Opinions Please on New Shop

[Paul Cooper]

Tracey,

I'm still very new at this html stuff. This is what I have in the product description and this problem affects many of over one hundred products that has the data sheet button:

A self assembly kit of parts to construct a 10A continuous load rated speed controller.

Data sheet below applies to 1500-001 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 10 / 11 / 12 & 13

!!<<a href="http://www.technobots.co.uk/Data%20Sheets/1500-001.pdf"><img src="GenImages\Data Sheet Button.jpg" ><br>>!!

I tried that closing tag but no joy.
Edit my mistake, I put the closing tag after the >!! not before - I said I was new to this! Thank you Tracy

[TraceyHand]

glad you figured it out...I typed several replies and every one was wrong LOL
I'm a bit under the weather today and my brain isn't functioning!
Someone might come along and offer a more "proper" way to format the html too...but it's not my forte...I speak "pigeon" html

[leehack]

You really should have width, height and the alt attribute added to the img tag as a bare minimum. Border should be another with it being a link. Make it standard to include those 4 to any img tag you add.

[bamboo]

Hi Paul
I'm in an e-commerce "coaching club" & we regularly "critique" other peoples sites from both SEO & the human readers point of view. So with this in mind please don't be offended by any of the items I raise below. They are my personal opinion based on my own findings and those of my fellow members. They are things that have improved the conversion rates on all number of e-commerce sites within the club.
They are in no particular order just what I have found going trough your order process.

When the search engine visits a site it goes down through the columns of text. The first bit of text it finds on your page is in the white frame & non of the text in that frame is keyword optimised.
To see the text Google sees put your URL into the search box, click on the cache & select text only view from Googles header. Do the same for your top three competitors & you will see a big difference.

The sliders need to be done away with. They do make the site look amateurish. Losing the frames would help. There are many different Actinic templates that will do a better job.

Blue writing on yellow is a big turn off. People are accustomed to seeing blue underlined HYPERLINKS not body copy.

There is nothing on your homepage that really tells me that I am in a shop. It looks like a content site Again look at your competition & cherry pick what they do well.

You are wasting your above the fold space (this refers to the first bit of the page that opens in the browser window). The banner is too big & meaningless.
Your logo is frankly boring. Robots are exciting things and your site needs to be exciting for those new to the game & even for serial robot builders.

None of your hyperlinks are "no follow" so any search engine spiders that visit get locked into pointless spider loops.

Despite all this you have a seemingly excellent PageRank of 4 but this is a common page rank amongst Actinic sites. It seems Google likes Actinics basic layouts, (well done Actinic).

In my "club" we have just had a big exchange of views on what works regarding buy buttons. The upshot is that the bigger & clearer the buy button is the more people click on it.
The nearer it is to the product image the more people click on it.
The button text as a big part to play as well. In order of preference its "Add to shopping cart", "Add to cart" with "Add to basket" coming in a poor third. All the other combinations including chopping basket images just fail miserably.

Colour of the button also matters a lot as to whether people click on it or not. Pick a colour that contrasts with the rest of the page.

When a product is added to the basket the text doesn't line up properly & looks amateurish.
Here's the thing. People do not like shopping online. Even though there is more & more doing it if they are given a reason no matter how small they will abandon the shopping process. This is a biggie.

Lose this line altogether
"Unfortunately City Link are in our experience finding any excuse not to honour their insurance cover."
All it says in the customers minds is "why the hell are you still using them, morons!"
This lack of service is between you & your carrier it is not something your customers need to know about!

Get all your dates UP TO DATE!! I can see 2006 & even 2005 all over your site. A "get out of here fast" trigger if ever there was one!

You do not make it clear anywhere on site that there is a minimum order in operation. Again a cardinal sin that only encourages shoppers to bale out as quickly as possible.

You need to have your newsletter opt in on the homepage.

That's just some of the things that can easily be done to what should become a very profitable site.

[Paul Cooper]

Derek,

Well that gives me one hell of a lot to think about, some of which I would need to research to find out what it means like "no follow".

The line regarding city link copied across from our existing website and was put on out of shear anger at the treatment from them and i wonder why we still use them but point taken.

I do put the minimum order value on the T&C's page plus I repeat it under the cart summary on the right hand bar, is there anywhere else you feel it should be? The newsletter opt in, by that do you mean not to have the log in open in a new window but for the user to type direct into boxes on the home page (not that I know how to do that but that's another story)?

I was really quite happy with the site but it's been so useful having other critical reviews that I will delay the launch until I can implement what I can. I don't want to launch and then significantly change its appearence a week later.

Many thanks

Paul

[Paul Cooper]

Derek,

Working through your list of comments and I am starting to wonder whether you were looking at our old site rather than the new one. Comments about the shopping cart image rather than text (old site used icon, new one has "Add to Cart", and I maybe going mad but I cannot find the reference to the City Link comment on the new site, the reference about the white frame which is on the old site again (not that I understand frames but they happen by default on the old package).

Just to check, the new website is at http://www.technobots.co.uk/actalog/test

Thanks

Paul