Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

My apologies, I didn't notice the link to your website! (It's getting on for midnight, and I'm bushed).

Points of issue:

(1) The photos are excellent and show your products to perfection -

- - - however - - -

as a visitor, I don't get the chance to see ALL of them. By all means have the gallery, but please put largish thumbnails AND A BRIEF DESCRIPTION. Provide a link to each individual page (sorry I didn't check, I am seriously dopey right now) that has a good description and option to buy or sign up for emails etc. When purchasing they can be given the opportunity to sign in too.

Keep the gallery at the top and make it smaller, or have a circle of gift ideas/topics surrounding it that are large and obvious as to what they are. Four or five would be excellent. Do leave them stationary so that people don't get befuddled.

If you really want, make up the site as described and switch them week on week as a brief split test. I think you will soon see some difference.

What do the others think? I know what I think, it's time for bed!

Perhaps I was the perfect customer ... I missed that little button that was obscured by writing.

Your front page needs to look like your second page but less cluttered.

You seem to have everything I suggested - but couln't find!

What is your current bounce rate? My guess is it is very high.

Add clickable piccies with titles and you should be sorted. I really can't see much else that is wrong at all. Sorry I didn't spot it earlier - - - but then, clients can be as dim as Marketers at times. M xx

I agree with what others are saying. I would get rid of that opening page. It is a barrier and serves no real purpose. Start right off with the store front.

I'm guessing that your biggest problem is you are not getting enough traffic. You didn't mention what traffic you get so I may be wrong. Keep in mind that selling online requires a lot more people to see your products (via the web) than selling person to person. 50 people seeing your product at a fair may yield good sales, but on the web it is wouldn't.

From an e-commerce viewpoint, it may be that 1&1
(your site hosting company) isn't doing you that many favors.

Add to this the first page of your site: it kills appeal, it offers no indication of trust, 50 percent of the page is blank space, and as far as Google is concerned, the page's Flash animation renders the page nigh on invisible.

Although I'm all in favor of lean sales copy, 41 words of text on a home page (or first page) isn't doing you any favors either.

I also suggest you look closely at your use of Twitter and Facebook icons because all they do at the moment is link to the personal streams of the people clicking on them. What they ought to be doing is linking to YOUR Facebook and Twitter pages.

Although it's admirable that you've put this site together, from the way the site is built and worded, it's evident that this kind of design and writing may not be your strong suits.

To counter this, my best advice is to look at the e-commerce sites of other people in the crafts/handmade gifts niche and that you make a list of all the things those sites do right.

I suggest you then find a marketing-aware graphic designer and an e-commerce aware copywriter somewhere in your post code (SE1) and that you invest time, money, and effort into overhauling your site from top to bottom.

You might also benefit from adding links and ALT tags because from the detective work I've done the site seems to lack these things. Paid traffic and forum-post traffic might also help (once you've overhauled things) because the people clicking on those ads or posts will be at least 50 percent closer to wanting to buy before they arrive on your site.

The main problem is with the first page.

Beyond that it is simply tweaking.

My thoughts are that the second page is a little cluttered - the first page could be better used with three to eight pictures that lead to different parts of your site.

That would be much easier than an entire re-work and you would gain valuable info in the mean time. Once you have started to generate interest and sales is the time to focus on any re-working.

Gary's point about the issue over short copy is very good. The point is that you can deal with this at a later date - and concentrate on your best sellers first!

Hope this helps. Moriarty xx

No. When I say short copy I mean the lack of benefit-rich, message-to-market aligned messaging on your site is impacting the way people perceive your offerings. There are 41 words of copy on your initial page, none of which talks to the buyer about his or her needs. Unless you have experience writing sales copy I think you'll dow well to work with a copywriter.

No. When I say short copy I mean the lack of benefit-rich, message-to-market aligned messaging on your site is impacting the way people perceive your offerings.

There are 41 words of copy on your initial page, none of which talks to the buyer about his or her needs. Unless you have experience writing sales copy I think you'll dow well to work with a copywriter.