Attempting to open a new online whistle shop

[Technocelts]

My wife and I love the whistle. We thought we might become more involved with our love for the whistle by attempting to open an online whistle shop. We have to start with a small inventory as we are Not wealthy LOL. But our hearts are in this %100 to serve you, THE PLAYER! Visit us at https://www.celticcrosswhistleshop.com
A penny (whistle) for your thoughts.

[AngelicBeaver]

Nice site. A couple of minor photographical suggestions:

When you photograph the whistles from above, I notice that you aren't directly above the whistles. In the case of the Clarke whistles, the perspective distorts the shape of the whistles to the point that you can't tell that they have a conical bore.

I also notice that your white balance varies in some of your shots, like you have it on auto-White balance. I would suggest standardizing your lighting and figure out what white balance setting most accurately represents the colors of the whistles and then using those settings every time you shoot a product. For well known whistles like the Clarkes, it probably isn't a big deal, but I've spent a lot of time looking at whistles by various manufacturers, trying to figure out if the whistle was brass or aluminum with a yellow color cast, or trying to figure out if their whistle has a conical bore or if it's just the angle at which they took the photo.

On the whole, the site is very nicely done and I'm partial to green . I ordered a Clarke Original and checkout went quite smoothly. If you're unfamiliar with white balance, I've typed out a briefly boring explanation below. I put in a link to at the bottom. Again, these are minor observations. I've seen some horrendous product photography (ebay) and yours is actually quite good. One of the websites I was looking at suggested white for the background and walls, but I like the green fabrics you used and don't think they hurt the representation of your products.

White Balance:

White balance, simplified, has to do with color temperature. For example, an incandescent bulb has a very warm color temperature (2700K or so). Noonday sun has a very cool color temperature (6000K or so). If you have your white balance set for incandescent light and you take photos outside, everything will have a blue color cast. If you have your WB set to daylight and you take photos inside under incandescent lighting, everything will have a reddish-orange cast.

Auto-WB analyzes the photo you are taking and tries to balance the color to eliminate the cast. You can see this happening in the picture of the red Sweetone. The green fabric surrounding the whistle looks comparatively bluer then the other whistles because the camera is seeing a lot of red and is trying to balance it by shifting the balance toward the cooler end of the spectrum.

https://www.pixelz.com/blog/need-accura ... me-rescue/

[Chifmunk]

Congratulations! I agree, nice clean/clear site.

My suggestion is to have a brief "About Us" page. Personally, I avoid ordering/buying from sites where they don't make clear where and who they are. I know you give a phone number there, but.. no email/Contact link?
IMHO, having a nice "about us" photo of the owner(s), stating your general location and a sentence of background as to why you created your shop etc... adds the important human touch and contributes much to my confidence in ordering from a site.

Love the free shipping- less to fuss about when thinking of ordering!

[ytliek]

Congratulations! I agree, nice clean/clear site.

My suggestion is to have a brief "About Us" page. Personally, I avoid ordering/buying from sites where they don't make clear where and who they are. I know you give a phone number there, but.. no email/Contact link?
IMHO, having a nice "about us" photo of the owner(s), stating your general location and a sentence of background as to why you created your shop etc... adds the important human touch and contributes much to my confidence in ordering from a site.

Love the free shipping- less to fuss about when thinking of ordering!

Yip, congratulations and best of luck. I too look to the "About" link before I go any further. I saw the FB page but that too is vague.

Go for it!

[dyersituations]

Just posting to echo: good looking site and an about page would be nice. I definitely am more likely to purchase an instrument from a site with a "face." There are a lot of instrument sites these days, and I like knowing that the people behind the site are caring for the instruments as they are shipped out. An about page would help show potential buyers your passion for the whistle.

[Tommy]

Area code 724 is a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania telephone area code in western and southwestern Pennsylvania, including most of the suburbs of Pittsburgh. It was split from area code 412 on February 1, 1998.

[Technocelts]

Thank you all so much for your good wishes & great comments. All of the advice was good & I certainly will follow through with all of it. Deb & I ( PJ ) Love whistles & want to meet your needs & fulfill your desires.
Update: As per your request, the Celtic Cross Whistle Shop has added an about section to our site. Also, we will be re shooting photos of the inventory with a green background. Please, always, always feel free give us your input. We want the Celtic Cross Whistle Shop to be a part of the whistle players community.

[Tor]

There's a small issue with the fonts used in the descriptions (e.g. the piece about Phil Hardy) - the letters run into each other in my browser (late Chrome). 'm', for example, always covers the next letter.

[whistlecollector]

The About section is a definite improvement. Your own passion about the whistle is what got you into this business --- sharing that passion and a little of your history with your customers is only a plus. As you travel to various festivals and meet whistlers (and even C&Fers!) it might be nice to expand your About page with a little scrapbook gallery of images and memories of those meetings!

There's a small issue with the fonts used in the descriptions (e.g. the piece about Phil Hardy) - the letters run into each other in my browser (late Chrome). 'm', for example, always covers the next letter.

No issue on Opera, Firefox, Tor or Chrome for me.

[Chifmunk]

Yes the new About section is great!

One more thing that's important- -you don't give an email address/link anywhere on your site in order to contact you.

You say on your about page: "we want to get to know and become friends with all of our customers. We want to hear your feedback, and meet all your needs if possible." ...but there's no way to contact you other than by phone. People generally will not phone someone's home to ask a simple question about a product or shipping... they want to email their question. Usually, an email address and phone number should be on a simple page called Contact or Contact Us. (separate from the About Us page and link, and often with a FORM for composing and sending the email right there)
If you don't want to add another page, at least just put your email above your phone number on the main page.

[sfmans]

Couple more things to add to the above;

- the site name 'Celtic Cross Studios LLC' is different to the URL and enterprise name; to subliminally inspire buyer confidence the banner should also say 'Celtic Cross Whistle Shop'. Same point applies to the individual page titles, although ...
- The About Us page is only titled, and thus shown in the browser tab, as About Us' rather than identifying itself as part of your site - if anyone bookmarks that it'll only show as About Us.
- I see someone has already pointed out the thing about the weird perspective and background on some of the photos ...
- On the front page, the description of the Killarney whistles is missing its closing full stop. Also in the Susato section lindsey-family.com should be a hyperlink, preferably target='_blank' so that it opens in a new window rather than leaving your site.

Good luck with it!

[Peter Duggan]

preferably target='_blank' so that it opens in a new window rather than leaving your site.

While widely done, this is debatable in attempting to force behaviour on the user rather than leave the choice to them.

[Technocelts]

The wife is of Scottish descent. She is an Alba girl. So of course we have some Alba whistles being made for the Celtic Cross Whistle Shop. They should be arriving soon.

[Technocelts]

Yes the new About section is great!

One more thing that's important- -you don't give an email address/link anywhere on your site in order to contact you.

You say on your about page: "we want to get to know and become friends with all of our customers. We want to hear your feedback, and meet all your needs if possible." ...but there's no way to contact you other than by phone. People generally will not phone someone's home to ask a simple question about a product or shipping... they want to email their question. Usually, an email address and phone number should be on a simple page called Contact or Contact Us. (separate from the About Us page and link, and often with a FORM for composing and sending the email right there)
If you don't want to add another page, at least just put your email above your phone number on the main page.

I have now provided an email address in the contact us section on the about page as well as in the header on the main page.

[Technocelts]

[quote="whistlecollector"]The About section is a definite improvement. Your own passion about the whistle is what got you into this business --- sharing that passion and a little of your history with your customers is only a plus. As you travel to various festivals and meet whistlers (and even C&Fers!) it might be nice to expand your About page with a little scrapbook gallery of images and memories of those meetings!

I absolutely love the idea of a scrapbook with a photo gallery sharing good times meeting whistlers (especially C & Fers) at various festivals! Thanks for that whistlecollector.