3 sites for review

[JimboS]

Finally finished my V8/9 designs and would welcome opinions on 3 of my sites I have finally finished upgrading from V7 to V9

www.eyecare-cosmetics.co.uk
www.dry-eyes.co.uk
www.prescription-swimming-goggles.co.uk

James

[bamboo]

Warning: This review may not be what you are wanting to hear but it is what you need to hear IMHO.
Eyecare Cosmetics

Call us anytime!
Answer phone available
24 hours a day, 7 days
per week!

To your prospective customer this says “We don’t want to speak to you so don’t bother ringing us!
No-one likes speaking to an answer phone, no-one so why tell them that is what they are going to get if they decide to ring your company?

• Your banner is enormous and turns ‘eyecare’ into ‘Ceyecare’ which looks silly and instantly confuses the prospective customer.
  
• Eye care has nothing to do with naked ladies especially one in silhouette. IMHO the banner should have the most gorgeous pair of life size young ladies eyes decorated with your eye care products and they should be looking slightly down the page because we always follow other peoples gaze so subconsciously your banner would be telling visitors to look down your wonderful page.
  
• I realise the peacock butterfly is probably your company logo but it looks incongruous with the rest of the site. The text colour is bland at best and a turn off at worst.
  
• You are not going to get any sign ups when you expect people to go through an entire form of your product listings.
  
• Product news is old hat. If the sign up was for solid information that shows me how the products you sell will make me look better than I do in real life then you may get my attention. But worst of all the sign up form takes you off the shop site to a Butterflies health care branded site. Yet more confusion for your customers and therefore bad for profits.
  
• You have a good site name in eyecare cosmetics and then you derail the potential customer’s train of thought with nail and skin care products. This site needs to concentrate on one thing only, eye care products.
  
• I am on your homepage for the first time and I am immediately into the sell before you have proved to me you site is one that may have what I am looking for and I can trust. Your landing page is NOT the page you ask a brand new POTENTIAL customer to enter their discount voucher. They won’t have one and will feel that without one they are missing out on cheaper prices so will click that mouse PDQ to go to the competition.

DRY EYES

• Cart should be top right not top left.
  
• Navigation should be top left.
  
• Without exception this is what the prospective customer expects to see but straight away you are confusing them and they will click away PDQ.
  
• Again banner way too big and achieves nothing. I honestly thought I was on a water companies site not an eye care site despite the ugly two colour text slap bang in the middle. As I’ve said on other reviews Google and just about every internet user IGNORES ‘Welcome’ so get rid of it and replace it with the single best value proposition that tells your customers that they are in the right place if they suffer from dry eyes. This isn’t rocket science but few seem capable of doing this. It will take time, effort and research before you crack it but it will give you the biggest jump in profitability when you do.
  
• What is the point of the enormous off centre graphic?
  It is just taking up valuable above the fold space and achieves nothing. I presume anyone suffering from dry eyes will realise that an eyedropper may be involved in the remedy. Don’t insult your customer’s intelligence or confuse them as the competition is but a click away.
  
• Again discount voucher entry on the homepage is pointless and a turn off. You make the same error with the contact us as in the first site. I’m guessing the butterfly takes you to the same complicated form.
  
• You offer FREE shipping on this siteand yet you hide it at the bottom left of thepage where it CANNOT be seen!

‘Hint’
You have real gold hidden in this FREE shipping section. Extract it and use it!

I am not even bothering with the third one because it simply compounds on the problems you have with the other two. I would imagine the market for prescription swimming goggles is a very tight one so you should perhaps work on this site first as it would be very easy to figure out who the dominant players are in this field and work out what their message to customer is and with a bit of reverse engineering you can then figure out who their and therefore your customers are.
All you then have to do is make your site speak to the customer better than theirs.
I have simply gone down through your list in the order it is on the page which is why this advice comes at the bottom of these reviews.

Once you have this knowledge you can then go and change the other two but please be methodical and don’t be tempted to fix all three at once.

None of the three have enough text on them and none are keyword optimised which basically means your sites will be ignored by Google and customers alike. Even if you send customers to the site via Adwords you will be wasting your money as none of them are on message in any way.

I haven’t gone any deeper into your sites as personally I thinks it’s a tad cheeky asking for three sites to be reviewed at once (yes even though I’ve taken the time to do two of their home pages and glanced at the third). Definitely a work in progress. Keep going there's lots to do!

[JimboS]

Thanks fro the comments - lots to consider.

A couple of quick comments for anyone else who looks at them.

The 24/7 answer phone was meant to imply that when we are not open they are able to leave a message - during normal hours a person would answer but I can see how this could make people think they won't be able to speak to anyone.

The Eye Care Cosmetics range was initally launched as just eye make-up but has expanded in it 25 year history to now include face, lips and nail make-up and skin care - not much I can do about the brand name and range.

Sorry you felt 3 sites at once was cheeky, it just I finished all 3 and didn't know whether to list them one post at a time or all at once. As they do all have a similar feel allthouhg a different look commnets on one will I am sure apply across all of them (the swimming one is slightly different to the others).

James

[pinbrook]

you have an 03 phone number - you should put a short note under it to show how much theses calls cost - not everyone is familiar with 03 charging yet.

personaly i hate home pages where the navigation exceeds the height of the central column.

get a decent add to cart button to and align it to the right

[RuralWeb]

Look like standard actinic template sites to me so whats to review?

[JimboS]

Quite a lot acording to Bamboo

[bamboo]

Here's how it works
SEO gets people to your page.
PPC gets people to your page.

Once on your page these things have to take the prospective customer through to the sale in order of importance IMHO.

1. Words
2. Pictures
3. Design

If it is a product page they land on then price comes into play at number 4. But more often not it is the words and pictures create the sale in the customers mind and the price simply seals the deal.

The home pages sole purpose is to connect with the customers mind set and show them you have the solutions (i.e. what they think they want) and send them where they need to go.

Obviously I know little about the brand Eye Care, and none of my female acquaintances have heard of it but no matter. Even though it's been around for 25 years it would still be more profitable to have the site focus on just eye care products for the eyes.

There is nothing to stop you building another two sites to focus on the other product segments.
Unless of course you are expecting your existing customers to buy from your online store but honestly the way it is put together it looks like you are after new ones not existing ones. Clarity brings profits.

Finally don't try and be 'subtle' and 'imply' anything as online customers attention span is minuscule compared to a 'real world' shopper. It isn't easy to get the line right without being condescending to the customer and almost treating them like an idiot but it is well worth doing because so few e-commerce stores bother. So to go from mediocre to super store on the web isn't that difficult it just takes time, focus and clarity to get on message.

With 25 years of trading there should be a beautiful and very accurate pen picture of your ideal customers profile up on your office wall. Use it to alter the sites to appeal to it and its 'kerching' time even in the Dour Scots recession.

[pinbrook]

Once on your page these things have to take the prospective customer through to the sale in order of importance IMHO.

1. Words
2. Pictures
3. Design

Possibly.... but i think its greyer than that, you have 2 seconds to persaude someone to stay on the page, thus to me product images are more important - design is important to draw the shopper to the important elements of the page. Words are important once you've got the shoppers attention.

[bamboo]

Possibly.... but i think its greyer than that, you have 2 seconds to persuade someone to stay on the page, thus to me product images are more important - design is important to draw the shopper to the important elements of the page. Words are important once you've got the shoppers attention.

There is indeed more than one way to skin the cat. I know people who have beautifully designed and well laid out home pages that simply don't convert because they are so far off message.
I also know people who have the most god awful site design that looks like it belongs in the 1990's and yet they sell shed loads because they engage the customer from the second they land by speaking their lingo.

With that said if the words and pictures are saying the same thing then the only way the prospective customer can go through to buy what they are looking for is with a good site design. Confuse, delay, baffle them or even worse make them have to look for where to go next and they are out of there.

The OP's sites don't connect with their prospects IMO.

[gabrielcrowe]

http://www.ceilingcat.com/img/ceiling_optimus.jpg