Can we go live ? New Site Upgrade - Test Mode

oakfurniture

Free Member
  • Sep 28, 2011
    128
    22
    Good Morning All,

    I just wanted to firstly thank you for taking the time to read my post. I have been there many times and always appreciate the response and I help I get from this forum.

    We are a small family-run furniture business based in Oxfordshire.

    We have a current website on an old platform and the new one which is an upgraded version - We have testing it and looking to go live next week - I will send the link for both old and new version and feel free to offer comments/suggestions/ the things you don't like/ the things you do like.

    Old Site
    www.oakfurniturehouse.co.uk

    New Site (Not live on Dev Server)
    https://oak2019.innuodesign.co.uk/

    I am also looking for a freelancer to work on-site on a regular basis to upgrade, offer advice, add new features, etc.

    Thanks
    OF
     

    fisicx

    Moderator
    Sep 12, 2006
    46,745
    8
    15,407
    Aldershot
    www.aerin.co.uk
    All I can see are some cosmetic styling updates. The general site structure is the same.

    I've reviewing the site my phone and the cookie this is really annoying. There is no option to refuse your advertising cookies.

    When I drill down I get guff at the top of every category that is just guff. And the filters get in the way, are clunky to use. I also see multiple listing for the same table with different chairs. This could be a single product with variants.

    On the actual product page the content doesn't fit on the screen and, images are letterboxed and don't swipe - they open in a modal - which is pants.

    And the item specifics don't always match the description. On one table it says there are two drawers and a melamine finish. Neither of which apply.

    There is also apparently a 5 star review but this doesn't exist.

    It says it's a 12 seater table but you only show 6 chairs.

    There is no default on the options - this shows an error when I try to buy

    On the checkout the field types need sorting. It allowed me to add letters to the telephone and the email wasn't an email field.

    I selected to pay by paypal. Realised my mistake and returned to SWJ lld (who are they?) and ended back up on the delivery page.

    The site is nowhere near ready to go live.

    And the site just make me think you are a cheap copy of oak furniture land.
     
    Upvote 0

    Tin

    Business Member
    Nov 14, 2005
    2,931
    1,427
    Herefordshire
    www.tinsoldierdesign.co.uk
    Hi there

    Have only had a minute to look over your new site but there's a couple of things that stood out to me. I'll have another look when I get more time.

    1: URL's - why a messy and lengthy url like this "/home-office/home-office-console-and-lamp-table/Home-Office-Console-Tables-Sub" - home office being repeated 3 times? Your current site doesn't do this.

    2: Use of Capital characters for urls /More-Rooms/Kitchen-furniture/breakfast-bars and none capital characters urls in other places?

    3: That banner that pops up, had it 3 times in a one minute look, not to my liking but I understand why you have it there. Maybe drop the frequency a bit.

    4: A real lack of text introducing each page, most I saw was 3 lines under the page header

    Will try looking again later.

    Thanks
     
    Upvote 0

    oakfurniture

    Free Member
  • Sep 28, 2011
    128
    22
    Dear flsicx,

    Please see my comment below in red and thank you again for your time and comments.

    All I can see are some cosmetic styling updates. The general site structure is the same.



    I've reviewing the site my phone and the cookie this is really annoying. There is no option to refuse your advertising cookies.

    Will get this resolved – Thank you



    When I drill down I get guff at the top of every category that is just guff you liked this before and now you want to remove it? . And the filters get in the way, are clunky to use. what do you suggest we should do ?



    I also see multiple listing for the same table with different chairs. This could be a single product with variants – We can take your point onboard and look to redo them again

    On the actual product page the content doesn't fit on the screen and, images are letterboxed and don't swipe - they open in a modal - which is pants.

    Will require a new module for images as well as all the images changing on the affected listings and we will get it working.



    And the item specifics don't always match the description. On one table it says there are two drawers and a melamine finish. Neither of which apply.

    Minor issue which is already being worked on



    There is also apparently a 5 star review but this doesn't exist.


    Check the reviews tab lower down the page but we will now have it linked


    It says it's a 12 seater table but you only show 6 chairs.


    Not sure what you mean, an example would have been helpful here -




    There is no default on the options - this shows an error when I try to buy


    Example please, I will need to look at if its a site issue or just an issue on that product




    On the checkout the field types need sorting. It allowed me to add letters to the telephone and the email wasn't an email field.


    Minor issue – We will fix it now




    I selected to pay by paypal. Realised my mistake and returned to SWJ lld (who are they?) and ended back up on the delivery page.


    this could be just a return link issue but will raise with IT company to have a look into




    The site is nowhere near ready to go live. – Will take your point onboard



    And the site just make me think you are a cheap copy of oak furniture land. – I really don’t know what I can say on this – we offer different items, they are 100+ Stores company and we are a small family run business.
     
    Upvote 0

    oakfurniture

    Free Member
  • Sep 28, 2011
    128
    22
    Good Morning Tin,

    Please see my reply to points you have raised.


    Have only had a minute to look over your new site but there's a couple of things that stood out to me. I'll have another look when I get more time.

    1: URL's - why a messy and lengthy url like this "/home-office/home-office-console-and-lamp-table/Home-Office-Console-Tables-Sub" - home office being repeated 3 times? Your current site doesn't do this. - This is not an easy fix as it requires redoing all the SEO's for all categories and products – unless you can point us towards the right direction?

    2: Use of Capital characters for urls /More-Rooms/Kitchen-furniture/breakfast-bars and none capital characters urls in other places? - This is likely down to when we listed the products or categories, would be sorted with the above

    3: That banner that pops up, had it 3 times in a one minute look, not to my liking but I understand why you have it there. Maybe drop the frequency a bit. - Minor tweek to the timings

    4: A real lack of text introducing each page, most I saw was 3 lines under the page header - These were reduced to improve the look of the pages, if they are too long it drags the page down further

    Will try looking again later.

    Thanks
    OF
     
    Upvote 0

    fisicx

    Moderator
    Sep 12, 2006
    46,745
    8
    15,407
    Aldershot
    www.aerin.co.uk
    People will only ever be on your site because they want oak furniture (or other advertised products).

    It follows that your job is to guide them to the products they need.

    The homepage is very busy, simplify everything and just show me the categories. I don't care about your popular items - if I want a table why do I need to know you sell a lot of beds?

    You also have featured ranges - again how does this help me look for a table.

    You do have a search hidden away top right. This should be in the main content area above the categories. And it need to work properly. I searched for 'dining room tables' and there were only two relevant results (on page 2).

    I use the mega menu (which is horrible on my phone) to look for oak dining tables and it says
    Here at Oak Furniture House our main goal is to have 100% customer satisfaction. We believe this involves having Excellent Customer service, outstanding quality furniture and the lowest prices you can find. Our Oak Dining Sets are no exception to our goals, and every single set you find here has been priced competitively so you won't find them anywhere cheaper. Each one is made by skilled craftsmen who are passionate about delivering quality standard furniture and should you have any queries about any of these products, our customer service team will be more than glad to help you with your questions.
    It's just waffle.

    On the category page is has small, medium, large, extra large. Would it not be better to deine the size by the number of place settings - or have this as a sub title

    Look at this page:

    https://oak2019.innuodesign.co.uk/d...-Table-Chair-Sets/Extra-Large-Oak-Dining-Sets

    You can see the URL - it's horrible and spammy and google won't like it.

    Many of the listing are for the same table but just different chairs. These could be variants.

    In the filers the only material is oak and it says there are 3 products but there's a lot more than that on the page.

    The sliders are really fiddly on a phone and not much help. Selectors are much simpler to use. They should also reflect the category. It says I can have a 240cm wide table when no such product exists.

    The images are too small. If I'm spending £1900 on a table and chairs I want to see a big HD image, lot of details and different views. Try your zoomy thing here:

    https://oak2019.innuodesign.co.uk/d...rdeaux-Oak-Furniture-Grand-Table-Lucia-Chairs

    More pixels than Disney. And the 'view larger image' isn't much bigger. And see how the image is letterboxed. Why can't it be full width?

    Why is the description in a toggle. This should be on the page at all time along with all the other useful info. Look at an Amazon page to see how to do it.

    If you show 5 stars I should be able to click on the stars and go to the reviews. If I want to write a review I need to register and login. That's just going to put people off.

    What's the difference between klarna and Deko? And one takes me to a new page and the other is a popup.

    Click to buy and I get an error on the additional chairs. Set the default to 'none' and don't make it a required field. If I do select additional chairs then update the price.

    Don't try to compete with the National chains. Make the site more personal. Write the descriptions as if you have the products at home. Tell me the bits you like, describe the details and make me feel like you want to help me find the right table. It look and feel just like every other online store, there is nothing to suggest you are family run business. Put your pictures on the pages. Sit on the chairs and look happy. Make me want to buy from you and not your competitors.

    And the mega menu is annoying move the mouse anywhere need it and the whole screen is obscured. I then have to find an edge to click off.

    Have you tried making the menu simpler - far easier on a phone and tablet (the device of choice for a lot of browsing).
     
    Upvote 0
    Very busy site, with very little information.


    You're offering free UK Mainland Delivery, and then excluding all of Scotland. It's normal to charge more for the islands, but Edinburgh or Glasgow are both very easy to get to.


    On the MegaMenu, New in refers to 2019 and doesn't expand to give me options. If I want new chairs or a new desk, I have to search twice.

    Why doesn't the delivery plus price show until I am about to pay? I wouldn't have got that far normally.
     
    Upvote 0
    IVe been trying to crawl your site for the last hour or so but its so huge?? Why is the link profile so big? do you really have over 150,000 products??

    Here is where I got to before giving up, 30%!

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/37mmy9hsef8mvcb/javaw_81I6bforG5.png?dl=0

    A few things:

    1. Remove capital letters in your link structure, they look ugly, lowercase is great and looks better.
    2. You have some malformed/broken links: https://www.dropbox.com/s/izu7l5fb1ble5yy/javaw_9yxmrmQhRe.png?dl=0
    3. You also have a few redirects, try and fix those: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dy44p4qo40ezc4o/javaw_CqTVmT9sI8.png?dl=0
    4. huge amounts of 404s: https://www.dropbox.com/s/hyh3pmf7kb3vjvm/response_codes_client_error_(4xx).csv?dl=0
    5. Lots and lots of BAD links either not SEO friendly or using underscores which you should NEVER use... https://www.dropbox.com/s/3mizwms0ret97g2/url_underscores.csv?dl=0
    6. Lots and lots of url chains over 115 characters, which is also very bad https://www.dropbox.com/s/7e4ohqp0a9y601k/url_over_115_characters.csv?dl=0
    7. Missing meta descriptions :O :O https://www.dropbox.com/s/ffqeyqjbsndjm7x/meta_description_missing.csv?dl=0
    8. So SO SOOO many duplicates! https://www.dropbox.com/s/rg1b9b7b5g1o38s/meta_description_duplicate.csv?dl=0
    9. Missing H1 tags! https://www.dropbox.com/s/dlcn9w0zba9iado/h1_missing.csv?dl=0
    10. Tonnes and Tonnes of JSONLD errors which MUST get fixed! (affects all pages so no need to do an export at this time).
    11. Also your devstage has various pages which are INDEXIBLE which means this devstage is at risk of appearing on Google and other search engines and might also cause duplicate conflicts with your live site!!
    Sorry about all the stuff, there is a lot of issues and this is just the surface! Ofcourse this is only a 30% crawl so will need full analysis to catch all the issues.
     
    Upvote 0

    UKSBD

    Moderator
  • Dec 30, 2005
    13,033
    1
    2,831
    That menu just drowns everything and is too responsive
    I'm looking at something, accidentally move my cursor and the product I was looking at disappears until I realise the menu has overlaid it - do you really need that big a menu on every page?
     
    Upvote 0

    UKSBD

    Moderator
  • Dec 30, 2005
    13,033
    1
    2,831
    The bit you don't see when landing on the page is the nicest bit

    i.e.
    I go to the dining room page, ignore the top, ignore the menu, ignore the filter/stockstaus, ignore the featured product- by the time I've scrolled past that lot I've got to something much better.
     
    Upvote 0

    fisicx

    Moderator
    Sep 12, 2006
    46,745
    8
    15,407
    Aldershot
    www.aerin.co.uk
    Just done a bit of googling. You are using stock images which suggests some sort of dropshipping thing.

    It's all starting to unravel - I thought this was something special but it's not. It's just the same old stuff everyone else is flogging online.

    And your competitors are cheaper.
     
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