What do you think of my website?

[Steven001]

I'm almost ready to launch my business, just need to reconnect with a supplier for products and then set the payment system to live. Business will be based around custom printed t-shirts with unique designs and paid subscriptions to health & fitness articles.

Please let me know what you think: https://alt-fit.com

Disclaimer: prices have not been properly set, they may be cheaper in the end depending on what kind of deal I can get from the supplier/printer.

Thanks!

 

[Alan]

Interestingly a site that works better on desktop for instance what is 'CA0' on the desk top nav menu?

Contrast on size selection is no good.

 

[Steven001]

H Alan,
I'm trying to understand your comment. The link you provided leads to the cart page, I don't see CA0?
What do you mean by contrast on size selection?

 

[Alan]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JcwzVt250QL8J_NypG9aCO0ebp3TWsZw

 

[Alan]

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vUZetuboES3L2KlbOPDA9hVC82z6UNRy

 

[Steven001]

I see it now! This site has been tested on Android, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.
What kind of browser & o/s are you using?

 

[Alan]

Google Chrome

Obviously not tested well enough

 

[Steven001]

Weird.
This is my view on Chrome running Windows 7 Ultimate

LHS is mobile size, RHS is dekstop. No issues.

I noticed the font is wrong on your screen, for some reason you aren't viewing the font that is installed on the website. I think maybe your o/s or you have blocked it?

 

[Alan]

Looks like you don't have a font stack that works on all devices

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7202914

You have no back up font stack

font-family: corbel;

Thats what happens when you use a microsoft only font

 

[Steven001]

Thanks for the link, seems the custom font was the problem. I'll look into this.

 

[Alan]

No problem, hope the feed back helps a bit.

Some other feedback on desktop ( maybe font related ) is text is too small for my liking and the scroll on the home page is annoying.

The home page real-estate is wasted - with a title 'Welcome' and no call to action and to be frank no idea of the purpose of the website, when I scroll down it starts to look like a food receipe blogger website.

I'm guessing the objective is to sell tee shirts - but it fails at that objective - buy hey I can subscrive to something for £5 a month - what am I subscribing to I have no idea!!! I could wait for that really slow text to scroll to find out - but hey 3 seconds have gone ...

Ok lets say I hang round long enough and click more on the recipe - what it doesn't give me more it, I have to be a subscribe.

I'll be frank -
a very poor effort

 

[Steven001]

I could always change "welcome" to "buy t-shirts", I presume that's what you mean when you say "no call to action". I could get rid of the panel and dedicate a new about us page instead.

I'm thinking I could create a slider above the t-shirts scroller with the first slide explaining benefits to subscribing with it linked to the main subscription sign up page.

"starts to look like a food recipe blogger website"
That's the article side of the website. I'm trying to make this a unique experience, web-shop, article subscription service and a community forum all rolled into one.
To access all the articles you have to pay, this is part of the business model. I agree there needs to be more info on why you should subscribe.

"a very poor effort"
haha okay... I'll make some changes and post back when I can!

Cheers

 

[fisicx]

Don't have scrolling products. It's dated and a bit naff. Show the products as a grid.

However, decide what you want the site to achieve: sell t-shorts or get people fit. It does neither at the moment.

You ask me to subscribe for £5/month but don't tell me what I get for my money. What are you offering that is any different to the thousands of alternate free fitness sites?

I can't see anything on the site that is going to help me get fit so I'm really not sure why anyone would want to pay you anything.

As an aside, I clicked to buy a T-shirt and you added £4.99 shipping. Don't do this. The price I see should be the price I pay.

 

[Alan]

As an aside, I clicked to buy a T-shirt and you added £4.99 shipping.

I disagree, it is OK to add shipping, shipping is different to product, e.g. if you order 2 it is still £4.99 shipping

BUT make sure you have a delivery / shipping link in the footer that explains the shipping costs (UK world wide etc .. ) this where experienced shoppers look - right now you have a link called legals - this make the site look amateur not having clear links - delivery - returns, that is what people are looking for when checking you out before ordering..

AND use FREE shipping as a sales tool, on a header banner for instance - free shipping on orders of 3 or more tee-shirts, kills two birds with one stone, covers shipping AND says you sell tee-shirts...

ALTHOUGH - don't use sliders - as fisicx says they just don't help conversions and makes the site look amateur. If you want movement in 2018 - use a video - e.g. a professional video of your tee-shirts being modelled ...

 

[g]

>Please let me know what you think...

Honestly, and constructively/objectively rather than simply personal preference... it's poor - 'an amateur effort from 2004', it fails on clarity,structure, design, visual appearance, copy and overall 'vibe'.

There's many good examples of more effective alternatives and places from which you can learn what's appropriate and why - which will enable useful assessment of what you currently have.

 

[Steven001]

>Please let me know what you think...

Honestly, and constructively/objectively rather than simply personal preference... it's poor - 'an amateur effort from 2004', it fails on clarity,structure, design, visual appearance, copy and overall 'vibe'.

There's many good examples of more effective alternatives and places from which you can learn what's appropriate and why - which will enable useful assessment of what you currently have.

While other members have provided specific information which enables me to make changes, you have not. Your comment seems more like a dig than anything approaching constructive for instance "an amateur effort from 2004" - the site meets W3C standards compliance and is MYSQL database driven using the latest coding practices to mitigate all forms of hacking. Nothing like that existed in 2004. I hand coded every page and PHP script to ensure a unique experience to avoid looking like all the other one-click solution websites such as Magento/Wordpress which I detest. It's current 2018 tech and it's bulletproof.
If you are talking about adding some fancy JavaScript or front end visual effects, that's another thing altogether but as mentioned previously your comment has no specifics.

====================

I'm currently trying to find a new hosting company as my current host stupidly made an update which blocks insecure SSL/TLS requests, including TLS 1.0 and TLS 1.1 meaning that clients using Internet Explorer and older versions of Safari are unable to connect. They have no work around for this apart from suggesting I use CloudFlare which is not an acceptable solution so I'm looking for a VPS host right now and then development can continue.

Regards,
Steven

 

[lazypbx]

+1 on scrolling. Get rid of it.

I second that the website does not look professional, quite amateur and dated. While this might feel like a dig, the message is that there's copious problems YOU can't see, and it's a waste of time to list them all. It's time to get a professional designer on board. Your comments about MySQL etc.. indicate you're code focused, that's great, but you don't have good UI sense. While you might detest much of Magento/Wordpress there are also design conventions you should follow. Hire someone who's experience to re-design the website if you want it to look professional. As an aside: it's hazardous and smacks of inexperience to think that because you hand coded every page it's bulletproof, in fact it's quite the opposite.

Finally what do you do? Very mixed message 'Check out our cool t-shirts' / 'Lean Muscle Food Recipe', even the t-shirt designs have a mixed message. What's your business ? Why would I subscribe ? What's your forum for? This also comes back to consulting with a good website designer (not coder).

 

[fisicx]

I hand coded every page and PHP script to ensure a unique experience to avoid looking like all the other one-click solution websites such as Magento/Wordpress which I detest.

Maybe you do detest them but they work and people like them. It matters not one jot what you like, it only matters what prospective customers like. And in the majority of cases they like wordpress.

But the site does look very dated. It looks hand coded and doesn't work with the lifestyle aspirations of those who may want your services.

White backgrounds and a 'standard' layout work. Don't mess with what works.

As an aside, I still see TNR not corbel.

 

[Steven001]

+1 on scrolling. Get rid of it.
I second that the website does not look professional, quite amateur and dated. While this might feel like a dig, the message is that there's copious problems YOU can't see, and it's a waste of time to list them all. It's time to get a professional designer on board. Your comments about MySQL etc.. indicate you're code focused, that's great, but you don't have good UI sense. While you might detest much of Magento/Wordpress there are also design conventions you should follow. Hire someone who's experience to re-design the website if you want it to look professional. As an aside: it's hazardous and smacks of inexperience to think that because you hand coded every page it's bulletproof, in fact it's quite the opposite.

You have to concede that this is your opinion, not possibly shared by everyone else. I want this website to be unique which is why the background isn't the standard white color and the layout isn't the standard square box block-out. I want people to instantly recognize my brand. This is my personal business but the other website I hand coded from scratch follows the same protocol you described as the clientele and type of website requires it. I design to tailor the look to the type of business and designing and maintaining websites is my job 6 days a week.

I wouldn't ever hire someone to do what I can do but I do concede there are some issues with the UI, the menu system should follow the page down, I'm going to look into designing something that pops up after the header is scrolled out of view. A simple UI with possibly large pop up box under a linked heading with sub links to specific pages. General web control stuff.

When I said bulletproof I was of course hinting at the level of security implemented in the code, not the front end. Yeah as you have guessed, back end code is a specialty.

Finally what do you do? Very mixed message 'Check out our cool t-shirts' / 'Lean Muscle Food Recipe', even the t-shirt designs have a mixed message. What's your business ? Why would I subscribe ? What's your forum for? This also comes back to consulting with a good website designer (not coder).

This is very helpful, thank you. You're right I need to instantly tell people what it's all about and to buy buy a t-shirt and/or sign up and why they should sign up. I'm currently strategizing on how to accomplish this. Possibly add a main banner at the top of the index page to act as an advertisement. Maybe 2 static images which rotate, first one offering clothing for sale, second one offering subscription and discounts on clothing.

 

[Steven001]

Maybe you do detest them but they work and people like them. It matters not one jot what you like, it only matters what prospective customers like. And in the majority of cases they like wordpress.

But the site does look very dated. It looks hand coded and doesn't work with the lifestyle aspirations of those who may want your services.

White backgrounds and a 'standard' layout work. Don't mess with what works.

As an aside, I still see TNR not corbel.

It might be a shocker to you but yes I want it to look hand coded, not some out of the box software that anyone can one-click-install. I agree it needs some pzazz and I will def. work on that!

By the way you're not the first person to mention the font issue, must be an Apple thing as the font is Microsoft based and Apple dropped support for this Microsoft Corbel font a while back

 

[fisicx]

Just because it’s hand coded doesn’t mean it has to look naff. I hand code all my Wordpress themes and they don’t look hand coded.

It’s all in the CSS

 

[Awinner2]

I cannot understand why T-Shirt designs and paid subscriptions to health and fitness articles belong on the same site. Confuses me and probably others too?

 

[Steven001]

I cannot understand why T-Shirt designs and paid subscriptions to health and fitness articles belong on the same site. Confuses me and probably others too?

The idea is to offer people discount vouchers for clothing if they sign up to the monthly subscription service. I'm trying to tie the 2 together as much as possible to expand profit and get regular money flowing in.

 

[Steven001]

I made some changes and want to thank those here who were brutally and constructively honest, you were right! As I delved deeper into adjusting and replacing elements with new ones I began to realize it's not hitting the spot look and feel wise.
Here's the new home page so far: https://alt-fit.com/

More work will be done on the home page as I want to include some products from a latest range and a discount offer, possibly a 2 panel split width.

The subscribe sign up form is gone as well as the forum activity include. The subscription page now shows a new banner in the same style as the home page: https://alt-fit.com/subscribe

I haven't finished with the subscription side yet as I'm going to make quite a few articles accessible and free to read to give potential subscribers an idea of whether it is something they want to pay for.

I haven't worked on the menu/ui yet but that will be coming.
Thanks again

 

[fisicx]

So it's not a fitness site anymore, it's now just a site selling tshirts.

On this page: https://alt-fit.com/shop you have repeated products. Put all the benito shirts on one page and let the customer choose the colours. When they choose the colour the image should change to show the colour. And make the image bigger - as big as possible.

And get rid of ALL the backgrounds. Keep it clean and simple: black text on a white background.

It still looks very dated (and not in a good retro way). The layout isn't conducive to conversions - on the product pages for example you have this tiny image on the left with a big blank area on the right and below this another box with some random description.

The checkout isn't well designed - why for example do you need two boxes for my name. And are you really shipping to all those countries?

Errors take me back to the top of the page - I had to scroll down to see what was missing. And then I got taken off site to Nochex. Which is a problem as I wanted to pay with PayPal. And there is no link back to the site to amend my order. There is no need these day to go off site - you can easily integrate payments into the site.

Look at some really good ecommerece sites selling clothing and see how they present the product and manage payments. Copy their model.

 

[Steven001]

"So it's not a fitness site anymore, it's now just a site selling tshirts."
Not just selling tshirts as there is a forum on health & fitness, I'll be linking this to the health & fitness articles and the health & fitness articles to the subscription service which will be linked to tshirt sales as I'll be offering discounts for subscribers - that's the idea, get it all working together.

Re: payment processors;
PayPal is out of the question for me, I refuse to pay their ridiculous fees and their company is becoming increasingly politically charged.

"you can easily integrate payments into the site" not true with a custom built website. I had significant problems with PayZone, I made a thread about this here: https://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/threads/payzone-issues.390436/

I'm now with Nochex as it's really easy to integrate, similar to WorldPay and that's the way it's going to stay.

Some valid points. Haven't worked on the rest yet. The shop page will be vastly redesigned as will product pages which are merely templates at the moment.
Cheers

 

[fisicx]

That's your decision about paypal - which is a pity as I saw a massive increase in sales on one site when I added this as a payment option.

You still have the awful slider on the homepage. Bin it now.

What will be the main focus of the site? The shop or the subscription service?

If I subscribe for £5/month I get 20% off a tshirt costing £18. Which means I need to buy at least 2 tshirts per month to make subscribing worthwhile. Not sure that's a big incentive. Paying for articles and health news is not an incentive considering the thousands of site already doing this for free.

I get what you are trying to do but people don't consume content like this anymore. The days of a one-stop-shop are behind us. People move from platform to platform as their needs change.

 

[lazypbx]

I think you're either selling t-shirts or running fitness forum..choose. If you want to offer members fitness merchandise (not sure where t-shirts fit here) from time to time then you can post it or mail it, but don't put a shop on the front page.

If you want to sell t-shirts.. well, you've got a lot of competition and it will be a tough nut to crack. You're probably better off with a market stall with that small range.

 

[Alan]

Like it or not when I ran an an e-commerce business simply adding Paypal saw sales go up 15%.

 

[Steven001]

@lazypbx I don't envisage any problems selling the tshirts as they are unique and I already know the target market very well and have lots of contacts plus I'll be advertising on Outbrain and Google ads. The range will grow of course but slowly as I'm the designer too, lots to handle!

@fisicx @Alan PayPal, I'll think about it but can you tell me what the effect of having PayPal as well as taking cards is? Will the people who may pay with card decide to use PayPal instead because they're logged in? I'm thinking of prices as PayPal isn't cheap to use fee wise.
Re: the subscription. If someone isn't interested in h&f articles they won't be subscribing anyway. I will offer vouchers at a lesser percentage though for non subscribers, periodically for special offers etc.

Thanks for the comments.

Made quite a few updates, styling, new UI (not finished - no mobile yet) this is a test page so not everything is working.
https://alt-fit.com/newtest

 

[fisicx]

It's just that a huge number of people already have PayPal accounts and use it to make purchases. I use it to pay for flights, buy loads of stuff, sell on ebay, transfer money to friends and family and so on.

 

[Alan]

Absolutely ... if it has paypal I have feeling of some sort of protection ... plus generally it is easier, one click you have my delivery address, so easy no typing of cvc etc etc

 

[g]

Though anything less than 'brutal honesty' is inappropriate, I've absolutely no desire to be rude and hence tempered my initial comment accordingly.

Having decided to stay away from things where I can't be of help (either because I don't know enough, or resistance to my input), I do however find myself here again.

There's been a lot of good objective and well-reasoned input, often from those who actually know their stuff rather than simply interjecting opinion.

And much of it seems to have been either ignored or railed-against with personal preference and seriously flawed non-logic.

Honestly, Steven+some-number... please take more note of much of what's been suggested. Without it, you will almost certainly fail... and probably 'blame the market, or something else'.

For the forty-plus years I've been developing businesses for myself and others, among the most significant mistakes I've made and have often seen in others, is 'doing stuff for which you lack appropriate knowledge'. Such scenarios are bad-enough when 'you know you don't know enough', and far worse when 'you don't know you know enough, but think you do'.

Anyway, enough. 'Kirk out.'
(Although I won't return to this thread, I'm of course reachable in the usual way.)

 

[g]

My error...

There's a typo toward the end of my comment, which should read:

Such scenarios are bad-enough when 'you know you don't know enough', and far worse when 'you don't know you don't know enough, but think you do'.​

 

[Steven001]

@fisicx I just checked with Nochex who I'm with now and they charge 2.9% + 20p per transaction for UK registered Visa, MasterCard and Maestro. From what I can see PayPal charges 3.4% + 20p so it is a bit more expensive but really not that much in it.

I had a rethink and if it increases sales then I'll do it! Have to check with my current provider to see if they have a problem with me adding PayPal or not, don't want to burn any bridges at this early stage.

Work
I've updated the UI, now a global change, mobile version created too: https://alt-fit.com
Working on the shop page next. Will post back when a chunk more has been done.

 

[fisicx]

All you have to do is offer both payment options at checkout.

If you use the PayPal API customers can make payments without ever leaving the site. Demo Here.

Moving the menu to top is wrong, it should be under or next to the logo.

Get rid of all the backgrounds and the product slider.

 

[Steven001]

@fisicx I'll do that - 2 buttons at the end of the customer form, one for Nochex, one for PayPal but I need to check with Nochex first to see if they're okay with it. Can't use that demo, it's a plugin designed for WordPress, as mentioned this is a custom built website and I had major problems with PayZone which uses an API.

New shop is up: https://alt-fit.com/shop
Will work on individual product pages next. Possibly add more to product description and as suggested fill the space with something practical.
Cheers

 

[fisicx]

Not suggesting you can use that demo, it was just to show you how the PayPal API works. Very little of the code you saw was wordpress specific - the form is custom code and the rest was supplied by PayPal.

 

[Steven001]

@fisicx thanks. I'm going to contact Nochex tomorrow and see what they feel about PayPal, not expecting much resistance, I hope!

Made some more updates, shop now has prices + added function to copy the discount code to the clipboard when the button is pressed. https://alt-fit.com/shop

Also worked on product pages, added new product care section with fabric care icons and instructional text. Also added new in stock label to main div holding the product image which is linked though to the legal section of the sales page describing what in stock means. https://alt-fit.com/shop-?1003-Phoenix-tshirt-navy

Haven't finished with product pages yet, I'm going to create a clickable product image which pops up a larger version of the product. I'll make a separate system for storing and retrieving large images to reduce overheads and keep things running fast.

 

[Steven001]

Apologies for the double post. Just thought I'd share some art of a new clothing design finished today.