hello

[jelly3]

Hello,
not sure I'm posting in the right thread.
Could someone just have a look at my shop & tell me if there is anything I need to change. I was putting in products at 1am this morning. I have not yet put the payment provider on but you can still put things in the basket.

I only published it 5 minutes ago

cheers

ann-marie

desmundlovescoco dot com

[falconinternetlimited]

Anne Marie,

I like it very much. Clean and simple and well laid out.

Just as an aside - I think your banner could be more interesting.

Good luck,

Rupert

[blown away]

I also like it but I think you could do with a sitemap - for easier navigation and to help with seo.

[Naughty Vend]

Meta Tags, RSS and and ICO file need work.

Get some descriptors in your META tags and keywords, if you are unsure about these right click and "view source" your competitors whose results are high up on the search engines (TIP) and adapt or borrow some inspirational ideas.

Your RSS files, search how to do an RSS on the web as there are loads of self help and tutorials.

An ICO file adds your icon to the url bar of the search engine being used by the browser, unlike this site at the moment which as a big blue E for Internet Explorer as that's the default of my browser take a look at Google for example and see how they have their G logo at the left of http in the url bar.

I am assuming you are a B2B site for two reasons, the prices are plus VAT and not displayed also that you need to logon to buy anything, if that's the case then OK but try to display the + VAT value next to the selling price anyway. However your descriptions lend themselves to retail, which are you... retail or B2B... find that identity... for retail (if that is your target) let unregistered customers purchase and then sign them up automatically for an account so you can market them later.

[jelly3]

Thank you for your comments,

NVI it is actually meant to be a Business to consumer site, I was certain I had set it up so that login was optional, I shall check that.
The prices definitely do not include VAT though. Not at the moment in any case.

Does a retail site really need an RSS feed?

[Naughty Vend]

OK dokey, if you are a consumer site then your prices should show VAT inclusive prices without exception. Imagine going into McDonalds and the prices were + tax, the UK consumer is not ready for that... also try to match the inclusive prices into your shipping charge.

Example £3.45 shipping + £6.55 tax inclusive product = just a tenner, it is a mental perception thing... even better, free shipping when you purchase two products for registered customers only. You get registrations, more sales and one shipping overhead, load your product prices a wee bit to cope...

[jelly3]

I thought it was against the law to show Vat inclusive prices if you were not Vat registered though? Or only if you are certain you will earn the £60000 qualifying amount.
That was why I have put in Vat is not charged. Because I will not be charging Vat right now.

[Naughty Vend]

Sorry my assumption, so used to dealing with larger concerns :) indeed you can't charge tax unless you are registered...

...be safe and just don't even mention it on your site.

[jelly3]

No worries NVI, I'm here to learn.

This is the first of 6 shops, 3 this year and another 3 next so I very much hope that I become one of those larger concerns.

I know that I cannot leave it like that. I have to elaborate in 'About Us' etc
and I have to register with Googlecheckout/Paynova now, will not be using PayPal under any circumstances.

[darrenwis]

Neat site, well on the way....

I too agree with the tax issue raised above, your opting for the google checkout then, this is something i need to look into for my potential business soon.

[jelly3]

darrenwis, What I said (typed) re paypal was done in a moment of anger at them, never a good reason to make a decison. I am not normally so rash.

Paypal pros, they have a potential 87? million registered users worldwide even Boots is accepting their payments now.

Paypal cons, various, despite their position they are definitely far more pro buyer than they are pro seller. Having said that I bet Boots will never get their account limited just because they attempted to buy glowsticks at 4am, then have to wait 25 days for a letter from America, just because they (ie me) happened to be ex-directory.

Random account limitations. Scare me. I could never rely soley on Paypal as a payment option.

Googlecheckout pros, recognised brand, they are not Paypal, they are free until the end of the year.

cons, not as many countries

[awebapart.com]

The site looks OK visually, but not everything that glitters is gold. In its current state you wont be getting much natural traffic from the search engines with it.

There are two reasons for this:

1. Except for the home page, there are no other pages on your site that are under your domain name, they are all under the strato domain name, so your domain will never rank highly in google for popular terms since search engines quite rightly see your domain's site as a one page site. In this sense it is more like placing your products on ebay, but rather than ebay you are using strato, and strato does not have the footfall/visitors that ebay does.

2. Even if everything was hosted under your domain, the service you are using is hosted in Germany, which is bad for search engine ranking if you are mainly targeting the UK market with a .com domain. Even in its current state with your products hosted under the strato.com domain, the strato site is hosted in Germany so your product pages wont rank well for the UK audience (google will knock off points in your ranking for default 'web' searches, and google will not list you at all for 'pages from the UK' searches).

To test this just google for desmundlovescoco, first with the default 'web' search and secondly with the 'pages from the uk' option enabled. Your site wont appear in the second search. You might think great, my site comes up no 1 on google in the first search, but that is for a specific unique non-competitive search, your site wont do so well for more competitive product searches where google will give some favour to the other sites (your competitor's sites) it sees as UK-based.

To check what country a website is hosted in, use the online tool at: www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip (http://www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip)

I have commented on the strato service a couple of times before on the startups forum:

www.startups.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=141886 (http://www.startups.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=141886)
www.startups.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=141762 (http://www.startups.co.uk/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=141762)

Unfortunately strato are a bit like 1and1, they advertise a lot, they sell 'em cheap and stack 'em high, they pretend to be UK, but their UK customers end up with a german hosting package (which is OK on the UK search engines for .co.uk domains, but is bad for UK company .com domains on the UK search engines).

If you want to continue using strato and target the UK audience and search engines then you really need to change your domain name to .co.uk (to counteract the negative affect german hosting of a com domain has on search engines in the UK), and you need to see if strato can place all of your pages under your domain (where it will improve your domain's search engine ranking) rather than their domain (where it just benefits their domain).

[jelly3]

Strato have stated that they will be changing the 'shop strato' pages in the next couple of weeks. So every page will have the 'desmundlovescoco' domain at the top. Will links not counteract this in the time being?

[jelly3]

I forgot to say I actually chose a dot com because I wanted worldwide visitors & I intended to place the site on certain UK shopping directories on top of that.
I have other sites that I am building up currently with ekmpowershop.

[awebapart.com]

Strato have stated that they will be changing the 'shop strato' pages in the next couple of weeks. So every page will have the 'desmundlovescoco' domain at the top. Will links not counteract this in the time being?
That's good to hear, it will be a big improvement. Search engines don't index sites immediately, they do it incrementally, a bit at a time, over weeks and months, so hopefully by the time they come to index your site fully, it will be under your domain.

I forgot to say I actually chose a dot com because I wanted worldwide visitors & I intended to place the site on certain UK shopping directories on top of that.
I have other sites that I am building up currently with ekmpowershop.
Ekmpowershop do host in the UK. Even though you want to be 'global', there will still be the fact that your products and UK-sourced shipping will appeal to certain countries more than others, so it is really a question of deciding what is your most important country out of all your worldwide sales, and hosting your .com site in that country. Unfortunately from a search engine viewpoint, your current setup is most ideal for targeting worldwide sales with Germany as your most important customer (well it would be if the site was written in German and had euro prices). Since your site is in english and has UK sterling prices I'm guessing that although you ship worldwide, the UK is the main country you are targeting (and the one you theoretically should have more success with due to cheaper shipping costs and faster delivery).

[sirearl]

will not be using PayPal under any circumstances.

why not as the biggest provider of online payments in the world .Do you think this is wise?

Earl

[jelly3]

Sirearl,
I would not want to use paypal on it's own on any site, but I do realize their importance.
I am thinking that perhaps I would get less chargebacks on a UK only site, from UK only consumers as well, & may use them for that in the meantime Googlecheckout combined with Paynova is more likely to be used on this (desmund) site.

[BadCompany]

NIce site, again the banner could be a bit more interesting..