Review my site, anyone?

I've just finished putting together my site (all that's missing are the "testimonials" and "site map").

Is anyone interested in looking it over and pointing out any content flaws?

I am currently happy with the design, and I'm hoping to receive feedback on the written content.

For a site with like 20 pages, it sure did take a long 3 days to put together. I'm just about done with the bastard >:K

http://www.popetarot.com/

Nice looking site--good luck!

Couple of suggestions. The "realities" section of your Ethics page is too much information--what people need to know is that you will help them focus their questions to get the best possible reading.

And your demurrals about your experience and skills--I'd rethink all this (below). Maybe just say, continually developing your skills and priced fairly. If you feel confident of your skills, no need to tell people that they might not.

While I certainly don't consider myself to be an expert ...
I have been reading for well over a year at this point. While many readers can boast decades of experience, I feel confident enough in my skills to read for people publicly. I do understand that although I am not a novice, I am certainly not a "master" reader. I've priced my services to reflect this fact, and can safely say that the prices I offer are rock-bottom.

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What debra says. If you are good enough to charge, you are a professional. You don't get a doctor saying to new patients "I qualified only a year ago but I will do my best to treat you properly..."



Or if he did - would you go to him ???

A VERY small point - "good god no." I would change that to "Good grief, no" or something. Or even just "Absolutely not."
It's that God word.... It has the oddest effect on some people, is all.

Your history section (nice and brief - kudos for that !) - the illustrated pips bit does kind of diss TdMs by implication. I don't mind, but - well, just a thought. "...are often painstakingly illustrated" or "are painstakingly illustrated in Rider-Waite-Smith style decks..."? I note that you mention TdMs right afterwards, but still...

I LOVE the how does it work bit

Very nice site - clear and easy to navigate.

Nice site and best of luck!

What others said and some more:
"at a greatly discounted price" - this sounds as items on sale which expiry date is dangerously approaching; can you change it to "affordable rates" or something.

"Feel free to talk to me about anything that comes up – I love talking to people, too!"
Be careful not to end up doing free readings for Tarot junkies.

Other questions that aren't possible are: "Will I go back to school or work in the fall?"...

Though i agree with you, that's exactly what many want to know - and the main reason to consult a reader too; i wouldn't put this on site - it goes without saying that you'll re-phrase the question but don't say its impossible, its a turn off.
(And honestly, chances are that the cards will respond you to the above question - its another thing if you don't want to predict; but its quite possible actually.)

"What type of doctor will my child grow up to be?"
If they want to know what kind of Dr their child will be - that's what they want to know; not whether the child will be happy, its another question.
Pull the cards - if you see he/she will be a Dr - say which type, if you see other profession - say which profession it is.

Tarot is not that vague at all and paying clients (even the non-paying ones ) usually want to know very precise things.

As a side note: if someone is my first cousin, i'd tell them - you know love, it ain't matter whether the kid is Dr, it matters whether he is happy... but if you are paid - first, we don't know if the statement is true, its a projection based on various psychologist theories that value one's inner state of being more important than the results in real world - the thing is that the natural human condition is entropy and plain laziness; achieving anything in life is a battle that's not really pleasant and fulfilling... and it should be like that, otherwise we would be still sitting in caves.
Anyway, one can disagree of course - but if its a business, you don't get to tell the customer what they need - you can provide what they want under conditions that you find fulfilling and profitable.

I'd mask your email address (home page) to help avoid the spambots
As you have your clickable email address now it wants to bring up and open Microsoft Windows. I don't use that mail program, along with millions of other folk so you might think about how to customize or generalize it. Or just take it off the home page and let Contact take care of it.

I use them a lot too, but for a professional site, you might think about getting rid of the exclamation points, they are just a degree above smileys Personally, great, professionally, not great.

At the moment, I own 6 decks. On the 25th, I will be shipping Robin Wood out as part of an online trade, and I will hopefully be receiving the Aquarius tarot back!

Unless you intend to rework your website weekly (and believe me you won't) I'd leave any dated information off. It is fun info here, clients won't give a hoot.

re: decks. You need to link to the publisher and/or artist site. And ask permission to use them is a really nice thing to do, most artists are great with it, publishers, ... they will probably be slow to get back to you... unless they see their decks being used and you haven't asked. Then they are very quick to get to you.

Again, back to professionalism, you'd probably be better with a simple overview of your decks and eliminate all the info about how you are finding them to work. They won't care, honest, and brevity is always better in keeping people's attention.

Is your testimonial Latin?? That seems like you are making fun of me for some reason.

None of this is meant to criticize, only critique from a consumer's point of view. I wish you the absolute best success, truly! A profession site will aid that immensely.

That lorem ipsum stuff is a standard chunk of Latin text many places use to fill space being worked on. It is mostly meaningless. I think Apple started this one.... ! I met it loads when I used to publish newsletters !

AJ said:

I'd mask your email address (home page) to help avoid the spambots

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How do you do this, then? My email is all over my blog!

One simple way which avoids the automated ones is to show it as

carla.tarot at doozy dot com

or whatever. That way a HUMAN can read it and work out how to use it, but a crawler can't.

Also most blogs have a way to do "contact me" which goes through their server somehow and emails you through the software.

gregory said:

One simple way which avoids the automated ones is to show it as

carla.tarot at doozy dot com

or whatever. That way a HUMAN can read it and work out how to use it, but a crawler can't.

Also most blogs have a way to do "contact me" which goes through their server somehow and emails you through the software.

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Well, I'll change it at the first sign of danger. I don't have one of those nifty email thingies though. I've got the free version of Blogger. No income, can't afford any outlay!

Thank you for your comments everyone! Sorry I took so long to get back atcha.

Is your testimonial Latin?? That seems like you are making fun of me for some reason.

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Yes, Gregory is correct. "Lorem ipsum" is what they call a chunk of quasi-text generated so you can preview the layout without being distracted by content (it was originally fake Latin because the concept was created with movable printed type, and of course most all books were printed in Latin back then). You may notice that the first two words are always "Lorem ipsum"

I think you all are right that I should not downplay my super special talents

I'm going to update the contacts page and remove the yucky clickable stuff on the index page. I write up the content in Word and then paste it, and unfortunately Word includes the "mailto" tag on e-mail addresses.

Thank you for your advice everyone I will be revising the pages as per your excellent suggestions.

At the moment I am not really worried about spambots, although I know it can be a problem.

Carla: For the most part, there isn't too big of a problem having your e-mail on a page. Here are a couple ways to get around it though:

1. Make your e-mail address in to a picture, so there is a plain graphic saying "alison@popetarot.com" or whatever, and put that on the page. Spambots won't read an image in this way, but people of course can (this can be irritating if you have a long or complicated e-mail address. People like to copy 'n paste them, but with an image they will have to re-type by hand). [ps: it is hard to make an image like this sit naturally in a line of text, so you can make it larger and stick it at the bottom of the page or whatever.]

2. Embed a contact form, a bit like I have on my contacts page now (although I will be upgrading it). ONLY IF the person has Windows Mail or a mail service set up on their PC, they can fill out the form on your webpage and send it to you without ever needing to know your e-mail address.

I would combine the two, so they can send a form and see your e-mail address in case the form does work.

I am not sure how embedding a form would work on a blog, unfortunately.