Positive Thinking

This morning I feel quite optimistic and positive about things, which worries me a little. It’s not that I’m a negative person- my usual waking up mood is that of optimism, but recently with all the illness going around I haven’t felt like this. I had probably the best night’s sleep I’ve had since before I went down with the flu, our second youngest daughter also slept well- although we’ve kept her off school just to be sure and to build her strength back up, and so far no one else has had a relapse. Which is why I can’t help being worried- although generally we are not a sickly family, everyone being well at the same time is a bit of an alien concept at the moment, and I can’t help thinking it’s all a bit too good to be true. Still, ‘take advantage of it while it lasts’ I tell myself. I have still to be convinced.

My Tesco daffodils are all in bloom today, giving the kitchen and dining room bright spots of spring sunshine, that should help keep my mood happy. Mike went out in a rush today, so hasn’t cleaned up in the kitchen, so that must be my first job. I realise somewhere along the way that it’s recycling again today, I’m not sure how it was managed last week while I was semi-conscious upstairs, but even though I feel so much better, even I recognise that carrying the heavy bins down the drive will be pushing things too far, so, for the first time in years I do my best to turn a blind eye to the recycling mountain that’s threatening to overtake the utility room.

With the washing machine happily working away for me, I turn my attention to my website after a quick check of emails etc. The trouble with having a slower start to the day is, of course, that the whole day ends up behind time. In my head it’s now only mid-morning, but it’s already heading towards lunchtime. I may still have no appetite to speak of, but in the vain hope that it will at some point return I’m trying to keep to eating at the appropriate times in the day.

Whilst toying with a slice of toast, I take another browse through the website design offerings. I’m still a bit put off by the names they have given to the designs, but at least the one I think will suit my business best is simply entitled ‘Nursery’, not entirely inappropriate either. I still have a backup design in mind, but this one is called ‘Intelligent Beauty’ which doesn’t quite sound right to me! As soon as lunch is cleared away, and second youngest daughter has returned upstairs to read, I decide that I just need to be brave and try out this new design, or else I’ll still be thinking about it at Christmas!

Whilst looking at my chosen design, I click on ‘select store’ and instantly my store name appears in the preview image. Most pages, information and categories have been transferred over, but the colours are in their sample ones and not the ones I have established as Little Dolly Clothes Shop’s ‘look’. There is also a small logo at the top, which still has the sample store name, and a picture slide-show showing their graphics. All very well, until I realise that there is no ‘save’ button on the page anywhere, meaning that what is showing on the preview is actually live online at the moment.

Changing the details therefore suddenly becomes more urgent, so I start with the logo- not that simple as my logo is about twice the length of the space allocated on the store design. A lot of fiddling about later, I have a semi decent logo to use in the top corner. Next for the slide-show, for a quick fix I just place some of the photos currently in use on the store so that at least it’s my pictures that are showing. The photos are way too large though, and the slide-show fills the entire computer screen, so I’ll need to sort this straight away- after all I was aiming at making the website look more appealing, not something to laugh at, I can’t see many sales coming my way if that’s the case!

Editing photos to look good on a website slide-show isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially not on a fairly new computer that I haven’t yet entirely got to grips with yet. But I persevere, and a while later I have two usable slides, I’d like to add a third but time has run out and I need to go and get my littlest from school- my first proper school run in two weeks! With her safely back home and playing with her sister I add a third slide to my collection and then get them up and running online. The result is much better than the temporary fix, although they are still a lot larger than I imagined. I change the colours of the text and the background to match my business, and then take a look at the website online.

After all that work, I’m not even very impressed with the way the website looks, and I don’t like the way the products are presented on the category pages. Time to try out website design number two…