Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Pauline,

The first question I would ask is who is your main target audience? Who buys gifts or gift baskets online? Right now you are trying to reach too many people. You need more focus.

When I first landed on the site I saw your logo which is very professional looking. You know what the definition of obsession is? Obsession- something that preoccupies a person to the exclusion of other things: I would play off that theme with your site.

What's your obsession? Your family, Your Kids, Movies? Wine? Chocolate? Healthy Eating? etc. We at The Obsession Box are here to help. We have great gifts for all occasions and all obsessions....

Overall the site does nothing for me and I would say that is the reason that people leave before buying anything. It's an ecommerce site with gifts, there are thousands of gift websites. What separates The Obsession Box from everyone else?

You start off with a photo of two cups, Mr and Mrs cups. Where is the excitement in that. When I clicked on the photo thinking it would take me to unique wedding gifts it took me to Father's Day Gifts. As a first time visitor I would be gone.

So I went to your navigation menu next. You have some issues. The fly out navigation is crowded and hard to read. I know you have one product per page currently but I would recommend landing pages instead of the current fly out navigation. What I mean by this is have one page for specific gifts like you have https://www.theobsessionboxco.com/fadaygiforhi.html and let people choose from that page not from the crowded navigation.

The home page is valuable property, I would feature some really unique gifts that would be of interest to your target market. You mention that you support specific causes, do you donate a portion of every sale? Mention this on the home page.

I would change the name of the button Featured Product to Featured Obsession. Then promote Movie Obsessions. The summer is blockbuster movie time and I'm not talking the video store. Play off that people watch a lot of movies during the summer. It's a summer obsession.

You want people coming back so put your email announcement sign up form on your home page. Make the offer exciting. Why would I want to receive your email every month?

I know you want to offer gifts for every occasion but the site currently is overwhelming. I would offer less products and more uniqueness.

I hope my suggestions along with others will help you turn your site into a true revenue stream for you.

Brian Bearden
Houston, TX

Dear Obsessionboxco,

First of all, well done on asking for help. It's a tough thing to do and it takes courage, so hearty congratulations on taking that first step.

OK. Here are a few thoughts that may help.

1. The black and red colour scheme is a little off putting. You know your competitors better than anyone. Look at their sites for ideas on themes, images, and placement of images and copy. The following list ought to offer enough examples to keep you busy for while. As yourself "What do these sites do or offer that I'm not doing, that I'm not offering?":

https://www.gifts.com/

https://www.findgift.com

https://www.abernook.com

https://www.theydeserveit.com

https://www.personalcreations.co...

https://www.giftregistrylocator....

https://www.giftsforyounow.com

https://www.redenvelope.com

https://www.seniorstore.com

https://www.personalizationmall....

https://www.abbeypress.com

https://www.thingsremembered.com

https://www.weddingchannel.com

https://www.happy-anniversary.co...

https://www.xperiencedays.com

https://www.tybinc.com

2. There's WAY too much text on your home page, and what text you do have is mostly focused on you, not on the needs of your site users, who, incidentally number some 3,000 people per month, mostly female, ages 35 - 49, and a few other things besides. How do i know this? I ran your site name through Quantcast, and you can see rough estimates on your site's monthly traffic here: https://www.quantcast.com/theobsessionboxco.com

I also use a little copy calculator that tells me how copy ranks in terms of its weighting. And you can use the same tool because it's available here: https://www.futurenowinc.com/wewetext.htm

Isn't this fun?

When you paste the copy from your home page into the main box of the calculator you see that your customer focus rate is 33.33% (14 customer-focused words), while your self focus rate is 66.67% (24 self-focused words, and 4 mentions of your company name. This means you're talking about yourself about twice as often as you speak about your customers. That's impacting on your effectiveness.

The first bit of copy I read was "***Proud Sponsor of the American Heart Association***Cancer Society***State Sponsored Pre School Children*** and many more charities and Non Profits***

You can place your order online - we have a secure checkout cart and accept VISA, MASTERCARD, AMER EXP, & DISCOVER, We also accept payment by PayPal (available at checkout) Orders may be faxed with card info to 408-370-9881 or Orders may be placed by phone to 866-796-4702 10 to 4 Mon-Fri PST"

The charity stuff is all very nice and noble, but it has no business being on your home page. Why? Because as far as gifts are concerned, it's irrelevant.

3. Images. Colour images of things with black and white themes equals one thing: Dull. Use images that appeal to your audience a little more and your bounce rate (which if Quantcast are right, your 60 percent number equals 1,800 visitors jumping ship every month) will fall. But of greater importance is your exit rate and the length of time visitors spend on your sit and which pages they exit from.

4. Navigation. I don't think I've seen a site with quite so many navigation tabs. You'd do well to do some drastic pruning here because as things are your page is incredibly overwhelming.

5. Shopping. So, let's suppose I make it onto a few of your item pages. What I find is a lack of visual consistency. On every page your navigation buttons need to be in the same place. At the moment your "Add to Cart" button drifts from here to there and I had to go looking for it by scrolling up and down and scanning around the page, which is not good. You MUST make the buying process as automatic as possible. This means having all your buying buttons in one place on every buying page.

Let's take a page at random. https://www.theobsessionboxco.com/habimoma.html In the top right hand corner you've got a tab that says "Related items". Remove this and replace it with a standard set of order buttons (you don't need the cart icon on your add to cart button, most people know what a cart looks like). BENEATH the buttons, add a tab that says something like "You might also like ..." or "People who bought this item also bought ...". And consider adding discounts: "Buy this item, get this for X percent off!".

6. Your images lack alt tags. When I hover my mouse over an image I get nothing. In the source files of your HTML set up, each image file needs to have a title and an alternative tagged title. So rather than naming an image JPG 1234, name it "Christmas holiday basket (alt tag): A Christmas hamper of sweets, treats, and games". Search engine spiders LOVE these kinds of things because it give them points of reference that are keyword related.

7. On your home page you have no way of harvesting e-mail addresses and names. You need an offer to tempt people with, and you need to make better use of testimonials because they offer social proof. As with your order buttons, testimonials need to be placed consistently, and they, and your sign up for an offer box need to be on every page.

All right. I'm done for now. The opinions here are offered with the best of intent and I hope they help in some way.Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA