I just started up my website http://www.debbiescakesandtreats.com and could use some professional feedback..    

Thank you in advance..

Nice looking website. I would suggest adding carrot cake to your cake flavors list. A paypal account is good  to have for collecting payments ahead of time for orders and safer than checks.

From a web site design standpoint, it looks good. No unnecessary tricks that are likely to crash anybody's browser. Navigation seems simple and straightforward enough. Seems fast-loading (but I'd have to be at home, looking at it on my dial-up connection to be sure of that).

You do need a more flattering picture on the "About Us" page. Low angles, and a single harsh light that casts deep shadows on the ceiling, don't look good unless you're shooting, say, a vampire movie. At the same time, though, you probably don't want a professionally shot one: either you'll be likely paying through the nose for publication rights, or you'll potentially be making an enemy with grounds to sue you for copyright infringement.

Thank you Madcobble - The reason I don't have carrot cake as being a home bakery, I am not approved to use cream cheese. Still working on a lot of recipes to be approved here in California. Working a Paypal account.

Thank you hbquikcomjames - That is the only recent picture of my son and I. Will work on getting a better picture taken. (Might just do that this weekend for Father's Day).

AIt's not against the law to use another type of icing on carrot cake....just in case you're interested in experimenting, and mixing things up. When I host tasting events, clients pair up icings and fillings with the cake samples, and they come up with all kinds of different combinations I would have never thought of. I would try brown sugar buttercream with carrot cake. Or maybe even apple butter buttercream. Now I'll check out your site.

You are so right, I never thought of putting anything other than cream cheese frosting on Carrot Cake.   Now you have me thinking.  Thank you

ALooks ok from my phone, but I definitely echo James' suggestion about lighting/photos.

AThere's not really anything I can think of that would not taste good together...lol.

AI tried it from home. First the good news: over a roughly 44k dial-up connection, your home page loads in no more than a minute and a half. I think that's faster than even my home page.

Now the bad news: for some reason, the left sidebar gets pushed completely off the left side of my browser window unless I expand it to considerably wider than my 1040x768 screen. In my experience, that's the result of trying to exert too much control over how the browser renders the page, and/or making assumptions about the screen size.

Don't see a flavor just ask and I'll be happy to meet your needs as best as I possibly can.  Think this needs some work.  Either 'Don't see a flavor?  Just...'        Or 'If you don't see a flavor...'   

No flavors of buttercream?   

'Don't see a style or design please...'  Same comments as for Dont see a flavor above. 

'full of flavor these bite'  Should this be   'full of flavor.  These bite'      

'Don't see a style or design'  same thing again.  

Now I see that you have the cursive font after all the flavors.  Maybe on the cake page you should have this same font for your sentence after filling. 

As you go forward you should work at staging your cakes and cupcakes for photos better.  Neutral or coordinating backgrounds, good lighting, etc. 

Not sure why your square servings perfectly  match up with Wilton but the rounds and rectangles don't.  It seems inconsistent in serving size. 

You don't do buttercream icing on cakes?  There is no price for this.   

'please call to see if date is opened.' should this be open?

I would like to see some color on the home page banner.

Other than these little things it looks good to me.

AI just jumped on for a quick look and on my ipad the left part of the screen is cut off and I can move the screen across a long way to the right. I can put my finger on my screen and move your whole home page around in circles. It's really weird!

Nice and easy to navigate around but you really need to work on improving you photography as it lets everything else down.  Windows in the background, clutter etc are very distracting and do not help to showcase your work.  All you need is a plain melamine board underneath and one behind and things will improve drastically.

ANice to see it's not just my somewhat superannuated browser (Firefox 3.5.19, the last release of FF that runs on PowerPC-based Macs) that's got the left-side cutoff issue. You've got a legitimate problem, but it's a problem you can solve. Although your machine-generated HTML is not exactly easy to follow.

Remember: HTML isn't rocket science, or molecular biology, or brain surgery, and learning to hand-code it will give you a much more browser-universal web site. When I'm maintaining my own web site, I live and die by Ed Tittel and Steven James' HTML for Dummies. And instead of some sort of WYSIWYG HTML editor, I just use TextEdit (the Mac equivalent of Notepad and WordPad on a WinDoze box), and frequently open the page in Firefox, to see how it renders.

Something just occurred to me: why are we discussing a web site in the cake decorating forum? I should think there's somewhere else on CC where it would be more appropriate, and if we're all subscribed, I think our subscriptions will find it, regardless of where it gets moved.

I like this website, do not have any problem navigating it.  Just a little thing, sorry to be pedantic: "at this time we can only except check or cash"  should probably be "at this stage we only accept check or cash".

Thank you everyone for your time in giving your feedback. Some things I have changed and others I will work on.  

Ahttp://cakecentral.com/t/767611/cake-photography/0_70

This thread has some really good tips for cake photography. It can be done without expensive equipment and rigging. The pics that jumped out as harsh are the ones of your truffles. The angle, lighting, and glare bouncing off the table do not do those delicious nuggets of joy any justice.

How about 'currently we only accept check or cash'?

May want to remove the middle finger F-you cake? That may totally turn some customers off. Or put it in an album so people know what they are about to look at if they are at work. 

FioreCakes - I was debating about putting that on there just for the purpose you stated.    I think for now I will just take it off and in the future start an adult themed page as I started doing some corset cakes for my daughters friends that are getting married.        (Much better than the one in my pictures)

I liked everything on the website except for the background color.  The white background just seemed too harsh.  Maybe an ivory color would be more flattering to your photos in the gallery.  Just a personal preference and observation!  The website is very user friendly and attractive!

You can purchase Cream Cheese Extract or Flavoring for Carrot Cake!