MoonShadows
The Jam Man
I'm refining my website and would like to know what buyers want to see when they are looking at a business's website.
This is my website in the making. www.rosewoodpoultry.weebly.com
Thoughts? Constructive criticism?
I'd also love to see your websites!
I see you are working very hard on your website.
One thing you will want to consider as you move on is buyers want to do business with professionals and people who are serious about their business. A website makes a statement to the buyer, and if that statement, or first impression, is not a good one, you will lose the customer before s/he ever sees what you are selling or your good prices/services, etc..
Having a website that advertises it is free, especially right on the homepage, and that uses a sub-domain (www.xxxx.yyyy.com) and a gmail email account, is not professional and makes a statement right off the bat about your business. You don't have to spend a lot of money. There is website software out there that costs little to nothing that can make you look much more professional and business-like. Check out these sites: http://www.oscommerce.com/, http://www.zen-cart.com/ and http://www.cubecart.com/. I believe they still offer their software for free or very low cost. What is good about them too is they are websites and shopping carts all in one. You will need a domain name hosting for your software, but you can buy a domain name for under $10 and get hosting for as low as a few bucks a month. Take a look at http://www.top10bestcheaphosting.com/ for a list of cheap hosting packages. You will also need a merchant account to take payments online...when you begin to ship, which you mentioned you want to start doing. Once again, you can get inexpensive merchant accounts. The best known and least expensive (I think it still is) is www.PayPal.com. You can open an account for free and they will only charge you 2.99% on what you collect with no hidden or monthly fees like so many other merchant accounts.
Good ecommerce software, your own domain name and hosting, and a merchant account are the basics of any business website.