Site Review Please -I am at your mercy friendly fellow Actinicers!

[mypalchris]

Hello there,

Not knowing any HTML or CSS, I thought I was ideally placed to design, code and run an actinic webshop for our company........

Anyway, I have learnt pretty fast over the last month or so and I have managed to cobble together something workable.

It would be fantastic recieve any feedback, no matter how small or petty, as I long ago lost any objectivity!

I'm no coder and certainly no graphic designer and this is my first stab at anything like this, so please don't pull any punches as I am really keen to improve.

Any advice on getting traffic on to the site would also be very usefull as we are in an ultra competitve field with many larger sites with much larger adwords budgets elbowing us aside.

The site is here: www.alittlegift.co.uk

Thanks a million,

Chris

[acompton]

Looks very nice; I could only find a few little things.

- by convention, the header should be a link to the home page
- <days> turns up in the T&C
- lots of little spelling errors
- why does the email use a different URL to the website?

Made from fine lama textured chocolate brown leather with an lime green grossgrain lining

The item pictured was black leather with an purple lining.

[mypalchris]

Looks very nice; I could only find a few little things.

- by convention, the header should be a link to the home page
- <days> turns up in the T&C
- lots of little spelling errors
- why does the email use a different URL to the website?

Made from fine lama textured chocolate brown leather with an lime green grossgrain lining

The item pictured was black leather with an purple lining.

Thanks a million Alan. Spelling really is the bain (sic?) of my life.......

[RuralWeb]

A simple actinic theme based site that works well IMO.

Points:

Move your product sections on the left to the top of the column so people can see them without having to scroll down - its the bits you want people to see.

Some of your text is underlining when hovered over eg product titles - this makes it look like they are links and will really anoy people when they try and click them.

You have used the ext info pages as your SPP which is not good for SEO - have a look at other methods which are a bit better in terms of SEO.

Some of your product images are a bit big both physically and file size - use a 300pix image and a popup or multi-images to show the product better while keeping download times small.

Get your buy button further up the page

Very good though for just a month

[mypalchris]

Thanks Mal for the really helpfull critique- I'll certainly look into the points you have raised. I have a few follow ups to some of your points though....

You have used the ext info pages as your SPP which is not good for SEO - have a look at other methods which are a bit better in terms of SEO.

Would you mind going into a bit of detail about this. Like I say, I'm kind of new to this. Could you point me in the direction of and explination of what SEO and SSP actually are?

What other methods would you recomend?

Some of your product images are a bit big both physically and file size - use a 300pix image and a popup or multi-images to show the product better while keeping download times small.

I have Normans Multi image addon to impliment, so hopefully this should solve that problem to some extent. What would be the upper limit (in kilobytes) of a product image? I realise that different people have different ideas about this, but are there guideline figures?

[mypalchris]

Could you point me in the direction of and explination of what SEO and SSP actually are?

Doh! SEO is Search engine optimisation? right?

Too many all nighters working on the site has affected my mental process a bit

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

Your first five sections from Games, Cards and Toys" through to "Photo & Memory Boxes" have missing section images which have been replaced by actinic with a dot.

Another small problem was with the dropdown section list on the top menu. It dropsdown on hover but if you bring the mouse down the list and off the side the menu stays expanded and partially hides the left navigation menus.

Nice looking site for something cobbled together in a month.

[mypalchris]

Thanks very much for your help guys. Looks like I need to make a few minor aesthetic changes here and there.

But now for the important bit...... Traffic!

In your opinions, what is the number one thing I should focus on in driving traffic to my site?

Sorry, if I seem a bit relentless, it's just I'm determined to get this site right first time and it makes sence to mine the depth and breadth of knowledge that you guys obviously posses.

You have been a great help so far. Cheers!

[pinbrook]

The site would benefit from single product pages.

eg at the mo you have multiple products per section, with an extended info page

do a forum search for more info on this.

for immediate listings in google you will have to resort to adwords.

[mypalchris]

The site would benefit from single product pages.

eg at the mo you have multiple products per section, with an extended info page

do a forum search for more info on this.

for immediate listings in google you will have to resort to adwords.

Sounds like a lot of work! I'll get working on it when I get home tonight and I'll certainly read related threads on the forum for info.

Seems a bit odd that actinic by default requires such an humungous rejigging to get it and google to be friends.

Is this down to the way that actinic works, or the way google works, or both?

Is this going to be as hellish a rewrite as it first appears?

[leehack]

It's more your approach on using Actinic to build things in the best way for the web really. Have a read of this - http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/actinic-spp.htm - should help you a bit.

[mypalchris]

It's more your approach on using Actinic to build things in the best way for the web really. Have a read of this - http://www.websitedesigned.co.uk/actinic-spp.htm - should help you a bit.

Outstanding - thanks very much. I'm delighted I went with actinic an other ecommerce solution. The level of support and the helpfulness of the community is second to none.

[bamboo]

But now for the important bit...... Traffic!

This shouldn't be your primary concern IMO. Attracting converting customers is where you should focus your efforts. Traffic is dead easy, some may say way to easy, to get with a well crafted Adwords campaign.
I know there are different points of view on here but there is no easier source of instant targeted traffic.
If you cannot get Adwords customers to buy from your site you are facing an uphill struggle to get organic search customers to buy because it is much more difficult and takes much longer to get high organic rankings even with tightly focussed keyword strings.

I will presume that in common with almost every other start up, me included, you haven't actually proved to yourself that a market exists for your products let alone a profitable one. You say you are in a competitive market and already have a downer on your efforts by thinking that larger sites with a bigger Adwords budget are working against you, again a common failing in thinking IMO.

Just because a site is larger than yours or advertises everywhere it doesn't mean that they convert their Adwords customers into buying customers you simply assume this to be the case.

LESSON ONE
'Assumption is the mother of all f8*k ups'

I would recommend you spend your time analysing which keyword strings your competition is advertising on and take a close look at the landing pages the ads send you to.
If there is a disconnect, in other words the ad advertises gold jewellery boxes and the link takes you to a homepage or a page with silver jewellery boxes or best of all a 404 page you can kill the opposition simply by making your ad more relevant and getting the connection right.

Also 'just in' is meaningless clutter that needs to be removed.
10% off if you spend £50 simply screams 'built in discount pricing at work' to me and isn't a good enough reason to buy from you over your opposition.

There are quite a few typos, says he whose posts are full of the flaming things but on an e-commerce site there is no excuse for them.

Finally by all mean tell me I'm wrong but most people do not see fire blankets as 'gifts' so you are making an instant top left disconnect with your customers IMO.

Please remember these are just my opinions based on a five minute run through your site.

[mypalchris]

Please remember these are just my opinions based on a five minute run through your site.

Thanks for your points - very constructive and informative.

The one thing I am certain about is my market...... I've been running an eBay shop and an Amazon shop for the last 2 years (Oddly enough, Fire Blankets saftey Gift sets sell as gifts far more often than you would think -surprised me too!) and both have been doing really very well indeed. I get around 1000 sales a week, but I'm desperate not to give 15% to either company as they really don't deserve it!

So in away, two of my major competitors are, er, me.

I think that the strategy you recommend, sounds like a lot of leg work, but will ultimately be highly rewarding. Perhaps my larger competitors would not have the inclination or time to do something similar.

I also concur about the 10% off deal - as an insentive it probably sends the wrong message. I simply assumed that it'd make a good case for people to choose me over my competitors, but I'd be interested to hear other forum members views though....

Spelling is something I know I really need to sort out. I think I'll run my heirarchical file through the spell checker when I start work on the site again tonight. That should sort out the worst of it.

[bamboo]

I get around 1000 sales a week, but I'm desperate not to give 15% to either company as they really don't deserve it!

Excellent and deserving or not of their 15% they are providing you with all of your buying customers at present. Competing with yourself is a good thing IME as the true competition in the form of other retailers have no idea how to combat such a strategy even if they realise this is what you are actually doing.

Doing it on Adwords can be expensive but only if you don't keep a close eye on it. Doing it in the organic search pays big dividends if done well.

Fire blankets eh! Makes my lesson about assumption appear to be bang on the money.

Perhaps there is the opportunity to completely dominate the security/fire gift market with another Actinic store which features just security and fire related gifts.
I'll bet no other Giftware retailer is going down this road, more research I'm afraid but may well be worth the effort.
The big benefit is that there would be a lot of 'natural' upsells, cross sells and bundling to increase the added value of each sale along with the profitably of each sale.

If this approach works then simply build out another focussed site and rinse, wash and repeat.