Comments on: Comic Shop Web Design Round-Up Part 01: The Bad and The Ugly in one fell swoop.

By: Professor Coldheart

Professor Coldheart — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:48:48 +0000

“I’ll have you know that was my Lil’ Wayne ringtone going off during the wedding, and I’m particularly proud of it.”

By: Kevin Church

Kevin Church — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:47:00 +0000

Well, then, now people know where to go. Is there a particular reason you made the choices you made with the site?

By: Dustin Harbin

Dustin Harbin — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:58:16 +0000

While your ironic decorum, in blurring things out “to protect the guilty”, is ironically appreciated, the first site you mention was designed and is maintained by me, and can be found sans blur at http://www.heroesonline.com

By: Kevin Church

Kevin Church — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:38:43 +0000

Blogspot can publish to a domain; that’s how I maintained this site for years. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer much in the way of flexibility outside of straight blogging.

For a small comics shop (or any small business, really) looking for a more polished presence that doesn’t need e-commerce capabilities, I’d recommend using Wordpress as a publishing platform. It’s flexible and allows you to create static “pages” as well as blog posts, that way information like directions, a contact form, etc are just a click away and your blog (or another static page) acts as the landing page when people visit the site. It makes your site extremely search friendly and can be updated with very little effort.

(And as far as Rocketship’s presence, I would mostly recommend getting the shop its own domain and neatening up the blog so it looks a bit more polished. Everything else is very solid, as you’re using it as a communications and marketing tool, not a direct sales effort.)

By: Alex Cox

Alex Cox — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:32:40 +0000

We use blogspot, but only because we change “front page” content frequently… I’ve tried to make the site as close to a “real” web page as possible, though… ie. address, hours, directions, photos etc at the top of the page.

I’ve toyed with making an actual website, but in all honesty, the blog setup works so well for our needs that I can’t see the benefit of changing it at this point.

I would be interested in your thoughts on our web presence, as someone who has been to the store, linked to from our site, and whatnot.

By: HCE

HCE — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:36:46 +0000

I used to live in the same town as the storefront for #4. Now, I can’t say that this applies to your other examples, but for this place the problem seemed to be that the website was, indeed, an genuine extension of the physical business.

By: Evan Waters

Evan Waters — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 02:55:58 +0000

Too many businesses still treat web presence as a minor thing- they want to have a site, but they’re not going to go to any great effort or expense to make it good. On top of which, of course, some comic shop owners can’t run a real storefront let alone a virtual one.

By: Kevin Church

Kevin Church — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:10:38 +0000

I really, really, really hate welcome pages/gateways/etc.

By: Phil Looney

Phil Looney — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 00:17:16 +0000

Glad I’m not the only one bugged by that first site’s “Come on in” front page. But then, I have an unreasonable hate for websites with a “welcome” page before you get any content.

By: Dave Lartigue

Dave Lartigue — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:09:44 +0000

Well come on, it’s not like comics geeks use the Internet.