How to get started with Moonfruit by Slikk Designs
There are many things you should do before launching any website, but the main thing that springs to my mind is patience! I often see a lot of people launching their website before it’s anywhere near complete. I know it’s hard to beat temptation because of the excitement of developing your new website, but ultimately your website is there for a reason and that’s to increase sales, promote you’re brand and broaden your market. Launching an unfinished website can have the opposite effect.
You’re website is your online face to represent you as a company or artist so it’s vital customers get a good impression of that when visiting your website, because first impressions count! It’s pretty simple. If your website looks fresh and professional the customer thinks you are fresh and professional. If you have an unfinished website then.... you know the rest!
Colours Scheme
It is important that you get the colour scheme right throughout the website. Here is a useful link to a website that shows you which colours complement each other best. http://www.colorblender.com
Font sizes
Another thing that always catches my eye on a website is the font sizes. Maybe I have issues and am somewhat very picky but little things like this really polish your website off. Try to keep the website universal throughout, so for example title headers 14px and normal text 12px, then add bold to particular things that need to stand out from the rest. There is nothing worse than a website which has huge writing scattered all over in different places and sizes.
Navigation
Filter the website content in the best possible way. Map it out in your head as if you were a visitor and develop the website in an idiot-proof manner. Make sure everything is nice and tight and only one click away if possible. That doesn’t mean put everything on one page but you get my point!
Checkout one of my websites for an example on navigation http://www.elizabethgeorgebridal.co.uk as here you can see how everything relevant is tied together so customers can find exactly what they want without any distractions.
Getting people to your website
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is very important. Maybe not so much for artist websites but certainly for business based websites. People need to be able to find you when typing keywords into Google and the way to do this is to work with Google. Not officially of course but make your website easier to read! Here are a few pointers to help with this.
When logged in you will see “Admin” tab. Click that then go to “Site information” inside you will see the following: Site name column - Moonfruit only allow 50 characters anyway which is perfect. Site keywords - This tag should have no more than 20 words. Anything more will be considered as NOT robot friendly. Site description - This tag shouldn’t contain more than 200 characters. Anything more will be considered as NOT robot friendly. All the above tags need to be relevant to each other and relevant to what content you have on your website (Page content).
Hope this has been a help for you in a way. If you need any further help or suggestions please feel free to contact me on paul@slikkdesign.com / www.slikkdesign.com
Good luck with your website.
Paul Bowen
Comments
Hi,
You might want to fix some of the spelling mistakes and use of full stops in the article above.
Thought I might tell you!
Thanks for the tip Bob,
Regards,
Walt
maybe its me but I cant for the life of me get my editing done. The one picture Ive managed to upload appears on the second grid of thumbnails, and how do I get rid of the images that live there from moonfruit? And what about that text welcoming me to my site,which is still visible when I click the button to see how my site appears to the public? How does that vanish? Maybe its me, but Im not really impressed. Somebody put me right please? Thanks
So... ive tried searching for my website through google, but cant find it? Do I have to do something in order to launch my website? I wanna get it up asap so please help me :)
merci
Hi Yetta,
I can see you created your site only 5 days ago. Google can sometimes take weeks to index a site. But you can help them find your site quicker by going to Google (and/or Yahoo, Bing etc) and registering your website.
I notice you added your URL as .co.uk but it is actually .com i.e. yetta-photography.moonfruit.com
Please do have a look at our SEO Guide which you can locate under Help on your site. SEO is Search Engine Optimisation - making your site search engine friendly.
One final thing. Our software is web-based. This means that the moment you build your site - it is live and on the internet. You just need to 1. notify the search engines, 2. ensure you site is SEO friendly, and then 3. be patient.
Hope that helps.
Walt
Please could someone help me? i have designed my website and havnt a clue how to launch it.
Hi, wonder if you can help me! Have submitted my Sitemap to Google Analytics and seem to get the dreaded re cross next to it. i assume that my site isn't being recognised by Google. Any tips or information would be welcome.
Andy
Hello to everyone,
I'm just in the process of building my site and wondered about the keywords section; do we need to place a comma , after each keyword?
Apologies if this has already been asked countless times!
Regards,
Oliver.
Apologies for the wrong "new" website address on my earlier post!
Remeber! Moonfruit only allow 50 characters anyway which is perfect. Site keywords - This tag should have no more than 20 words. Anything more will be considered as NOT robot friendly.
I cannot agree with the last comment from Recovery CD assuming he is referring to the 50 characters limit on the Site Name. As I have pointed out before this is HIGHLY RESTRICTIVE in terms of SEO in getting sufficient keywords into the Home Page Title (as this is what Google indexes as the title for a MF site’s homepage. I did think that MF had said they were going to sort this out.
Walt had previously mention this was worthy of attention in the 'bug log': http://www.moonfruitlounge.com/post... .
Whilst acknowledging that MF have a lot on their hands with the new release, can I remind them that this was brought to their attention over a year ago – see: http://www.moonfruitlounge.com/post...
Any thoughts on finally resolving this Walt or Joe?
Hi Justin,
It's still on our list. There is a slight oddness at the moment that the 'site name' is used for the / page of your site, e.g. the root homepage, but the page title is used for the site/homepage, e.g. the direct link to the actual page in your site. What we are likely to do is retire the 'site name' from being used in the HTML of the / page and instead / will use the same as /home. What do you think?
Joe
Hi Joe - thanks for responding promptly.
To be honest I don't mind how you solve this one as long as I have an area in MF to enter a Page Title for the Home Page that will appear in the Search Engines for the Home Page and is more than 50 characters.
It appears that the ‘site title’ has always appeared at the top of every page in the HTML version with a link to the home page. I’m not sure why this should have been but it has always looked strange to my mind - I know the HTML version is about to be improved so maybe this has been looked at. I would guess that removing the site title from the HTML altogether may affect some site’s SERPs – some in a good way others in a not so good way.
Those who know and care about these (SEO) things should have some control by using the Page Titles and H1 And H2 tags – although in my experience the H tags can be a little flaky with MF, in that you think you have got the titles in the right place to be a H1 tag and they don’t always appear and need to be done again. Anyway – I digress. I just hope that the all of the changes that you have planned in the long awaited upcoming release have been considered in how they will effect SEO. IE. It is all very well having the HTML smartened up but if this adversely affect SEO then it will be a bad thing as no one will ever find the websites. Hopefully there is nothing to be concerned about as you smart cookies will have considered these things.
Hi Justin,
Yes we are keeping SEO in mind when we make these changes. Removing the 'site title' from the homepage will have an impact, but not necessarily a bad one as we will use the 'homepage' data instead. With the new HTML there shouldn't be any change to how the content is 'seen' by search engines. But we'll need to keep an eye on things when we go live. Many thanks,
Joe
And what about that text welcoming me to my site,which is still visible when I click the button to see how my site appears to the public? How does that vanish? Maybe its me, but Im not really impressed. Somebody put me right please?
Hi,
Normally you use Design on the toolbar and then Page Master to edit your site logo or text that you've described. But you've not left an email address or usable URL I can locate on our database to check your site and advise.
But generally, your description is of simply using Design and Page Master.
Regards - Walt
Hi
I wonder if you can help. I have submitted my Sitemap to Google, and analytics shows that over the last four weeks my site has lost 90% of its traffic.. im confused as to why
Hi, what address are you using? I can't find your given email address or URL on our system.
Thanks
Walt