Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

I went to your site and tried to click on: the big image on the home page; what looks like a button above the "welcome to doodles" text and nothing happened. Then, I spotted the little nav buttons on the top. Aha!

So, first thing, make that image clickable. Or better yet, make each part of it clickable (toys for boys, toys for girls, etc.)

Highlight particular products right on the front page as "brand new" or "Best selling" or something. Make it easy for me to start interacting with the site and get to what I want (toys, clothes, diaper bags, etc.). Make the pictures bigger (or offer a zoom in option) so I can get a better look at the merchandise.

Once I do get to the toy store, I see toys, but also diaper bags, bedding, and other things that aren't toys. Where are the toys?

The category headings on that page are hard to read. Make them deeper or brighter colors. Even black, so I can see them better.

The white type against the pastel background on the nav bar is also hard to read. Same advice applies.

Your descriptions are too general. Highlight one or two great items. Tell me why I must have it. Then, offer me the option to "see more like this."

If there are different colors, put the choices in a drop-down box. Don't make me find the link (which is hard to see because it's gray), click on it, and then see what colors the party hat comes in.

It's too hard... there should be as little friction as possible.

Also, where are your shipping/return policies? What happens if I buy something and it doesn't arrive, or it's damaged, or I hate the color?

Hope this helps.


Jodi

Check out Froogle.com (Google Shopping). It's free to list your products, and I've had good results with it. All you have to do is meet their technical specs for submissions, and you're in.

Improve navigation to make shopping all over the store easier. On the toy store page, a navigation bar appears beneath the logo. This navigation bar lists all the categories and allows me to move between departments with one click. I think you should put that same navigation bar on each page.

Some of the products could use better photography. Products should be isolated from other similar products, clearly distinguishable from their backgrounds, and pictured in-full.

Several of the products could benefit from enhanced descriptions. I'm looking at a $50 vinyl headed doll, and I can't figure out why it's worth so much more than dolls available at a discount store. I need to be told. Other descriptions need more active verbs / fewer passive verbs. For instance, replace statements like "It has two bottle pockets." with statements like "The two mesh bottle pockets hold your bottles securely."

Reduce the length of your title tags to describe your products in two or three words. Search engines will hold those words to be more relevant and give you better natural search results.

Best of luck!

It doesn't appear you have analytics installed (check out Google Analytics to start with). That will tell you more about your visitors - where they came from, what they did, how long they stayed.

Get rid of your home page. As Jodi mentioned, it's confusing and people are not likely to want to figure out how to navigate to your products page.

Add contact information prominently (footer and/or header). Let me know I'm dealing with a trustworthy company.

Do you have any testimonials about their company and/or products? If so, share 'em.

Dear Hilary,

Imagine the scene: You're reading a forum and a post pops up that says "Welcome to my post on this forum! Where you'll find unique answers to unique questions."

Silence. Er? Hello? Coo-ee? Anybody home? Again, silence. Not good.

Were my posts or my bio on this forum to read as above I'd be wasting my time and the time of anyone kind enough to stop what they're doing and take the time to read my opinion.

The same rule applies to websites.

When a customer walks into your store and you welcome them and then issue a blank but polite stare you'll freak people out and they'll find themselves edging for the door.

The same is true of websites.

Your home page is "pretty" but sadly, when it comes to creating instant attention, "pretty" doesn't cut it and nor do images.

True, we are visual creatures but without CONTEXT, images do not impart masses of information, so they often fail to communicate.
To make sense of the world around us we must convert visual information into aural information—the pictures must speak—and until they do this, they remain static.

To liberate the information we need sound, which explains why watching TV without sound can be irritating. There's no sound context to anchor stories to, so the images, pretty though they may be, make little sense.

When images make little sense we tend to ignore them—or, we process them swiftly and we determine they are no no inherent value. So again, we ignore them.

It's said that a picture says a thousand words, but this rather depends on the picture and on the contextual relevance of the image. All images say something but images that "speak" and
that get people to listen are few and far between.

Your home page is the first thing people see. Your site visitors
will expect to find short chunks of descriptive text and clickable images and if you cannot deliver these things within the first five seconds, your site is dead.

As things are your home page offers neither of these things and THIS alone is killing any desire to interact with your site because there's nothing to interact with.

Your text must be compelling enough to make people click on a link to find out more. Your images must be clickable and both they and your text must—MUST—take people ... SOMEWHERE. There's got to be engagement, there's got to be a payoff, and there must be logical and compelling reasons for people to drill deeper into your site content. As things are you lack all or most of these things.

No one will buy from you until they feel they know you, like you, and can trust you. To make this happen you must offer people trails, you must offer them content and value and you do this with video, with testimonials, and with compelling calls to action.

When it comes to creating a call to action your home page text "Welcome to Doodles! Where you'll find unique clothes and toys for unique girls and boys." isn't enough. There are no keywords or key phrases and nothing to engage people.

Pick any children's toy or clothing site and, Flash introductions aside, pretty much all of them will telegraph instant calls to action.
Here's a great example: www.etoys.com and here's another one: www.toys.com.

Their offers stop you dead in your tracks and your site must do the same. I'm NOT telling you to copy these sites but I am suggesting that you compare your site to these (and others) and that you ask yourself pointed and possibly painful questions:

What do these sites do that we do not do?
How are their pages linked?
What's their page structure?
How do their images work?
How is their text structured?
How are their calls to action set up?
How many steps are there in the process from product page to shopping cart and check out?
How do they follow up with shoppers?

And so on. These questions will help you restructure your site
to make it more user friendly. The easier the pathways are to navigate the easier you will make the buying process. And the more you follow up with buyers AFTER their purchase, the deeper your relationships will become and the more people will come back.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA