Feedback on new site

Alan Hope Copywriter · Sep 29, 2007

Good Morning Everyone

Yesterday afternoon I posted a thread on the Introductions section which has had a lot of viewings but nobody has provided any feedback about my new e commerce site which I launched on 1 September.

I wander if I am better mentioning it on this thread.

Could I trouble some of you to visit my site detailed below and let me have as much constructive fedback as possible as this is my first venture.

aluxurygift4you.com

Thank you in advance.

Alan Hope

Paramount Embroidery · Sep 29, 2007

Hi

I'm going to be honest here... Your selling upmarket gifts but the design is amateur. You should pay a few £'s more and buy a great looking template.

The product graphics need some work to make them uniform with each other. Try to checkout from the menu on the left. It does not work. You can only checkout from the cart. The paypal gif at the foot of the page is missing...

I left the site after 1min.

fcg · Sep 29, 2007

I have to say that the colours arent too appealing although very clean. I would personally increase the amount of white space in the central portion, increase the size of the images, and reduce the height of the main banner. There isnt anything that particularly jumps out at you as the menu bar on the left is the same colour as the central portion of the page. Also, a mixture of square and round edges reduces impact. The banner does look very amateur (sorry) and really does need redesiging. The concept is good.

lajlaj · Sep 29, 2007

Hi Alan

Welcome to the forum, I am a relative newbie here myself although I have been in business for over 5 years now.

My first impression is that the name of the website "a luxury gift 4 you" and your logo and "look" don't correspond. You really need to portray the "luxury" element of your name to instill confidence in consumers to purchase from you.

The little pictures, the gifs and so on, don't do justice to the products you are wanting to sell.

Also you need to put some proper "add to cart" buttons on as it was a little difficult to work out how to purchase.

One of the biggest issues facing web retailers is gaining the confidence of the consumer - after all they aren't able to "eyeball" you, they can't pick up your products, feel them, touch them or smell them - so you need to be able to reach out in different ways.

Some people buy on the look of something, others want to read and re-read the descriptions over and over again to make sure that what we offer s what they want. Therefore I use a mixture of "sparkly" descriptions written by a professional copyrighter and professional photography to put over the luxury element of our jewellery. Obviously when you are starting out you probably don't have the money to invest in this but small things can make all the difference.

I hope that helps you a little bit, I would say your starting point is to invest in a really good logo and customise the site and the colours around that.

Just a quick edit to add that you ought to research other websites selling luxury gifts to see what they are up to!

Astaroth · Sep 29, 2007

This link has been posted before for review - or if it hasnt then someone else has the identical type of site with the same layout and same very weak header with random small unintegrated images of products.

If it is a different site then exactly the same comments go, as others have made, the website is not luxury and if I had searched for luxury goods and found your site on google I would have immediately gone back and looked at the next listing irrespective of any of the content/ products/ prices etc because it looks heavily like an amatures attempt at using cheap template which doesnt make me think that the company behind the site knows about luxury quality/ goods etc

awebapart.com · Sep 29, 2007

Hi Alan

Your site has passed the first test I always perform when reviewing a UK .com site, it is hosted in the UK (which is good for UK search engines) so that is good. You can check where a site is hosted at:

www.maxmind.com/app/locate_ip

I cannot give a detailed review and advice, but here are a few important first impressions and feedback which you can easily address:

1. You are using the easywebstore sitebuilder, which isn't bad for the price, the site and template doesn't look too bad, and the main thing that is dragging your site down from a first impression is the top branding area which you have put in - which isn't easywebstore's fault. If you can get the right professional graphic designer to design a good logo/top banner area for the site, in keeping with the site design/constraints, it should improve the site's look no end.

2. As mentioned before, fix the missing paypal graphic at the bottom.

3. You have some serious problems with some of your product images. Some when clicked want to close the browser! Others are embedded from another site where it looks like a realtime server-side image shrink is requested - resulting in a very slow load speed. Others are just strectching your website width, making your site look bad.

RedEvo · Sep 29, 2007

Astaroth said:
This link has been posted before for review - or if it hasnt then someone else has the identical type of site with the same layout and same very weak header with random small unintegrated images of products.

If it is a different site then exactly the same comments go, as others have made, the website is not luxury and if I had searched for luxury goods and found your site on google I would have immediately gone back and looked at the next listing irrespective of any of the content/ products/ prices etc because it looks heavily like an amatures attempt at using cheap template which doesnt make me think that the company behind the site knows about luxury quality/ goods etc

Bang on. He was told it wasn't that good in the previous post as well.

d

derren · Sep 30, 2007

I am not an expect at commenting on sites but hey neither are 99.9% of people who will look at your site, but everyone has opinions and these are your potential customers. So my first on clicking on a product is extremely slow loading of images. This puts me off after clicking on a few and I would move on ie potential sale lost (not that I got a penny to rub together)

Malcolm Cooper · Oct 1, 2007

According to "Retail Week" this very week these are amongst the very best quality goods web sites in the UK. Take a look with fresh eyes and compare yours. (I don't come up to the mark either btw).

http://www.johnlewis.com/
http://www.habitat.co.uk/pws/Home.ice
http://ocado.co.uk/webshop/startWebshop.do
http://www.coast-stores.com/pws/Home.ice
http://www.topshop.com

These brands perhaps don't have to worry very much about homepage SEO. They are however a good indication of the state of the art in etail design.

Selling luxury goods requires a luxury environment.

Calibre Designs · Oct 1, 2007

Much improvement needed especially for your market level.
Theres no warm feeling to it.

Sent you a PM.

Thanks

Kay

ken_uk · Oct 1, 2007

The habitat, and coast stores site I closed well before even getting to see the design... Got bored waiting for the line to draw across the screen on the coast stores, and got bored watching the number slowly count up on the habitat site. God help anyone with a slower connection than I have...

Thats one of the major disadvantages of flash and designers who assume everyone on the planet is running with a connection the same speed they have.... (or even imagining it will run at the same speed as it does from their local drive....)

Oct 1, 2007

Can.t see a lot wrong with it,apart from your top logo overlapping.

Images of products ( the most important thing on an e-commerce site ) not bad some could do with being bigger (toy cars e.t.c)

You might also like to do some research on the psychological effect of colours.

But you are going to have a hell of a time trying to sell at those prices.

Earl

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Feedback on new site

Alan Hope Copywriter

Paramount Embroidery

fcg

lajlaj

Astaroth

awebapart.com

RedEvo

derren

Malcolm Cooper

Calibre Designs

ken_uk

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