Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi Stacey,

First for me, when I click on that link from your home
page, and the link is quite far DOWN the side,
the first thing that pops at me as the page loads is the second listing for $189.99. That just hit me between
the eyes with...this is TOO expensive for me!!

The Bumbo Baby Seat has this line, 'for babies from as soon as they can support their own heads'. Bad grammar.

Babies can be put in this seat as soon as they can hold their heads upright. Or something like that.

What are the benefits of ANYthing on your site? You only have 2 lines describing things.

Why would I buy a swinging baby gate from you when I could probably buy one locally?

It would be good to put a streaming video on your site showing how to use the baby food chopper.

I think most people have a blender, cuisanart or some sort of something like that to make their own baby food.

Doing a quick search online, I can find the video monitor for $174.95 and free shipping.

I would flesh out the descriptions and check pricing and put the higher priced items toward to bottom of the page.

And I would add some neato things, new babies are fun, I don't see any fun things to buy. Hooded towels, onesies with fun sayings, [lol only a parent would know a 'onesie']

And you need a 'back' button.

On the resources, I would make the text so people can see it. Pink is not easy to see.

On your links line up, put your sponsors at the btm of the line, ditto resources, toward the bottom.

You have your SALES page at the bottom of the links listing!!!!!

And this is a personal thing, but if the font is too small, or too light, meaning I can't see it. I'm gone. There are plenty of other places where I can spend my money that I can see. And while I am not a new mom, you might think about that. Moms, esp new ones, are bleary-eyed, and don't have a lot of time to sit at the computer.

Janine

The disconnect for me is that while your home page is warm and fuzzy, the rest isn't - it's pure eCommerce. You need to make it a continuation of the promise - nuturing support. It would be nice to have recommendations of your products from both you (the editors) and the users (like Amazon does). You're looking to build trust in your products. Also, if there's something that differentiates your products from things found on other sites - otherwise people will see your recommendations and search online to find a better deal. Is there some value added only you do?

In all honesty... your website is very "Front Page" looking.

1.) Design is lacking... it's not visually stimulating. Look how much nicer this site is for a product similar to one you have in your musthaves page.

https://www.rightstart.com/global/store/product~item~5343.html

2.) Your musthaves section probably shouldn't open in a new window. Studies have shown that it makes people feel like they are leaving the site and people hate that.

3.) If your site is truly an ecom site then it should be easier to find the products. How do people know that clicking MustHaves is where you have to go to shop?

4.) You might want to invest in having online registry capabilities.


I hope this helps.

Anthony

To me, I generally like the site and would probably buy from you. Now to what you really asked. I get the feeling that this is a "me" site. So much is devoted to promoting your advertisers and your needs and the busy Moms as consumers are not the center of site's attention.

I think you may also suffer from "you don't have that many products on your site, therefore you're small time and I may not / don't trust your site".

Your About Us is truthful yet less inspiring as a referrer of products "for my most precious baby".

Consider (in no particular order):
1. Build a rapport with new Moms and to an email list to send tips on selected subjects along with the "latest" must haves. Your email option (at the bottom of the survey????) mostly says "sell you stuff" instead of "we provide you help"

2. Add recommendations of your (expert) suppliers) and testimonials.

3. Add more products and tips - become an authority - not a salesperson. Add more specialty products that won't generally be available at the local store. Also do an affiliate program with Amazon or others on book recommendations.

4. Center your site on What's in it for the Mom (not what in it for Stacey)

5. Since you have a quantity of hits to your site - analyze your traffic and where people leave your site mostly (ask your webmaster for this information).

6. You have a survey (which I didn't know you had unless I went looking around), maybe work in a "Why didn't you buy?" survey on the Must Have page. Hear your feedbacl from the people who aren't buying.

7. Possibly add to your Must Haves page why they should buy from you. Safety and security of transactions, guarantee and customer service for products. Are your prices competitive? Any "match anyone's price" or discount offers, buy two offers, specials, free shipping (and shipping details and delivery time), etc. I didn't find out payment methods until I was waist deep into your checkout process.

8. Your Terms of Use and Privacy are buried in the checkout process - make them visible.

9. No clear definition of customer service seen (just a Contact Us page). No FAQs, no Customer Service / Order Problem phone number.

10. Must Haves. They're listed near the bottom of your navigation. Must not be that important.

11. Need more (and better pictures - click to enlarge) and detailed descriptions (example - wood gate - how wide / tall, locking, alarmed, no-mar rubber pad to prevent wall scratches?) (auto alarm - what / how do you see your child, how is it installed, need power, what about 2 kids, etc.) are a must for adding confidence in a purchase. In the absence of touchy-feely, words and pictures are their only hope of understanding what you're selling.

12. Tips aren't easily identifiable (need topics and titles to differentiate) and only a few tips. Surely there are more tips available.

In summary - I think you need work mostly on the Ecommerce portion - better descriptions on what you have and building transaction confidence.

Sincerely,
Bob
[URL deleted by staff]

Stacey --

as a mother of a 2-year-old, I'm not all that removed from needing these must-haves. Let me start by saying that your logo is actually really great -- from a web designer point of view, you really have some wonderful potential with that alone.

I think you could do a lot with your SEO stuff -- as explained by Kathleen above, but I would like to add a bit more to this.

The first thing I noticed, is that the e-commerce part of your site is ... not customized. You are using a paypal shopping cart, which, by itself wouldn't be all bad, but the e-commerce section already looks sort of mom-n-pop. (credibility issue)

Well, hey. Mom n Pop isn't all bad, but the next thing I did was look at your prices. I think this may be an issue. When I can find the baby seat alone for a full $10 cheaper elsewhere, why would I buy from you? What value do you give me that makes me choose you over the $10 discount on the product and the free super saver shipping? (And those seats are AMAZING, by the way.)

If you really want me to buy from you and not Amazon, Target or any number of the many places that have the products less expensive than you, give me a better reason to come to you. Make your site more special, your pitch more personalized.

Your site really is nice, it is much stronger than many sites I have seen, but I do think that you have some little things that you can fix to make it a little better -- from a design standpoint.

Design.

1. Ditch the "white" fuzz on the left sidebar use hover text color instead.

2. use the font from your logo instead of Papyrus if you can. Papyrus doesn't seem to really fit your message. I wish I could explain this better, but it looks like a commonly used font that someone thought was pretty, but it doesn't make you unique in any way. Look on sites like veer.com to find a font that matches your purpose and is unique to you. ... You can find a really great swishy font that is perfect for you -- at not a very large investment. There are some great fonts there for less than $30.

3. Use Verdana instead of Arial for your body copy.

4. Increase your leading (line-height)

Site Statistics

Use Google Analytics and Google Sitemaps. These are totally free services, and will give you so much insight about how search engines and your visitors see your site. With Google Analytics, you can see so much more than your hits. You can see where people are coming from, how long they are staying, where they are going in your site, the path that took them there, the browsers and screen resolutions they are using. ... everything you need to track what's working and what's not. They are easy to implement and very user friendly.



Well, I hope this helps. Overall, I think the kits are great, your idea is great. Your prices are too high, and your e-commerce section doesn't really fit with your site. Consider the design adjustments and I think it will make a difference for you.

Any business that helps new moms is a good business. Being the mom of little ones is definitely something that required a support system and as a mom yourself, you know this. I am not just telling you this to get my two cents in, but I really thing you've got something here. I am on the steering committee of my local MOPS group, and moms supporting moms is something meaningful to me and many other mothers, new moms or otherwise.

You are very close to making this work.

Hope this helps,

Jennifer
XPRT Creative

p.s. GREAT URL, by the way. Just a tip -- anytime you refer to your site, always type it as www.NewMomINC.com, and also, consider changing MustHaves.htm to new-mom-must-haves.htm, and use a 301 redirect to catch all the old traffic and redirect it to the new site.

When you say "hits" are you talking about visits or unique visits. Hits are meaningless. It is the number of unique visits you get and where they are coming from that makes a difference. You also did not say if these visits were to the store or your landing page. If the visit is to your landing page then how many people went to the store? You do not make it easy to see you have a store.

As someone mentioned, 800 visits a month is nothing. That can come from false search responses and the few other people that visit. Your biggest problem is to get traffic if you want to sell anything on the store. That is traffic to the store.

One more thing. Someone mentioned they thought your designed looked like Front page. When a web designer/developer says it “looks very Front Page” they mean it sucks. Your site does not suck. It is actually simple and very appropriate for your target. That same person made some good suggestions after that statement.