Can anyone offer some advice to me please?

[CinnamonCreations]

Hi All
I'm new to the boards.
My name is Niki Jackson and I own Cinnamon Creations.
http://www.cinnamoncreations.co.uk

I am looking for advice on how to breathe some life into my web site and get those sales!!!
I have been open for 8 months and business is really slow. I have great products but am struggling to know how to show them off in the 'right' way!

I am about to change hosts to save on costs and a simplier layout,with more flexibility as I currently cannot add pages for information just product pages and would like to add information for my customers.

How can I improve the sale-ability of my goods???

Thank you so much in advance!
Niki[/url]

[Webstuff]

Wow, thats a great idea for a shop :P I think though, if I see one more 100% width website today I'll scream. It makes a website look messy! Go for a fixed width (I'd suggest 750px max width, to make it nice for people who refuse to keep with the times). That giant, centralized text down the main page looks a tad scruffy. Go for a neat, "table layout" feeling (even if you use div's instead, make it look table-y), with probably a size or two down font. Use some product pictures on the main page; I know theres some at the bottom of the page, but they're so far down it looks like you're trying to hide them!

Aside from all that, nice website, and welcome to the forums!

[Webstuff]

and here I come again; try an alphabetic ordering for your navigation!

[SillyJokes]

What about bringing the colours from the banner onto the site to give it a more uniform feel.

The images are a bit small and blurry and not doing your products justice.

The home page is pretty bad. There's far too much text and not enough obvious calls to action. It would be better to hit the public with a key product image that immediately attracts the eye and is a picture story of what they can find at your site.

Then say something like 'Hand Made, quality primitive items to give and keep at surprising prices"

People give a webpage about 3 seconds before clicking away. This site is not unique and so you have to make it instantly appealling to prevent this happening. Don't make your precious visitor wade through lots of text - they can't be bothered.

The last thing I would say which is really only relevant to me I suppose is that the banner at the top with the doll and the gingerbread men is the most sinister thing I have seen in ages. They're coming to get me!

[CinnamonCreations]

Hi
Thanks so much for the replies! I just got my sign in for the new hosting so will be working on that today!

You have some great ideas!! I have noted them all and will make the changes then you can have another look lol!

As for the doll and gingerbread lol well they are all part of the 'theme' and are actually very popular in the primitive world! I hope others don't find them scary!

Thanks again!
Niki

[Top Hat]

if I see one more 100% width website today I'll scream. It makes a website look messy! Go for a fixed width (I'd suggest 750px max width, to make it nice for people who refuse to keep with the times).

Sorry to disagree but 100% width and adjustable text size is the best on the web. I paid a lot for this monitor fill my screen.

Back to the site
Agree with most comment above, link the site to the logo with colour, either from the logo to the site or from the site to the logo.

Home page needs products, that show exactly what the site is, in the first fold.

And some of your images need optimizing, the logo is 79K, try reducing the number of colours, or changing it to a jpg, I think you should be able to reduce the size to under 15K. Another example thekey.jpg is 170K, should be under 17K.

[Webstuff]

But when a website "re-arranges itself" to fit your screen, you inevitably lose correlation between images and text. Unless, that is, you have percent-width pictures, and thats not even funny. Personally, I dislike a website that fills the whole page, but I have a high-resolution screen, so it doesn't happen too often ;)

[c2webdesign]

Hi Niki

There are some great suggestions posted above and plenty for you to think about.

I would definately recommend bringing the colours down from the logo (which I think is great by the way!). There are simply too many colours on screen. In a 3 second glance I saw 5 colours - ideally a website should be made up of two primary colours with variations of brightness of these colours for effect.

- Bring Featured products to the top of the main page

- Take the newsletter to a seperate page, but with a link from the top of thie home page. This way you can add images of the free gifts and explain more about the special offers. At the moment this is lost with the clutter

- Put the Whats New above the Navigation categories

- Also your search area should be at the top allowing the visitor to find whatever they need quick and easy

- Unfortunately your search engine optimisation will have to centre around the Home Page (because each product page has additional characters within the URL, i.e. '?' and '=' - search engines have difficulty with these.

- Remove the redundent category button at the foot of the vertical navigation

There'a s alot you can do to turn those visitors in to customers - but how are they finding you. Is it by accident (through unrelated keywords) or on purpose. If on purpose (because they were looking for cinnamon products) then your half way there. If not why not promote the competitions you are holding through competition sites - this way you can gain traffic, build your newsletter subscriber list and build brand name.

Also fixed width is recommended - normally 750px width is good as this covers the largest proporotion of home users monitor resolutions (800 pixels) and also doesn't s-t-r-e-t-c-h too much on a larger resolution.

If you are looking for any other ideas or advice, just contact me through my website.

Best wishes,
Dean
C2 Web Design
http://www.c2webdesign.co.uk

Web Design | Online Marketing | Search Engine Optimisation

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[xxdxxd2004]

I just visit your website, i find you shop haven't wigs.it is very important so many girls like it.
I think in the beginning the shop'price should be lower,for the products kinds is not much enough and the name is not famous.in one word,the beginning,you should not think about earn money.only use the price and quality and the variety to atract the customers.do you think i am impolite,i only want to help you by my heart.