feedback on revised website www.aluxurygift4you.com

[Alan Hope]

Some of you may remember giving me feedback on my site www.aluxurygift4you.com (http://www.aluxurygift4you.com) which I launched with Easywebstore on 1 September 2007. Some of you felt it looked rather amateur.

Towards the end of November I moved from Easywebstore to EKM Powershop who have redesigned the site to my specification.

When I "re-launched" the site with EKM I did PM some of you who had given feedback seeking your opinions but I thought that I would be "brave" once again and seek the opinions of the rest of you on my new look site.

I believe it looks so much more professional than my original site and more in keeping with the products that I am selling.

(EKM are to change the text in the category section down the left hand side to white.)

I look forward to hearing from as many of you as possible-you do not need to be gentle with me as constructive criticism can only be to my advantage.

Incidentally I had my first sale-on Christmas Day!

I am getting about 15 to 20 visits per day.(steadilly increasing)

Thank You in advance for taking the time to peruse the site.

Kind Regards

Alan Hope

[tcfw005]

OK

will visit it

[dave_n]

Hi Alan....
I have to say that I'm not a fan of grey on grey text/background.
You need to top align your images next to the text and the text needs to much wider.
A search for 'ring' brought back far too many results (needs paging - 20 a page), many of which had nothing to do with the search term. Maybe a wildcard sql search that needs limiting?
The shopping cart font should be the same type as the rest of the site.
Not sure about the main navigation being in the centre of the site and top to bottom and a little too much whitespace around your logo.

Sorry to be so critical!!!

[Page]

Text very small - don't like the jewellery pictures to much background and not sharp enough - I would want more "comfort" text before I considered buying from you.

Good luck - you are in a crowded market place.

Not convinced the site is specific enough.

[INDIZINE]

grey conveys no emotion - try adding another colour to it.

[quikshop]

Incidentally I had my first sale-on Christmas Day!


Congratulations on your first order!

I can see the style you are going for but its a hard one to get just right. You are likely to polarise your visitors, they'll either love it or hate it.

Personally, I think something needs doing with your category navigation? The grey on grey looks quite dour and uninviting.

Why should I buy from your shop and not one of your many competitors? Where are my incentives, reasons to buy? Take a look at our converting ecommerce shop visitors into customers (http://www.internetretailer.biz/partner/converting_ecommerce_shop_visitors_into_customers. aspx?qsaid=199) article. I appreciate you're using a competing service but the principals are the same regardless of your hosting company.

Spark your visitors interest by offering them a discount, perhaps a loss-leader giveaway with orders over a certain value... loyalty points with each order, anything to make your visitors stop and think and therefore stay on your web site for that bit longer.

[blown away]

It's a good idea to have your phone number on every page - if customers can easily contact you it really instills trust.
You could definitely do with a few deeper coloured accents to add to a luxury feel. It's a bit too subtle at the mo.:)

[awebapart.com]

Hi Alan

As we previously discussed via PM, I see ekm never got around to implementing a 404 error handler on your new site, so that people clicking on links to your old pages (http://www.aluxurygift4you.com/Philips-Double-Speed-Pressurised-Steam-Ironing-System_AIQ11.aspx) from your old site on the search engines got a friendly message during the interim period. This doesn't matter so much now since google has now updated its index with pages from your new site, but it is an important thing for web suppliers to provide for the interim period when they are taking on a site migration project.

The site looks better but a lot is down to the better top banner graphic which you could have done on your old site.

Some of the thumbnail images don't appear to be sized correctly, a thumbnail set to a different display size to the underlying image will result in a poorer quality image display (jagged stepped lines, pixel loss, etc) due to browser resizing, for example the baby trike 3 products down on the gifts for kids (http://www.aluxurygift4you.com/gift-ideas-for-kids-2-c.asp) section (and the wheels on some of the cars look more octagonal rather than cylindrical).

For search engine optimisation (SEO) purposes, it is better if your 'HOME' link goes to www.aluxurygift4you.com (http://www.aluxurygift4you.com) not www.aluxurygift4you.com/index.asp (http://www.aluxurygift4you.com/index.asp), as this currently gives you 2 home pages and can affect your internal page ranking.

Personally, and colour is a personal thing (you wont keep everyone happy with a particular colour), I think your greys are OK, but then I can hardly moan about grey websites (http://www.awebapart.com). You have a wide range of products (gadgets, toys, gardening tools, jewellery), some less luxurious than others, so it is difficult to find one colour that is representative so a neutral colour like grey is fine. If you don't think that grey is a luxurious colour, call it silver, granite or graphite - just like shades of yellows or oranges are sometimes called gold!

But that's enough feedback from me. More importantly what is your feedback, are you glad you moved ecommerce suppliers (http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=48334)? Has it made much of a difference to sales and visits, and if sales and visits have changed is this due to your new ecommerce supplier or due to other factors (time on google, changes to top banner, changes to content, changes to prices, new products etc)?

[boho]

Hi Alan
Not fan of the grey either I'm afraid, its not a silvery enough grey to convey the luxury touch I think you were going for, personally your company name to me makes me think of red and gold colours, something more inviting that suggests high value items.

I really don't like the fade out effect on the jewellery images, jewellery really does need as higher resolution clear close up image as you can get, which isn't easy I know, but the background image is a bit dated looking, and not going to attract a younger customer base it makes me think of twinsets and pearls, doilies and all things old and twee.

I find the mixture of fonts distracting and a bit offputting, the purple text on the homepage adds colour but doesn't seem inkeeping with the rest.

Minor bugbear but I do get irritated with sites that don't link back their logo to their homepage, as it's such a conventional navigational tool and hunting around for the word home just annoys me, I know yours is in a slightly more obvious place but my natural instinct is to click the logo.