Site Review Please

[acompton]

Give me tips on top of the abuse

This isn't abuse, its advice. Your site is not inviting. Fix the things that are being criticised here, and the performance will improve. Thats the biggest tip of all.
Ignore gabe's tech-speak for the moment and concentrate on the obvious:
- get rid of the large, colourful text. Keep your message simple, so visitors can quickly grasp what's on offer
- divide the site into major sections that invite people to dive in and browse. Put image links on the front page to those sections.
- keep the overall layout simple and consistent across the site. Start with a simple Actinic template.
- look at other website - see which ones you like and copy them.
- publish some Terms and Conditions

[leehack]

Do yourself a favour Steve and get some professional help IMO. Have a look on the actinic site at the designers listed, visit their sites, view their portfolios, contact their clients and find someone with whom you can knit well with. The web is littered with sites like yours, the difference between a thriving website and one like yours can often just be a couple of thousand pounds and getting in contact with the right person.

I know it's hard to take the leap of faith, i know it's even harder to accept that in just 12 months time a correct web design company could have turned you into a website turning over 40-50k, maybe even more who knows. One of the most frustrating parts of the web (as a designer) is seeing sites drifting along, looking pants and achieving very little, when all it would take is a few thousand pound and the right advice off the right person.

You wouldn't try a fit a £3,000 carpet in your house, you wouldn't try and install a gas pipe for a new fireplace, treat web design in the same vain.

[parklifeclothes]

I found your site very confusing as it comes across more of a fancy dress site than one selling cosmetics and the home page just went on and on. I would be tempted to either create 2 very seperate parts to your site or better still, 2 new sites as the customer buying cosmetics on your site won't be interested in the fancy dress and vice versa.

As Alan says "The site seems to have an overall identity problem - I assumed from the URL that you sell cosmetics, but the real force seems to be in fancy dress." if you continue to sell both on the one site you may have to work on your identity, this is one major problem for us too as when you try to put products together that have little or no connection you have to accept there is always going to be problems for visitors deciding what you are all about and this decision is made in a split second in many cases.