Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

I like it... very effective.
Here is a potential for improvement...

When I clicked on handbags, I see only the brouse by designer / color/ etc. If I were in a major hurry I would have never seen the selection of bags with pictures.
I would consider switching the two. Visuals always win over words ... In my book at least.

Frank Hurtte

Paul,

Your site has a nice clean look about it. Style wise I think it is great.

You may want a few more words on your home page. Search engines like to see words. Perhaps a couple of sentences about what cutestyle is. This will help you with search engine ranking.

Your menu links all have an "alt tag" of "css menus" if your park the cursor on them" you may want to change this to Home, Browse Handbags, Browse Accessories, etc.

On your handbag or accessories page I would contemplate having a larger image with models with a product in addition to the thumbnails. As it stands there are just the two images with people in them. I think pictures of people help sell products (just my opinion).

As you get sales you may want spot for testimonials or reviews. These always help people feel more secure in ordering online.

Perhaps instead of "view details" you had the manufacturers name with the thumbnails, i.e. Claudia Canova. Once again this may help some with search engines. When a user clicks on a brand name you my want to indicate the brand they are in the page title, i.e. Handbags - White Flirt or Handbags - Black if they select to look by color. This will just help people remember what they were doing.

Overall I think you have a great site. Keep up the good work. Hope this helps,
Mike

You should run a free website marketing report at WebsiteGrader.com. It will give you a bunch of tips, including:

1) You are missing a permanent redirect

2) You seem to be optimizing on very general keywords, and for a brand new website, you don't have much of a shot at ranking for "handbags", so you might pick something more within your reach, like "cute UK handbags".

Guys, guys, guys (and you are guys) :-)

You haven't told me why I would want to buy a bag!

Instead, the text you have is a little wacky. An "underarm" handbag??? (Stock code: SKU-1912) . It IS a a cute bag, but it sounds smelly.

What will the bag do for me? Will it make me look good? Keep me organized?

Paint a picture with words.

How about this instead:

"Hand-rubbed red leather bag stays soft and beautiful for years. Extra pockets keep your wallet, cell phone, and keys within easy reach..." etc.

Get a professional copy editor to look it over (to fix capitalization and typos). Example: on the "About Us" page, some of the headings are initial caps and some aren't. In the "no quibbles" section (and there are, it seems, quibbles, original packaging, tags, etc.), it says in "it's" original package, rather than "its".

I agree with Mikee about the pictures of people and the alt tags.

Oh, and (sorry, but you hit my pet peeve)... something for everyone? If you sell to everybody, you sell to nobody. Who is your customer? What is she like? Or, are you aiming at men buying gifts? Hard to tell.

Otherwise, I like the overall look and feel. It's clean, well-organized, and easy to use.

I think the site is okay, but it really doesn't look original, or different than any one of thousands of different templates sites. Although your prices aren't cheap, the design and layout gives me that impression.

It's very utilitarian, as in: "here's what we have, buy it." I would add some personality to the site. Who is Cute Style, why are they different, and most important: why do I want to buy from you?

The home page has too little content. "Look good, feel good" isn't enough copy for the search engines to index your site, and worse, I don't know what that's supposed to mean to me.

You need to take some of the info you have on your About Us page and move it to the home page. On your About Us page, give more information about who is behind Cute Styles .

"We have something for everyone" means that there is nothing special about what you sell. If your site is for everyone, you might as well be Walmart. You need to create a niche, and more targeted tag line.

The product descriptions also are more fitting to a budget site. "Red patent leather scoop bag. Medium size, soft red crinkle patent leather handbag with pocket detail." Ho-hum. No personality there.

Once you define your identity and the personality of your business, you can transform this site into a boutique where women will want to shop. Until then, it's just "another bag and accessory" store.

Add examples of your products to your home page (perhaps the handbag/accessory of the week).

The something for everyone graphic is cute, but doesn't add anything to the home page. Consider moving it to the banner (behind your logo & tagline).

Your tagline could be stronger. For example: "Look good, feel great" or "Look cute, feel awesome"

Nice site overall. Clean and simple, but maybe too simple. Your homepage is almost too plain. Why am I at your site, what is its purpose, do I go there to buy bags, and most importantly, why would I buy bags from you and not a competitor?

Convince and reassure me that I am at the right place. As Babbsela said, it's all about "here's my stuff, buy it." But you haven't answered the question "Why buy from you?" Other commenter have already eluded to adding some personality to the site as well.

You might also want to add more HTML text (possibly links as well) to your product thumbnails. This will help search engines spider your site better, as most won't follow an image link. A robot friendly site map is another great idea to the them.

Best of luck.

My impression is a really STUNNING website. The images communicate far more than words. The message is:
"we have something for everyone".

The image on left with handbag communicates that it is stylish (stylish model).

This proves my belief that IMAGES - especially the human face communicates to a deeper level to a human. More than words and faster.

All I can say is WOW and good luck. BRAVO!
~ Nancy Mehegan

In general I like the structure of the site, I especially appreciate the very upfront price updates with shipping options. Too many online retailers try to bury this critical choice driver behind registration and checkout pages.

some advice... SELL to your customers. Tell them why they want to buy your products... what will benefit them. Some well thought out, concise copy will work wonders for you.

Best of luck!

I think a lot of good comments have already been made, so pay attention to these.

I'll add on a few.

The bottom image of all the people feels like I should be able to interact with it. A killer improvement would be something similar to how the Apple dock behaves where you roll over the people and the one you're on enlarges until you roll to the next. When you click on one, I'd just pull up a random bag or perhaps some specials. Make it sort of a mystery link. You can buy a flash app that already has this functionality and populate an xml file for it to read and be done without having to know Flash (figure less than $100 for the code).

Also, "look good, feel good" at the top should be stylized more and part of the Cute Style image. It looks like an afterthought in the default text of the site.

I'm sorry, I don't like your site. Nothing about it compels me to want to purchase from you.

Get rid of the VIEW DETAILS link below each product thumbnail, as someone has already suggested. Replace that with a linked product name.

When I click that thumbnail, take me to a page that already shows me a larger image of the product. Fill the screen with it. Don't make me click yet another link to a larger image. If you have other image links, make them show other perspectives of the product, like the interior of a handbag.

Definitely hire a copywriter. Your product descriptions have very little appeal.

Have you looked at other retail sites that have succeeded? Look at how Overstock.com and ColdwaterCreek.com present their inventory effectively. I realize you're doing this on a shoestring, but perhaps you can emulate some of their tactics.

Good luck!