New Ultimate Wood Oven website! Please give us your feedback

Overall it looks great on my smartphone.

I like that I can just scroll all the way down and see everything I need.  I like that the whole bundle is available so I could get that in a hurry without having to think

Link at bottom “master gardener program” should be “garden master program” or there may be legal complaining.

I should be able to sign up for something free here (how about the Daily-ish?) and I love that ther is no pop-up mugging me for my email address but what if I want to be kept apprised, I’m noncommittal but interested?  How about one little piece of candy just for reading the whole page?

(It’s more work but you could fruitfully put a quiz at the end to f the page to see if I’ve read and understood — people love to take quizzes and look knowledgeable, and this might reduce misunderstandings that have propagated)

Also for what it’s worth calling it a wood oven will have a certain percentage of people think you mean the oven is made of wood and just not click on the link. I don’t know the best way to address this, but maybe the links _to_ the page can say “wood-fired” or better “wood-fueled white oven” and few will notice the URL.

Last, I tried clicking on the words in red because the visual cueing is “these might be links that would tell me more about these concepts” but they aren’t. Should they be? I don’t know. Italics would make them look less link-like.

Usability testing (observing someone using it) is the only way to really know how people will use/not use the site, but I doubt there’s budget for that. Maybe plotskateers can ask a naive neighbor or other test subject to try it and observe ?

I merged your stuff with the following thread. I hope that is okay by you.

Here are my impressions:

Colors and font are good.

It gets a bit repetitive where a number of bullet points are basically saying the same thing.  Maybe that's how marketing is done these days but it could be tighter.

I'd avoid saying rocket-powered at the very top.  I'd think that will scare many people off before they start to scroll.  Maybe "Build your own super efficient wood-burning oven".  But then you'd have to segue back into using the term when you define it lower.  So maybe ignore this suggestion...

For the next text block I'd change it to say "Enjoy the instructional movie and get all the plans to build your own wood oven....."

I don't have much scrap wood in my back yard so this might read better if flipped around: "Fire a rocket oven using only scrap wood and twigs from your backyard."

"The J-tube is constructed from heat-resistant refractory bricks, while the rest of the oven is made from high-quality steel."  Two things...  No one knows what a J-tube is so maybe it would be better to call it "The burn chamber".  Secondly, is it really "high-quality" steel?  Seems more like it uses old barrels which are not terribly high quality.

The links under Uncle Mud and Paul don't go where they say they'll go.  They just circle back to this website.

Hi!
In the footer section below "Check out more permaculture and homesteading stuff at" the listed items are a little too small - the font size is ok at some of the smaller screen sizes, but the 15px I'm seeing on my Lenovo laptop is hard to read.

Thanks!

Hiya!

"Enjoy all the plans and an instructional movie to build a wood oven powered using a few twigs from your yard with a carbon footprint of 1% compared to an electric oven. Save the world and power your oven for free with everything you need in one convenient package."

Wow that's a long sentence to start with!

Enjoy all the plans and an instructional movie to build a world saving oven. Using a few twigs from your yard, they have the  carbon footprint of 1% of an electric oven. Power your oven for free with everything you need in one convenient package.

That textbox would be better if it was the same ration (H x W)  as the video next to it, then the page could be symmetrical.

Also I agree about the repetition.

"Limit harmful emissions by using a fraction of the wood needed for conventional wood ovens"

Limit harmful emissions by burning the pollutants normally produced by conventional wood ovens

The drawing of the oven with "Get cooking with wood ovens today!" doesn't seem to add anything and just means that there's more stuff for people to scroll past to get to the buying options.

The layout on the 3 buying areas are rendering as a bit of a mess (none of the text, images or buttons quite line up) and the colour background doesn't go full width.

The font on the "Check out more" links could be bigger.

Some sections have lines as breaks while others just use the background change as the break.




Firefox 111.0.1 on Mac 10.15.7

I like it. Needs more pictures of the oven and things cooking in the oven. Under Need inspiration? what about a clip show on the right of the oven cooking: pizza, vegetables, bread then ending with "what will you cook next?". Also what about a picture gallery of rocket ovens? From people who have built them and uses them.  

Mike Haasl wrote:Here are my impressions:

Colors and font are good.

It gets a bit repetitive where a number of bullet points are basically saying the same thing.  Maybe that's how marketing is done these days but it could be tighter.

I'd avoid saying rocket-powered at the very top.  I'd think that will scare many people off before they start to scroll.  Maybe "Build your own super efficient wood-burning oven".  But then you'd have to segue back into using the term when you define it lower.  So maybe ignore this suggestion...

For the next text block I'd change it to say "Enjoy the instructional movie and get all the plans to build your own wood oven....."

I don't have much scrap wood in my back yard so this might read better if flipped around: "Fire a rocket oven using only scrap wood and twigs from your backyard."

"The J-tube is constructed from heat-resistant refractory bricks, while the rest of the oven is made from high-quality steel."  Two things...  No one knows what a J-tube is so maybe it would be better to call it "The burn chamber".  Secondly, is it really "high-quality" steel?  Seems more like it uses old barrels which are not terribly high quality.

The links under Uncle Mud and Paul don't go where they say they'll go.  They just circle back to this website.

Excellent. Thanks so much Mike - we will work on these points!

Sharon Goodenough wrote:Hi!
In the footer section below "Check out more permaculture and homesteading stuff at" the listed items are a little too small - the font size is ok at some of the smaller screen sizes, but the 15px I'm seeing on my Lenovo laptop is hard to read.

Thanks!

Thanks Sharon, that is good to know! We will test this out. Appreciate your input!

James Alun wrote:Hiya!

"Enjoy all the plans and an instructional movie to build a wood oven powered using a few twigs from your yard with a carbon footprint of 1% compared to an electric oven. Save the world and power your oven for free with everything you need in one convenient package."

Wow that's a long sentence to start with!

Enjoy all the plans and an instructional movie to build a world saving oven. Using a few twigs from your yard, they have the  carbon footprint of 1% of an electric oven. Power your oven for free with everything you need in one convenient package.

That textbox would be better if it was the same ration (H x W)  as the video next to it, then the page could be symmetrical.

Also I agree about the repetition.

"Limit harmful emissions by using a fraction of the wood needed for conventional wood ovens"

Limit harmful emissions by burning the pollutants normally produced by conventional wood ovens

The drawing of the oven with "Get cooking with wood ovens today!" doesn't seem to add anything and just means that there's more stuff for people to scroll past to get to the buying options.

The layout on the 3 buying areas are rendering as a bit of a mess (none of the text, images or buttons quite line up) and the colour background doesn't go full width.

The font on the "Check out more" links could be bigger.

Some sections have lines as breaks while others just use the background change as the break.

Firefox 111.0.1 on Mac 10.15.7

Great advice! Thanks so much James. We'll work on these

T Blankinship wrote:I like it. Needs more pictures of the oven and things cooking in the oven. Under Need inspiration? what about a clip show on the right of the oven cooking: pizza, vegetables, bread then ending with "what will you cook next?". Also what about a picture gallery of rocket ovens? From people who have built them and uses them.  

Lovely, thanks T! Do you have any photos you'd like to contribute?

Jules Silverlock wrote:

T Blankinship wrote:I like it. Needs more pictures of the oven and things cooking in the oven. Under Need inspiration? what about a clip show on the right of the oven cooking: pizza, vegetables, bread then ending with "what will you cook next?". Also what about a picture gallery of rocket ovens? From people who have built them and uses them.  

Lovely, thanks T! Do you have any photos you'd like to contribute?

I am building a rocket oven and will try and get some pictures. Is there a good place on permies to post the pictures? Anyone have ideas on what would be good?

Putting on my editing hat, I would, without changing the basic data, re-structure that intro paragraph thusly:

"Save the world and your money with everything you need to build and operate a wood-powered oven in one convenient informational package.
With these detailed plans and an instructional video, you can use a few twigs to power this efficient oven, with a carbon footprint of 1% of an electric oven!"

T Blankinship wrote:

I am building a rocket oven and will try and get some pictures. Is there a good place on permies to post the pictures? Anyone have ideas on what would be good?

I think maybe a new thread and if you could post the link here that would be much appreciated :) Look forward to seeing the pictures!

Mercy Pergande wrote:Putting on my editing hat, I would, without changing the basic data, re-structure that intro paragraph thusly:

"Save the world and your money with everything you need to build and operate a wood-powered oven in one convenient informational package.
With these detailed plans and an instructional video, you can use a few twigs to power this efficient oven, with a carbon footprint of 1% of an electric oven!"

Thank you Mercy! Great poetry - we will definitely look at this.

T Blankinship wrote:
I am building a rocket oven and will try and get some pictures. Is there a good place on permies to post the pictures? Anyone have ideas on what would be good?

I think the masses would very much appreciate anything you share to the rocket stoves forum!  The more images the better - they help people picture doing it in their own lives and spaces.

This is great! I love the colors and the use of lots of pictures. I'm no editor but I didn't see any flaws. I forgot how much I want to have one of these at my house, and this website reminded me thoroughly.

The only wish list item would be for a button at the bottom to buy the oven pre-made! Maybe with a pie inside...

Made some changes!:

- Font size changed on footer; I worry this will look wonky on different screen sizes... I had originally adjusted it to 15 to avoid wrapping, but I was on a smaller monitor then, so can't tell as well now. But take a look.

- Switched up the copy in the header based off of suggested edits; it's a bit different than suggestions, but I totally agree with the sentiments expressed by all, so I mashed together the feedback and came up with something else. Does this feel more clear and punchy?

- replaced "J-tube" with "burn chamber"; I had the same thought with that one, but wasn't sure what else to change it to. Excellent suggestion.

- moved the box with the image of the oven plans with text "get cooking with wood ovens today" to underneath the pricing box; I think this works better as sort of a summary, with redirect back to pricing.

- added a few more pictures under the "need inspiration?" section; we need more cooking pictures! The page is now using all images I was presented with when I jumped in, but maybe there are more somewhere.

- I kept "rocket-powered" in header after changing the header copy to include "super-efficient" below. I went back and forth on this one... I think it's good to keep the language consistent, and using the term straight out the gate does build curiousity... But I do agree it might confuse people, and could be better to use more familiar and clear language here, so I may change my mind again. Open to thoughts. I had waffled on that one earlier as well, but decided to keep it because the video in the header says "Rocket oven" so I felt that built some consistency and context.

- adjusted some margins and formatting things, mostly on tablet and mobile views.



Thanks everyone for your feedback so far! Keep it coming if you feel so compelled.

Oh! And I tried something out to clean up formatting in the 3 pricing panels. James, does that look better on your end?

Nicely done! Generally friendly and clear with well readable font and clean images and graphics. Are those SVGs? I love SVGs.

I am a bit puzzled by the extensive negative space under:
- What is a Rocket-Powered Wood Oven?
- Why Rocket-Powered Wood Ovens?

It may just be my browsers rendering of those particular bulleted paragraphs.
Using Brave Version 1.49.120 Chromium: 111.0.5563.64 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Slackware 15.

Hyperlinks to your other sites seem to colour coded in some fashion, interesting but unconventional.

I'm reserving opinion of the affiliates listed in the javascript plugins until I have researched them more thoroughly.

Chris Kay wrote:Nicely done! Generally friendly and clear with well readable font and clean images and graphics. Are those SVGs? I love SVGs.

I am a bit puzzled by the extensive negative space under:
- What is a Rocket-Powered Wood Oven?
- Why Rocket-Powered Wood Ovens?

It may just be my browsers rendering of those particular bulleted paragraphs.
Using Brave Version 1.49.120 Chromium: 111.0.5563.64 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Slackware 15.

Hyperlinks to your other sites seem to colour coded in some fashion, interesting but unconventional.

I'm reserving opinion of the affiliates listed in the javascript plugins until I have researched them more thoroughly.

Hm! Those images should only show up on tablet view... interesting. I had added them in to fill the negative space added when the screen size shrinks.
Are you on a chromebook?

I'll maybe just deactivate the images altogether if they cause weirdness on different screen sizes.

T Blankinship wrote:I like it. Needs more pictures of the oven and things cooking in the oven. Under Need inspiration? what about a clip show on the right of the oven cooking: pizza, vegetables, bread then ending with "what will you cook next?". Also what about a picture gallery of rocket ovens? From people who have built them and uses them.  

I like those suggestions. The website looks good in its latest version. I'm left wanting more info and pictures, plus a short "trailer" from the video. That's going to answer more questions for me, which is what I'd need before pulling the trigger to buy. Questions like, what materials are needed to build (no bricks visible), estimated time to build, how clean is the burn?
Looking good!

 Margaux Knox wrote: I kept "rocket-powered" in header after changing the header copy to include "super-efficient" below. I went back and forth on this one... I think it's good to keep the language consistent, and using the term straight out the gate does build curiousity... But I do agree it might confuse people, and could be better to use more familiar and clear language here, so I may change my mind again. Open to thoughts. I had waffled on that one earlier as well, but decided to keep it because the video in the header says "Rocket oven" so I felt that built some consistency and context.

I’m not sure the word rocket is so foreign anymore. Maybe it’s just the algos finding me but I see constant links on Pinterest and YouTube for building rocket stoves and ovens. Ads on Etsy selling plans and kits.  Europe and Russia are very familiar with baking in masonry ovens. I suspect the internet is ‘shrinking and connecting the world’ enough that these concepts may be more familiar than we think. That said, I do still feel it’s probably good to keep the word rocket, if for no other reason than it being specific to the design, whereas ‘super-efficient’ is both subjective and also applies to many other types of heating and cooking devices.

Hi,

sorry if this comment is already made. (Today I have a limited capacity to read all the comments...)

I purchased the rocket powered oven plans some time ago (a year or two? I don`t know...time goes so fast...). And planning to build one. I have now finally gotten all the materials I need for building one or two. But time has passed and the newest version looks temting. I am wondering if there could be a discount for "upgrading" the plans to the newest version? So if you commit to a product, you could easily pay a bit extra for the new tec-updates.

Love your work. I backed your last kickstarter movie. And also the latest one. Can't wait to try to make the ceramic rocket kiln and be able to make some ceramics off-grid!

Best regards
Jo Ravn Abusland

Beau Davidson wrote:
I think the masses would very much appreciate anything you share to the rocket stoves forum!  The more images the better - they help people picture doing it in their own lives and spaces.

And I have started one here: https://permies.com/t/214383/rocket-ovens/Building-rocket-oven-pictures

Is the Grill/Oven combo included in this package? For me, that would be the best of both worlds

In any event, I would have ordered the Bundle except I don't use Crypto [Canada proved how risky that can be], I refuse to use the Political hacks at PayPal, and know nothing about Stripe.  If you'd just accept credit cards {Visa/MasterCard} I would have ordered the Bundle

The grill-oven combo is on the 8th movie here:

https://richsoil.com/wood-heat.jsp

Mike Whitley wrote:Is the Grill/Oven combo included in this package? For me, that would be the best of both worlds

In any event, I would have ordered the Bundle except I don't use Crypto [Canada proved how risky that can be], I refuse to use the Political hacks at PayPal, and know nothing about Stripe.  If you'd just accept credit cards {Visa/MasterCard} I would have ordered the Bundle

Hi Mike! Stripe is a reputable third-party payment processor that takes credit card payments. A huge number of web stores process payments through Stripe, along with many service providers. It's trusted by companies like Amazon, Google, and Kickstarter. Take a look at their website and see if you're comfortable with it, but it is significantly more trustworthy than Paypal, and is one of the more prominent payment processors on the web at the moment. It's not unlikely you've used it before and not even known, as many sites have it seamlessly integrated.

I don't care for that Army Green color, but otherwise the site looks great!

Jo Abusland wrote: I am wondering if there could be a discount for "upgrading" the plans to the newest version? So if you commit to a product, you could easily pay a bit extra for the new tec-updates.

Could you provide a link to
a) the plans you have, and
b) the plans you want to upgrade to?

I agree with the posts that suggested shortening the opening sentence. Permies aren't 'normal' but keeping things to a 6th grade level is suggested.

The layout is pleasing. I like the inclusion of the small graphics for visual effect. The font, forms of VAG, is a font previously unknown to me. For Accessibility, I'm not sure about the rest of the Permies site as I've never bothered to check but guidance on accessibility suggests Verdana for best screen readability. I didn't notice any areas displaying color contrast problems but the WAVE website evaluation tool flagged 7 low contrast problems. The different sections are not keyboard focusable. All photos should have an on-screen text explanation but I was impressed that each one I checked had Alt-Text displayed on hover but I think it was just the filename so a slightly more descriptive Alt-Text would be helpful. I didn't actually check the hyperlinks but based on the displayed URL they should be functional. Accessibility and best practices promote using only brief descriptive text for the hover Screen Tips and the complex URL should never be displayed.

The movie is fully functional.

For the text box and photo combination that shows grilled corn, the text opens with Margherita Pizza which is grand but not what is in the photo. I think I saw some comments suggesting more photos and if more photos are added, I'd suggest the order of the photos and the text list be in sync.

There are plans in the offer but exactly what plans are included is never really described. Maybe it's in the video but until you decide to make a purchase you won't see the video. May want to add more details on the plans and what exactly is 11 pages of download?

Viewed on a Macbook Air with 13" Retina 2020 running MacOS Ventura 13.2.1 using Google Chrome Version 112.0.5615.49 (Official Build) (x86_64) and loosely inspected with the Google Developer Tools which showed 2 errors and 2 issues. Also used the WAVE Website evaluation tool (https://wave.webaim.org/report#/https://wood-oven.net/) and here I break the best practice because I'm not sure how to provide the information without breaking the best practice. I think I need to reload Chrome to get the extension tool to work.

Margaux Knox wrote:

Mike Whitley wrote:Is the Grill/Oven combo included in this package? For me, that would be the best of both worlds

In any event, I would have ordered the Bundle except I don't use Crypto [Canada proved how risky that can be], I refuse to use the Political hacks at PayPal, and know nothing about Stripe.  If you'd just accept credit cards {Visa/MasterCard} I would have ordered the Bundle

Hi Mike! Stripe is a reputable third-party payment processor that takes credit card payments. A huge number of web stores process payments through Stripe, along with many service providers. It's trusted by companies like Amazon, Google, and Kickstarter. Take a look at their website and see if you're comfortable with it, but it is significantly more trustworthy than Paypal, and is one of the more prominent payment processors on the web at the moment. It's not unlikely you've used it before and not even known, as many sites have it seamlessly integrated.

Ok, I know I'm older than dirt but as a retired EE I cannot seem to find where/how to use Strip for ME to pay a business. It seems fully geared for a business to accept payments which is fine but obviously not what I need to do. All I want to do is order the Rocket Oven Bundle and it seems I lack the ability to do that.

Mike Whitley wrote:
Ok, I know I'm older than dirt but as a retired EE I cannot seem to find where/how to use Strip for ME to pay a business. It seems fully geared for a business to accept payments which is fine but obviously not what I need to do. All I want to do is order the Rocket Oven Bundle and it seems I lack the ability to do that.

Hi Mike, thanks for asking about Stripe, I've created a new thread below to answer your query and to help others who might benefit from it - and to keep this thread about changes to the website. Do follow me over here: https://permies.com/wiki/214620/Payment-Options-Permies-Stripe  

Mary Haasch wrote:I agree with the posts that suggested shortening the opening sentence. Permies aren't 'normal' but keeping things to a 6th grade level is suggested....

Thanks Mary for all your comments and feedback, we appreciate it and will look into your suggestions.

Margaux Knox wrote:
Hm! Those images should only show up on tablet view... interesting. I had added them in to fill the negative space added when the screen size shrinks.
Are you on a chromebook?

Nope an old DELL Optiplex running Slackware.

Margaux Knox wrote:
I'll maybe just deactivate the images altogether if they cause weirdness on different screen sizes.

I suspect Brave uses the same technology to withhold screen size to prevent computer slash identity profiling Tor does.  If I get a chance to confirm that I will.