Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

You have one too many "S's" in the URL. That's the problem.

Good thing you checked in with us before you got too much farther into the website. WAAAAY too many words, and not nearly enough of the right images. And the gray background is dark and bland ... depressing instead of uplifting. Reverse type is hard to read.

But more important than those: Who is your target audience and what's the benefit? You need to simplify the homepage and just get the big idea across. Then, if people want the benefit, they can look further into the site.

And it has to be really simple and clear. Not too many words. (Outdoor billboards try to do it all in 3 words or less.) Otherwise people will just bail before they know what you're offering. Nobody will read all that copy.

Hope this helps.

Dear c_gabriel99,

On your home page you've got 615 words of copy, much of which is below the fold. Consider cutting this to 150 words or so and have nothing below the fold ... even if that means having a second page.

Making people scroll cuts their desire to read. In turn, this trims any selling point you might have.

On your home page you use 37 customer-focused words and 28 self-focused words. This means you speak about yourself almost as often as you speak about your customers.

If I'm buying your service I want to know about ME, not you.

You might also want to bring some of your benefits (buried on the features and benefits page) onto your main home page. And put your benefits FIRST. Again, I don't want to read about features, I want to read about what's in your service for me.

If you can't get people's attention with solid, rich, glorious benefits in under five seconds they'll walk.

You need to formulate an irresistible offer that you put up front somewhere—something that compels your readers to stick with you, something along the lines of:

"Your gift giving, simplified and delivered, guaranteed!"

OR

"Birthdays, anniversaries, and more, remembered forever. Guaranteed!"

What you're selling is a service (that's the feature). But what you're offering is peace of mind (the benefit), in that never again will any client of yours have to worry about forgetting a special occasion.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Wilmington, DE, USA

Hiya, just thought I'd drop in an opinion or two.

Firstly you need to stop.

Your site is asking consumers to;
1. Trust you with organising gifts on important days
2. To handle their money and store their card details.

This is a huge market as you know and the website that you create has to represent security to the consumer otherwise, regardless of how good the idea is no-one will use it.

Take a step back and do some research before you start again. Look at your competition because that is what you are going to have to beat to get a head start. And to be honest your site doesn't represent that, try looking at some Joomla templates that you could use to get you where you need to be.

Finally, when you look at your competition, think outside your box and ask yourself if you would trust them with your card details, because that's what your customers are going to think when they look at you.

I hope in someway this helps.

Good luck, Nev