Feedback on site

[alloneword]

I seem to remember there being somewhere where users could post links to sites for review - would that be here?

[acompton]

Here is fine. Viewers will need a URL though.

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk
Great board games and cards games you won't find in the High Street

[alloneword]

ok thanks

Here's the URL:

http://www.turn-turtle.com

It's just gone live and it's getting increasing amounts of traffic currently around 100 hits per day from Google and print ads.

What I'm looking to do is convert these hits to sales.

I know more text needs to be added which should help things along. We're also continuing to extend the range of products.

One more thing is that I'm going to categorise products by brand and populate these sections with duplicates. The brands seem to be the key factor.

Any thought and feedback on these issues would be most welcome.

Jeff

[fleetwood]

Hi Jeff

On first entry, you have a nice professional looking site.
I particularly like the engraved or shadowed style used for the sidebar and sectioning headings.

One element I am not so keen on (and probably more important than the above) is the product layout.
I'm viewing at 1024x768 and I get a relatively small picture, surrounded by a lot of white space, with all the descriptive text and price pushed over to the right.
This gives a rather unsettling view (the right-handed equivalent of a top-heavy look, if you see what I mean).
Its the fact that the picture is very small compared with the amount of text, that creates this unbalanced view.
It may look better with the text on the left, and the picture on the right.

Only had a quick look, so nothing further to add just now.

Best of luck

Martin

[alloneword]

Thanks Martin

Yes I get that in Firefox although IE 6 seems ok - I'll need to tweak the template code.

Jeff

[Duncan Rounding]

Nice site Jeff.
Just a couple of points I found:
1. There's a broken link from the marine safety image on the RHS to:
http://www.turn-turtle.com/acatalog/Safety.html
2. You do not have a redirect to homepage or a custom 404 error page - I saw this with the broken link above
3. You don't have an index page in your acatalog directory, hence I could list the contents of that directory with:
http://www.turn-turtle.com/acatalog/
4. I could also list your cgi-bin directory - I would check your directory permissions

[gary in jersey]

looks great

nice to see another jersey site on the forum... good luck..!

[alloneword]

Thanks for taking the time to have a look at the site and thanks for pointing out those issues.

btw nice work on newblades.co.uk Gary.

Jeff


http://www.alloneword.uk.net - Web design & development in Jersey

[jont]

Hi Jeff,

nice looking layout with some good colour combinations - elegantly simple - which I like

If I am going to be picky (and hence the reply) I would look at the text you use for the side box heading - there appears to be a drop-shadow or some sort of emboss effect going on which due to the size of the font does not look that neat and precise. I have a very good monitor but it comes over as a little blurred - may be worth going for either a full, fatter font face or making it more simple.

The "Gift Ideas" images at the top centre of the page.. this is not tied into the design and at first I thought it was either a banner advert or it would change on a section by section basis .. which is didn't. It really looks like it has been dropped in there as a last minute thing and is not in-keeping with the rest of the layout which is very well executed.

Maybe worth losing the home, contact and site map from the top right of the page (hard to see due to colour choice) and simply adding site map into the navigation bar as home and contact are already featured there.

Nice site - hope it does well for you.


John

[remmo]

Add me to the "I like your site" list

The colours and layout look good. One thing (and this is being picky) I am looking at your site with a large high resolution monitor - the result is that the banner at the top of the site looks a bit small. It's got a bit of a lost feel to it, almost like its been stuck in as an after thought. This may only be a problem on high res screens like mine though. Great site

[ragwort]

Yet another plaudit with an accompanying niggle! I agree the banner looks a little out of proportion but my main criticism is the two graduated headers running at 90 degrees to one another - looks a little ugly.

Otherwise terrific.

Nigel

www.boothandbooth.co.uk

[pinbrook]

the index page doesn't fit onto 800x600 but the rest of the pages do

the links at the bottom of the page are left aligned they would look better centred.

agree with the others about the graphic in the header to the gift section its the wrong size/proportion - it also had me confused as I assumed it was a banner advert and not a link to your own site

[David@MPL]

Nice site

Personally, when I shop online I like to be able to find the company's phone number (and address) very easily. However with just a quick glance I didn't find yours and clicking "Contact" just took me to an email form.

Other than that it looks good, well done.

[alloneword]

Again, thanks for taking the time to look and thanks for the feedback.

Is it really that obvious that the gift ideas banner was a last minute thing?

The site has been live now since the weekend and although through Google and some print advertising the site has recieved around 500 visits, we still haven't had any orders. Would anyone agree that this is normal for a new site and it will take a while for things to get going?

I really take on board the point regarding phone number I think it's important to give potential customer confidence in the credibility of the site.

Jeff

www.alloneword.uk.net - web design & development from Jersey

[fleetwood]

Jeff
I wouldn't panic about lack of sales just yet.
First up, a fair proportion of your visitors so far are probably via this BB with people taking a critical look like you asked, rather than seeking out your products.
Second, you are not selling 'impulse purchase' items (DVD's, CD's etc), so its less likely visitors will buy on first sight. More likley that they will bookmark you if they like what they see, and come back and purchase when the need arises.
A fair conversion rate is thought to be around 1%, although this will differ wildley from site to site.
Personally, I would have been happy to receive ONE order within a month of launch of our site, as I wasn't expecting a rush, although as it turned out, we had our first order on day 2, and increased exponentially thereafter.
Give it time, and good luck (and let us know when that first order rolls in )

Martin