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web site stores (was re: clay recommendation,)

updated thu 10 feb 05

 

Randall on mon 7 feb 05


At 2:29 PM -0500 2/6/05, Brenda Funk wrote:
>If you go to the Laguna website, there is a chart with all the clay bodies
>and what they are best used for.
>http://www.lagunaclay.com/volumev/guidetoclay.pdf

Gee, do you know the other night I must have gone to over TEN
different web sites for ceramic supply.
I used to buy from Georgies in Portland Ore when I lived in that
state years ago, but I wanted to find a place closer since I wanted
to order some moist clay to try out.

It was getting really frustrating because I needed to buy several
sizes of the nylon mold straps AND the clay as well as a few more
tools.

It was just amazing what I went through, as an example in no
particular order followed by some suggestions thta anyone is free to
pass along to anyone theyknow who has a web site;

Site 1 I went to Laguna by coincidence, excellent with the clays,
so I decided on the specific clay I wanted and then looked for
distributors and selected the closest state outside my own to save on
shipping from Oregon as well as sales tax in my own state so I chose
MInn, the many without web sites I skipped entirely, and only went to
those that had web sites and "full line". I wound up expanding the
states as I kept running into;

Site 2 had a nice web store and the mold straps but only text
description of all their clays going on for 3-4 pages worth
Site 3 was selling their business, probably not a good idea to give
credit card info to a place closing up shop
Site 4 had a bunch of clay, no mold straps
Site 5 only had a collection of individual PDF files for each page in
their catalogue, meaning one has to download each file, open, read,
close, delete the file, didn't have mold straps either and only text
descriptions of their clays
Site 6 had no way to order on line from their store, you had to call
Site 7 had a $100 minimum web store order and no mold straps
Site 8 had a non functioning link bar, so you couldn't access any of
their sub-pages
Site 9 was "Placid" only a text list of their clays and weird color
pale green fonts on white that were like looking at the wattage on a
lit 100 watt light bulb
Site 10 had all these individual files for their catalogue and no way to search

Some of those I looked at included;

Cornell Studio
Evans Ceramic
Krueger
Indiana ceramic
Crossroads
Stone leaf

NONE of these places had the red clay I selected on Laguna whose web
site said these were all "full line" dealers. Some had numbers I
didn't see on the Laguna site so I had no idea. Offhand I think I
looked at WC881 and EM234 and then running into brick walls I looked
for alternates and liked stock numbers CLM7W, CLNLW and CLREW but
the dealers either didn't have the other stuff I wanted or some other
issue was involved like a limited selection or vague descriptions.

Finally I said the heck with it this is insanity and went to Georgies
and ordered everything I needed there, clay; "Warm Springs Red with
grog CC510C and several wood tools and a dozen large mold straps.

As a net user now for over 12 years, a long time multiple site
webmaster, former internet tutor, I find all of this extremely
frustrating since I have seen good, well designed easy to navigate
sites and then there are those that you want to tear your hair out
with. Music, bouncing whirling, jumping, spinning, running dogs and
cat acts across the screen, mouse cursor turned to stars junk is
cute- for about the first 15 seconds on someone's personal Geocities
site, then it becomes annoying, then in a minute or two it becomes
REALLY annoying especially with music you can't shut off or that
competes with your own stereo.

Chalk white backgrounds on a web page are as easy on the eyes and as
inviting to stick around as looking at a lit 100 watt lightbulb,
conversely, black backgrounds with white text are heavy, depressing,
deathly and ghastly, the black can however make color images much
more vivid when used correctly.

Vivid or heavy patterned backgrounds hide or obscure text and make it
difficult to read, drop -down menus are a real pain in the butt, many
don't work well and "roll back up" before you can select from them,
they can be screwy and if a customer can't navigate it they can't see
what you have for sale.

Broken links, missing pages, links pointing to obvious errors like;
C:\\my-computer\My_files\Uploads instead of a valid web page are
careless, links and all functions should be checked often. Having one
page as a "book cover" with a ""ENTER" link to get TO the main site
finally is also one more step that wastes time and is annoying

How in the world can someone choose something like colors, glazes,
clays or anything else like this based on somewhat vague TEXT
descriptions of them? A description like " A warm brown, toothy body
cone 4-7" tells people virtually nothing, a sample tile in a photo is
worth 1,000 words there.

One site had all these religious symbols and references to Bible,
Jesus, scripture lines and the owner's attendance to a certain
church, this stuff doesn't belong on a business site- customers want
products, prices and information to order- not a mini Bible sermon!
That's about all I can think of at the moment along these lines, it's
just that when I browse business sites for other things, I am used to
a certain protocol, things working, storefront working, being able to
order there and so on, just seems many of the ceramics sites haven't
met this challenge and as a result losing business and not knowing it.
They say somewhere that the average web browser will wait 10 seconds
for a main site page to load before looking elsewhere, that means as
a business you have 10 seconds to make the sale before it flies off
to your competitor, which in the case of stock clay, ceramics
supplies, tools, Duncan glaze, kiln parts, cones, shelves etc there
are hundreds of outlets for all these items, people can pick and
choose where to buy from a large list and chances are they will go to
the one who has the best web site that is the most complete and the
easiest to deal with.


--
All the best,

Randall
Webdirector of "Randall's Lost New York City"
A historical photo essay of lost buildings from NYC's architectural history
http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/
YIM: LostNYC2004

Kathi LeSueur on tue 8 feb 05


Randall wrote:

> <<<<<<> webmaster, former internet tutor, I find all of this extremely
> frustrating since I have seen good, well designed easy to navigate
> sites and then there are those that you want to tear your hair out
> with.>>>>>>>>


As research for building our website, my partner has been looking and
searching for other websites. Her research has shown that there are a
lot of incredibly bad websites that people paid lots of money for. They
don't work, they can't be found, they can't be used. So, if you don't
have a website, the next time someone offers to build one for you in
exchange for pots, politely tell them no. Do lots of research on how
websites are built, how they work, how search engines work, and try the
sites of any web designer you are using.

Kathi

Randall on tue 8 feb 05


At 7:45 AM -0500 2/8/05, Kathi LeSueur wrote:
>
>As research for building our website, my partner has been looking and
>searching for other websites. Her research has shown that there are a
>lot of incredibly bad websites that people paid lots of money for. They
>don't work, they can't be found, they can't be used. So, if you don't
>

There's part of the problem, new people get on the net and haven't an
idea and so they get sucked into paying hundreds of dollars to
someone advertising "web design services" to design a page that a 12
year old child could throw together in 15 minutes. My own site and
those I've built over the years for various things were all coded by
hand in a plain text editor- no templates, scripts or software.

Like working with clay or firing a kiln, the ONLY way to learn how
things work is hands-on, if you let WYSIWYG software do it for you,
if you have a problem you can't fix it because you don't know how the
codes work or interact together. Same deal if you hire someone to
build your site for you, you don't know how they arranged the files,
how they interact or how to fix something. Not everyone is cut out to
do the coding or even wants to bother, but these $500 "web site
designers" are a rip.


--
All the best,

Randall
Webdirector of "Randall's Lost New York City"
A historical photo essay of lost buildings from NYC's architectural history

Kathy Forer on wed 9 feb 05


On Feb 8, 2005, at 9:04 PM, Randall wrote:

> Not everyone is cut out to
> do the coding or even wants to bother, but these $500 "web site
> designers" are a rip.

Other rip-offs are web hosting and domain registration. Hosting used to
be far more expensive than it is today, but disk space and bandwidth
have come down in price. Personal hosting is now in the US$5-12/month
range. There's no difference due solely to price! And some of the lower
priced hosting plans offer the best services. Comparison shop for
services offered, but also consider support. Some people are billed as
much as $20-50 and more for lesser services, often having to pay more
for simple things that should be included. For $99/month you could have
your own dedicated server, running a huge and complex site, serving 500
GB bandwidth per month!

Domain registration is quite simple. Anywhere from $7-15/year is just
fine. Unless you had to buy your domain from a domain-name
collector/reseller or had to ransom it for late payment at one of the
larger and older, former dinosaur registrars. The lighter, less
commercial registrars are all pretty good now. There are places to
check, or check here, on their reliability and accreditation, but don't
get caught, like someone I heard about, paying $200 to a "designer" for
domain name registration. If you have a credit card, it doesn't take
more than a few minutes to register a name.

You don't need to register your domain name at the same price as you
host your site, though it can be convenient and some hosts offer
packages that include domain registration. If your domain is already
registered, all you need to do if you want to move is change the "name
servers" listed at your registrar. You might consider adding the host
as technical contact as well, but not necessary. Just remember to have
more than one email address listed among owner, administration,
technical and billing accounts.

"Go forth and sit beside plentiful web streams!"

Kathy Forer
foreverink.com

Kathy Forer on wed 9 feb 05


> You don't need to register your domain name at the same price as you
> host your site

I meant at the same "place."

Jennifer Boyer on wed 9 feb 05


Just another view point:

It's not really necessary to avoid web site software and be PURE by
writing in HTML. My brain and my typing skills aren't up to that task,
but I've had very little frustration using Adobe Golive. It's quite
intuitive. I'm sure I've beaten my head against a few walls that I
could have avoided using HTML alone, but everyone has different paths
of resistance, and web sits building software may be just the right
thing for some folks....
Jennifer

On Feb 8, 2005, at 9:04 PM, Randall wrote:

> My own site and
> those I've built over the years for various things were all coded by
> hand in a plain text editor- no templates, scripts or software.
>
> Like working with clay or firing a kiln, the ONLY way to learn how
> things work is hands-on, if you let WYSIWYG software do it for you,
> if you have a problem you can't fix it because you don't know how the
> codes work or interact together. Same deal if you hire someone to
> build your site for you, you don't know how they arranged the files,
> how they interact or how to fix something. Not everyone is cut out to
> do the coding or even wants to bother, but these $500 "web site
> designers" are a rip.
>
>
> --
> All the best,
>
> Randall
> Webdirector of "Randall's Lost New York City"
> A historical photo essay of lost buildings from NYC's architectural
> history
>
************************
Jennifer Boyer
Thistle Hill Pottery
Montpelier, VT

http://thistlehillpottery.com

Gary Elfring on wed 9 feb 05


R> There's part of the problem, new people get on the net and haven't an
R> idea and so they get sucked into paying hundreds of dollars to
R> someone advertising "web design services" to design a page that a 12
R> year old child could throw together in 15 minutes. My own site and
R> those I've built over the years for various things were all coded by
R> hand in a plain text editor- no templates, scripts or software.

R> Like working with clay or firing a kiln, the ONLY way to learn how
R> things work is hands-on, if you let WYSIWYG software do it for you,
R> if you have a problem you can't fix it because you don't know how the
R> codes work or interact together. Same deal if you hire someone to
R> build your site for you, you don't know how they arranged the files,
R> how they interact or how to fix something.

I think there are three separate pieces to building a web site. 1)
Figuring out what you want your web site to say. 2) Building a set of
web pages that convey this information and let the customer easily
find it. 3) Turning those web pages into a web site. For beginners, I
think the hardest part of building a web site is figuring out all the
technical gobble-de-gook in part 3.

Basic web site design is very easy. If you don't want to learn it,
there are hundreds of web sites that sell "web site templates".
Basically you visit their site, browse through all the web sites they
have to offer, then buy one. It has the web site layout, navigation,
and pictures. All you need to do to start is edit the text.

But the hard part is- what do you do with the web site files??? How do
you get a domain name? (excellentclay.com) Once you have a domain
name, how do you get a web site? (your web site is an actual computer
sitting somewhere on the internet- you pay someone to keep your files
running on their computer) How do you send the files to the web site?
(you need an ftp program) How do you get listed in search engines?
(build the web site correctly and get several links to it and you are
all set.) How can you build a store for your web site?
(you need ssl and some web forms)

If you have a tutor to show you what the gobbledygook is in the last
part, the rest is manageable.


--
Best regards,
Gary

Janet Kaiser on wed 9 feb 05


It has been said before, but I think a reality
check is worth repeating every now and again...

NEVER FORGET a web site costs a lot of money to
produce and maintain. Do not expect small
companies or family-run Mom & Pop firms producing
and/or selling raw materials at a marginal profit
which only just about covers the "old fashioned"
overheads like rent, utilities, wages, etc. to
offer the same on-line resources as the Big Boys,
who have thousands or even millions to invest in
"marketing". There is not one "ceramic company"
in the world able to boast the financial clout of
any other industry, most especially those
producing raw materials. Clay has to be right at
the bottom of the pile.

Please temper your own expectations to the
possible, do not ask the impossible! Not least
because one day you too may become the unwitting
victim of a spoiled and fickle public who are
incapable of putting themselves out enough to
actually make a phone call to speak to a real
person...

GASP! HORROR!! WHAT!?!?! A live person who will
listen to what is wanted/needed and give expert
advice and information... OH_ME_GOSH!!! Who'd a
thunk that was an option?

Oh yes... And quit that bad habit of ordering
something, not liking the look of it or the
colour packaging when it arrives and then sending
it back, in the full expectation it is your
"right" not only to do so but also to demand a
full refund. That is what makes goods and
services more expensive for everyone. It is also
what puts small companies out of business because
they cannot absorb such unfair costs by
fracturing them into their prices in the same way
as high turnover companies can. There is a reason
Amazon has yet to break even, let alone make a
profit. Potters are usually very small
businesses, so remember to do unto others what
you expect them to do to you.

As for active avoidance of paying state taxes...
That is a matter of conscience not a technical
question. No one enjoys paying taxes, but they do
help provide schools, roads, public services and
all those sorts of unnecessary luxuries which the
tax dodger never needs or uses, but all the lazy
good-for-nothings down the road get for nothing
without doing a stroke of work... >cough<

Sincerely

Janet Kaiser -- on a chilly night in Wales.

**************************************************
**********
THE CHAPEL OF ART - or - CAPEL CELFYDDYD
8 Marine Crescent : Criccieth : GB-Wales LL52 0EA
Tel: ++44 (01766) 523122
http://www.the-coa.org.uk
Contact: Janet Kaiser: The International Potters
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