Would anyone mind

[candlemakermaggie]

taking a look through my website and tellingme about any cahnges/improvements i could make? im having lots of people looking but only a few are buying,people areloving theproducts once they have bought, i just need a little help with the "convincing" to buy

www.Maggies-candles.co.uk

[DuaneJackson]

The whole layout could do with being tidied up a bit. The centered bold text on the home page isn't very attractive.

Do your prices compare well to your competitors?

(ps made your link clickable incase anyone else wants to look)

[candlemakermaggie]

You mean the blue bit? i was trying to make the special offers obvious lol

the prices are the cheapest about, ive made sure of that :smile:

[candlemakermaggie]

Thanks for the link thing, i couldnt post a url yet

[Poppy Design]

Hi

Would agree with Duane - could do with a tidy up.
The bold blue 'special offer' is quite offputting.
I think you would benefit from some better product images - if you have some really stunning product images, you can leave the design of the website quite simple and let the product shine through.
If you do not have access to a decent camera and lightbox, why not try contacting a local photographer to take some shots for you? It may be cheaper than you think and what is £100 at the end of the day, if they start to help sell you products?

best of luck
Joanne


taking a look through my website and tellingme about any cahnges/improvements i could make? im having lots of people looking but only a few are buying,people areloving theproducts once they have bought, i just need a little help with the "convincing" to buy

www.Maggies-candles.co.uk

[clairemackaness]

Hi Maggie,

You'll find it takes ages to get enough hits to make good sales. It took me over 6 months before google picked me up and plopped me on the front page. And now I've re-done my entire site I'm going to have to start all over again. As we sell the same products can I make a suggestion?.....Your too cheap. Only just but you can allow yourself to put your prices up a bit (trust me). Over all your site has lots of content, but the images are very dark and the text is very small. I'd go for alighter colour background as well as the brown looks a bit mucky.

[candlemakermaggie]

It may be because ive just had to start my site over again then, ill definately have a think about getting professional photos taken :smile:

[clairemackaness]

None of my photos as professional, just make sure its nice and bright int he room or even take them outside in the garden. Most of my soap slices where photographed in the outdoors, I just took my camera to the local farmers market with me and snapped away between customers!

[SillyJokes]

Joanne, I can really help you turn more conversions from this site.

First of all there is too much text to wade through on the home page, plus it is centred. This is extremely off putting to customers who want to land and see instantly if you can help them.

You need to think like a customer - what can you do to answer their questions right away? Don't try to be too different from other websites because your customer spends most of his or her time on them, not on yours and they won't want ot have to work out what it is you are offering.

First off you need a bold strap line to go with your logo. It should not be clever, just tell people what you do in as few words as possible.

I.E Quality hand made scented candles

All the images on the home page are the same giving the impression that you only have one image. If a candle smells of something, perhaps feature a photo of the thing it smells of, or evokes - like a fresh green apple in the background or on a dappled shaded garden table.

Your first fold - the bit you can see without having to scroll, is the most valuble part of your site and you are currently filling it a too large banner/header and a paypal button which looks a little naff.

I could see no link anywhere to tell me about your shipping.

When I do find info about it, it looks confusing and seems to imply the more I buy the more it'll cost me. This is quite off putting.

When I was trying to find out about shipping I put a candle in the basket, but the site didn't take me to the basket so I had to click checkout (finding it first of course) only to discover I have to sign in to get any where. This is an absolute killer, particularly for a shop which, in all honesty I'm not going to want to buy from many times a year, and will cause you endless abandoned baskets because, remember your competitors are just a couple of clicks away.

If someone is mooching about in your basket you don't want to do anything that will put them off completing a sale as they are the best prospects you will ever get.

You have your privacy polcy well displayed which is great, but I failed to understand the relevance of 'shop progress'. This was a wasted click to me as I'm not interested in your shop, I'm interested in buying candles and I think this would be better placed in your 'about us' section - which is a section that customers expect to see, not shop progress - it almost sounds like a call to checkout and is therefore confusing.

Your search button should be at the top. Customers shouldn't need to search for the search :biggrin:

The menu items should have alt text so the customer can get an idea of what they will see should they click it.

There's plenty more to say which would help you, but I'll leave you with that for now.

I think the main reasons you are not making more sales are

No clear p&p policy.
Registration requirement to shop.
Images not of sufficiently good quality and repetitive
too much waffle to get through before the customer can see what you do.

I wish you well with the project. It's great to know there are things you can do to improve.

[SillyJokes]

~On the subject of photos, find out what you need in terms of lights, camera and so on, than haggle with Jepsons - we got a great deal on our studio and couldn't live without it and it has paid for itself many times over.

[Poppy Design]

Hi
Not sure what you mean about the below paragraph? Perhaps you got our names mixed up? !

Joanne

Joanne, I can really help you turn more conversions from this site.

[SillyJokes]

Sorry Joanne, I only had a limited time to post today and made a mistake.

Of course, it was for Maggie, but the same advice stands for any site really,

[candlemakermaggie]

Ive been listening to some of your advice, how am i doing?

[SillyJokes]

Hi Maggie,

(Got it right this time). I think the evocative images are delicious, much nicer, but you also have to show images of what the actual products really look like too on the details pages.

You have got your strap line which is excellent and reduced the 'happy talk' and I think that it is now really clear what it is you are attempting to do for people.

It looks a lot better.

OK, now for a couple more ideas. You top menu needs trimming, it's a bit too long and I think includes some items better put elsewhere.

Affiliates - this should go at the bottom of the page - your customers are not interested and affiliates will know to look elsewhere for this sort of link.

Scent descriptions - this link could and maybe should go on every product details page

Links - could go at the bottom of the page or the left hand menu

Through out the site there is a muddle of capitalised letters, for instance in the main menu you have not capitalised 'personalised'. On the scent description the use of bold is inconsistant and there are some typos which effect the overall feeling of professionalism.

On your products you have a drop down list of all the scents, this is incredibly long and I do not think this is a really useful way for people to select the scent they require.

You have given them a full scent description page but I wonder if you might be better either drastically reducing the number of scents you offer or breaking the list down into 'moods' like Invigorating, Sensual, Relaxing, Uplifting.

If you think what people want in a scented product is it usually something to enhance a desired mood? Perhaps this could help you make this daunting drop down list into several shorter ones and make the decision much much easier for the customer. Instead of choosing a sensual scent from an alphabetical list where they are all muddled and must be picked out, they know they are looking at sensual and can pick much easier.

I also think your left hand menu is too long and you could shorten it and make it easier to browse by putting one or two things together, for instance candle holders and oil burners could become Holders and Burners, Wedding candles could go under Candles.

This is quite important as visitors will click the candles link and expect to see all the candles but in fact you have some other wedding candles too in a different place, which they may not observe, they may simply decide you don't have them and leave before reading right down the menu.

Descriptive alt text on those menu items is good for customers to make the right click and it helps search engines and those with visual disabilities who would also appreciate your products.

[Prezo]

looks good, simple to use..just keep improving your links and they will come.

[KateCB]

90% of our images are photographed either in the garden or a wel lit room with a domestic digital camera; photoshop or corel is then used to edit them, clean them up etc so no actual additional outlay and they are quite good if I say so myself - in fact, the images of the Accent branded goods which are al photographed by me are far superior to the ones supplied to us by Adidas!

Got to agree with silly jokes on the registration bit though - I won't buy from ANY site that asks for registration and I make a point on our site that you don't need to register to browse or buy..........

Kate
Htpp://www.martialdesign.co.uk

[Rachel]

Nice photos, headers a little small. Lovely products!

[GNU]

This may have been mentioned but I couldnt see your checkout button, only accessible through the cart. As users may browse adding more items to cart, you need a checkout button on the main page as well as via the cart.