Amy,

Your site is beautiful and very well constructed - it's fast even with all the images. Here are some things that come to mind in terms of improving traffic and number of orders.

To increase traffic, optimize your website for the keyword phrases your customers would use to find your site. You may need to do some keyword research to identify the best phrases to use. Then, make sure your page titles, meta tags, and content focus on those keyword phrases.

Arriving at the home page, it takes a few minutes to identify the purpose of your site. Make sure the content of the home page explains very quickly what you do. I think it would also be a good idea to have the product categories shown on the home page. I know that would make it longer than you'd like, but it would let visitors know what you offer, and encourage them to look at the products. An alternative would be to show the 10 categories on the navigation bar under the Products heading. I don't think your visitors will spend a lot of time trying to determine what you offer.

I don't know that much about how other distributors set up their websites, but you might want to check them out. Usually, if a site promotes online purchases, there is an easy way to make those purchases. There is some type of a "shopping cart" where visitors can place an order quickly. I'd look around to see if that is also the standard in your industry. If so, you need to provide that capability.

I'm afraid your visitors won't take the time to gather all the specific information about which products they want, then send an e-mail that includes a long list of required information.

If setting up a shopping cart is not possible, I would at least offer a response form that generates an e-mail to you so that you can quickly contact the prospect.

The lack of pricing is another issue that came to mind. Perhaps you could display the list price, and indicate that there is a wholesale price list that can be accessed by setting up an account.

Finally, I'd suggest thinking about the categories you have established for your products. Is it likely that your customers would be shopping based on artist? colors? subject of the piece?

For example, if I were your customer, I might want to purchase things in the Art/Photography category. I see 14 galleries organized by artist. Is that how I would make a choice? It occurs to me that there may be other selection criteria I'd be using, and would find it almost impossible to find things in those 14 galleries that match those criteria.

Maybe you should include keywords in the product descriptions and highlight your Google search to find particular things. Then, if someone is looking for winter scenes, or red decoupage, they'd be able to find it with the search. Those are just examples, since I don't know your customers. Maybe they don't want to find winter scenes, but there's probably some criteria they'd use to choose products!

Hope this helps.

Kathleen

Amy,

I agree with gurubaba - there is too much gray in your website. This keeps the mood too formal in my opinion.
Love the images and the layout is pretty logical. KSA has good points on SEA and perhaps re-arranging your offerings by using more specific category/logical descriptors to elicit greater interest.

Some other comments:
- You 'Contact Us' page is first-rate, I wish they were all this neat.

- The 'Closeouts' page brings up 'Gallery not Found' however. If you don't have any closeouts, you should remove the link.

Hope this helps,
John

Amy,

Sorry for being a bit late, swamped here at work. I did take time to look over your site. Many of my comments/suggestions would echo KSA's. In looking at your site, I would change the background color to a shade of blue. One similar to the shade you have in your "lili Belmont" print would look nice. It would brighten up your site and make the gray more of a contrast than a theme. I think this would draw your readers/shoppers/visitor into your site more. Too much gray gives an appearance of drab, dirty or dingy. You site and message do not convey that, so your appearance should not.

Overall the layout is very appealing. I know when targeting a niche market (wholesalers) it can be tough. I would advise taking the form on your http://www.swirlsofcolor.com/contact_us.htm page and having that on your http://www.swirlsofcolor.com/pricelist-password.htm page instead of a link to the contact page. You want to make wholesalers jobs easier to carry your products and that little step would be nice. I would also add a login feature to your menu at the bottom. That way, a wholesaler can log in from any page to view your products/pricing.

Just my two cents on how to make the sight navigate better for your wholesale customers.

I also second KSA's assessment on categories.

I hope that helps some.

Michael

No offense but what year are we in? People are not going to take the time to buy something from your site when it's that difficult - no matter how nice your product is. It took me 5 minutes just to find out how to buy something!! You need to simlify this or you will lose potential buyers before they even get to checkout. Good luck!

Hi there,
Most of the points have been covered in above posts. I thought i would add my voice on 2 points.

First, your brand/company name is "swirls of colors". though long, is wonderfully evocative ...bringing to mind splashes of bright colors - pink, peach, red/maroon, yellow etc (You could link it to beautiful pieces of art your selling...)

Both your logo design & the website are simply not doing justice to the potential of the name....Maybe you could think about an investment into a logo & website designer(if not already in place) to re-do the whole look of your website/company.

that is the aesthetic bit, on strategy, well, I agree with KSA...esp on having items categoried by type rather than by artist.

Is the website your only weapon of marketing to reach your TG?

IMHO, Since your TG is so clear, your website must ensure that all possible info is provided in clear manner. I am right now not sure that clarity is there...are you talking their language?

I might be wrong but it just seems to be a catalog on web, I feel you need to think about what they need to see that would enable them to make a decision in your favour after visiting your website.
I can't sense any value proposition by visiting your website right now - Why should they buy from you?

As I said I might be wrong- you might not need that in your website, but this is my 2 cents worth !

Hope this helps
Sowmya

Hi Amy, Sorry I'm late, glad I didn't miss this one.

Firstly the site, Swirls of colour, love the name and the logo's fine, but two s's.?? maybe try an S & a C instead.

The products you sell look great, but the flowers on the front represent something from the realms of Laura Ashley, maybe drop it, it doesn't really represent what you do or your artists contributions.

I think the main issues that I can see are these;

1. It looks like a retail site for end users and not a wholesale only operation.
2. Your enquiry form and contact form have no validation fields in it allowing anyone to send it without giving information
3. The ordering process is too complicated, create a form in word with all the information on it, make it into a pdf and the users can download it, much easier and you are guaranteed to get the information
4. The page title tags are too short
5. Lastly and I don't really like saying this, but the whole site, both in colour and layout does not represent what you do, it needs more impact, afterall the only people who really use grey is Dior in their winter collection.

I don't think that the spec for the layout was done correctly and looking at the rest of Doug Felton's work I feel that I'm justified in saying that

My personal recommendation is to split the site into 2 parts. Firstly the wholesale part, secondly a user site, showing where the goods can be purchased, this will help users to see where they can actually buy the artists products and will install confidence in the wholesalers as they can see that you are actively advertising the products as well.
After all, you can have the best products in the world, but in no-one can find out where to buy them, what's the point in selling them.

Good luck, hope this helps, happy xmas