Wanted: Website Review My first ecommerce website

[bensd]

I have just launched my first ecommerce website http://www.cufflinksformen.co.uk

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Also, if any acorners are interested in cufflinks I have added a 10% discount code AD10

 

[Systreg]

Ben, I'm in no way a designer :lol: but, do you think it could do with a little bit more colour, is it a bit too grey?

 

[bensd]

Lol, it is a bit grey! I was hoping to keep it fairly simple with splashes of colour in the banners and pictures

 

[fish]

ME NOT MUCH OF A DESIGNER EITHER
but a black background would focus the viewer a little more imo;

 

[golddiggerguy]

The picture of the bascket needs to be an icon saying "add to basket"

I clicked it guessing it was that but nothing happened only to notice I had added 4 items with out knowing.

Added: Yes needs colour or white BG

 

[namealot]

Are we living in the 1940's yes deffo more colour

 

[bensd]

Thanks for the comments. I have just changed the background colour - any thoughts?

The picture of the bascket needs to be an icon saying "add to basket"

Sorted - what do you think?

 

[peacock]

Hi Ben,

Congratulations on your first e-commerce site.

Here is a few comments from my browsing around...

- Domain Name : Bit disappointed here.
- Logo - I can't make out what the icon is. I like the fact that the URL is in the logo. Why does logo link to cufflinksformen.co.uk/index.php?route=common/home and not just the home URL?
- Overall impression - It's trustworthy enough that I would more than likely make a purchase. I like the fact you have PayPal and free shipping - that should swing it for me.
- Facebook cover picture - far too boring!
- Checkout - could do with some sort of trust signal here, or the "reasons to buy" - 30 day returns etc.
- FAQs - might be worth building these up: delivery time comes to mind



Hope it goes well for you.

Rob

 

[WealdDomains]

Hi Ben. I think the site looks very good overall, so do please take these comments (using Firefox) in this spirit.

- the "read more" link doesn't display anything more

- the parent site, which I Googled based on the C S O L footer, is weak and needs to a little bit of strengthening to build confidence

- the two yellow blocks on the right (PS and sometimes on the left !) seem a bit too light and might be better as inspiring gold rather than insipid yellow

- one- and two-line descriptions work OK in the boxes, but going to a third line causes a different height : maybe force the size to cater for the maximum (three ?) lines of description for consistency

- the superscript in the third paragraph of the masonic text makes the text paragraph look wrongly formatted, so I suggest losing the superscript and simply going with "16th"

- moving between pages seems jerky - partly due to repainting and partly due to the blog box being in a different place on the home page to all the others : maybe move it higher on the home page

- I would prefer a CamelCase URL name in the header rather than a space between FOR and MEN

- the Cufflink Boxes page still includes a test item for 1p

- the Company / Blog link is wrong

- the heading logo link and the Customer Services / Contact Us underlying URL links seem long-winded

- I'm not convinced that the dynamic grey search responses while typing a search are ideal, but that's probably a matter of taste

- Products meeting the search criteria seem a bit muddled, with "Add to basket" images clashing with "Add to Wish List" and "Add to Compare" text options, which in turn seem to be confusing in conjunction with the blue-on-white Add to cart option

Regards, David

 

[anthony]

I have just launched my first ecommerce website http://www.cufflinksformen.co.uk

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Also, if any acorners are interested in cufflinks I have added a 10% discount code AD10

Oh sh1t, a cufflink site, that's got to be like chocolate to me, i'm sure I'll be buying from it sooner or later.

Regarding stock, themed cufflinks are always popular, rather that the spurious 'squares, circles, strips' designs. They command a greater price, and are a bit of a talking point. Targeting dance clubs (ballroom) might help, they often have two or three dance weekends per year, always rich for fresh sales aligned to dance themes. I know, that's what brought about my 3 dozen collection!

 

[bensd]

Thanks for your comments Rob, I really appreciate it.

In answer to some of your points/questions:

- Domain Name : Bit disappointed here.

I personally think it's quite an easy to remember name. It's also has an exact match of 1,900 per month (compared to mens cufflinks 1,600 and cufflinks 18,100 - I did try and buy cufflinks.co.uk but it wasn't for sale!). Why were you disappointed?

- Logo - I can't make out what the icon is. I like the fact that the URL is in the logo. Why does logo link to cufflinksformen.co.uk/index.php?route=common/home and not just the home URL?

The icon is of a shirt sleeve and cufflink! I think the link was a default opencart setting - I have changed this now.

- Overall impression - It's trustworthy enough that I would more than likely make a purchase. I like the fact you have PayPal and free shipping - that should swing it for me.

That's always good to hear!

- Facebook cover picture - far too boring!

Forgot to remove the fb link - the page is currently under construction. Hopefully won't be too boring when finished!

- Checkout - could do with some sort of trust signal here, or the "reasons to buy" - 30 day returns etc.

Good point - I have added the Promise and Secure Shopping banners to the cart and checkout pages.

- FAQs - might be worth building these up: delivery time comes to mind

I was going to do this intially but didn't get round to it - will add to the to do list.



Thanks for such a detailed reply David, much appreciated.

In answer to some of your points/questions:

- the "read more" link doesn't display anything more

Well spotted - I have fixed this now.

- the parent site, which I Googled based on the C S O L footer, is weak and needs to a little bit of strengthening to build confidence

I set this up a few weeks ago and forgot to finish it - will get onto it. That's exactly why I set it up though so thanks for the reminder!

- the two yellow blocks on the right (PS and sometimes on the left !) seem a bit too light and might be better as inspiring gold rather than insipid yellow

Have fixed this now (they were appearing on the left on the blog page). Will have a look what they look like in gold.

- one- and two-line descriptions work OK in the boxes, but going to a third line causes a different height : maybe force the size to cater for the maximum (three ?) lines of description for consistency

I have been playing around with this. My dilema is that only a handful of the titles are 3 lines and if the title is 1/2 lines the box looks a little odd.

- the superscript in the third paragraph of the masonic text makes the text paragraph look wrongly formatted, so I suggest losing the superscript and simply going with "16th"

It seems to be displaying fine on my browser - do you have a print screen?

- moving between pages seems jerky - partly due to repainting and partly due to the blog box being in a different place on the home page to all the others : maybe move it higher on the home page

I have fixed the blog box, it should always have been below the categories. What did you mean by "partly due to repainting"?

- I would prefer a CamelCase URL name in the header rather than a space between FOR and MEN

May play around with this on the next version of the logo. I already have a couple of hundered boxes with the logo printed on so will stick with that one for now.

- the Cufflink Boxes page still includes a test item for 1p

Well spotted - I have removed this now.

- the Company / Blog link is wrong

Well spotted - I have fixed this now.

- the heading logo link and the Customer Services / Contact Us underlying URL links seem long-winded

Header link fixed. Unfortunately the contact us link is the built in opencart contact form - will see if there is a way around it.

- I'm not convinced that the dynamic grey search responses while typing a search are ideal, but that's probably a matter of taste

I'm not a massive fan but one of my competitors had it on their site, which gave me the idea. Will give it some more thought.

- Products meeting the search criteria seem a bit muddled, with "Add to basket" images clashing with "Add to Wish List" and "Add to Compare" text options, which in turn seem to be confusing in conjunction with the blue-on-white Add to cart option

The search page was very last minute (forgot to re-design it!) - it's on the to do list.



Thanks for your response Anthony - get buying!

Oh sh1t, a cufflink site, that's got to be like chocolate to me, i'm sure I'll be buying from it sooner or later.

Regarding stock, themed cufflinks are always popular, rather that the spurious 'squares, circles, strips' designs. They command a greater price, and are a bit of a talking point. Targeting dance clubs (ballroom) might help, they often have two or three dance weekends per year, always rich for fresh sales aligned to dance themes. I know, that's what brought about my 3 dozen collection!

I have a limited stock to begin with and hope to grow it within the next few months. Thanks for the top about the ballroom dancing - will see if I can hook up with a couple of local ones.

 

[WealdDomains]

I get the impression that moving from page to page results in a noticeable brief flash of the blue background before the central content is repainted, suggesting something in the code is a bit "slow".

Not sure how to include a print-screen, so let's try phrasing it differently. The superscript causes that line of the paragraph to have a taller line height to accommodate it than all the other lines in those paragraphs of text. That means that there is more white space above that line of words than elsewhere, which looks like wrong line spacing.

David

 

[bensd]

Thanks, David.

I get the impression that moving from page to page results in a noticeable brief flash of the blue background before the central content is repainted, suggesting something in the code is a bit "slow".

I assume the background loads first before the rest of the website - will have a play around to try and get the load times down.

Not sure how to include a print-screen, so let's try phrasing it differently. The superscript causes that line of the paragraph to have a taller line height to accommodate it than all the other lines in those paragraphs of text. That means that there is more white space above that line of words than elsewhere, which looks like wrong line spacing.

Thanks for that - will have a look into it.

 

[saberace]

Just a little thing, on your checkout page you have a signup box to become a member, however it just asks for a password. If you include an email box you could perhaps build an opt in email list where you could forward special offers / products.

I know people will probably only become a member if they are gonna buy something, but you never know - every little helps!

 

[bensd]

Just a little thing, on your checkout page you have a signup box to become a member, however it just asks for a password. If you include an email box you could perhaps build an opt in email list where you could forward special offers / products.

I know people will probably only become a member if they are gonna buy something, but you never know - every little helps!

Not the type of site where people will just join a 'newsletter' however, every order takes the email address

 

[DomainMagnate]

Looks decent now!
But the main questions is how do you plan to get traffic for it?

 

[alex]

Hi Ben, congrats for opening your first eCommerce site. My first impressions are good, it's a simple-to-use clean site.

What I would say is I feel you could add more trust symbols etc. I can't remember the exact stats, but a large proportion of people check 3rd party hosted customer reviews, trust seals etc so they may be worth looking into. I have a subscription with TrustPilot whereby customers are invited to leave a review. I get a trust badge, the ratings are posted to Google (the stars in results pages) and customers can check out a trusted source of reviews.

Have you submitted these to Google shopping yet?

Have you added an XML sitemap?

To be honest there's not much more I can say. It ticks all the boxes in terms of functionality. Could maybe make a few changes for SEO, but as a buyer looking at the site I think if you are able to add the trust seals/reviews and possibly make it more colourful (although I personally don't mind the colour scheme) then you've covered pretty much everything.

 

[alex]

Also, when appropriate a 'browse by brand' feature would be quite nice.