Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

What has your installed Google Analytics told you? How many visitors are you getting? How many of them click through to various pages? Buy? Abandon their shopping cart?

For your home page, less welcome text and more pictures of representative / best-sellers of each of your product categories.

Also, are you selling products that you manufacture or others'? If their your own, tell how much better they are (even better - get testimonials). If they're manufactured by others - what makes your pricing/service better than the competition?

Put the most popular items on the main page. They should see what you have to offer without clicking. You don't need the welcome paragraph there. Put a welcome tab on the menu and make it a new page if you must.

See how that works to get more traction. Then you can move on to changing colors if you want. I don't think the site is bland. It should be very simple and easy to use. The focus shoul be on the product not the fluffy statements.

Is the problem that you don't have enough site visitors, or that site visitors are not converting?

If it's the former, then website design is irrelevant. You need to deal with your advertising/marketing approach.

If it's the latter, then I agree with others that the site is probably too "soft." The issue here may be solved with great landing pages.

How are people finding you? What are the sources of your traffic? Instead of just sending everyone to your homepage, you would probably be better off sending them to landing pages that (a) segment them, and (b) deliver whatever you promised in the ad/link that got them there in the first place.

Let me suggest you watch the free MarketingProfs online seminar on landing pages at: https://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/online-seminars/226

So a few observations:
1. mgoodman is spot on (again) and beat me to the punch on the whole landing pages thing.

If you''re getting good traffic but bad conversion:
2. Your home page doesn''t really suggest a commerce site. You may want to think about being able to rotate particular products, highlighting their appeal (something the celebrities like? common problem of pregnancy solved by your product?).
3. You could use validation on your site: are you listed by the BBB? Verisign? eBay rating? People who may want to shop there may not know if you''re a trusted vendor and that could limit

If you''re not getting enough traffic:
4. think about better landing pages that focus on a particular style or topic related to your product.
5. focus on an SEO friendly design -- use more of your keywords in your product description pages.

There isn't a single item on your home page that telegraphs a primary benefit to your audience.

You waste valuable real estate with tabs that bore people to death with terms and conditions. Then, you ask people to register, but register for what?

If you want someone's e-mail address give them something worth handing over en e-mail address for.

You tell viewers "If you're a working mother, you should reward yourself with work clothes that are suitable for work and yet forgiving to your growing belly.

Having gone through two pregnancies, I understand the frustrations of a pregnant (working) mother-to-be. I have put together a collection of maternity wear that will meet all your needs." but you fail to show WHAT you're offering. If you were to walk into a book store and there were no books on the shelves but lots of little cards telling you what great stuff the store owners had in their stock room, would you stay in order to find out more? Or would you walk out?

Offer some tangible benefits, ditch your terms and conditions, or at least, stash them in a site map, and then show me your goods on your home page.

Good luck to you.

Hi Edith,

I just had a very quick look at your site and compared it to another that came up in a Google Search.

Your website makes the potential buyer search for your maternity wear, rather than being on display and easy to access on the front page. The less work for the consumer, the better!
I'd recommend that you have photos of some of your products, preferably taken by a professional photographer on the main landing page. You don't need a whole heap of photos, maybe just a photo for each section, ie tops, dresses, pants, bras, sleepwear. Failing this, you could use a rotating banner with photos of your products appearing every 10 seconds.

You could replace the tabs up the top of the page with each of these sections also, as you have done with the menu on the left side. Move the existing tabs elsewhere on the page, perhaps along the bottom, but retain the 'Register' tab at the top of the page.

You might want to feature your 'latest products'. You could also have a 'how to order' section, with screen shots of how to place an order, or something more interactive. Do you have information on shipping and delivery times? Customer comments/testimonials are also useful.

As I mentioned above, I have only had a 2 minute glance at your website and not looked at it in detail, but I hope this could be of some help to you.

Cheers!