New Comapny fedback

EWJim

Hello all
I have started a new company "On The Other Hand" I will be supplying Product for Left handers young and old.

I am looking for feedback on my Sites and new likes

http://www.ontheotherhand.ie

http://www.facebook.com/ontheotherhand.ie

Any Comments are welcomed

Also like every other new business I am looking for other free ways of getting the word out about my products.
I am going on Local Radio Next week and i am calling schools to get orders. I also took a stand at the local Bank for enterprise week.
Is there any other suggestions ?

EWJim

Hi Jim

I dont like to be negative, but I wouldn't put too much time and energy into this, or you could end up like Flanders and broke.

Your market is tiny first of all, leaving little scope to grow the business.

How do you target left handed people? i am left handed, but Im not in a left handed club, and I can't think of any specific area to advertise to left handers.

And then if you get to the left handers, they have to be interested enough to purchase a product. All the products you advertise there I can use the right handed version.
So, your not selling anything new, and your not selling anything essential, or something that solves a problem (if i can use right handed products, then I dont have a problem). You really need to have 2 of these ticked off if your going to start a business.

The site is not great, better a designer critique it then me, but it has no balance (I know you have moved it to the left on purpose but it doesnt look great), black is not a sales colour, not good to have a mobile number at the top. It needs to say Left Handed Products somewhere on the page when you open it up first.

If this was a hobby that you could sell a few items a week, then by all means improve it and see what you can do, but my initial impression is the above. Your welcome to tell me where to go and that it will make you a fortune though

EWJim wrote: »

Hello all
I have started a new company "On The Other Hand" I will be supplying Product for Left handers young and old.

I am looking for feedback on my Sites and new likes

http://www.ontheotherhand.ie

http://www.facebook.com/ontheotherhand.ie

Any Comments are welcomed

Also like every other new business I am looking for other free ways of getting the word out about my products.
I am going on Local Radio Next week and i am calling schools to get orders. I also took a stand at the local Bank for enterprise week.
Is there any other suggestions ?

AndyJB

EWJim wrote: »

Hello all
I have started a new company "On The Other Hand" I will be supplying Product for Left handers young and old.

I am looking for feedback on my Sites and new likes

http://www.ontheotherhand.ie

http://www.facebook.com/ontheotherhand.ie

Any Comments are welcomed

Also like every other new business I am looking for other free ways of getting the word out about my products.
I am going on Local Radio Next week and i am calling schools to get orders. I also took a stand at the local Bank for enterprise week.
Is there any other suggestions ?

Hi,
Firstly, best of luck with the venture.

After only a quick look at your site here’s my few cents worth…..
1) Your logo is far too big and your colour scheme is not good.
2) Put a reduced size logo at the top with menu options just below, no need for the “On the Other Hand” text as well.
3) I always consider a mobile number for contact as suspect! Get a geographic VoIP number from someone like Goldfish.ie. Then display the number as (044)…..
4) Put your postal address on the contact page.
5) The general layout is very amateurish and wouldn’t inspire me to contact you for a brochure, sorry.
6) There are typos on the “Who we are” page.
7) Your text fonts/sizes are different across most of your pages.
8) I’d also suggest you put a control text box on your contact page to prevent/reduce spammers.
9) Why not put an e-store together. A Blacknight hosting account gives you the option to install an e-store, they’re pretty easy to setup and have most if not all the functionality already built in. You can take payments initially by Paypal to get it up and running.
10) A small thing, as a web business you’re never really closed, so remove the 9 to 5 message! Outside of these hours or if phone is busy have your v-mail give the caller info. The Goldfish.ie service can do this for you. I use them and it works fine. I get emailed with missed calls and v-mails, and I can setup time of day/week call routing.
11) On your stock images, prices seem very high and you don’t mention delivery / postal charges.
12) Do you have a shop?
13) Your FB link should drop the visitor onto your FB Wall page.
14) Your FB contact e-mail address is @live.ie why????
15) Unless you can sell/supply for the same or cheaper than Dunnes, Woodies and Aldi etc I honestly can't see you making many sales/profit.

Best of luck.

writhen

Best of Luck with your venture.

Had a quick look at the site and a few things struck me:

• web design is poor
• I'd prefer to see a land line number on the site
• You need to get your online shop going asap

Actually I'd echo pretty much everything what AndyJB said - good advice.

I am pie

I am left handed and I have never bought any left handed specific items (with the exception of a guitar) in my life. Never thought about buying anything either and I don't think i ever would.

I do hope that i'm not representative of lefties out there, but maybe i am !

tricky D

Do yourself a big favour, get a good designer to help you with your website. There's a ton of boxes you are not ticking at all and mistakes and opportunities missed almost everywhere. If I was helping you, I'd start again, concentrating on getting found, being credible and trustworthy, making sales and making further sales. The only thing I would keep is the logo, but with dark text and with all that blue useless stuff removed, all of it.

I disagree with El Rifle on the market size, dunno about his other left handed points. There's lots of potential for servicing international markets and competitor websites are poor.

StupidLikeAFox

Also, for marketing, StumbleUpon have a "Left Handed" category that you could submit to. Best wait til after a site redesign though or you will get a good few thumbs down

tricky D

tricky D wrote: »

Do yourself a big favour, get a good designer to help you with your website. There's a ton of boxes you are not ticking at all and mistakes and opportunities missed almost everywhere. If I was helping you, I'd start again, concentrating on getting found, being credible and trustworthy, making sales and making further sales. The only thing I would keep is the logo, but with dark text and with all that blue useless stuff removed, all of it.

I disagree with El Rifle on the market size, dunno about his other left handed points. There's lots of potential for servicing international markets and competitor websites are poor.

I took a look at the other sites as well and agree that they are poor. What i would take from that though is that there is not much money in this. Its not a new concept so, if it was profitable surely someone would have a professional operation up and running by now...

Chet Zar

I like the idea and do think it could be a nice little earner in fact. Haven't seen anything like this before and it could prove to be a nice little novel site and have some appeal.

Some feedback:

1) Watch your grammar and spelling. If I hadn't seen on the site that your name is Gogarty, I would have likely guessed looking at this thread and your site that you weren't a native English speaker. I'm amazed that people put websites out there with typos and grammatical errors...if you have issues though or anything just get someone else to proofread.

2) People have a tendency to start writing all about themselves when it comes to an 'About' or 'Who We Are' section. That's a natural tendency but really it should be more about what you can offer a potential customer...that draws them in and encourages them to engage...same goes for your homepage.

3) Make sure your products are very visible and in clear view on your homepage when you have them up there.

All in all website design needs a LOT of work - don't promote it widely until you get it all sorted.

Good luck!

EWJim

Thanks all

I have revamped the website quite a bit.

I got the website built from the http://www.gettingbusinessonline.ie
so I am limited to what I can do with the site at this time.

As a wise man said "keep moving forward"

EWJim

Just as a close to this thread. The website page discussed has been completely redesigned and comments above are not in the context of the redesigned site which went live on the 13th of August 2011.
Thanks to all who commented on this thread.