Quilt Shop Directory

Web Design

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Free Tools:
Web design tips
Web promotion tips
Quilter's guides to:
Placing your business
   on the web
Promoting your
  business on the web
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  Marketing Newsletter

 

Favorite Quilt Shops

Support the quilt shops and other quilt businesses that support us! The online quilt shops you'll find here were all designed by QuiltProfessionals. They offer a wide selection of merchandise and use our secure shopping cart. Visit these quilt shops to see some of the best looking, as well as easy to navigate, quilting sites on the Web (in our humble opinion)!

Quilters' Encyclopedia

The Quilters' Encyclopedia is a new feature on our directory. We provide useful information on topics such as Hawaiian quilting, crazy quilts, art quilts, machine quilting, and quilt marking. We're always looking for new entries, so if you are a writer with quilt expertise, please submit your entry to us.

Web Design for Quilt Shops

Putting your quilt shop or other craft business on the Web is a big job and we have the expertise and tools to help you at every step of the way. We have worked with and talked to dozens of quilt shop and quilt and craft business owners (and helped thousands more with our monthly column on "Web Site Success" in Sewing, Quilting & Embroidery Professional magazine). Whether you want a custom web site or are more interested in one of our standard web design packages, we have the skills and tools that will help you make your web site a success.

If you think you might be interested in our services, please contact us via email or phone at (479) 677-2235.

For our standard web design packages we have taken a popular design from our custom portfolio. We've found that small business owners want a web site that they can easily manage themselves without having to learn or buy complex software. To make it easy for you to maintain your own web site, we've created a management system that allows you to add new web pages and modify existing pages by filling out simple forms. Please take a look at several samples of web sites created with our standard web design packages.

A professionally created web site looks better and does its job better than a home-made web site. We specialize in web design for quilt shops and other craft businesses, so we know the needs of quilt shop owners and we know how to help you understand the Web. One of us, Paula, is a quilter and we use some of the same design principles in building your web site that Paula uses in making one of her award-winning quilts. The custom web sites we design are among the very best looking and functioning sites in the quilt world. Please take a minute to see one of the custom sites we've designed recently for Helen Squire, Mama's Log House Quilt Shop, The Twisted Stitcher, Fabric Art In A Bag, Thimbles 'n Quilts, or Quilt Hawaiian or visit our Portfolio area.

Necessities for Your Web Site

E-Commerce 
Our shopping cart is especially designed for quilt shops. There are no monthly fees or per product fees for this cart beyond the web hosting fee. Because the cart is designed for quilt shops, you won't have to choose whether to categorize your fabric by manufacturer, designer, theme, or color. Instead you can have it all! The cart includes a fabric calculator, and handles eighth, quarter, third, and half yard cuts.

Email Newsletter 
Once you bring customers to your web site, you'll want them to keep coming back. Our email newsletter allows you to easily collect email addresses on your web site and then email your newsletter out right from a private part of your web site. The same newsletter can be automatically displayed as a web page on your site. 

Automated Class Listing 
Our class list allows your quilt shop customers to view your class listings on your web site, and to search for the classes they want either by teacher's name, type of class, day of week, time of day, or month. If you have also chosen the Email Newsletter feature, you can email the class listing out to your mailing list. 

Web Hosting 
We now provide green web hosting. We have affiliated with a data center in southern California that is entirely powered by solar panels. We provide all technical support (and if you've ever hosted a web site with one of the large corporate hosts you'll really appreciate the personalized support.) Web hosting starts at $14.95 per month (with $1 off if you pay quarterly). You'll need our Solar II web hosting plan ($19.95 per month with $1 off if you pay quarterly) for the Business Standard web design plan, the shopping cart, email newsletter, or automated class listing. Visit our sister web site for more information about green web hosting.

Advertise on Quilt Shop Directory 
Put your business at the top of our Directory! Visit our advertising page to sign up your quilt shop or quilting supplies business. Or, contact us for more information.

Free Tools for Quilt Shops

Free Quilt Shop Directory Listing 
Sign up for your free listing on any of our  directories that are relevant to your business. We offer directories of quilt shops, quilting supplies, quilts for sale, quilt teachers, and quilt guilds. You can add an enhanced listing with a map, photos, or a lengthy description to your free directory listings for a small yearly fee.

Free Web Site Marketing Newsletter
We are interested in keeping you up to date with trends and tips in promoting your web site. If you are interested in receiving our free newsletter, sign up for our Web Site Marketing newsletter now.

Free Quilter's Guides to the Web 
Our Quilter's Guide to Placing and Promoting Your Business on the Web is such a useful tool that Quilting Professional magazine published it in a four part series in 2004. See the guides online to learn the essentials of placing, and then promoting, your quilt shop, quilting supplies, or other business on the Web.

Don't Miss Our Monthly SQE Column 
Be sure to read our column, Web Site Success, in every issue of Quilting Professional and Sewing, Quilting & Embroidery Professional magazines. Past columns are available here on our web site. We give you tips on improving your web site design, optimizing your site for the search engines, choosing a shopping cart, and much more. Whether you have a quilt shop, longarm quilting business, or sell quilting supplies our columns will help you make your web site the success you want it to be.

Craft Website Design Too! 
Quilt Professionals works with all types of craft businesses, not just quilting. If you are looking for craft web site design, we are the web designers for you. Paula, our designer is skilled in a large number of different craft areas and she brings both her crafting and her craft website design skills to design your web site. (Jeanne, our programmer, is not so skilled with her hands, but watch out when she's at the computer!) Whether your need is for woodworking web site design, knitting web site design, scrapbook web design, or any other type of craft web design, we are ready to help you create one of the best-looking and functioning web sites in your business.

Does your web site look homemade? Why not look like this!

Does Your Web Site Need a Makeover? Take Our Quiz!

Take this short quiz to see how you score your web site. Give yourself 10 points for each statement true for your site and 5 points if partially true. The quiz is divided into three areas, each of critical importance to your web site.

Sales and Traffic (40 points)
1. Your sales on the web site are high

2. You get more than enough visitors

3. You know what key phrases are used on your home page and you know what key phrases are in your title tag

4. You know how many other quilt shops and other quilting supplies web sites link to your site and you have a web page filled with reciprocal links from quilt shops

Web Design (40 points)
5. Your site has a unique, creative look that is very different from other quilt shop sites

6. You can easily point out no more than one or two focal points on your home page, i.e. your site does not have "web site sprawl"

7. Your site uses basic design priniciples such as consistent alignment, good contrast, visual emphasis only on important elements, tasteful use of special effects

8. Most of your images are striking close ups and were chosen because they help convey your message

Performance (20 points)
9. Your site loads quickly

10. You have evidence that your customers easily find their way around your web site and your shopping cart

How did your web site score?

Low Sales & Traffic - 30 points or less on questions 1-4:
Your web site needs to be made more "friendly" for the search engines, i.e. you need "search engine optimization". Alternatively you could use paid advertisement to bring customers to your web site. You may also need to modify the contents of your shopping area or the way the shopping area is set up. Navigation may be a problem.

Poor Web Design - 30 points or less on questions 5-8:
Your web site needs a new design or a major design overhaul. You will almost certainly need to engage a professional web design company, but you must first learn a little about what constitutes good web design so that you are in a position to evaluate the work of potential web designers. A well-designed online quilt shop is far more profitable than a poorly- designed web site.

Performance - 15 points or less on questions 9-10:
You need to work on specific performance issues. A slow loading web page is often due to oversize or high resolution images. To test for navigation problems, ask two or three objective people to try and find their way around your site. If they have trouble finding products, contacting you, making a purchase, or other critical tasks you need to upgrade your site navigation and possibly your shopping cart. Other performance issues could be incompatibility with different browsers, poor HTML code written by the template or WYSIWYG software (e.g. Frontpage) you are using, or slow shopping cart pages.

5 Reasons Your Quilt Shop Needs A Professionally-Designed Web Site

1. You are a serious business and you are serious about making money with your online quilt shop.

2. Designing a web site that looks professional requires expert design skills plus a full knowledge of HTML. A web site designed by your husband or the kid down the block ALWAYS looks it.

3. How will visitors to your web site know that you are serious about your online quilt shop if your web site looks home-made?

4. Do you want to spend your time learning to use software like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage or do you want to run your quilt shop?

5. Do you know the signs of a poorly designed web page? Do you know how to use "key phrases" so that the search engines will send you customers looking for your products? Do you know how to design a web page that will look good on all the different browsers?

Directory of Quilt Shops, Quilting Supplies, Quilt Teachers, Quilt Guides, Quilts For Sale!

Quilt shops, quilting supplies, quilts for sale, quilt teachers, quilt guilds