Feedback on new ecommerce site www.ideviceservices.org

mathepac

Could I ask some of you kind boardsies to check out my new site http://www.ideviceservices.org and provide me with feedback as to its useability etc.

The site itself is completely DIY and cost nothing except time to set up. It's a template site so coding options were limited. The 2-year domain name registration and security cost US$32 through Yahoo Small Business so there are the total costs.

Thanks in advance

gtroo

Hey, the site is not bad although you dont have SSL or member access which are essential in your situation. Why i say this is, if someone is to contact you all you have is a contact form, no number? do u honestly expect people to use a service where they feel like there not secure?. Also it was built with freewebstore software which is another pointer in the wrong direction.. If you used Open Cart then may be creditability would have been better. Look your probably a genuine person selling genuine services, but i can assure you i would not use your services without more information full stop. Thats my 2 cents.

Regards,
Al:p

Duckjob

Get a guest checkout option in there or most people will just close your site at that stage. You're shooting yourself in the foot bigtime if you try to force people to register before they can buy anything.

Also, on-page SEO (Titles etc )is a bit patchy on some of the main pages.

I didnt go as far as the payment because of the register/login blockade, but if you don't have a secure connection when you ask people for CC details, you're toast.

tricky D

You need to do a lot of reworking.

First and foremost, not using SSL is unacceptable, full stop. You should immediately disable the cart until that is sorted.

Trust is missing: no proper contact info as noted, no shipping/returns info and the logo and design look amateur. Insurance? Terms of the services?

$32 for .org for 2 years isn't great value and a .org is supposed to be for the likes of charities, communities, non-profits, etc. You can pick up .com for around €7 pa.

The cart you are using is poor and even though it's free, it has provided bad value.

Lastly, invest properly and wisely in your business. Stop thinking free or as cheap as possible, go for value and RoI. Don't forget your time costs money and opportunity costs can be a factor too. Seriously consider getting and paying for outside professional help for the site, your business' web presence needs it. As is, the conversion on this site will be very low, almost zero, a bit of investment in this area should solve that.

gl/hth

mathepac

tricky D wrote: »

You need to do a lot of reworking...

Thanks for your post but SSL aside could you be specific?

tricky D wrote: »

... no proper contact info as noted ...

All contact info including phone number is displayed as part of the order, purchase, agree to proceed / cancel order process.

tricky D wrote: »

... no shipping/returns info .... Insurance? Terms of the services? ...

All shipping, T&Cs and contract info is available as part of check out / opt out process.

tricky D wrote: »

... and the logo and design look amateur. Insurance? ...

No issue (for now). The logo etc are fine as place-holders for now

tricky D wrote: »

... and a .org is supposed to be for the likes of charities, communities, non-profits, etc. ...

...

I purchased the domain name through Yahoo Small Business who are very clear on the purpose and use of the site as declared and specified by me to Yahoo and to the CRO. Your information on the use of .ORG seems to be out of date based on my research.

tricky D wrote: »

... The cart you are using is poor and even though it's free, it has provided bad value. ...

How could it be improved upon?

tricky D wrote: »

... Lastly, invest properly and wisely in your business. Stop thinking free or as cheap as possible, go for value and RoI. Don't forget your time costs money and opportunity costs can be a factor too. Seriously consider getting and paying for outside professional help for the site, your business' web presence needs it. As is, the conversion on this site will be very low, almost zero, a bit of investment in this area should solve that. ...

Thanks.

Graham

If you are a Limited company you are obliged to display certain contact/company information on (or clearly accessible from) the homepage.

There are no legal requirements for the use of a .org domain name but it is generally accepted that they are not commercial. Nothing to stop you doing it though and even less to stop you overpaying for a .org domain.

I would re-read the feedback you got from tricky D from a slightly less defensive position. You got some good feedback there which you would be well advised to take on board. The point about free being bad value is especially pertinent, free is very bad value if it costs you more than you save.

tricky D

mathepac wrote: »

Thanks for your post but SSL aside could you be specific?

I would strongly advise you to start on a completely new platform and get professional design input. Freewebstore is one of the worst cart solutions I've ever seen.

Currently, there's so much that is missing or implemented badly: no Sales techniques, bad conversion, poor copy, poor typography, lack of trust, no walk-throughs, poor social media implementation, no testimonials/reviews/endorsements, poor SEO...

mathepac wrote: »

All contact info including phone number is displayed as part of the order, purchase, agree to proceed / cancel order process.

All shipping, T&Cs and contract info is available as part of check out / opt out process.

They should be up front. Hiding them further in the process is no good and bad for trust. Trust is a basic essential in business. Why would you not have them prominent?/Why is it hidden?

Besides that, how does a user know what country you operate in??

mathepac wrote: »

I purchased the domain name through Yahoo Small Business who are very clear on the purpose and use of the site as declared and specified by me to Yahoo and to the CRO. Your information on the use of .ORG seems to be out of date based on my research.

Nope, it's not out of date at all. Not sure why Yahoo! would say this when .com, country cctld like .ie or .uk, new business extensions would rank much higher in terms of desirability. .com is simply the first go to extension. It might be acceptable, but that does not mean it's desirable. The fact that there is also a different company at the .com will also be a cause for confusion and brand dilution. Yahoo! are also charging you well over the going rate.

mathepac wrote: »

How could it be improved upon?

Thanks.

See paras 1 and 2 above.

Sorry for being blunt, but this is a very poor solution as it currently stands.

Graham's last point is also especially worth noting. Put another way; the money saved by not investing properly could well be the most expensive saving you make.

gl/hth

mathepac

Graham wrote: »

If you are a Limited company you are obliged to display certain contact/company information on (or clearly accessible from) the homepage.

...

It's not a ltd company.

gtroo

Just reading some of the responses, and there very informative. To reiterate the necessity for member access would be based on potential later revenue, which i failed to mention previously. Yes as DuckJob pointed out there should be something for guest checkout, which is why i suggested (opencart) it has this feature already built in, but it also has the option for signing up! Its more workable than the cart your using at present too, and its (free). Start again with opencart you will be happy you did.There are plenty of free templates to select from aswell. http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=105285 Link for opencart download -> http://www.opencart.com/?route=download/download

Best of Luck
Al

mathepac

mathepac wrote: »

Could I ask some of you kind boardsies to check out my new site http://www.ideviceservices.org ...

A few changes made based on feedback:

• Links to "Terms" and "Privacy" now appear at the top as well at as the bottom of each page
• Guest purchasing now enabled
• Phone no. & snail mail address now on Contact page

In June I asked 3 businesses advertising themselves professional web-developers to quote for developing the site. They offered telephone quotes for silly money (1.6k to 2K+) and they promised to get back to me with more detail. I'm still waiting

AlmightyCushion

You have 4 product pages (unlocking, jailbreaking, data recovery and jailbreak and unlock) but only 7 products. There is no need to have 7 products separated out over 4 pages. Just make a products/services page that lists all 7 products. Do you even need 7 products. Some are just duplicates e.g. iPad unlocking and iPhone unlocking are the same thing at the same price. Why not just call it iPad/iPhone unlocking or iDevice unlocking. Same with jailbreaking.

Your home page and your products page (providing you put them all on the one page) can easily be combined because there is so much over lap between them.

Your product information page gives no information about how the service works. Do I have to visit you? Do I post it to you? If so, do I pay for it and how much does postage to you cost? How long will the service take? Your unlock and jailbreak product gives very little information about the service itself unlike the individual unlock and jailbreak pages.

In your contact us page you have your company name listed as iDevice Services and iDevices Services, which is it?

Some of the English is pretty horrible in the terms and conditions page. E.g. "Each time you use or cause access to this web site", "Our web site and services provided to you on and through our web site on an "AS IS" basis". That whole sentence is a mess. You say in your privacy policy page that "The site owner can be contacted at the email address on this sites contact page". Firstly it should be site's contact us page and secondly there is no email address on the contact us page. There are lots of little niggly things like this that make the site look unprofessional and enough of them make me question whether the site is trustworthy or not.

Ditch freewebstore. That bar up the top of the page just screams amateur. It doesn't instil trust in me either. I really would assume that the site is dodgy based on it. Hosting can be had relatively cheap now and there plenty of professional looking free shopping carts out there.

Edit: Also you seem to take every currency under the sun. Why is this? What are the implications of this? Is the currency price calculated based on the exchange rate of the day? If so, what happens if the exchange rate changes massively between the time the person pays you and you withdraw from paypal? It could cost you. Also, will your bank charge you extra for deposits from an obscure currency? Unless you plan on getting lots of orders from these countries probably best to stick to Euro, GBP and USD at most.

Graham

I think the biggest problem that you're going to have with your current site is trust/confidence. As well as spending the €35 for your services, potential customers are going to have to have enough confidence in your business to trust you with a device worth several hundred euro. If you were offering a lawn mowing service your current site would be fine but you're not, so it isn't.

The figures you mentioned for a professionally designed website aren't far off the mark to be honest, I suspect the companies that quoted could sense you'd never consider spending that amount and decided not to invest any item pursuing your project.

OK, bad bits over, hopefully this next part will be useful....

It is possible to get a great looking site on a budget, especially if you're able to do much of the work yourself. You've already demonstrated you can find your way around html/shopping carts etc so you've actually done almost all of the hard bits. I'd recommend you spend a few euro buying a great looking template (Wordpress or plain html) and adapt that to your requirements. Themeforest have some good ones (if you can look past the animated sliders on almost every design) and they'll cost you less than €50.

I think you're undercharging. Anyone who needs data recovery enough to consider paying for it is likely to value your service more than €35.

Great to see you taking some of the feedback on-board, I did think this was going to turn into one of those threads where much constructive feedback was destined to be ignored.

Edit: +1 for ditching free web store, there are much much much better (low cost) alternatives.

Trojan

mathepac wrote: »

In June I asked 3 businesses advertising themselves professional web-developers to quote for developing the site. They offered telephone quotes for silly money (1.6k to 2K+) and they promised to get back to me with more detail. I'm still waiting

That is silly money, indeed. Ecommerce site development should cost you in the region of €5-25k. Any less and you're almost certainly wasting your money.

--

Don't hold your breath waiting for more details back from those folks if you spoke to them in the same defensive manner you did Tricky D above.

mathepac

Trojan wrote: »

That is silly money, indeed. Ecommerce site development should cost you in the region of €5-25k. Any less and you're almost certainly wasting your money.

--

Don't hold your breath waiting for more details back from those folks if you spoke to them in the same defensive manner you did Tricky D above.

I'm stretching my imagination to its absolute limit and can't see how your comments could be seen as helpful or indeed interpreted as feedback on the site.

Trojan

mathepac wrote: »

I'm stretching my imagination to its absolute limit and can't see how your comments could be seen as helpful or indeed interpreted as feedback on the site.

If you can't possibly imagine why feedback on ecommerce site pricing is helpful, then I think you have bigger problems than we can help you with.

And lose the defensive tone - it's not helping you here. You put stuff out for public feedback, you get feedback - deal with it.

mathepac

Trojan wrote: »

... Don't hold your breath waiting for more details back from those folks if you spoke to them in the same defensive manner you did Tricky D above.

That's not feedback on the site, it's just nasty (but unsurprising) personal commentary.

Trojan wrote: »

If you can't possibly imagine why feedback on ecommerce site pricing is helpful, then I think you have bigger problems than we can help you with. ...

I neglected to edit out the first sentence of your post, apologies for that, and I think reasonable posters would have deduced that fact. Very few I've encountered would have resorted to turning my omission into another nasty (but unsurprising) personal comment.

Trojan wrote: »

... And lose the defensive tone - it's not helping you here. ....

I'm not signed on here to take instruction or orders from you about my "tone". It doesn't seem to have been much of an issue until your ill-mannered intervention.

Most posters to date, those preceding your singularly unhelpful post, were very helpful. Their help is appreciated and I thank them for it. I also acted on the feed-back already received by beginning to change certain aspects of the site, those that seem to be within my control at least. Other changes will take longer and may prove impossible, in which case the "start again" suggestions will be explored.

Trojan wrote: »

... You put stuff out for public feedback, you get feedback - deal with it.

I asked for feedback on the site not mean, low, personal commentary.

In anticipation of a lock / ban, thanks to those of you who helped with site feedback. This was by first venture into the "wild" with a DIY site shoehorned into a free template. It could have gone better.

Graham

mathepac wrote: »

It could have gone better.

I think you're under-estimating how much you've picked up to get the site to where it is now. You're now in a great position to move onto version 2 of the site.

I suspect you're hesitant to 'start again' with a clean slate. Don't be, you'll end up with a vastly improved site in a fraction of the time the current one has taken. In the time you're spending trying to dress up the existing site, you'd have the new one completed.

P.S. Don't assume that abrupt negative feedback is a personal attack, it's usually not.