Official Luthiers Forum!

Well, after long last, I'm proud to announce that my new website, http://www.mountainsongguitars.com is live! It's not showing up in Google searches yet, but you can just copy and paste the url into your browser, and it'll take you there. Please take a moment to stop by and check it out. I'd love to hear your feedback, as I'm still tweaking and adding content. Thanks all!

Ken

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Very nice work dude, ya very nice!

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Audiences and dispensations on Thursdays ~ by appointment only.


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Nice job Ken

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Very nice Ken!

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Alain Moisan
Former full time builder of Acoustics, Classicals and Flamencos.
(Now building just for fun!)

Nice site, Ken. Clean, intuitive, easy to navigate--all good things.

Feedback: I find the relatively quick pace and prevalent use of slide shows with wipe effects distracting and a bit amateurish looking. Also, the "Shop Tour" section seems like it needs a little work. What do I learn there that might make me want you to build me a guitar? Lastly, showing the tonewoods available is visually interesting and provides a great opportunity for you to showcase some of your knowledge and expertise, but having to explain that the sets aren't for sale to other builders reveals how confusing the page is in its current form. I'd consider renaming it to "Tonewood Options," or something similar and replace the specific pricing information with something generic about these being the woods currently available as upgrades over whatever your standard configuration might be. The goal here is to start a dialogue that leads to an order, not to have the visitor comparison shop for the best prices on bubinga.

There, now you have my .02 cents. :-)

Excellent job overall. Well done!

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George :-)

Thanks for checking it out guys. George, many thanks for your excellent insights. That's just exactly the sort of feedback I was hoping for. Yes, I agree that the shop tour is sloppy, the images were really just placeholders until I get some better glamour shots, but I'm now thinking I'd be better off changing that page to "progress shots". I've got millions of those.

Regarding how to present pricing, I'm still figuring that one out. The reason I have structured it the way I have, is I don't really want to have a base model, per se. The woods I own, I own because I want to build with them, and I believe they'll help make great guitars. I have nothing against EIR (except the smell), but I'm not interested in building with it. It makes more sense to me to set a base price before tonewood selection, since upcharges aren't necessarily commensurate with our costs. It just seems more to-the-point, but I'm also open to other opinions. Thanks again!


Ken Jones
Mountain Song Guitars

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I't very nice overall but I agree with George about the slide shows not being the best way to present your beautiful work.

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Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com

Hey Ken,
I love your work. I don't mind the slide shows, but on my computer the screen bounces when the slide images change...

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Steve Sollod (pronounced sorta like "Solid")
www.swiftcreekguitars.com

Checked out your website, and really enjoyed the visit.
Marty

Very nice, good photo's and easy navigation. Nice looking shop too!

Thanks for checking it out, guys!

Steve, we were having that problem, but my web guru thought she'd fixed it. What browser are you using? Is anyone else experiencing this?

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Ken, it looks ok to me in updated versions of Chrome, Firefox, and IE. I can't test in Safari at the moment.

Ok, thanks, it looks good to me in Safari.

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

I get some shifting in the transitions using the latest versions of both Firefox and Chrome (for Mac). That's one of the reasons I commented on the effect being distracting. It can be difficult to get such behaviors to function properly across all systems and platforms.

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George :-)

Huh, looks fine in Firefox on my end. I wonder where the difference lies...

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

That's one of the great mysteries of web development. Drives my biz partner to drink.

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George :-)

Web development is my day job and yes it's enough to drive you crazy. It's called the browser wars and they have never ended. One recommendation I would make is to optimize your site for mobile. It looks ok on my Droid but it would be better if the design was responsive such that it would know you are using a mobile device and present the information for such a device. But over all it looks great imo.

Yes, great advice. The KingSize template is described as semi-responsive, but I do find it problematic on my iPhone. I'll probably wait a while before changing templates. Although, how difficult, ie costly, would it be to modify this template to be responsive? That is a high priority for me.


Ken Jones
Mountain Song Guitars

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Mountain Song Guitars www.mountainsongguitars.com

Looks great here!

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Jason Moe
LaCrosse WI 54601

Really nice. I like the simple navigation and the slideshow backgrounds (great way to instantly show users your beautiful work).

As others have said, it would be good to see some accompanying text with the photos of your shop rather than the two slideshows. Once the site is responsive, you'll only have to tweak a few things here and there. George's advise all sounds good.

EDIT: Just thought: the main paragraph text needs to be bigger I think. Tis quite a bit smaller than the menu text and I'm straining a little to read it from my usual position... And I know it seems like nitpicking, but I'd enhance the menu slightly with some hover styling and maybe some shadow. Just to give it a little "shine". Think of it like purfling