Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Dear willmetge,

I've looked at both sites and I think the issue is that your Yahoo store spells out compelling benefits. Your customer site does not.

Here, on the first page I see, first impressions are vital.

So, suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend I am your customer.
I arrive on your Yahoo site and I see neat rows of images BUT, you
give me tasty copy that, although it's short, it gets right into the meat with gems along the lines of:

Heuchera 'Miracle'
Incredible color-shifting heuchera provides an amazing show throughout the growing season.
Regular price: $10.50
Sale price: $6.70

Short? Yes. But effective.

Here you tell me what the plant is, you then do what SO MANY business owners do NOT do, you paint a picture I can see and latch onto.

This is huge.

You then show me your regular price, you then show me your sale price ... and, with the delight factor of the vision of the plant growing in my garden, you reverse my inclination to ask how much by chopping down the price (which is a huge sales decision tool) and then, drum roll please, you make me WANT IT.

IN effect, you make me sell the plant to myself. This is direct response marketing at its best. Brilliant.

You've essentially said what I've been saying for MONTHS, and it's something I learned from John Carlton: tell people what you have, tell them what it will do for them, then tell them what you want them to do next.

That's it. It's so incredibly simple but it works like gangbusters.

On your other site you give me:

Light: Full Sun
Water Average
Zone: 4-9

That's it.

No glowing description. No usual price, no SALE price, no desire—AND, on top of all that, you make me click an extra button to find out more when I'm already bored to tears with what you've already told me (which is nothing), so you've given me no incentive to find out more, which means my desire to voyage farther along the sales path was withered on the vine.

If I'm your prospective customer, those three little lines of type:

Light: Full Sun
Water Average
Zone: 4-9

tell me NOTHING! Which means they give me NOTHING. Which in turn means they inspire me to do ... NOTHING, and it's for this reason that your Yahoo site is kicking the ass of your custom site.

Your custom site also has a big, fat ribbony thing across the middle of what is essentially, your store window. In that window there is also, nothing: no incentive, no offer, nothing to make me what to do anything apart from leave.

The monkey on your back of design? It's wearing you down. I know this because for weeks (well, actually for MONTHS) I've been farting around with my own site, thinking, wrongly, that it has to be just "so", when in reality, it has to be no such thing, it just has to be good enough.

Not perfect!

Just good enough, and in this there is a lesson for you and for me.
Your custom site? If it's not pulling its weight, take it off line and stop worrying about it. You and I are both victims of analysis paralysis: we think things over and muck about and tweak and tune and just get buried in angst when in reality, we are the ONLY people who care about such things.

Your site (and mine) neither has to be perfect, they just have to work, which is what I'll be doing this weekend as I scrap my current design and start again.

I hope this helps you.

And—thank you!—because you've really helped me to see the wood
for the trees.

Good luck, and I wish you every success with your Yahoo site.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

Dear willmetge,

My dear old dad died just over five years ago.

I miss him dearly and although this has nothing to do with your question he was a keen gardener. As such, he had an interesting philosophy on plants and specifically on planting seeds and on raising seedlings.

As he tamped seeds into place and watered them before setting them
on the bench in his greenhouse he'd say: "They've got two chances:
they either grow or they don't!"

The same applies to businesses.

They either thrive or they don't.

There is no middle ground.

You Adwords directs aside there are still major differences between
your shopper's perceptions of the buying processes on your two sites.

My browser window is pretty big but the Google (custom) window puts what's in the cart (once I click on an item to buy it) BELOW the fold, so it's pretty much invisible. For a second or so I know nothing about what's happened to my stuff, UNTIL scrolling down the page.

A minor thing? Yes. But it's PERCEIVED as far from small.

It's a barrier between your process as the merchant, and my gratification as the buyer. And in any sales process—really, in
any sales PATHWAY,—barriers are bad.

Think of driving a sports car along an open road with no twists and turns. Tempted to put your boot down? Why the hell not, eh? And so, whoosh! You're off and you arrive at your destination all the swifter.

Now, same car, same driver (you), but a different road. THIS road has twists and turns, switchbacks, toll booths, and—what the hell's this? Gates? What the ...? Oh, and there are flocks of sheep and little kids cross the street and strollers and stray dogs. Better slow down.

All of which makes the journey and your progress sooooooo mmmmuuuuuuccchhhhhh ssssllloooooowwwwwwweeeeerrrrr.

Barriers, see? Barriers is bad.

With the Google checkout I have to scroll down (an extra step that causes just a wee bit extra stuff for me as your customer to have to deal with or process).

The Yahoo cart puts stuff STRAIGHT into PayPal and everything's right there where I can see it.

Yahoo+Paypal = good! Google+scrolling = bad. Simple really.

So, the Yahoo site is a pain to update?

Hmm. Well here, you have a choice:

Go with custom and see lower sales for what may well be the reasons I've already outlined.

Or stick with Yahoo, see HIGHER sales, and deal with the issue of updates.

Longer term, I predict the following:

Sticking with custom, although nicer for you, will cost you more in lost sales, fewer REPEAT sales, and reduced rates of customer loyalty by people getting frustrated with your process. Your customers might be SATISFIED, but they're less likely to be LOYAL. Trust me on this: long term, you want to build a list of LOYAL customers because by looking after them, they'll look after you. With seasonal products like garden plants your life time value of the customer has WAY more profit potential than short term, one or two off sales. PLUS, with loyal customers you have the extra option of offering additional products as up sells AT CHECK OUT (when they're most keyed in to spend money!).

What kind of products? "How to" e-books; audio interviews YOU'VE done with top growers and leading gardeners; video "master classes" that you make ONCE and can sell over and over again; flower arranging books and guides, short reports for less than $5, and so on (I can give you all kinds of resources to source material like this, contact me off forum). Now, will everyone buy something extra in an up sell presentation? No, but 25 to 30 percent of them WILL ... and, you can still market these things later as special offers, so there's still the possibility of longer term revenue generation.

Yahoo, although a pain in the ass for YOU, may still be the better option and it could also be the better option when you outsource all the tedious updating to a lower paid staffer, or to someone via www.elance.com.

The bigger questions here are how important is your longer term growth? Is it WORTH the lower sales from the custom option? Or is it better LONGER TERM, to go with the higher profit option?

And how much of the updating and back end stuff could you outsource and pay for with the extra revenue you're creating through Yahoo and STILL have net revenue left over, net you can then plough back into the business in advertising, product development, inventory expansion, and so on? Might this then free you to focus on business growth, product selection and creation, interview creation, and so on?

Dunno. It's your choice. I'm just laying out possible options that may or may not work. The bigger questions still are these: what's it worth in the longer term for your business growth to not push out? And what's it worth longer term to go for something that pleases your customers more?

Remember, your customers do not need you. They can shop for plants at lots of other places. BUT YOU NEED YOUR CUSTOMERS.

To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, When you make life easier for other people, when you give them the chance to get what THEY want, they'll give you the chance to get you YOU want.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA
Follow me on www.twitter.com @GaryBloomer

Hi, willmetge

WOW, you really made me smile. Usually websites that are asking for critique in this section are so bad, I don't even know where to start critiquing. In the case of both of your websites they are so good, I actually want to thank you for showing them - they are that good.

But, of course, perfection is something we all want to achieve. And I too have couple suggestions.

Yahoo site.

- I am not sure how much control do you have over the layout, but it's not bad as is. What I would change is move "View Cart" link from the main menu to either under the search above the main menu or put it next to the search on the right, so it's very well visible. And I would also change its appearance with color or boldness and add a "cart" icon. Make it more intuitive. Also, it moves to the next line anyway, so you completely lose this link and create an ugly second line.

- I like the bottom menu, but get rid of all caps and boldness. Instead of using gray background I would also keep it gray on white, and just would separate it from the content with the same gray bar you have on top. These measures are important because now your bottom menu looks more important than the top - Product - menu and overpowers is, you don't wanna overpower your Product menu with anything.

- Another thing that will directly bring you more orders: on the product class catalog page (as in, for instance, https://provenancegardens.com/perennials-hosta.html) add "add to cart" buttons to every product. Above the price lines add "More info" or "learn more" link, non-bolded. This is important to have because not everyone will be smart enough to click the image. You really need that "Learn more" link so people could get more information.

- From the design point of view, I would add a thin gray border to all pictures.

- On Shipping & Contact Info page I would rather add an image of your team or family if it's a family business. You wanna know who these people are, and it's not fun to look at the bushes where you wanna see faces. Besides, adding some human presentation on your page will add more to client's loyalty. I would love to see there a picture of couple of guys in farm clothes holding pots with plants. Also, add more copy so there are no white spaces next to the image. I would also increase headers size 2 or 3 pts, and maybe changed color. It will improve usability. That concerns plans names on "catalog" pages too. Make them bigger and change color to, say, orange. Orange goes perfect with gray.

- Also, since it's Shipping & Contact Info page, you should place the content accordingly, First place Shipping info, then Contact info (if I were you, I would make it Contact & Shipping Info and put contact info first), and then you can put About us copy But, again, you have space in that bottom menu, make it a separate page. Write something about your company and about 2-3 main players in it - with pictures! That will be very good for the website.

Guess what, everything else is PERFECT!


Now, your Custom site.

I like how it looks much more, indeed. But it's a bit inferior to the Yahoo one from the usability and logic point of view.

- I like it that you have all plants group names, but why don't you use initial cup? It's especially important, cause it's a Name. It's supposed to be initially capped. If you don't do that, you don't really sound that professional at all, so this really hurts your credibility. This thing you MUST change.

- I would also cap the menu items too. This is just correct English. Just do it, the website will look so much more polished this way.

- Sincerely, I am not sure if you did a right thing by placing the Product menu all on the right. I would place it across the page, that will help customer to find their way around faster. And time in this case really matters! Besides, you really overpowered the right side: top menu, product menu, cart info on each page! That's too much. Remember, usual way for most of the people to read is from left to right. if everything is on the right side, it will take longer. May be seconds, but you don't want to lose those seconds: they may be crucial for people to make a decision to leave.

- The fact that you don't have search on your custom site really hurts it. Try to find a way to add it.

- Having Cart info on every page makes it illogical to have "view cart" link in the top menu. If I were you, I would move the top menu to the left a big, make a vertical separator and instead of putting "view cart" link, would place the following info: "Cart image" Cart: 0 items | $0 or if there is something in the cart "Cart image" Cart: 3 items | $25.15 and link the cart image and the word "cart" to the cart page. This will save you valuable space for placing more products to the visible (without scrolling) area on the page, and dramatically improve usability.

- Your cart page also needs some TLC. If the cart is empty, there should only be "Your cart is empty" message in the middle of the page If the cart is not empty, there should be a table (with borders or cells should be separated from each other by using background color) with product name, price, shipping value, may be weight - ACROSS the page, not in a small corner of the page.

- Just a hint for "Your cart is empty" page. The best practices: add 3-4 thumbnails of the most popular plants or Hot Deals - those products that are on sale, add "add to cart" buttons. This may add sales, I assure you.

- This is a big, big mistake that you use a link "add to cart" instead of a button. You HAVE TO replace text link with button - and make it red or orange. I would suggest orange, again, it goes very well with gray. You loose A LOT by not having buttons for add to cart link. Call to action should be as visible as possible. I would also highly recommend increasing the sale price font size 1 or 2 pts on catalog page! And, perhaps, making it bold.

- My suggestions on the About page from the Yahoo critique portion of my comment applies to the custom site as well.

- I would join Shipping and Return Policy in one section (you don't wanna emphasize on Returning, make it less visible, don't give it the whole page of your site)

- Privacy policy it's always a very good-to-have section, bring it back.

So, this is, pretty much, it. It was a pleasure reviewing your site. Kudos to the designer, they did a great job.

Whatever happens -
good luck!

Natasha Chernyavskaya
Artographica
Los Angeles, CA