Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Hi, Brookbend.

You offered a lot of points, so I'm assuming you're serious about wanting comments. If so, here's a long response -- a punch-list with perhaps more items than you are expecting.


Overall: Pleasing color choices and quality photography.

Content: Needs polish.

1. Home page:
(a) Banner area. This statement is convoluted and wrenches the mood it’s trying to establish; plus it focuses on you rather than the customer: “Our love and focus on organizing the home brings you the best of luxury and innovation.”
Better: "Add innovative luxury to your home and office organization."
(b) Tag line: “Stuff you won’t have to hide.”
“Stuff” downgrades your product; one doesn’t call artistic style and good craftsmanship “stuff.” Also, your product claim is based on a negative, which is like giving yourself a slap.
Better: “Artisan style for your office.” or “Organizational furnishings to display with pride.”
(c) Menu area:
-- Graphics above words are not clickable, which will be a minor frustration for users. Also, one has to ask why there are so many of them if none does anything. Better: Make these images link to the same page as the word to which they belong. Not hard for your web designer to do.
-- Login and Sign Up both go to the same place. Why have two menu items for one option? This is potentially confusing for your visitors -- and confusion is the mortal enemy of sign-ups.
(d) Email sign up is jumbled and offers no benefit to the visitor. Better:
Free Newsletter!
Be the first to learn about new products.
[box wording] Type your email here.
Also, move the left margin inward to align with the left margin of the menu items above.


4. Cabinet page:
(a) You should list the dimensions of your products. No one is going to pay these prices if they don’t know whether the object will fit. You might also consider listing the weight. Offer a "calculate shipping" option or add a page about shipping so customers can get the whole cost.
(b) Consider listing or describing the materials. If you’re using real woods or veneers, if you have used special joinery, if the boxes have a protective coating or special stain, you should mention these things to support your price. Also, if any portion of these are hand-crafted, or if they are made in America, you should say so as these points can also support your price. (“Fine Massachusetts craftsmanship” or “Solid American walnut from sustainable forests” would be good phrases for a business such as this ... or any similar positive spin you can put on materials or production. Obviously, it would need to be true.)
(c) These points also apply to the sub-items here and in the other sections.
(d) The photo on the bath caddy page is stretched horizontally and needs to be shown at its native size/aspect ratio.

5. Desk Compliments:
(a) Images for the 5- and 16-inch card holders need work. They are not consistent with one another and the five-inch image doesn’t make it clear which of the three products pictured there is the one being sold.
(b) Rather than have a sub-menu, use one image that shows both card holders as the main image for the card holder options, and use the image of the five-inch product sitting on a cabinet, as a supporting image. This will eliminate confusion and minimize product returns.
(c) Having said that, the image of the two card holders is poor. First, the notes look bent, and the one with writing is unattractive. (Doesn’t look like something with which an organized consumer would relate.) Second, the background is surreal. (Note holders floating in space? Hovering over the ocean? Better: Put them in an office environment, consistent with your other images.)

6. Customer Service page:
(a) Contact Us is limited to placing an order; but what if a customer has a problem? If you’re willing to list a phone number, you should be willing to receive any type of customer call.
(b) Also, clarify your time zone.
Better:
Call us to place an order or for any other reason: 774-278-1066.
Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday, EST.

(Note, if you click through to “create an account,” you can’t get back to “login” by using that menu item. It leads nowhere.)

7. For the Press:
(a) This is an awkward phrase. A more common tab is “Media,” which has the advantage of being a term that journalists and bloggers search for.
(b) This tab currently leads to a 404 error page. You’ll want either to complete the media page or eliminate the menu item until this is fixed.

8. About Us page:
(a) Remove the logo from behind the text. It just makes it too hard for people to read -- gets in the way of communication and sales. Do the same on all other pages where the logo is behind the text.
(b) You really need some professional copywriting here. This is where you need to make your case, but it sounds like filler. Here’s a better direction to inspire you:

“Frank Lloyd Wright’s straightforward approach to design inspired the Prairie style of our deluxe organizational tools: clean lines combined with graceful curves; restrained yet artistic styling; modern sizing for today’s needs. Our vision is this: Those who love to organize should have beautiful tools that make a statement and bring pleasure to every organizing task.

Our heritage as [American craftsmen, New Englander woodworkers, whatever] allows us to bring you [positive benefits] every time you use one of our … etc.”

(c) “The Management at Timber Territory” sounds disingenuous and cold. This website doesn’t look like it belongs to a big company, but rather a small business. Better to say, “Tim, Sam and the whole team.” If you have a team, get them together for a friendly group picture.

9. Designer Bio page:
(a) Not necessary to say this is Tim’s first wood project. The design quality is strong; no reason to undercut it by drawing attention to a potential negative. “With his first foray into wood,” would be better as: “Although the material in this case is wood,”
(b) The bio mentions the Royal College in London, but it could be stronger. Better:
“In his younger years, Tim trained at MIT and then took his masters at the Royal College of Art in London. Today, he is a world-class product designer with a global clientele. “
(c) Rather than center Tim’s website prominently at the bottom of the page, it will help keep people in your store if you simply hyperlink his name within the copy.

10. FAQ page:
(a) A good FAQ page is actually a sales page in disguise. Yes, you want to answer questions to hold down phone volume, but organize this page in a way that helps lead customers through the sale. Remember not to reveal all the answers for a big sale, because you want that person to call you – remember, human conversation is your best opportunity to close a volume sale.

Examples of better questions and sequence (even though some of this information can also be found elsewhere on the site):
1) How much is shipping? Can I order expedited shipping?
2) I’m ordering this as a gift. Can a gift card be included?
3) Can I order in large quantities?
4) Who can I talk to if I have questions before I order?
5) What forms of payment do you accept?
6) Will your company accept purchase orders from large institutions or major corporations?
7) Once the product is delivered, do I need to do anything special to preserve the wood finish? (Answer is simply, “No.”)
8) Do you offer any customization?
9) What happens if my order is damaged in shipping?
10) Do you have a product guarantee?
11) Do you offer customization? (Answer: Yes, for volume orders. Please call us for details at 774-278-1066, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday, EST)


11. Search engines / search engine optimization (SEO):
The site doesn't contain key items necessary for internet surfers to find it using Google or other search engines:
(a) Meta descriptions and keywords need to be established -- different for each page -- and each page on the site needs SEO-sensitive page titling.
(b) Image names are convoluted and meaningless -- i.e., not helpful for SEO -- therefore the site really must establish “alternate” titles that contain carefully chosen keywords.
(c) The sub-pages don’t have what search engines look for in the copy: Headlines with head tags -- <h1>, <h2>, etc – copy with keywords in bold, captions for photos, etc. that would contain the principal words by which you want web surfers to find you (terms such as "organizer, desk accessory, desk organizer, desk set, recipe box, home office, executive desk," etc.) In this regard, the word “cabinet” may be misleading to search engines, so you might want to re-think that term.
(d) Search results improve when sites add a Privacy Policy page (Google views this as one indicator of a serious business) and site map.
(e) Every page instructs search engine robots to “index, follow,” (list this page in search engine results) so you’re not helping Google and other search engines know which pages have priority. "Index" is a term you want only for the pages that internet surfers need to find – i.e., pages with your products – but when every page is indexed, Google sees the Contact Us page, Designer Bio page, and even the 404-error page, as equal to your product sales pages.
(f) You can give a boost to your ratings if you add a page called “pricing” and list each of your products with prices there. To each item on the list, add a hyperlink back to the product sales page. (So, “5-inch card holder” on the list, is hotlinked to the card holder sales page.) This internal network of links suggests to Google which pages are most important on your site, and helps those pages get better ranking.

Finally, if you’ve read this far, you might be willing to accept a comment about the logo, which has some challenges. The greatest of these is the unappealing gray blob beneath the company name. This does nothing for your logo or your company. Get rid of it by giving the tagline a light type color. Also, the drop shadow and beveling of the large letters in the logo actually reduces the crispness of the company name when viewed by visitors.

With the product design being so focused, clean and sharp, the company logo should follow suit. You might rethink the graphic filler inside the lettering and go with either a light walnut look (related to the product), or even just a clean color that offers no distraction from the company name itself.

The products are beautiful and deserve the best website you can give them, so I hope you'll find this helpful. Thank you for coming to the MarketingProfs forum.