Navigation Feedback

[Ozzy]

Oh here goes . Welcome to my weekend and evening job, I'm no web designer but I built my wife's website for her own business on Wordpress, Woocommerce and a purchased theme. It's been a bit of a side job which originally was relaxing and a get away from the day job...originally!

My question I'd mainly like feedback around is the navigation structure, as we've been going round in circles between us. She's far from technical so I've tried asking her to imagine she's in a physical shop, and between us we're go nowhere fast . That said of course any feedback is welcome.

My wife's website is : https://thefairyboutique.co.uk

The next consensus of an update we're thinking of doing is changing the menu to be something like;
Shop by Product | Shop by Theme | Shop by Style | etc
Before I embark on reconfiguring all the products, categories and tags to support such a change I thought I'd ask here for comments, especially as it's such a huge undertaking. I've also managed to get some really good SEO results on the current category pages I don't want to lose them. It's probably worth saying some 80% of her visitors are on mobile, and most of her business originates from Google or Instagram. So I need to be thinking Mobile First on this.

Yes I've just found out the hero slider doesn't look good on mobile and will be fixing or removing it this weekend (Shop Now button on first slider isn't visible on mobile).

 

[Opinion87]

I can't close the Cookie Notice or see the bottom menu because of the chat box. Have to click that and click no before I can see anything else.

 

[MarkOnline]

Are you manufacturing anything (I noticed your East Of India stock and a couplee of online specialist sellers there) ?

Not the fastest loading site on a laptop.

 

[fisicx]

Sloooooow......

test your site on a phone using 4g.

There is no navigation, only the hamburger. So I have to guess what you sell.

There is no cookie opt out or details of what you are tracking.

In the navigation you have seasonal gifts with valentines and Christmas. That suggests you don’t manage your site, could even be a junk dropshipper. Doesn’t instil trust.

Im not sure what spiritual means.

Menu bar isn’t sticky.

So to answer you question, there isn’t any navigation.

Bin all the guff on the homepage and show the categories. Make it easy for visitors to get to your stuff.

 

[Fagin2021]

It may sound petty but the first thing I noticed was how often the words 'Our' and 'We' were employed. Rather than (for example) 'Our Best Sellers' couldn't it just be 'Best Sellers'?

The second, and more important thing, was a score of 2 (yes, two) out of 100 for performance in the Google Lighthouse report. Everyone's huffing and puffing about the imminent rollout of the Core Web Vitals update where page speed is an important ranking factor. Whilst Google have stated that page speed won't trump content, such a low score won't do you any favours.

I don't know WordPress (except for it's reputation for code bloat when themes and plug-ins are used) but I'd guess someone who does know it could get that score up quite easily.

 

[Ozzy]

Not the fastest loading site on a laptop.

Sloooooow......

test your site on a phone using 4g.

The second, and more important thing, was a score of 2 (yes, two) out of 100 for performance in the Google Lighthouse report.

Ok, first thing done. I've just shoved her site behind Cloudflare for caching and CDN. That should make a vast improvement on the site performance.
We use Cloudflare for these forums to improve performance load times.

 

[The Byre]

It may sound petty but the first thing I noticed was how often the words 'Our' and 'We' were employed. Rather than (for example) 'Our Best Sellers' couldn't it just be 'Best Sellers'?

It isn't petty at all - it's writing copy 101. Nobody cares about you - they all care about themselves!

The ratio of self-praise to mentioning the customer is about 2:1. It should be 1:4 or even higher. You might like to try to avoid 'our' and 'we' altogether! Just talk about the customer and what she wants!

Two books - 'Ogilvy on Advertising' by David Ogilvy and 'Making Ads Pay' by John Caples.

Ogilvy invented the ad featuring "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock." and countless other world-famous campaigns.

Caples wrote the ad that is still today cited as the greatest ever, "They laughed when I sat down at the piano - but when I started to play . . ."

You might like to add to your reading list 'How to write sales letters and emails that sell' by Drayton Bird. Bird has about half a century of experience in direct marketing and was hired by David Ogilvy for Ogilvy & Mather and rose to be their creative director.

 

[Ozzy]

It's interesting comparing this feedback compared to the same question asked of her social media followers in Instagram and Facebook. All very valid here and there, just interesting.

I noticed was how often the words 'Our' and 'We' were employed.

Nobody cares about you - they all care about themselves!

I can only base this on her social media engagement, and Facebook messenger messages she receives. That annoying Facebook Messenger icon on her website, it is pinging constantly none stop with messages from her website.
Her target market are pretty practically all women (based on Facebook web pixel data) and are interested in spiritual healing crystals, alternative therapy, and emotional feel good status updates. They are very connected emotionally. She receives a lot of comments "Oh I love your story", "Your story made me cry", this/that/the other is so cute/adorable, my chakras are all aligned now thanks to this.
I'd be wary that to amend some of the copy on the website to make it more "corporate" and sterile would alienate her target market. I could be wrong, but I do have a vibe from analysing the audience data and the Facebook messages they receives that her site does need a personal connection to her audience.

 

[The Byre]

"Oh I love your story", "Your story made me cry", this/that/the other is so cute/adorable, my chakras are all aligned now thanks to this.

There is nothing I can say to that, other than that I didn't even know I had any chakras, let alone that they are supposed to be aligned!

If I ever make a film about fairies, they'll be more like the creature in the underground hall in 'Pam's Labyrinth'.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

You are right Ozzy,

Men have a totally different way of ;looking at things than women, just look at the magazines they buy, full of sad stories about what has happened to other women, yet most men are never interested about other men's lives, apart from if they are good at some sport.

Women dress to impress other women, not their boyfriend or husband, and always compliment each other, where men never tell another that shirt/ suite, suites you and so on

Let women do there own marketing after all they understand what makes them tick, we defiantly don't

 

[Ozzy]

There is nothing I can say to that, other than that I didn't even know I had any chakras, let alone that they are supposed to be aligned!

We've never met, but I can see your face as you read this...
Your chakras are the spiritual energy wheels/centres within your body that align to the energies of your body and the world around us. When they are not aligned your inner energies can go out of kilter, or something like that.
As I say, it's a very niche target market.

 

[Ozzy]

I can't close the Cookie Notice or see the bottom menu because of the chat box.

I think I've managed to move that up a little now, so should be out of the way... I think.

Are you manufacturing anything

No manufacturing, although a few of her mugs are custom designed for her exclusively. Her feel good emotional wellbeing mugs literally fly out the door, have deliveries almost daily replenishing stock - crazy.

There is no navigation, only the hamburger. So I have to guess what you sell.

Ok I have a feeling I'm going to have an education here, but it's the hamburger the navigation on a mobile device? As in, on a mobile responsive design you hide the sticky or normal menu and put it into the hamburger?

 

[fisicx]

The hamburger is just three lines on a mobile. Until I touch the icon I don’t know what you sell. And even then, it’s sort of guesswork as to your categories.

But if you had a grid on the homepage with: candles, mugs, wall hangings etc, I would know immediately what you sell.

The menu bar should be sticky. That way if I’ve scrolled all the way down I can still get home or view my basket without having to scroll all the way back up.

 

[MarkOnline]

I have read some of your copy, I trade in the same space. They love the "humanity" of the story and 90% of our buyers are female. I work along the lines that women are "internaly" based with their emotions.
Its why women love strong arms and hands and men like big**** and ******.

Your wife is bang on trend but I dont like the website (sorry) your mug range is quirky I like your mug range. I like East of India brand but manufacture our own ranges of similar products. If it helps I would copy those designs and sublimate them onto unisub hanging plaques. (the mug designs you own the copywrite of)

Good luck.

 

[fisicx]

Where does most of the traffic come from? Where do they land? Do they then convert?

Or are all these facebook messenger pings vanity posts? If they aren't actual customers they have little value.

 

[Ozzy]

Where does most of the traffic come from? Where do they land? Do they then convert?

Most of the traffic comes from Google organic, with a big chunk from facebook Ads. They generally land on the category pages I've created for each category of product, and her web conversion rate from visitor to buy varies between 17% and 63% depending on the individual products (based on Google Analytics data)
The Facebook Ads land on the individual product pages themselves from using Facebook Catalog integration, so the ads show the Facebook Catalog and then click to buy takes the user straight to the product page. Traffic from Instagram Ads converts higher than traffic from Facebook Ads.

Or are all these facebook messenger pings vanity posts? If they aren't actual customers they have little value.

She gets a fair amount of repeat business, we've actually turned off the Ads for a while to see what happens and there has only been a marginal drop in orders. Quite a drop in traffic, and I do believe most of the comments in her IG posts are tags to friends and do convert to sales, and the FB messenger pings are usually Thank You's (or questions about delivery times as she does a lot to Ireland)

 

[fisicx]

Ok. That makes a lot of sense. It suggests the menu navigation may not be that important. What may improve things is related products, bundles and suggestions.

Imagine I’m looking at x. You suggest a complementary product or a bundle.

You can also make the category link more prominent (not using breadcrumbs).

But....

Only ever view the site on your phone. Never make changes based on the desktop version.

 

[Fagin2021]

Her target market are pretty practically all women (based on Facebook web pixel data) and are interested in spiritual healing crystals, alternative therapy, and emotional feel good status updates. They are very connected emotionally. She receives a lot of comments "Oh I love your story", "Your story made me cry", this/that/the other is so cute/adorable, my chakras are all aligned now thanks to this.

When you come from the 'Buy something or sod off' school of marketing, it's hard to grasp this sort of thing.

 

[Ozzy]

it's hard to grasp this sort of thing.

Welcome to the new world .
To be honest I don't get it really but I don't need to really, but where there's a market...and I just need to look after the techie stuff for her.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

Ok, first thing done. I've just shoved her site behind Cloudflare for caching and CDN..

Caching static content is always going to give you a slight improvement but caching the entire output is 100 times better. For a small extra cost you get virtual serverless performance.
https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/automatic-platform-optimization/wordpress/

 

[Ozzy]

I looked at that but Cloudflare couldn't detect Wordpress even though the site is on Wordpress, so I perhaps mistakenly figured as it's Woocommerce it wasn't compatible.

 

[fisicx]

You don’t need cloudflare. In fact using a CDN can make things worse. What you need is to clear out all the junk, find a better theme and optimise everything. There are loads of quick wins you can make to speed up the site.

start here: https://web.dev/measure

 

[John Hemming]

I use Fastly having had some issues with Cloudflare. I do think they help as well as giving DDoS protection.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

I looked at that but Cloudflare couldn't detect Wordpress even though the site is on Wordpress, so I perhaps mistakenly figured as it's Woocommerce it wasn't compatible.

I beleive this is a common error and I have expereinced something similar on a couple of sites. I can't remember what the fix was but it was something simple like disabling and re-enabling the plugin?

The last comment on this thread rings a bell...

https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cloudflare-does-not-detect-installed-plugin/

 

[OldWelshGuy]

The next consensus of an update we're thinking of doing is changing the menu to be something like;
Shop by Product | Shop by Theme | Shop by Style | etc.

There's a plugin that does just that no need to mess about with creating a multitude of categories etc.

 

[Ozzy]

So it's taken me a while, as the wife's website changes have to be squeezed into my spare time (like a hobby I'd don't choose), but I've made some mods to the navigation (burger) and also to the front page based on the feedback here. Took bloody ages re-categorising the products!

Can I have some updated thoughts please?
https://thefairyboutique.co.uk/

(no I haven't addressed all the speed issues yet as that goes above my pay grade, but I did remove the slider)

 

[fisicx]

It’s borked on a phone. Can’t close the cookie thing (which you don’t even need)

 

[Ozzy]

It’s borked on a phone. Can’t close the cookie thing (which you don’t even need)

Cookie thing switched off now

 

[fisicx]

Ideally have two columns on the homepage with the category image and title. All those words and ‘shop now’ aren’t necessary.

 

[BeyondTheIllusion]

You have a nice site going on there for your wife, and yes it's pretty niche.