Advice On Website

[Duncan Rounding]

Mens and Ladies doesn't seem like correct grammar. Where should the apostrophe go? - is one plural?

His and Hers would be better.

[garry]

Perhaps this is a modern trendy up-to-date site and we are all too old and stuck in the mud to apreashate it. is it selling products would love to know

[guccij]

Mens and Ladies doesn't seem like correct grammar.

Plain old Men and Women would be better. On second thoughts, make that Wimmin. She sure does look like the Private Eye stereotype

[sgtbash]

Wow, thanks all, loads of great ideas and things that now are obvious that need changing.

As for the typo - oh my word - how embarrassing; that is 100% due to my bad spelling. Oops - will get on it at 0859 am tomorrow morning

I will increase the text size, and change the colour to contrast against the background more.

Any advice on the £ would be appreciated, actinic seems to generate the wierd symbols every time I upload, even when i change them back to just '£'

Is there a decent guide to analytics (in general not actinic integration) around somewhere, it is set up, with an error on the home page - actinic generates an incorrect url when uploading for some reason. Im using it for basic hit logging and haven't really sunk my teeth into it.

I think i need to explain the site as i think everyone is approaching it as a full on ecommerce site...
Nineplus is a small, niche brand for the old school longboarder/surfer. Our customers are people who will avoid brands like Quicksilver, Ripcurl and Billabong just because they are main stream and corporate, they become, very much part of our family when buying into the brand, and return time and time again to buy nineplus because of what we are, not because of what we sell.

We tend to find that the type of person ordering from the site for first time is either already a nineplus customer and their local stockist is out of stock, or are already educated into who and what we are and 'want to be a part of it'

The 'family has grown' statement is talking about when Nineplus itself split into 3 earlier this year:
Nineplus - Dedicated to the soul of surfing
Hasu - Environmentally conscious apparel
Lotus Surfboards - Affordable Performance Surfboards
Quite rightly this should link to an explination and I have forgotten to do this, (it used to be on the home page and i have not got round to duplicating it)


I have found it quite hard to try and capture this ethos and create a site that doesn't follow the corporate template of the big 3 (Brands above). Especially as I am not an 'old school longboarder' =(
After working with a designer as the visual and myself who a programmer, we came up with what you see now - which up until last week, i thought was ok.

I am now working there full time in admin so have a lot more time to spend on the site (Previously i was freelance)

I completely appreciate all your comments and thoughts and will take them onboard to try and make the site more friendly to its users.

As for the images - I agree, I do not like the images used, and spoke this when they were shot, but i was overruled and they were used =(

Will have a go tomorrow and collating all your comments and follow a few through.

Thanks!

=)

[parklifeclothes]

Your link on page http://www.nineplus.com/acatalog/Carbon_Neutral.html takes you to nowhere and again doesn't instil confidence in your 'green' claims

[guccij]

Oops - will get on it at 0859 am tomorrow morning

You need to do this now. Leaving it for another 12 hours suggests to a potential customer that the site owner doesn't care enough.

That aside, I'm glad you will be taking some of the comments on board. Things, as my mate Tony used to say, can only get better.

One more thing - that typo is elsewhere on the site as well. Google nineplus fasion and it will show you where.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I found the lettering too small and the navigation confusing and difficult to find my way around the site.

It took me several minutes to be able to find any of the surf related products and initially assumed you only sold 5 or 6 garments and only when guccij mention surfboards did I realise I must have missed something, most customers won't hang around long enough to see what you have to offer.

[sgtbash]

Your link on page http://www.nineplus.com/acatalog/Carbon_Neutral.html takes you to nowhere and again doesn't instil confidence in your 'green' claims

oops, missing 'g' on 'org'

That will teach me for copy pasting =)

[RuralWeb]

We tend to find that the type of person ordering from the site for first time is either already a nineplus customer and their local stockist is out of stock, or are already educated into who and what we are and 'want to be a part of it'

That may be BUT they have not been educated in how to use your website - if they cannot find the products then they will leave and buy from your competitors.

You need to decide what the site is - if its ecommerce then it needs to follow the rules - if its an information site then you can do what you want BUT mix the two and you will fail.

[sgtbash]

It took me several minutes to be able to find any of the surf related products and initially assumed you only sold 5 or 6 garments and only when guccij mention surfboards did I realise I must have missed something, most customers won't hang around long enough to see what you have to offer.

Just a thought, I appreciate that the first few seconds are important in most things especially websites but what is the general thing that people are doing when browsing sites? That sounds like an odd question but when people enter shops, the majority will go to the left first and work clockwise, is there a majority pattern in the web commerce scene?

I also understand that all sales are good sales (especially in today's climate) but as you can probably tell the prices on our site are not competitive with other brands - our product is expensive, and that is because it is the 'top of the range'. The website is somewhere that our customers can come to buy our product direct from ourselves as they want to be a part of our brand, rather than because they dropped by on a random search for wetsuits on google and want to give it a try. I would say that a large percentage; and our 'Why did you buy from us' text box on the cart shows, that when people have bought something from us, it is because they have either already got a nineplus wetsuit, and want another, or their mate has one and they want one too, or in some cases they have been surfing for years and finally want to buy their Nineplus longboard.

[sgtbash]

...if they cannot find the products then they will leave...

I have been meaning to go over the navigation tree for a while but am unsure to what is the best way to approach it. I dont want to bombard the home page with reams of product as this would put off most of our regular customers, they know what they want and they know we have it. They dont need to be bombarded with this and that...
Hmm

Your comments regarding mixing informative sites and commerce sites is understood, but how would one go about making a hybrid site...
Surly there can be a happy medium...

[sgtbash]

Mens and Ladies doesn't seem like correct grammar. Where should the apostrophe go? - is one plural?

His and Hers would be better.

I like his and hers, may i steal that? =)

[guccij]

I dont want to bombard the home page with reams of product as this would put off most of our regular customers

Regular customers do not grow your business. New customers do this. If you're not getting new customers through the door, you might as well hang up your boots now.

Currently, I don't see much for a new customer on your website. There wasn't enough for to make me stay and browse, anyway.

After looking again at your site, I went back to FatFace, and although the site is currently looking crap with stupid Christmas stuff everywhere, it's well-branded, with easy navigation and enough on there to tell me without question what the brand is all about.

[sgtbash]

Agreed, completely.

FatFace's site is a really nice site, and what I am seeing time and time again that nicer ecommerce sites are not built on actinic's framework, I myself as a programmer am constantly being restricted in what i can do with the site due to its method of creation and non dynamic pages.

Maybe it is time to move on....

(Not to mention its extortionate price tag)

[bamboo]

Agreed, completely.

FatFace's site is a really nice site, and what I am seeing time and time again that nicer ecommerce sites are not built on actinic's framework, I myself as a programmer am constantly being restricted in what i can do with the site due to its method of creation and non dynamic pages.

Maybe it is time to move on....

(Not to mention its extortionate price tag)

A bad workman ....