Opinions Please!

[highlandstore]

Hi everybody! I am working hard on improwing our website, but the results are still not satisfactory. Our average monthly turnower has raised from about £700 last year to £2000 this year, but it is still not much. (We are getting about 200-300 visits a day with 1-5 orders a day)

Could you please have look at our website www.highlandstore.com and tell me what you like and don't like?
Maybe there is something wrong that I can't see, because I am too close to it?

I appreciate your time and thank you in advance.

[giant_u]

well

Trying to be critical, to be helpfull...

I'm not sure about the frontpage's colour scheme - the pink and burgendy kind of clash in my book, while the intro text contained in the main image is hard to read - the same is true for the shop location text on the right. These images obviously ad download time as while as not looking too great. Lastly (sorry) the flash bit at the top right is pretty pointless and some poeple seem to have a rabid dislike of any animation on a screen - might put some users off.

Do you have any idea of how many people are not making it past the home page? If those figures are healthy, ignore the above!

Once inside the shop, i think the look is much better, but one further quibble would be the horozontal size - it scrolls on a 15" monitor which I think, is still a bit of no no. Maybe move the stuff on the right, over & below to the bits on the left

Having said that, the extended info pages are great - exactly what you'd need to see before deciding whether to buy.

Only other comment would be the 'tell a friend' boxes under each product - look funny - don't know why.

sorry if this is a bit harsh, but I'm trying to help.

[jont]

Have to agree with Luke regarding the frontpage - the use of text on the image makes it very hard to read - may be worth splitting the images and having stand alone HTML text

The store section does not have the same feel as the homepage. The homepage has a red banner across the top and the rest are white with a person as part of the logo. It would make sense to use the same header as the frontpage (maybe slightly modded to suit) even keeping the flash if necessary and moving the card and security details down under the Trust UK logo in the right hand column

I pesonally have a thing against floating menus - as you scroll down the page this tends to obscure the fixed menu on the left and catches the eye as it moves - funky but distracting.

The product pages work very well - the images are very good and most have lots of info and larger images available.

5 orders from 300 visits is about the average so no real worries there. It may be worth adding an upsell feature (such as Normans at www.drillpine.biz) to increase sales and turnover.

On the whole the site looks good.

[BPJSURF]

I love your products. Your site could be doing much better with some tweaking. The thing you need to decide is are you willing to tweak in a way that will make the most difference to your customers. It’s obvious to me by the numbers you provided that you have a usability issue with the site.

I think your home page looks nice. However your catalog pages are completely different from your home page. Its design schizophrenia so first thing to do is use the site design of the home page in your catalog. Think one....
One design
One navigation type
Create your informational pages using the same design as the home page
create your catalog pages using the same design as your home page
Your currently using a fixed width center justified home page and a spanning design layout on the catalog pages??????
Fixed center or fixed left justified proven to be more effective.

Read a bit about web site studies completed by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association). There is a reason why the top commerce websites all use a similar design layout.

The fly out menus. They are cool if you’re a techie but you’re trying to sell stuff. I bet half your customers are over 40 and wear eye glasses. The usability studies on fly out menus and moving navigation have proven time and again that it confuses people and it’s difficult to operate. Eliminate the flyout menu they are crap!

Focus more on the Internet marketing of your website. You’re using 20 keyword phrases on your home page and you have no related text, links, alt tags, or any reference to the keyword phrases in your page titles. You should take time to do the research on your products and transfer that information back into the content of your website to make it more effective.
You need to focus your marketing effort to achieve better results.

Build more informational pages about your products or the manufactures that you sell. Your website is short on content. At the end of the day content delivers more visitors and more sales.

We have a few before and after examples of sites who suffered from similar problems. A good ecommerce professional can guide you to the next level. Here is a link from Actinic.com http://actinic.com/greektownimports.html with before and after examples. I imagine I could dig up a similar email sent to me by mike at Greektown that sounded just like the one you posted.

Brian

[highlandstore]

Thank you

I really appreciate your opinions- the're so valuable to me!

[NormanRouxel]

Hmmm....

I'd disagree somewhat with Brian regarding the dynamic menus. Sure they can be annoying if they're all over the place, but if they're for the single purpose of letting someone see all the product categories you have, then they save a LOT of mouse clicks and page loads.

I'd never recommend having them as the only way of navigating but it is there as a useful accessory should it be needed.

Indeed the actinic.com site Brian mentions uses them heavily, and somewhat ironically, as the sites meta includes: <META NAME="Owner" CONTENT="Actinic Distributor :: Sure Solutions, United States">

[jont]

dynamic menus. Sure they can be annoying if they're all over the place, but if they're for the single purpose of letting someone see all the product categories you have

Very true. Usability studies recommend no more than 7 items in a list or users get confused so the only option is for flyouts to get any sort of structure to a page and still maintain some form of design appeal.

Best to anchor the floating flyout down so it is in the same place and people can find it easily on each page - people are funny beggars and like continuity and familiarity - which is why as BPJSURF says most of the main e-commerce sites have a similar design concept.

[giant_u]

maybe

the trick with the dynamic menus is to keep them fixed at one spot on the page - i agree with norman that they save on clicks, but again, some people dispise them.

[NormanRouxel]

I'd rather hope that users are getting more skilled as time goes on.

For example Widows 9x and XP require users to use at least a 4 level dynamic menu (the good old "Start" button) to do almost anything other than run IE. We all use it so much that it's become second nature.

I'm an avid reader of Brian's posts as he puts a lot of time and thought into them.

PS. Sorry, Artur, if we've hijacked your topic too much.

[pinbrook]

Yep three things to fix.

Get the index page inline with the catalog pages, or indeed ditch it and open the site at catalog/index. Put the info about shop locations in the info/contact us.

ditch the menu flying up and down it is distracting

make the width of the site fit 800x600 res too

additionally if you want to provide food for SE spiders, add more descriptive text to your products

[PeteN]

Personally I think the flying menu can work well, most poeple are savvy enough to understand how to use them, and they do save a lot of clicks. The thing that would put me off the most was the site was very very slow to load, one page took 20secs (on a dial up) if I hadn't have wanted to look I wouldn't have bothered to wait. I think you should put your sections into a 2 colums layout and try to reduce the number of levels a customer needs to go into the site before he gets to the Buy Button

[NormanRouxel]

Re the jittery menu:

If Microsoft IE's implementation of the position:fixed style wasn't hopelessly broken those menus could remain in place without jumping about slightly.

[cdicken]

Hi there

I have taken the liberty of moving this to the 'Any Other Business' forum (with a redirect in the v7 Support topic) in order to try and keep the v7 topic just for Actinic support issues. Hope that's OK.

[Mike Hughes]

I assume you're making changes, as I got a 'service unavailable' message at first followed by a front page with links that seem to redirect back to the fron page.

Mike

[webyourbusiness]

I'd never recommend having them as the only way of navigating but it is there as a useful accessory should it be needed.

Bingo! If they are the ONLY means of navigation, you're sunk!

Indeed the actinic.com site Brian mentions uses them heavily, and somewhat ironically, as the sites meta includes: <META NAME="Owner" CONTENT="Actinic Distributor :: Sure Solutions, United States">

that's just an Actinic pseudo meta - Brian isn't the registrant..