Nigel MPB

Hi All

I have spent the past 18 months developing a webbased business whilst I have been recovering from an injury that has prevented me carrying out my normal work as a self employed gardener.

I had noticed how fascinated visitors to the house were with my families jewellery paraphanalia, constantly picking up stones and laying out design patterns to suit themselves. Working with a very patient web designer, Ella Goodwin, we have tried to recreate this in a virtual jewellery workshop.
We decided to keep text to a minimum and rely instead on users working out for themselves how the site works. A mistake maybe?

We also have a problem with calculating overseas postage of multiple items.

I would welcome criticism of the site to balance the biased comments of friends and family.

Thank you
Nigel
My Pearl Box

chris_17

Hi Welcome,

The site looks ok, business wise it is a very good idea IMO and would is probably a niche business, so if marketed correctly is could be very good, would be a great gift idea for things like birthdays, so you could possibly wrap them, maybe?

Back to the site it could be a bit too dark, and slightly complicated in terms of the illustrations,it took me a while to work out what to do exactly, but the demo was very good, never a big fan of flash but for this is works very well (for making the product) for the overall site I'm not too sure.

The homepage doesn't really explain everything, and doesn't make me want to find out more, I think that it could be organised better as well.

Great Idea though

Chris

__________________
Front-End Design, Development and Web Standards
chrisborrowdale.co.uk
@chrisborrowdale

Nigel MPB

Hi Chris

I thought I had replied to your post the day after you made it but I cannot find any record of it, my apologies.
I am glad you liked the site, we originally aimed it at women from 16 to 60 who were looking to accessorise difficult to match outfits, but we have found that it is being used largely for gifts and nearly 50/50 men and women which surprised us. Items are delivered in a leatherette pouch, but for a small extra charge gift boxes are available.
We appreciate that the workshop does require a degree of technique which is only discovered by trial and error. We decided at the outset to minimise text and have tried to make its usage intuitive, but it is only after a few minutes of frustrating experimentation that the correct control technique becomes obvious and many people give up before then.
We will have a look at rearranging the front page.

Thanks for your time.

Nigel

chris_17

No problem, good luck

__________________
Front-End Design, Development and Web Standards
chrisborrowdale.co.uk
@chrisborrowdale