Wanted: Website Review Please Review Griptape V2

[alex]

About 14 months ago I posted a thread requesting a review of griptape.co.uk. Well last month I relaunched the site having taken on board a year of feedback from customers. I'd love to hear what you think?

I've got a few plans to update the site further, but in case I've missed anything I'm welcoming suggestions, good and bad (hopefully good).

Many thanks

 

[accelerator]

Looking good. I always like to see a good tagline under the logo top left.

Also, the search top central needs to be made more obvious/noticeable. Big bold buttons in orange are good for this.

Congrats on your Google ranking.

Rgds

 

[alex]

Looking good. I always like to see a good tagline under the logo top left.

Also, the search top central needs to be made more obvious/noticeable. Big bold buttons in orange are good for this.

Congrats on your Google ranking.

Rgds

Thank you for the comments. I'll certainly try to make the search box stand out a bit more. I'm currently debating chaging the whole header to make things fit better. Whether I do or not I'll have a play to see what I can do about the search box when I begin the next phase of development.

Alex

 

[wb]

Seems to work well and is extremely easy to make a purchase by the looks of things.

Few quick initial thoughts, all my opinion of course:

1. The text element of the logo could do with having a larger font size.

2. If you aren't adding anything else to the top menu (i.e. Home, Skateboard Griptape, etc) then I'd increase the spacing between the links so that the whole width of the bar is filled equally with no gap at the end.

3. I'm downloading quite a few things right now so internet isn't a fast as it could be here, but the page background graphic could be seen loading. Easily solved, as the file (back.png) doesn't need to have dimensions as large as they are. It could be cropped down to a much smaller size and still achieve the same effect.

4. Looking in the footer, you have an SSL certificate but it doesn't seem to be in use anywhere. It's obviously not needed for the checkout page as customers can only go through PayPal, but it could be beneficial to use it on that page as another 'trust signal' for inexperienced users.

 

[alex]

Seems to work well and is extremely easy to make a purchase by the looks of things.

Thanks for the points, I'm glad you found it easy to navigate. I coded the entire thing myself except the Nivo slider, icons and Logo which means that the logo is typically one of the only things I can't change. Even more typical is that I signed it off on Sunday. I will however look into making it bigger as a whole and maybe overlap the wheel of the scooter over the top menu. I'll have to play about and see what happens.

Good point about the spacing of the top menu, I was thinking about adding social media icons to the right hand side, but will certainly look into spacing as a whole.

I'll also look at image sizes. Generally I don't think the site is too big, but I agree that the images need a bit of shrinking.

Well noticed regarding the SSL. I'll soon be adding an alternate checkout preceded by a checkout page so there will be use for the SSL in the future.

Thanks for your thoughts, they've given me some new ideas and reinforced what I'm doing with others. Much appreciated.

 

[alex]

Looking good. I always like to see a good tagline under the logo top left.

Just to confirm your earlier point, when you say tagline were you referring to the 'Welcome to Griptape.co.uk, the UK's leading extreme sports grip supplier.' or were you saying I need to add one to the logo?

 

[xstu74]

Hi,

Site looks good to me.

The only comment i would make is to change the back ground image to fixed

background-attachment: fixed">

This in my opinoin will give a cleaner look and feel to the page as my eyes were drawn to the outter image rather then the content when scrolling down

Thanks Stuart

 

[orchardapple]

nice one, only 2 things from me is the amount of white space around the 'shake junt', this is prime real estate thats being wasted a little

i'd also get the FB and Twitter images/links up in the header somewhere so you can further utilise this area with more 'grip tape' links, logos etc

 

[alex]

Hi,

Site looks good to me.

The only comment i would make is to change the back ground image to fixed

background-attachment: fixed">

This in my opinoin will give a cleaner look and feel to the page as my eyes were drawn to the outter image rather then the content when scrolling down

Thanks Stuart

Hi Stuart, Thanks for the feedback. I did initially try to fix the background, but I was told by customers it didn't look right. Having said that I am going to take another look at the background as a whole so will see if I can make it cleaner. I don't want it to be taking attention away from the rest of the site so thank you for pointing that out.

nice one, only 2 things from me is the amount of white space around the 'shake junt', this is prime real estate thats being wasted a little

i'd also get the FB and Twitter images/links up in the header somewhere so you can further utilise this area with more 'grip tape' links, logos etc

Thanks for the comments. I agree completely. I'm planning to have Facebook/YouTube/twitter icons in the top navigation to free up the space. As for the Shake Junt image it was what was to hand when I removed the Christmas delivery info so will get that changed.

 

[Fokebox]

I like the website. Looks very attractive. Colors, layouts, images content - perfect. There is nothing negative to say )

 

[alex]

I like the website. Looks very attractive. Colors, layouts, images content - perfect. There is nothing negative to say )

Cheers, I appreciate the comment. I've made a list of changes I'm going to implement, but I'm having trouble finding time. Will hopefully get started within the next few weeks and see how it goes.

 

[khalid]

Alex, more of a question - you must need to sell a lot of grip tape to make the site worthwhile?

 

[alex]

Alex, more of a question - you must need to sell a lot of grip tape to make the site worthwhile?

It depends which way you look at it. As a site alone then I can see why you'd be questioning whether it is worthwhile, but I have several ventures that require me to go to the post office each day so the 15 minutes each day it takes to wrap up the grip orders makes it worthwhile. The entire site is automated, I'm informed when stock is running low, buyers are sent emails at specific intervals and invoices are automatically created. Other than building the site it is very low maintenance.

Grip sheets have a mark-up of around 100%, rolls a little less, but with several sales each day on average it adds up to quite a bit over a year.

Also, the cost of the site is minimal. I already have the hosting, I built the site such that I can use the eCommerce template on other projects and advertising pays for itself. Albeit a LITTLE earner, it's a nice little earner

The previous version of the site was getting me about 1 sale every 3 days, since re-launching that's increased to several each day. In my opinion worth the time and effort, but others may disagree.

 

[khalid]

It depends which way you look at it. As a site alone then I can see why you'd be questioning whether it is worthwhile, but I have several ventures that require me to go to the post office each day so the 15 minutes each day it takes to wrap up the grip orders makes it worthwhile. The entire site is automated, I'm informed when stock is running low, buyers are sent emails at specific intervals and invoices are automatically created. Other than building the site it is very low maintenance.

Grip sheets have a mark-up of around 100%, rolls a little less, but with several sales each day on average it adds up to quite a bit over a year.

Also, the cost of the site is minimal. I already have the hosting, I built the site such that I can use the eCommerce template on other projects and advertising pays for itself. Albeit a LITTLE earner, it's a nice little earner

The previous version of the site was getting me about 1 sale every 3 days, since re-launching that's increased to several each day. In my opinion worth the time and effort, but others may disagree.

It sounds like you're doing well buddy, didn't know you had other sites but it makes sense..."every little helps" an all.

 

[alex]

It sounds like you're doing well buddy, didn't know you had other sites but it makes sense..."every little helps" an all.

I think one of the big things for me is not the fact I'm trading through the site, but that I now have my own eCommerce platform I can sell/lease out. It's fine having out of the box solutions, but they're so full of features that will never be used. This way I have full control to customise it and can actually properly optimise the thing.

With regards to the future of griptape.co.uk I've been getting quite a few enquiries for wholesale so have been in contact with a company in Taiwan. If it seems viable then it may no longer be a little earner, but we'll have to see what happens. Anyway for the time being I'm just happy I've built my own site