at one site where the about page had an image of text, and I talked about, we need to have that actually written out on the page. That's really important as well. Those are a couple of the big things. And then we could also, we, I mean, you could also get into like image descriptions in alt text. I don't know if that's something that that anyone here has explored with your product, especially with like your product images, where you're actually describing what's in the image. So like, if somebody with vision impairment is looking at your site, it will read out the image description, which should say something like, you know, like gold ring with a thick band and a red gemstone in the middle. And like, literally describing what the image is. I feel like I'm kind of going on a tangent now.

    It's all it's all important, though. Yeah, alt text is super important for SEO. I think Sohail Dewani, when we did a chat with him, he talked about it. I think CAMI talked about it too. But yeah, I'd love your colleagues info too, because accessibility is an interesting thing to dig into, an important thing to dig into.

    Yeah, I'll share it with you her course that I took. This is the course that I took. It's not just for web designers. Anyone could take it and you can apply it to your own website. And she is a certified web accessibility expert, so highly recommend. That's

    great. Thank you for sharing. For sharing that. Yeah, of course. Okay, we probably could do like, two more sites, maybe three more sites. Okay, I'm thinking just to kind of like respect your time, and then maybe we could do a part two later, but we could see what we can get through. Sounds

    good. Okay, so I have Melissa's slide pulled up here. Same comment about the carousel that we talked about. I recommend just focus on like one thing, probably this, that describes exactly what your jewelry is about, and then make sure it's in that header, one text style again, I love that has the background behind it that is very legible. That's perfect. And then below, you could add the section about, I guess you could add the section about gift bundles below, if you that's also something you want to highlight on the homepage, although I did feel like there's a lot on your homepage as well. So I might consider, like, maybe thinking about. What are the most important things that you would want people to see? Whether it's like shop by category and having three categories, having, I definitely think like a section this section about use a keep, keep on the homepage, you could consider like having one featured collection, or like, three featured pieces the blog, like, again, I question whether or not that needs to be on the homepage, because we really want to focus on, like, getting people to shop. I mean, there's you have so many, like, beautiful, unique things that I know can probably feel really hard to narrow down, but maybe just think about just like focusing in. I also was curious if stationary, if you keep this, if stationary is the right description here, because that makes me think paper, but it's, it's not, it's bookmarks. So maybe call it bookmarks, or like, there's also other things, though, I see stickers, something else. And let's see another thing that could help. I love how towards the bottom you go into these different background colors. And that really helps, just like it really helps it feel like you're visually going into different information, and that could help break up this information as well, and maybe help it feel a little less overwhelming, even if it's just like a slightly off white background, like white, off white, white, off white, just to help it feel A little bit more digestible.

    And then let's see. Um, I also wondered if you might consider moving like as seen on down. Uh, Liz, I think like first you want to get people to shop, so showing your products is arguably more important.

    And then let's see,

    okay, I think that's everything on your homepage. And then I think I looked at your about page, and yeah, that we had the proper heading structure and everything here, so that all was great. Yeah. Any any questions Melissa?

    I love the join the dreamer circle, and Lori's saying, I like how Melissa includes her name under the company name. Is this a good idea for those of us who have a separate brand name.

    I think that's a personal decision. It just depends on how much you want, like your self tied into your brand, but regardless of if it's part of your logo or not, I'm a huge advocate of talking about like, who you are on the about page, and like, having your name on the about page. Like, I can't tell you how many sites I go to where I'll see, like, a picture of the person who makes the stuff, and they'll say, like, I do this and I do this, but like, nowhere on there does it say their name. So I'm definitely a huge advocate of introducing yourself somewhere.

    Really appreciate that. I kind of was worried that I felt like my homepage was busy and you basically confirmed it. Yeah, I think it's, it's, I probably should do the reorganization and not try to highlight every single section, like the accessories and everything, when, again, the jewelry is the main feature. But the segmentation with the colors, it didn't occur to me that I didn't do that whole middle section, so I appreciate you pointing that out.

    Yeah, no problem. Thanks for sharing your site. Thank you so much. Okay, no, okay. Dante site.

    Did you have unfurl studio on your list, too?

    Unfurl, yeah,

    do that one, yeah, let's do Dante's and then Lori's unfurl, and then we'll wrap it up for today. No worries. I just, I have my list, and I was just, okay, yeah,

    excellent. Okay, so, yeah, so Dante site, same note about the carousel at the top, and then same note about text on top of a photo. Talked about that a couple of times, so I'm not going to reiterate it again and then again, like that header, one just needs to be like, statement about what you offer, something like, you know, artful jewelry that feels like you something like that. And then you can highlight the collection later in his own section. Okay, best seller. Is I would cut this down to like, three, six Max, because, again, it's just like a lot of decisions, and it feels more like best sellers when there's fewer. And I also right. If there's a way to like, have the name of the piece and like quick shop show up without having to hover over it, that would be ideal, just because you know it. In case somebody doesn't think to like, hover their mouse over here, they might just think, these are just images. It's not quite super clear that you can click on them. And let's see. I would also say, like, some of the text here again, like, very small. Like, the prices can be bigger, the button text can be bigger. Navigation is also very small, so don't be afraid to, like, bump it up. I promise it will still look elegant. I also, I loved this. I love the icons and the section about you. Those were great. And then just a note that so, like we talked about, we have to have the heading one at the top, and then we can't use it again. So I noticed that this was heading one, and so this has to be like heading two or three or something else. And then let's see in the about drop down. Okay, here. I well, okay, so find this. IRL, I think if your audience is like hugely, like millennial Gen Z, they will understand that. But it's never a bad thing to be more clear, like, find us at a store would be preferable, just in case no one someone doesn't know IRL stands for and then I wondered about these, like sub menus, because I so I noticed that, like, you can click on the first one, like, if I click about, about Dante Peru, it goes to a different page. But I think, because it full, it, like, expands into these people might not even think to click on this one at all, and they would just go to these. So I think, and there's already quite a lot under this, so I guess there's like, option options of just, like, putting everything under a pouch and not having the sub menus. Or, like, is this a place where we actually use one of those mega menus where it's like, you know, a larger thing with, like, columns and, yeah, just, I'm just thinking about, is it super, super clear that everything is clickable, and is it I

    would move press to the footer, and I would have, like, your favorite pieces just on your about page and not, like, its own click through. Like, maybe there's a link on your about page after your bio. Like, here are my favorite pieces. Kind

    of thing I love. Yeah, I am looking at going to a a mega menu. Okay, how do you feel about those?

    Um, I I well, okay, I would be more for using it for SOP than for about, because it can feel like a lot of information, a lot of options. So I think if you have like, tons of SOP categories, it makes sense. I know I mentioned for about, but like in general, we want to keep it simple and not too overwhelming to look at. So the lukewarm, yeah, exactly. I mean, it does work well for large stores that have, like, a lot of categories of categories under stop. But I probably, I know I said the second ago, I probably would have tried to avoid using it under about if you can't. Okay, yep,

    thank you so much.

    Okay, I think that everything, any other questions, I Yeah. Okay, awesome, so I'll go back to unfurl. Okay, so this was same note about the carousel, and same note about like the legibility of the text. We need to have, like a background behind the text or something, as opposed to text on top of the photo directly. And then I have, like, you know, like, we've been talking about that really strong header, one that describes what you do. And then, let's see. And then I. To add the same kind of info we've been talking about about, like, alternating background colors. So maybe you bring in a light gray or, like, a really light gold color, just because, like, it feels like the newsletter is part of the feature product section, and that will just help it visually stand out and, like, help people, like, just feel like they're going into a new section of information and then so, like I said, I don't think you need to like stuff, a whole bunch of stuff on your homepage, if you you know for no reason. But once you fix the carousel, you could consider having a section of the homepage that focuses on, like, talking a little bit more about the collection, like, about about luminaire. Sorry if I'm saying it wrong, but I know there was a slide in there about that, so maybe you just talked about that a little on the homepage. And then something else you could consider adding to the homepage is about you. I know you have it here. This looks like it's part of the footer, but I think Liz mentioned before about showing a photo of yourself, and I'm very pro like showing the person behind the piece as well. And then let's see this like very nitpicky thing, but you might consider changing the word discover in the navigation to about the first time that I went to explore this. I was like, what does that mean? And I was like, oh, it's the about in for information. So just like, ultimate clarity is never a bad idea. And yeah, I think I looked through your other pages, and I think we have, like, proper heading structure everywhere else. So that was all great. As I'm looking at this, though, I'm going back to the photo thing. If you're not uncomfortable sharing a photo of yourself that could be great on your about page, or is that on the about the artist page? Okay, it's there. Never mind. Yeah. Any other questions?

    This is super helpful. Thank you. Okay,

    yeah, of course,

    yeah, this is super helpful. I love something that stuck with me that you said in your, your Asheville presentation, was that, like, with in terms of clarity, like you don't want to, like, get too, too flowery with stuff. Like, it's good to be creative with your text and all that, but not in your headings and not in when you're saying what you do.

    Yeah, and it's so tricky, because I feel like every copywriter would hate me for saying this, because, like, we want to have brand personality and like, we want to be unique and all that in the copy. I would just recommend as an example, oops, okay, as an example, like, just you can start with the clarity and then, like, add the creativity around it. So like, for example, if we have something that's like, beads are life, or, like, the magic of beads, or something like that, like, that's very vague. Nobody knows what that means. It's not very, like Google searchable. So something like shop beaded jewelry is obviously, like, there's keywords there. It's very clear. But you could combine them, and you could have something like shop beaded jewelry that feels like you, because beads are life. So then you get, like, the clarity and the creativity. So I would just like, start with ultimate clarity, and especially when we're talking about, like, in those header ones. And then you can just like, build the the creativity around it, but don't lose the words that describe, like, exactly what you offer.

    Amazing. Any questions before we wrap up, and if we didn't get to your site, I'll talk to Alyssa about circling back another time, but I feel like a lot of the advice you gave can translate to everybody's site. So like you can take that what she said, and look at your site again. And yeah, any questions before we wrap up from anyone. Melissa says I learned so much, so helpful and inspiring. And I'm going to drop and I'll share this on all of our in the show notes and all of those things. But I'll share Alissa's information if you want to chat with her. I think you offer like, one of your services is a website audit, right? Yeah,

    I'll share it. I do offer a website review service where we look at five core pages of your site, and we meet one on one, and we take a look at what can be improved, some changes you can make, and the impact that, the impact that you'll receive if you make those changes. So it's very personalized. Walk through it together, and I make sure that everything, well, there are, is a significant amount of things you can do yourself. I want to make sure it's very easy for you to go and implement it all right away. So if that's something you're interested in, feel free to reach out.

    Great. Thank you so much. Thanks. Alyssa, thanks everyone. Yeah, take care of your voice. Go drink some tea. Have some tea. Thank you, honey

    for this, but thank you so much. You were so great. Nice to meet everyone. Thanks, everyone. Bye,

    bye.