Looking for opinions

endplate

Hi folks, I have launched this website about a month ago and so far things are slow. I have seen a few threads about asking for opinions on websites so if ye wouldn't mind can you tell me what you think of it. Thanks

easyeason3

Website is nice & easy to use.

Do you have sunglasses, non prescription, that will stay on when jogging?

tricky D

Take a look at some of the other reviews in this forum and the Web Design forum. Some shortcomings which apply to your site are mentioned there in recent reviews.

Briefly:
No contact address - bad for trust.
Poor use of homepage real estate - no special offers, promos etc. and lifestyle graphic esp.
Grey on grey with poor contrast.
Some layout problems e.g. overlapping text (FireFox), bad css for backgrounds in navigation submenu, check on more browsers.
Use titles better for SEO - no URLs and vary for glasses, frames... Use keywords in headings more e.g. in http://www.buynewspecs.ie/rimless/men-s.html Use Men's Rimless Glasses as heading one (h1) instead of just Men's in heading 2 (h2). Get links to your site.

endplate

easyeason3 wrote: »

Website is nice & easy to use.

Do you have sunglasses, non prescription, that will stay on when jogging?

Thanks EE3 have a look at the CEBE range here. They are designed for outdoor types hoping to get Bolle sunglasses loaded up soon.

Tricky D thanks for your comments I will address them tomorrow. I know what you are saying about the url's but I'm using a Magento cart and it writes URL's automatically. It's designed to be SEO friendly. If you start playing with url's the crawls finds a lot of 404 not found pages. Also did you notice how quick the site is? I have it running on a virtual server to improve speed

Buford T Justice

Are you getting a discount from silkwebdesign for creating the website? If not, why are you giving them free advertising on your site? Most good professional sites won't plug their designers.

Just my opinion

was.deevey

Tricky D thanks for your comments I will address them tomorrow. I know what you are saying about the url's but I'm using a Magento cart and it writes URL's automatically. It's designed to be SEO friendly. If you start playing with url's the crawls finds a lot of 404 not found pages.

Yes changing your URL's will create crawl errors "for a time" in google but nothing to worry a bout really .. submit a new sitemap .. Also you could modify your .htaccess so that 404's redirect to a main page on the site instead of going to a dead link for the time you are getting these crawl errors.

Also did you notice how quick the site is? I have it running on a virtual server to improve speed

Virtual as in Shared hosting or virtual as in VMware style on a dedicated server .. either way I cant see how that would improve speed compared to a complete dedicated server ? It loads slow as hell for me though?

I'm not too crackers on vertical dynamic menu's like that..would prefer a slide down to view sub categories.

New prescription sunglasses is WAYYYY too wide and looks weird.

The Grey or Grey Bold text also turns me off a lil .. think it'd look nicer with a white or light blue background and slightly darker non-bold text .. or even images as the links with text as sub-cat in a slide down menu.

Just a thought ..

However as it stands the site is very usable

91011

As trickd says, the lack of conatct detail & info about the compny would put many people off.

You're a family business - expand expand expand on this. Who are you, where is your store, what is your experience. Shop address (VERY important to have especially as it seems you have one)

Not everyone online is looking for dirt cheap prices - especially on something such as spectacles. Service is #1 for many.

have sent a pm to you with an idea (don't wnat somone nicking it on you!):D

TheWaterboy

As someone mentioned homepage real estate is very badly used. The links on Budget, Designer and Fashion all go to 404 error pages too

I really hate when you have to register with a site in order to purchase..turns me off straight away.

Though it is easy to use, the site is a little bland and boring. The one image of an eye is used throughout it.

There is also very little SEO on the site

Remember, an online business takes time to build so don't get disheartened yet. Remember it is only live for a month or so. Best of luck with it.

91011

another annoying thing - when you enlarge a picture, there seems to be no way to reduce it again unless you click your back button.

A bit more info on reglazing old specatcles would be good along with info how the process works - do the customer simply key in thei presription?

another product idea - turn old glasses into new sunglasses. All us 4 eyed people have old pairs lying about the place - some were expensive, some were favourites. Re-glazing them as sunglasses would be a very handy product. (me being your first customer:D!)

As for marketing - women's magazines. Current advertising rates are very cheap and plenty of marketing offers available such as sponsor the subscription page in exchange for 30 x free products, 4 x 1/4 page adverts for €750 etc etc. - overall it works out cheaper than google advertising (very useful too) and facebook advertising (excellent)

endplate

Thanks for all you help folks really appreciate your comments.

I'll update you later when I made changes

Thanks again

91011 wrote: »

another annoying thing - when you enlarge a picture, there seems to be no way to reduce it again unless you click your back button.

Yeah I found that a bit annoying at first you have to double click the pic to reduce size

antoinolachtnai

For this business, you have to really reassure people that you are legitimate (which I presume you are). You have to explain the regulation and the fact that you are registered, qualified, etc. I think you should give a name so that people can ring up the Opticians Board and see that you are legit. You could consider opening a very small but friendly and well-presented office where you do testing, in an upper floor in a very central location. The trick would be to offer tests evenings and weekends, when people are actually available.

A lot of what you are selling are fashion items and it doesn't really feel like you are selling a fashion item. Little things like presentation are important for this.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Hi Endplate,

I'd say your bounce rate is very high based on your content. You need to write like you would deal with a customer face to face. Give the information that they want and don't act like a bad date who talks about themselves for the entire night

For example "We like to move with the times and want to give you an opportunity to purchase", your talking you you you when people are thinking me me me. Customers don't care if you think selling online is modern, their sole care is finding a set of glasses that suit them and they have 1.2 seconds on average before they decide if your site is worth a look once they land.

Then look at SEO, you have optimized (possibly unknowingly) for the term "Budget". Its your category title and your SEO title is "Budget-Cheap-Affordable". What you haven't mentioned is that its glasses that your selling. So basically Google has almost no idea what your selling. Go to the google keyword tool and find out what people are searching for in your category then target those keywords.

Using terms like "Welcome" and "Click here to View", implies that the content manager isn't overly familiar with online shopping.

Loose the random eye image, replace with USP's and ajax clickable special offers.

Returns / Delivery will be a concern for some people, so don't hide it in your terms, make it easily accessible. Random empty fields for price and then below "starting at" when you dont have options to increase the price. You probably have a reason, but as a customer I got confused and moved on.

Really hope the site works out for you.

endplate

Lads, Just letting you know I haven't disappeared getting some very constructive advice and I'm very greatful for it. I've updated my homepage text let me know what you think. Going to update the photos on the budget fashion and designet tabs and fixed the links. Hoping to start the SEO on the products this week. Am also this week going to take a few photo's of the main shop and some of the machinery and put them into the about us section. Am also gonna speak to the web guys to change the products text colour and background and to put in a few promo links as well as a few brand logos to heighten awareness of what products we sell.

Thanks again

TheCostumeShop.ie (Ronan) wrote: »

Returns / Delivery will be a concern for some people, so don't hide it in your terms, make it easily accessible. Random empty fields for price and then below "starting at" when you dont have options to increase the price. You probably have a reason, but as a customer I got confused and moved on.

Really hope the site works out for you.

Have started a new page for returns. Your site looks well hope it's doing well for you. The starting at price craic is kinda relavent as if you add on coatings or buy different lens options your price will go up hope that makes sense

endplate

Now Folks it's been a couple of week but I've put a bit of effort into redesigning the home page. Let me know what you think. The only change outstanding is a flash movie which is not quite finished yet but hope to have it on in the coming days.

Changes from previous homepage is more focused on telling the person immediately what we do on the site. So I removed the text and replaced it with clickable links for some of our brands. The flash movie will replace the eye you can see the test version here.
The text is darkened for the our products bar.
There is more detail in the contact page.
Extra text in the reglaze section.
Am still working on the SEO that will take time to get right.
If you notice anything I missed let me know. Link is in my sig.

Thanks again for all your help