So, I've read multiple posts on here about how people don't read pricing info, don't do the math, etc. I'm actually OK with giving them the pricing info, it doesn't bother me at all. I've created a "form" message that I send via email that gets them off to a good start with pricing.

Here's what gets to me, though...people don't seem to even read my menu! I have it posted on both my Facebook page and my website. I provided links to both to a customer last night and her reply was that she would like Red Velvet! Red Velvet isn't on my menu! I explained that to her. So now she's leaning towards Carrot Cake. That is on my menu. But cream cheese icing is not. Anyone want to take bets that she's going to want it with cream cheese icing?

Kinda funny, but not.

Well this comes as no surprise to me.

Facebook is feeding the fantasy that you can make any and every kind of cake for every customer and every food allergy and it should be picture perfect and be stable for 3 weeks at 90F and....

And there are some people who go out and form legally binding contracts to make cakes that they don't know how to make, and they think that it's OK to assume that somebody will post a full tutorial online for them to copy blindly without any expenditure of creative energy...

In other words, the reality that cakes are FOOD with limitations has been lost in the fantasy of seeing images online.

And that means that customers do NOT read menus because their heads are full of fantasy...the reality of a menu doesn't register.

...the reality that cakes are FOOD with limitations has been lost
...fantasy that you can make any and every kind of cake for every customer and every food allergy and it should be picture perfect and be stable for 3 weeks at 90F and....
...customers do NOT read menus because their heads are full of fantasy...the reality of a menu doesn't register.

I think you've nailed it, Irene. Here's a Gary Larson cartoon I've LOVED for years.

You to client: "Ginger, I don't make Red Velvet Cakes. I don't make Cream Cheese Frosting."

What Ginger hears: "Ginger, blah, blah, blah. Ginger, blah blah blah."

You may want to redesign your web site to better feature your menu and call attention to the other pages on your site. As it is now there is way too much text so most people probably don't read beyond a paragraph or two (especially considering the text is italic against a textured background).

I add the size, price, number of servings, etc., so that they know exactly what they are looking at right on the sight with my sample cakes. I don't leave the math up to them.

Another issue may be that some bakeries, like mine, offer to make anything not on the menu. So it may open up the idea that everyone may be willing to make things not on the menu.

But even with my explicit pricing, I will get intelligent people email me with, "How much are one dozen chocolate cupcakes and a Bailey's cake?". I have to go and look it up and email back even when they had to be on the page and see the price in order to write the email.

It really helps to include cross section photos of your cakes.

I do agree with Jason. Your cakes are lovely and your works look clean and well executed. BUT your website's design, I feel, lets you down a bit. There's a lot of text before getting to the flavours you offer etc. People tend not to want to read tons of stuff. Rather pictures or short brief descriptions. Also the way the Cake flavours and fillings are just typed in one below the other, the heading is not standing out, its easy to miss.

My sister runs a multimedia company, doing websites, so I often help her and in today's online frenzy, people tend to judge a business a lot by its professionalism of its website. Just saying, it could definitely be designed much better to reflec the standard of the cakes you do.

Hope that helps and you don't take my comments the wrong way!

I am not sure who designed your site, nor who coded the htm, nor who rendered the graphics. But my suggestion would be to fire all three, and find a really good website design person.

I have viewed the site using 15 different web browsers, and it is different in all 15. They used CrapRoMedia as a drag and drop editor, which produces the most awful code ever. You have a very simple site that could be hand coded in about a day at the most.

The graphics on the first page are way too large in file size, they all need to be rendered and resized. You never let the HTM resize a graphic file. The actual file size does not change, and that is the most important. The file names are just awful, how do you ever keep track of what is really what on your development box?

This file name "f58ade0d23201e9a755827f3d97e20d0" is 4288x3216 pixels in visual size and is 1.5Mb is file size. But you are resizing that file to only 305x182 using htm resize attribute. I resized the file using a graphic editor, down to 305x182, and now the file size is only 13Kb. The backgound image has the same file name issue as all the others. I change the dimensions of the one file from being just a couple Kb shy of one Mb, and now it is only 30Kb in size. And it repeats over the entire page, no matter what size monitor I view it on. Much more pleasant to be passed across the internet.

I just took about an hour to design your site with the exact same layout, background image and title graphic, three graphics down the right side and all the text. The entire page has a total combined file size of only 72Kb. I cut out a huge amount of code that was not needed. Compared to the original combined file size of over 3.80Mb for the first page only.

And as the others have stated, your lists are not good at all. It is really difficult to determine what is the list and what is the title.

HTM is not a coding language, nor is it even a scripting language. It is a page layout format language. That is all that it can do. And it is simple to use. In fact, you can use any text editor and write all the formatting code needed for any plain htm site. You do not even need a web server to view it, you can view the file in any browser. The browser does all the tag rendering.

I just want to suggest that you pull the site and code it correctly. You will get much more from your site. And another thing, find yourself a really good ISP. you are using GoDaddy, one of the worst. There are so many great ISP available.

I choose my wine by how the label looks. If they did not take the time to design a great looking label, why am I supposed to believe they took the care and time into producing a great tasting wine. Only visual that I have for proof of that, is the label on the bottle. Websites are the same way. I would never let a mobile car detail company clean my vehicles if they did not take care of their own.

I am not sure who designed your site, nor who coded the htm, nor who rendered the graphics. But my suggestion would be to fire all three, and find a really good website design person.

I have viewed the site using 15 different web browsers, and it is different in all 15. They used CrapRoMedia as a drag and drop editor, which produces the most awful code ever. You have a very simple site that could be hand coded in about a day at the most.

The graphics on the first page are way too large in file size, they all need to be rendered and resized. You never let the HTM resize a graphic file. The actual file size does not change, and that is the most important. The file names are just awful, how do you ever keep track of what is really what on your development box?

This file name "f58ade0d23201e9a755827f3d97e20d0" is 4288x3216 pixels in visual size and is 1.5Mb is file size. But you are resizing that file to only 305x182 using htm resize attribute. I resized the file using a graphic editor, down to 305x182, and now the file size is only 13Kb. The backgound image has the same file name issue as all the others. I change the dimensions of the one file from being just a couple Kb shy of one Mb, and now it is only 30Kb in size. And it repeats over the entire page, no matter what size monitor I view it on. Much more pleasant to be passed across the internet.

I just took about an hour to design your site with the exact same layout, background image and title graphic, three graphics down the right side and all the text. The entire page has a total combined file size of only 72Kb. I cut out a huge amount of code that was not needed. Compared to the original combined file size of over 3.80Mb for the first page only.

And as the others have stated, your lists are not good at all. It is really difficult to determine what is the list and what is the title.

HTM is not a coding language, nor is it even a scripting language. It is a page layout format language. That is all that it can do. And it is simple to use. In fact, you can use any text editor and write all the formatting code needed for any plain htm site. You do not even need a web server to view it, you can view the file in any browser. The browser does all the tag rendering.

I just want to suggest that you pull the site and code it correctly. You will get much more from your site. And another thing, find yourself a really good ISP. you are using GoDaddy, one of the worst. There are so many great ISP available.

I choose my wine by how the label looks. If they did not take the time to design a great looking label, why am I supposed to believe they took the care and time into producing a great tasting wine. Only visual that I have for proof of that, is the label on the bottle. Websites are the same way. I would never let a mobile car detail company clean my vehicles if they did not take care of their own.

I am not sure who designed your site, nor who coded the htm, nor who rendered the graphics. But my suggestion would be to fire all three, and find a really good website design person.

I have viewed the site using 15 different web browsers, and it is different in all 15. They used CrapRoMedia as a drag and drop editor, which produces the most awful code ever. You have a very simple site that could be hand coded in about a day at the most.

The graphics on the first page are way too large in file size, they all need to be rendered and resized. You never let the HTM resize a graphic file. The actual file size does not change, and that is the most important. The file names are just awful, how do you ever keep track of what is really what on your development box?

This file name "f58ade0d23201e9a755827f3d97e20d0" is 4288x3216 pixels in visual size and is 1.5Mb is file size. But you are resizing that file to only 305x182 using htm resize attribute. I resized the file using a graphic editor, down to 305x182, and now the file size is only 13Kb. The backgound image has the same file name issue as all the others. I change the dimensions of the one file from being just a couple Kb shy of one Mb, and now it is only 30Kb in size. And it repeats over the entire page, no matter what size monitor I view it on. Much more pleasant to be passed across the internet.

I just took about an hour to design your site with the exact same layout, background image and title graphic, three graphics down the right side and all the text. The entire page has a total combined file size of only 72Kb. I cut out a huge amount of code that was not needed. Compared to the original combined file size of over 3.80Mb for the first page only.

And as the others have stated, your lists are not good at all. It is really difficult to determine what is the list and what is the title.

HTM is not a coding language, nor is it even a scripting language. It is a page layout format language. That is all that it can do. And it is simple to use. In fact, you can use any text editor and write all the formatting code needed for any plain htm site. You do not even need a web server to view it, you can view the file in any browser. The browser does all the tag rendering.

I just want to suggest that you pull the site and code it correctly. You will get much more from your site. And another thing, find yourself a really good ISP. you are using GoDaddy, one of the worst. There are so many great ISP available.

I choose my wine by how the label looks. If they did not take the time to design a great looking label, why am I supposed to believe they took the care and time into producing a great tasting wine. Only visual that I have for proof of that, is the label on the bottle. Websites are the same way. I would never let a mobile car detail company clean my vehicles if they did not take care of their own.

Haha, the people in question aren't even LOOKING at my website before "choosing" a flavor so the site's not really the problem . That being said...

SanDiegoBeautifulCakes, sorry, your post might as well be Greek to me. Way too much and too technical information. I can't, nor do I want to, fire myself . Thanks for going to so much trouble, though. My little business is just a step above a hobby for me so investing a lot of money into a website is out of the question. Unfortuately, I do agree with you about o Daddy but didn't realize it until I had already purchased. I will be making a change in April.

Pearl123, thanks for the feedback. My website is a work in progress and I'll keep your comments in mind . When I have the time to get back to it, I'll be focusing on the cakes and flavors page.

WickedGoodies, that cake looks delicious! I have been thinking of that. It would mean baking (and eating) A LOT of sample cakes, though!

scp1127, good point about the expectations that bakeries and other establishments offer "off the menu" items. I hadn't really thought of that. One of my selling points is "tried and true" recipes, I have no desire to be frantically trying to perfect a recipe for a specific order. Not that I think that's what a baker of your caliber is doing, but we have seen plenty of those "I have an order for...and I need a recipe ASAP" posts! I'm a very good baker but I'm nowhere near your level and would be concerned about not being able to pull it off. Before I started selling cakes I agreed to make a gluten and dairy free cake for a friend's daughter and baked 3 times and still was ashamed of the results. I know that's an extreme example but the experience did instill fear .

jason_kraft, I appreciate your feedback. I'll also keep your comments in mind as I keep tweaking the site. Interesting, though, the mixed messages I've had...the amount of text is in response to advice telling me I didn't have enough text in it's previous incarnation. My limited writing and graphic experience has all been in print (newsletters, brochures, etc.) and it's hard to let go of what works in print to do a website. I am working on a new background that's not as busy and the fonts. Sadly, the font choices in Go Daddy are pretty limited.

Apti, love the cartoon! I do believe it hits the nail on the head.

BakingIrene, I think you nailed it, too, especially with your comment about the heads full of fantasy.

BTW, the customer in question ordered her Carrot Cake with Very Vanilla Buttercream, which means she did ultimately read my menu, either on Facebook or the website!

Side note - SanDiegoBeautifulCakes, I appreciate your gobblygook, and if you'd take a look at my page...I fired my web developer and have done a ton of work to fix it since she basically copied and pasted code from another webpage, changed some text and sold it to me. I have spent a ton if time fixing the image sizes etc, but there is a ton of useless tags and code in the /head that I don't understand and have no idea what I can and can't delete - every time I try to play with it, it messes up the layout. It's messing with my SEO!

Elcee, people don't read.

Hi Elcee,

I am not super-baker. If someone wants something that I don't offer and I'm not comfortable with the flavor, I try to get two weeks. That's standard for GF or vegan. You have never seen me on here frantic because I don't have a recipe. My problem is I have developed more recipes than I could possibly offer. And remember, I am a very simplistic decorator. All of my time is spent on baking, not decorating.

But my menu is so vast because people ask for just about anything and I put it on the menu with a picture after it is done.

all techno-babble aside, even great looking menus don't get read! so don't feel bad there's always going to be someone who doesn't think to look for the info themselves; they feel more comfortable just asking you directly.

to WickedGoodies point, though, it's hard to ignore a nice lookin' picture ... yum!

Hey ScratchSF
I can help you and anyone else with their website. But I must tell you that you do not own your domain. I usually do not work on a site that is not owned by the person paying to have the site designed. Your domain is owned by a company from Az

Domains By Proxy, LLC
DomainsByProxy.com
14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260

I am in the process of recoding all of our sites. We have changed our domains totally. But I can work on it if you really need me. I would suggest that you get away from Go Daddy. That is not a good ISP at all. In fact, the worst. First thing that I suggest is trying to talk the owner of the domain into moving the domain to another ISP. Then we can talk about working on your site, and getting you what you want and need. I can work on it and recode it, or re-design it for you.

Beth & Andrew

Elcee, I knew what you meant... I was joking.

I have two flavors of cupcakes due next week that I have not developed. So I get to spend tomorrow night experimenting until I get it right.

You're very talented Linda, and I love your Dahlia cake! But your website Menu and Pricing page is difficult to read. People looking for a cake are not interested in also looking through a menu. I wish I could offer more advice, but my techno skills are exceptionally limited.