New Website - www.perfumeireland.com

TheWaterboy

I have spent the past 6 months developing this site so id appreciate if ye could check it out. Havent done a lot of testing on it but i dont think there are too many bugs in it. And maybe ye can all buy some discount perfume!

fade2black

i really hope this thread doesn't spawn a load of abuse for waterboy.....
Fair play to ya dude....gonna check it out

aidan_walsh

Nice, very nice... The "Specials" page breaks the stylesheet, and some of the pages have the habit of closing the open menu tree, but other than those little niggles, its looking very good...

impr0v

From a quick run through it, it seems to be pretty much correct information-wise, though a minor niggle is that after you click one of 'top 5' links you're brought to a complete list of all the products related to that name, rather than the actual perfume that is the best seller.

Aesthetic-wise though it looks a little too functional to me, like it was designed purely by someone from a technical only background. It's very boxy and list-like overall, like a database of electronics components. With the evocative product you are trying to sell I suspect a more visually appealing site would pay dividends in the long-run.

cgarvey

I'm sure programtically, the site is good, everything seems to work well anyway.

However, a couple of things..

• It seems a bit sluggish to load (just a bit)
• I couldn't find any contact details on either Contact Us or About Us.. which means I'd never consider shopping there.
• The blue <a> links are a bit style-less/90's.
• The font is very small.. I can see you want it small to reduce the clutter.. and that kind of works, until you actually go and try to read stuff!! Consider increasing font size, and using padding and background colour/imaging to break up the pages.
• The red font with blue underline on the FAQ page is just.. wrong!!
• I had a couple of issues with the tree nav not staying open (see impr0v's point)
• The text in the nav images along the top, is out of line

.cg

Figment

Technically i see no problem with it after a quick look.
Design wise it doesnt 'sell' your products to me. If i was going to pay that money for some smellies i want the design to convince me i am buying the Fashion Status that these products are marketed as and not to be suspecting that they could be knockoffs. I dont believe that they are knockoffs but the design is not reasuring me.

Best of luck with the site though. I hope it goes really well for you. How do you plan on marketing it? That is often the hardest part of a new business.

TheWaterboy

As im from a technical background my design skills are limited. And it is something i will work on. I accept all advice and will sit down over the next few nights and take that into account.

Regarding marketing the site well this is a difficult aspect. My budget is tight so i hope to get crawled by Google and Yahoo soon and work on increasing my listing then. After that i am unsure what to do. Anyone got any advice.

Figment

Depends on who you are targeting. Is it a local market or a world one?
For a local market take advantage of the exposure a good press release can bring you. You have to make it sound good if you want it to be carried by the press. Target publications who themselves target your specific market.

TheWaterboy

to be honest i only want to hit the Irish market and after that any other european market is a bonus.
There isnt anything like this in Ireland at the moment as such. I intent getting as much free publicity as possible. Especially through different newspapers, radio etc. Any body have any idea how you can get this exposure. i know the irish times do a website review every thursday

daymobrew

There isnt anything like this in Ireland at the moment as such.

Be sure to compare your prices with the perfume discount shops around (I think there are TWO in Blanchardstown Centre, near me).

dudara

I just clicked through to shipping as that is something I'd always look at when buying. You say that orders over E80 ship for free, but what are the prices for orders under E80? I'm really not going to go to the bother of emailing the website just to find this out.

TheWaterboy

Sorry i forgot to include that. There is a flat charge of €2.50 for shipping for any orders under 80 euro.

mneylon

It's quite attractive

dudara

Cheers for the reply Waterboy, you might be getting some business out of this

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Seth Brundle

Seems to works fine for me daveirl.

TheWaterboy

daveirl - i checked through the checkout process and it seems to work fine too. have another go and see how you get on...teething problems ;-(

Aquos76

Waterboy, there is a particular perfume which my wife has been looking for for a good while, its not on your site but would you have any contacts that you may be able to source it from. I think its called "vanilla fields" by coty for women.

TheWaterboy

Leonard - Leave it with me and ill see can I source it from one of my suppliers. I shall get back to you

TheWaterboy

Leonard - I have found this perfume for you. I can get you a 50 ml box for 28 euro + 2 euro P+P

Let me know and i can order it for you. It will take 7-10 days for me to get it though

LoLth

keep the business in PMs lads.

thanks

zAbbo

It may be worthwhile sticking to some of the w3 rules, unless the design warrants bypassing there strict document types

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.perfumeireland.com

Eoin

Hi,

Looks pretty good - a couple of comments in no particular order:

1) The underlined text on the homepage:
"Choose from 9015 products from 263 different brands". You have already made the emphasis with the bold text - this is enough. Underlined text normally indicates a link.

2) Nearly everything begins with "Discount" - we already know it is a discount, and it "cheapens" the term when you use it as much

3) This is quite a minor point but: Example: Davidoff Cool Water is under "D" in the fragrance area. Cool Water is the fragrance, Davidoff is the company, so the heading should either be changed from "Fragrance" to "Make / Designer etc" or Cool Water should be found in the "C" section, not the "D" section.

4) Lose the italicised bold red font.

5) Make your HTML W3C compliant - there are 100+ errors on the homepage.

6) The home page could be broken into logical sections a little better by using nice backgrounds etc. Like someone has said previously, given the type of product you are selling, you do not want too much of a "functional" look to the site, so you can probably lean towards using a bit more imagery (though I may get strung up for that)

I don't know too much about the prices, but they look like great value...

Eoin

Putang

Hi do you sell armani for men ? white/black and green.

PS now that your site is up how do you promote it to get up on the first page of google , is this done on your meta tags or are they a thing of the past.

I have developed a site myself but i am tryin to find out how to succesfully get it recognisded on search engines before i launch it

mneylon

You can't simply launch a site and expect it to be ranked.

Seth Brundle

re: Search Engine Optimisation main tasks
1. make your page valid HTML
2. include relevant meta tags on each page
3. have as many links to your site as possible (from other (preferably well ranked) sites)

http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/article.php/2167921 (and other parts of this site)
www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Eoin

I don't know if this makes a difference, but I seem to remember that searching for the domain name in google a few times can help it to be picked up?

yop

The site looks go lad, bes of luck with it.
Have a look at http://www.strawberrynet.com/ for some ideas and layout.
You layout on the header is similar but for other offers and details you could see what they use.

Gluck

angelofdeath

yop wrote:

Have a look at http://www.strawberrynet.com/ for some ideas and layout.
You layout on the header is similar but for other offers and details you could see what they use.

nice site, once its loaded and assuming you've the patience of a saint

MakingMeMark

hey mate, not a bad site at all.
give me a shout if u need any Flash work/banners
hey, want to buy McQueen's Kingdom - 56Euro seems a bit steep.any reduction for boards members? also, wanna ship it to London as a pressie for next week. u do that?
ta

rsynnott

You might want to have a look at Google Adwords. As far as I know you can target it to just advertise to Irish people. So when someone searches for "Perfume" in Google, a text ad for your site will come up on the right; it only costs you money when people actually click on it.