What do you think of my website?

[Steven001]

You say 'It's important to note: we DO NOT believe in censorship or political correctness so your words will remain visible, providing they do not conflict with our online community policy'

So you will remove peoples words and they won't remain visible unless you agree with them? ;-)

Community policy states the following;

You are not permitted to
‣ Make death threats against an individual.
‣ Call for violence against an individual.
‣ Dox - reveal personal information about an individual.
‣ Promote or engage in self-harm.
‣ Sell illegal substances or goods.
‣ Display gore or execution imagery.
‣ Display pornographic imagery.
‣ Display animal cruelty imagery.

That's pretty standard legal stuff and is nothing to do with free speech, more like calls to action. Nice try though

 

[DMollart]

You still have not addressed the main issue, the buy button is almost hidden. It should be clear to see instantly without scanning the page.

Your header still takes up too much space, you have a lot of padding that doesn't need to be there.

I would recommend this book to you as well worth your time reading:
http:// www. amazon .co .uk/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537179896&sr=8-1&keywords=dont+make+me+think

 

[Steven001]

@DMollart I made some adjustments. Example: https://alt-fit.com/shop-?1257-Iron-Eagle-Hoodie-Cherry-Red

Been through the entire site tweaking everything. I'm happy with where it is right now. Waiting for Nochex to get back to me on recurring payments as they are having tech issues, once that is resolved and the article recurring payments are working I'll start Google Ads campaign and see how it goes.

Thanks to everyone who offered valuable advice.

 

[Alan]

You have put a lot of effort in and I hope the venture goes well.

The only major item I have is lack of contrast for the text falling below standard accessibility levels, suffering with slightly impaired vision it is something I have empathy for. Your text to background ratio is 2.12:1 whereas the WCAG 2 success criteria is 4.5:1 for body text ( and 3:1 for large headings ).

 

[Steven001]

@Alan Thanks, it's been a tough ride and will be my first venture. I'd really like to be self employed and not under the thumb. Fingers crossed!

 

[Steven001]

Made some final tweaks, header changed and footer finished off properly. https://alt-fit.com
Still waiting on a fix for payment system problem for articles then I can test it thoroughly before paying for any PPC advertising.

EDIT: just updated search. Now searches for articles and clothing and renders out separately styled results for each while just pressing the button and not typing (I'm amazed at how many people do this) will remind you to type something! Also changed search to post instead of get, don't want spiders grabbing badly formed URL's.

 

[Alan]

That is the easy part done - now the hard part begins ( getting enough sales to justify the business - I say that from a position of running my own e-commerce business and giving up - basically it cost me rather than earned for me )

 

[Steven001]

@Alan Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.
If you don't mind, was it the cost of advertising which consumed the profit? I'm asking as it's something I'm fearful of.

 

[fisicx]

...was it the cost of advertising which consumed the profit?

Ecommerce is a numbers game. Let's say you make £5 profit per t-shirt. If the cost of marketing for each sale is £2 it means you need to sell 500 t-shirts to earn £1500 per month. If you convert at 1% you need 50,000 new visitors each month.

How are you planning to get over half a million visitors each year?

I built a site for a guy who sells t-shirts and hoodies. He's been doing it for 5 years and still isn't earning a living. It earns a decent amount but not enough to live on. His marketing costs per month are just under £1000.

 

[Steven001]

@fisicx that sounds bleak.
Don't want to spend anywhere near that on PPC and luckily the profit is substantially higher than a fiver per item. I think I can boost rankings by getting good social media exposure, get some nice articles going and up the interest levels. I know it will probably always be supplemental to my job and if it doesn't work out I've got ideas on another earner which will be fully automated so less/no hassle.

 

[Alan]

If you don't mind, was it the cost of advertising which consumed the profit? I'm asking as it's something I'm fearful of.

A combination of things, but for my line of business it was the amount and range of stock I had to keep ad the write off on 'dead' lines.I needed to have stock to sell and I computed that I really needed £250,000 of stock to be viable yet I could only afford to hold £40,000 stock and wasn't prepared to bet my house that actually a quarter of a million would make it work. I'm glad I bailed early as quite a few in my niche lost big time.

In terms of cost of advertising, for me that was quite is simple, spend 20% on Adwords, i.e £1000 on Adwords = £5,000 in turnover

 

[dan19900]

Unlikely you'll make a profit from adwords selling t shirts. Will cost around $1 per click, unlikely you'll convert higher than 5% so that's $20 per customer.

 

[fisicx]

Don't want to spend anywhere near that on PPC and luckily the profit is substantially higher than a fiver per item. I think I can boost rankings by getting good social media exposure, get some nice articles going and up the interest levels.

Suppose you do get the exposure, even if 10% click on your links that still means 5 million people need to see your articles/SM posts etc. That's a huge number. You may be getting more profit per t-shirt but you haven't factored in postage and packaging, returns and other costs.

I'm sure you will sell products but your spare bedroom is going to be full of stock and you will be spending all your spare time packing bags and printing labels. People expect next day delivery - or 2 days at most - so you need to be processing orders as they come in.

It's not all doom and gloom. This could work really well if you have the time to look after the business.

 

[Nico Albrecht]

Not really sure where to start here. My only advise is to get professional help from web designers and marketing people and listen what people have to say on here. The site is years behind current similar websites selling stuff, policies are not clear and I am getting arthritis in my fingers by scrolling like crazy even on a 4k lcd. Not a huge fan of wordpress and would never use it but you could have done that with wordpress in under 2 hours with much more features and functions build in and maintain a unique design. Not sure why google page speed not even giving values for mobile devices for your site.

 

[Steven001]

Not really sure where to start here. My only advise is to get professional help from web designers and marketing people and listen what people have to say on here.

This is the point when I know you haven't read this thread. Try starting at page 1.

The site is years behind current similar websites selling stuff

In what respect? You don't like the colour scheme?

policies are not clear

Policies are very clear, much clearer than many other websites. Sure you're on the right site?

I am getting arthritis in my fingers by scrolling like crazy even on a 4k lcd.

If you're using a huge screen there's hardly any scrolling involved. If a phone you will see the menu follows you and allows you to select what you want if you're unsure.

Not a huge fan of wordpress and would never use it but you could have done that with wordpress in under 2 hours with much more features and functions build in and maintain a unique design.

I've had other people make this sort of claim and they were as wrong as you are: the website I built has a forum with a login system, an article subscription system also with a login system and an eCommerce shop with all being tied in to each other and working flawlessly. There is literally NOTHING out there which offers the same in a pre-built environment/framework, even with the many poorly coded plugins they offer and believe me I tried for months trying to find something before I decided to develop the site myself - hope we've cleared that up!

Not sure why google page speed not even giving values for mobile devices for your site.

My Samsung mobile reports 74/100, maybe your mobile phone needs updating or has a problem?

By the way I had a look at your website and there are quite a few problems;
It's incredibly slow to load on mobile, your site is not responsive, there's no sticky menu. Page layout is bad with sections not lining up. If we're comparing;

Site checker pro reports
https://sitechecker.pro/seo-report/https://alt-fit.com/
https://sitechecker.pro/seo-report/https://nicogroup.net

W3C Validator Report (my entire site validates - xhtml 1.0 strict)
https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=https://alt-fit.com/&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https://nicogroup.net/we-are-techies-who-love-what-we-do

Nibbler Report
http://nibbler.silktide.com/en_US/reports/alt-fit.com
http://nibbler.silktide.com/en_US/reports/nicogroup.net

Looks like you have a lot of catching up to do.

 

[billybob99]

Both of your websites are pretty crap in this day and age - its a question whose is closer to the year 1999.

Steve's site looks like it is trying be a mobile site, on a desktop. Desktop and mobile are 2 completely different user experiences, should probably take a look at how Shopify transition from desktop to mobile.

Nico's website just about gives you a desktop experience on a desktop and a mobile experience on mobile.

As long as you're getting visitors and making some money, no harm.

 

[Steven001]

Both of your websites are pretty crap in this day and age - its a question whose is closer to the year 1999.

Steve's site looks like it is trying be a mobile site, on a desktop. Desktop and mobile are 2 completely different user experiences, should probably take a look at how Shopify transition from desktop to mobile.

Nico's website just about gives you a desktop experience on a desktop and a mobile experience on mobile.

As long as you're getting visitors and making some money, no harm.

Okay, I'll bite, please link to a website you consider to be using current tech, something you consider to be excellent.

 

[billybob99]

Okay, I'll bite, please link to a website you consider to be using current tech, something you consider to be excellent.

I could show you a bunch, but firstly I can't find any that are a cross between an ecommerce shop/forum/subscription to blog posts.

And secondly it doesn't matter if you run it thru some Nibbler report all day long and it gives you 10/10 - good UI and UX can't be measured thru an automated tool, this stuff is measured by real users and metrics.

No doubt you might have some solid tech behind it, hackers won't stand a chance etc. but the UI is an absolute shocker.

But you did ask for an example, although nowhere near similar, here it is.

 

[Steven001]

I could show you a bunch, but firstly I can't find any that are a cross between an ecommerce shop/forum/subscription to blog posts.

And secondly it doesn't matter if you run it thru some Nibbler report all day long and it gives you 10/10 - good UI and UX can't be measured thru an automated tool, this stuff is measured by real users and metrics.

No doubt you might have some solid tech behind it, hackers won't stand a chance etc. but the UI is an absolute shocker.

But you did ask for an example, although nowhere near similar, here it is.

To say it doesn't matter if you don't test a website with well known and respected online tools like W3C validator, site checker pro, nibbler etc. to check code quality & how well it's performing is not something anyone with any web dev knowledge would ever agree with so you're on your own on that.
UI must be down to opinion as I don't like the UI of the website you linked to, I prefer one that opens up full width and I prefer a sticky header which the site you linked to doesn't even have. I agree it has some pretty in page colours but that kind of design doesn't work with physical retail products.

 

[billybob99]

It matters for sure, if all you want is 100% performance and 0 sales.

A lot of people on this thread with a lot of dev knowledge have already disagreed with most of what you've said, so I guess anyone can have dev knowledge, it doesn't mean its accurate.

That's probably the issue, you're building a site based on what you prefer and not what the customer prefers, several have already said this before.

As long as you're not planning to quit your job and go full time on this.

 

[Steven001]

It matters for sure, if all you want is 100% performance and 0 sales.

Performance has a direct impact on sales. 53% of people will leave a mobile page if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Poor code and errors also increase loading times, not just images.

A lot of people on this thread with a lot of dev knowledge have already disagreed with most of what you've said, so I guess anyone can have dev knowledge, it doesn't mean its accurate.

I've taken advice from many people on the look of the website and have improved it. If you had read the thread properly you would know this.

That's probably the issue, you're building a site based on what you prefer and not what the customer prefers, several have already said this before.

Seeing as everyone is different you can't make a site that everyone loves. Although I agree there are good layouts and bad layouts and mine has improved a lot.

As long as you're not planning to quit your job and go full time on this.

If this hits off of course I'll be quitting my job. Seeing as I am not yet paying for any advertising of any kind the fact is neither of us know whether this will be successful or not so you can't comment on future sales.

 

[fisicx]

Poor code and errors also increase loading times

A minuscule amount, nanoseconds for HTML and CSS. Serverside code has a bigger impact and none of the online tools can test this. All a waterfall can do is show you throttle points, it can’t analyse how well the code performs.

 

[Steven001]

A minuscule amount, nanoseconds for HTML and CSS. Serverside code has a bigger impact and none of the online tools can test this. All a waterfall can do is show you throttle points, it can’t analyse how well the code performs.

I agree mostly on HTML but loading external style sheets can slow things down if they are large and complex, yes php can be an issue and also Javascript which can really slow down a website, especially when you have to load bulky libraries into memory.

 

[billybob99]

If you get this working looking like that, you will motivate me to do something worthy with my time.

I really hope this works.

 

[fisicx]

I agree mostly on HTML but loading external style sheets can slow things down if they are large and complex, yes php can be an issue and also Javascript which can really slow down a website, especially when you have to load bulky libraries into memory.

Yes but you said poor code and errors can slow down a website. What you are describing is the site architecture.