I wonder if I could ask for some constructive comments about my website, please?

It's a home-made site using Rapid Weaver. 

I think that as home-made sites go, it's quite a good one, but obviously I may not see things other might.

I can't believe how very quiet it is (for quiet, read completely dead!)

I am thinking of changing the photo on the home-page, as a peacock wedding cake is possibly an acquired taste and I want my site to invite people to click further! 

My personal taste is for sites that aren't too wordy! But I hope there's enough there for search engines to pick up on.  When you type Wedding Cakes or Birthday Cakes or just Cake Makers and my home town in Google, I'm there on the first page!  Unfortunately, if you type in wedding cakes London or wedding cakes Es*** (E s s e x <--  that's the county.  LOL @ CC's filter!!!!)  then I'm nowhere near!

My cakes 'hold their own', so I'm not worried on that count (and I don't meant that to sound big headed or rude... I just mean that I don't think it's the cakes that's the reason it's all gone so quiet)

Pat-a-Cake Parties

I've never bothered with a 'testimonials' page because who would ever put a bad one on their own site?  I just think they're a waste of time!  I also don't think customers are overly bothered to know 'About me'.

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

Suzanne x

AWhat is your marketing and SEO strategy for advertising the site?

The site looks good, but to me it seems a little generic and doesn't stand out much. Some possible improvements are a custom-designed logo to help branding, a more conspicuous link to your contact form on the home page, more info about your competitive advantages on your home page, and a dynamic slideshow on the home page to show off more cakes.

Also, the name of your business seems to suggest your specialty is related more to party planning than making cakes.

Just the quickest review from me. I think your format for showing your cakes doesn't do your work justice. The boxes are too small and the pink outline around the box draws my eye away from looking at your photos. Right before I looked at your site I looked at this site; http://www.rosalindmillercakes.com/weddingcakes_2013.html and your format pales in impact. Your cakes are very good, with a little tweaking they could look great on your site.

A

A marketing strategy should be self-explanatory. SEO (search engine optimization) is one component of the strategy to help improve your web site's placement in search results organically (as opposed to buying ads), here is some more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization

The reason I avoided a slide show on the home-page (assuming the software allows for that) is because I don't have any patience for a site that doesn't load quickly and so I assume other people may be the same.

You can design the site so that the rest of the site loads while the slide show is set up, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds for the slide show to start.

Well... when I FIRST started out many years ago, I didn't intend making cakes! I was going to do children's cake decorating parties. However, that didn't take off, but the cakes did. Since I have such a good Google rating, I am VERY reluctant to change the name.

If you want to maintain the party planning business I would recommend keeping the "Parties" brand and creating a new brand to serve customers looking for wedding cakes. If you don't want to maintain the party planning business the good Google rating isn't helping you much since it's not aimed at your target market.

i didn't go look yet--i just wanna say that selfie website launch/maintenance is as all consuming as making a cake--except at some point the cake is over--the website goes on forever--but you really get a huge sigh of relief if you cough up the $$  or i should say ## (pounds haha) up to get someone to design & help you--otherwise it's a never ending brain/time eater--

however--you want to retain control so you can do further tweaks and updates without them too--

but all this advice for future--

A

Agreed...in fact I quickly skimmed that section and originally thought all the photos were representative of your work before I read it in greater detail.

AI completely love your website! And I can't believe your based in gants hill, I'm about 20 mins away from you lol!! I really loved the little joke at the end about the site using cookies

I'm glad you going to try (if I can do it, you can too). Your cakes are too good not to be shown to your best advantage. :)

opinion as a shopper only:

• less pink, maybe stripes as an accent
• bigger photos for your thumbprint photos, about 100% larger
• put more then one elegant showpiece photo on your front page.  Show it off, show it first, show it well.
• your name sounds like a Mcdonalds kids cake outlet.
• The story has to go! and never show something ugly on your website. (or you have the cakewrecks page)

and most importantly........YOUR CAKES ARE AWSOME.  You deserve a professional website to showcase those cakes!

Seriously You are a fabulous decorator. 

Definitely get rid of the story. It made me think the decorator was you the whole way through, but it wasn't? And it was the first link I clicked on. It was msyterious, and I wanted to know what the little story was,and then it was a story about bad cake. Tell a story about a happy couple who came to you, had some kind of request, which you fulfilled beyond their wildest dreams and told everyone how happy they were.

And the name is off-putting.

Gorgeous cakes!

I do agree with the story, I clicked on it expecting a happy little read, and just assumed the pictures were yours at first. You do lovely work, I would hate for anyone to walk away because they didn't bother to finish reading that story!

I think the pink should be muted, I like the idea of a faint stripe. Maybe jazz up the look of the name, I don't mean some crazy font, just make it pop a little more.

I wimped out and used a wix account, lol. I was able to customize it a lot, but started out with an already set user-friendly, nice looking site. It costs something like $8 a month to keep it ad free.

Well, the story's gone!

The rest will take a bit longer to sort.  My husband is the one who does the website stuff for me and he's up to his eyes with work at the moment.  Deleting the page was about as much as I could do!!

Thank you for all your comments - very much appreciated.

Suzanne x