site feedback : sweets2yourdoor.co.uk

[davie_ne1]

Hi all

I was wondering if a few of you more experienced web guru's out their would mind taking a look at my retail site.

CAUTION: THIS IS A LIVE SITE !!

http://www.sweets2yourdoor.co.uk

Any suggestion or ideas would be greatly appreciated

I noticed that only around 1% of my visitors turn into customers is this normal ?

Cheers

Davie

[jont]

Hi David,

I did not venture much past the homepage TBH. The homepage is awash with confusion and very bright imagery ... there does not seem to be much focus or continuity where items are placed. Eg:

the basket is repeated twice on the page.
the delivery details are broken with a weights conversion guide
there is no obvious delineation between the side bars and the central content

On the product pages you need to get more keywords into the products - especially when using the 1 product per section trick - at the moment most of the keywords are ingredients (which will be mainly the same across a wide range of the products)

Have you looked at maybe offering a "retro" section .... I imagine a lot of users that grew up in the 70's are now very net aware and buying online and would love to see some of the old favourites to take them back to the long hot summer holidays ... even if the products are slightly different you can always offer similar alternatives.

Your site is a nightmare for sweet-toothed bloaters like me trying to loose weight..... maybe should start the diet next week....

[Luddite]

I noticed that only around 1% of my visitors turn into customers is this normal ?

From reading other threads I think 1% is about average. Aside from that, not much to add to Jonts post above.
Nick

BTW - I would in no way consider myself to be an 'experienced web guru'!

[acompton]

I think the use of bright colours is appropriate to the product - but the home page is a little overwhelming Particularly the yellow-on-red text (Advanced Search is almost unreadable).

A few observations:
Basket totals at the top - is it "Your Basket" or "My Basket"?

"All products sugar free" - A surprising claim from a sweet store. I looked at the Mars Bar and what's on top of the ingredients list? - sugar! To be fair, there is a sugar/gelatin/nut content chart at the bottom of the product.

The header: "sweets2yourdoor > category > product" - if you click on sweets2yourdoor it takes you to Advanced Search.

About Us page:
"Why not call in to collect your order and browse our full renage of over 700 of your favourite sweets" - What's "reange"?

BTW: I don't consider myself a web or e-commerce guru, but I have just crossed over the 1% conversion barrier after 3 months trading.

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

[jont]

our full renage of over 700 of your favourite sweets" - What's "reange"?

A typo like that

[davie_ne1]

"All products sugar free" - A surprising claim from a sweet store. I looked at the Mars Bar and what's on top of the ingredients list? - sugar! To be fair, there is a sugar/gelatin/nut content chart at the bottom of the product.

they are actuall link to show

"view all products"
"all gelatine free"
"all sugar free"

but I can see where you might get confused.

[davie_ne1]

the basket is repeated twice on the page.
the delivery details are broken with a weights conversion guide
there is no obvious delineation between the side bars and the central content

On the product pages you need to get more keywords into the products - especially when using the 1 product per section trick - at the moment most of the keywords are ingredients (which will be mainly the same across a wide range of the products)

When I first did the site I only had 1 basket at the very top of the page, then the other week I found the great little fix wrote by Graham bradley

So I put that in and it works great.

I agree with what you are saying though - 2 baskets is not good.

Will change to only 1

Keywords:

I had thought about this earlier.

The best way that I could think to impliment it was to create a customvar which displayed a bit of text about the product beneath the image and to manually write in meta tags for each product category.

an example of what I have done is here:

http://www.sweets2yourdoor.co.uk/aca...ERRY_LIPS.html

[davie_ne1]

The header: "sweets2yourdoor > category > product" - if you click on sweets2yourdoor it takes you to Advanced Search.

it takes you to :

http://www.sweets2yourdoor.co.uk/acatalog/index.html

which is the actinic index page.

I don't really use this page as the site root page is

http://www.sweets2yourdoor.co.uk/index.html

Is their any way to set-up actinic so that if someone clicks on the sweets2yourdoor it takes them to the root page

[jont]

LOL - quote from site "yes they still taste like soap"

[davie_ne1]

LOL - quote from site "yes they still taste like soap"

yep

they are scented sweets, so they do taste like soap.

You'd be surprised how many people ask that question

[davie_ne1]

update

Update:

Did a complete overhaul of the site over the weekend, taking into account some of the comments made

Your revised feedback would be appreciated ?

n.b. I have not have a chance to revise the meta stuff on each product page yet

[fleetwood]

There is a box half way down the lefthand sidebar that is headed "Can't find them?"

I looked everywhere, and your right, I can't find 'them'.

Maybe you should add some text before its too late !

On a more serious note, you are happily trumpeting "fast delivery £6.95 per order". I'd suggest this is might well put folk off, unless they are buying in bulk.
Remember that a lot of web buyers are used to free postage.
Whilst I don't advocate that, unless you can do so and still make a profit, £6.95 postage for sweets seems way too high.

On the design front - centre headers (having a party etc), are incomplete, and the first category I clicked - 'new additions' - was empty.

The T&C and track your order detail both include multiple typos and spelling mistakes.

This looks like a rushed job, and you would be better to test and trial (ask for opinions etc) BEFORE taking the site live.

As a potential customer, I'd have to ask myself - if the site is sloppy, will the service be too?

'About Us' shows a nice pic of your shop. Whilst it looks well stocked, the first question that sprung immediately into my mind was "how are they going to process my order from there?". I'm sure you must have other additional premises, but that was my first thought!

I'm sorry to be so critical, as I like the fun look of the site (it does say 'sweets' to me), but your better off hearing it here, than not hearing it from lost custom.

Martin

[Mr Bump]

Hi,

just noticed four typos in track an order I think! -

1) recieved - received
2) dispacth - dispatched
3) recipt - receipt
4)Christam - Christmas

I can't spell for toffee but my better half is a proof reader!

[davie_ne1]

Thanks for the input guys

Spelling - this has never been my strong point (wish actinic had a spell checker )

Delivery - At the moment our average customer spend is around £40 per transaction. The way that I set it up was to set a fixed delivery price no matter how much you order in the hope that they will order more. Some customers spend in excess of £300 so I assume that it's working as I intended. I do take your point though if you only wanted 250g of sweets paying £6.95 to have them delivered is a lot. Will look into setting up a small delivery charge

Cant find it box - I was aware that the box was empty. The reason for this is that their was a search box in it but I found out just before leaving work that when I have 2 search boxes on a page, 1 of the search boxes does not work properly comming back with the error
"Missing text search join mode. Please specify AND or OR."
So I thought that I better remove 1 as most people use search to find products. Will amend the site better in the morning.

image alignment: Point take had set to left justify will centre.

Empty sections - Never a good this will hide them until I have something to put in them.

Site looks rushed - I originally set this site up last november, but it has really taken off over the last 2 months and I suppose that their is just not enough hours in the day to take your time any more.

Keep the points comming

Davie

[fleetwood]

Hi David

It would be worth running the text through the spell checker in something like Word - simply cut and paste blocks of text in, and run spell check.

An odd spelling mistake is an unfortunate slip up, but when a site shows multiple ones, it dosen't give a good impression - worth finding the time to sort it out.

Delivery charges are the bain of most of us.
Customers expect it free, and the reality is, it costs us a fortune.
However, the web expectation is cheap, fast, free....

I would be inclined to

1) look at whether you could absorb part of the cost - I would look more to lower postage than to offering discounts
2) maybe build a little bit of the postage cost into the price of the product (unless they are particularly price sensitive), enabling you to lower the add-on charge.

Martin.