What is your opinion

[totalluxury]

Hi

I have had my site operating for 10 months now and nothing is happening. Can anybody give me some constructive critisism. Usually the front page has 3 or 4 photos promoting a new product and links going through to that product. I also promote a free gift if you sign up for our newsletter.

I would love some advise or some ideas. If you have time go to Total Luxury - Online Jewellery Store

Oh and merry christmas have a safe and happy new year.

Larissa

[Heidi Price]

The firts thing that grabs me is the harshness of the pink............

[Heidi Price]

I'm a bit confused here - your business is called Total Luxury, but the site does not convey that message.

Sorry, but the payments accepted box MUST disappear off the home page.
What do you normally have where the Christmas message is at the moment?
I do like your banner.
But that pink outline around everything is sooo getting to me.
My eyes don't know where to land and stay.
And combine the white outlines with the pink in the catalogue, and it is headache inducing.
Oh, and the catalogue navigation doesn't match the home page navigation - these should be consistant.
And then the About Us and Contact US pages have different background color to the rest of the site! No no no!

To be honest, a black background is the hardest color to use effectively, and the white does look better for your site (though I would go with a soft color, unlike white which is harsh).
Oh, and the orange nav bar is ewwww.
Your email should not be "admin@..." - enquiries@.... is more professional.
And if you are targeting a national or international market, you don't need to put in your street address, especially as you have Newcastle on the About Us Page.

Oh no........ the Login (wha? Logon?) pages has a different background too.

I'm going to stop here - if you want to start again, let me know:

enquire@heidiprice.com.au

[MissieK]

To be honest, the layout looks cheap - and not a site that would attract me past the first page. I also don't like sites with a black background - I find it hard to read. Your photos aren't very clear either.

That said, it is easy to navigate - however if I didn't know you through here, I wouldn't go past the home page.

HTH
Melissa

[Elizabeth Richardson]

Hello Larissa,

Happy Christmas to you too. Hope your wishes come true.

About your website...

• Keywords - Your meta keyword selection looks good. Your meta -description is OK. When choosing these, you must think of the words or phrases that someone else might type into a search box to find what you have to offer.

• Your Website Traffic - Do you know where your current traffic is coming from? A stat counter is a useful tool so you can determine what is working, how people are finding you, how long they stay on the site etc.

• Your Colours - You might also like to try some colour combining to produce a more stylish result. I use this free online tool called Color Palette Generator Color Palette Generator

• Your Pictures - Good to see you have optimized them for use on the web. I think your images look OK, but they could use some enhancement to make them look even better on the Internet though. Most image editors have an auto contrast button (Googles Picasa is a free program and very useful for other things too) and in one click, your photos would be brightened and much easier to see. Sharpening them (picasa does that too) would help a lot as well.

• Improving Traffic Flow - I notice you have lots of outbound links! Have those websites given you a reciprocal link? Getting links to your website from other relevant websites will improve your traffic flow and search engine ranking, especially if they are high ranking for the keywords you have selected.

• Website Consistency - I really like the pages with the white background. Your images can look really good on white too, especially if they are given a white background and blend more onto the page. Having some black pages and some white is a dead give-away that your site hasn't been professionally constructed. Keeping them consistent helps with visual ease of navigation too.

• About Us Page - You've gone slightly overboard with the total luxury keyword. You already have it in your domain name - it's useless to include it so many times - in fact, it can even work against you by creating a duplicate content issue. But, I really do like how you've left aligned the text - that's a professional look. Centered text is not!

• A Warning For Everyone - Hotlinking your email address on your website is the number one cause of SPAM, as the robots come in and harvest your email addresses, sometimes in only a matter of days. It's best to use a contact form with an anti-spam question or maths challenge OR disguise your email address by writing it something like this - admin [at] totalluxury [dot] com [dot] au

I wish you all the best with your website...we just keep on learning.

Elizabeth

[ahortin]

Hi Larissa,

I tend to agree with most of the previous posts. Heidi in particular raised some great points...

Overall, I think the site looks a little "dated". It could do with a bit of a 'freshen' up.

Navigation is hugely important. It needs to be consistent across the whole site.

Your site colours should also be consistent. As mentioned, some pages have a black background, others are white and some pink(ish).

The menu colour, pink(ish) on orange(ish) is kinda ugly. Not really the best combination and the colours themselves aren't really pleasant to look at.

I'd tone down the pink outlines around everything. Not everything needs to be outlined.

Your main banner image looks a little grainy. A bit too much jpg compression.

You've gone a bit overboard with the Total Luxury on the "About Us" page.

As Elizabeth mentioned, you'd be much better using a contact form than linking your email address on the Contact page. Email addresses written in text, even when they're not linked, are just asking to be Spammed. If you dont want to use an email form, at least change the email address to something more suitable than "admin", as Heidi suggested.

You've used the same image on the "About us" and "Contact Us" pages, which is fine, but it looks kinda funny with all the whitespace around it, especially with one edge being straight. An image like that lends itself to being flush against an edge or blended in with some other design. Also, it sits in different places on both pages, obviously because of the different text content. If you're going to have a "two-column" or "multi-column" site, then the column widths shold be consistent across the whole site (unless of course there's a good reason to change them). In your case, on both these pages, you have the image in the left column and the text in the right. The widths should be the same so that the image sites in the same place on both pages.

The "shopping cart" buttons look a bit cheap 'n nasty. The "Add to Cart" button has (what's supposed to be) a kind of dropshadow effect, yet the "Proceed to Checkout" button doesn't. Also, your "Delete" and "Update Basket" buttons look totally different yet again.

Anyway, just a few thoughts to consider.
Good luck.

Anthony.

[totalluxury]

Thank You so much for all that advice. I will see what I can do.

Cheers.

[Nexus Resources]

Hey Larissa

You said something like "I have been going for 10 months now and nothing is happening"

I'd say the answer to that question is the global economy!

I just had a quick look at your site and loved YOUR BAGS, however, having said that … I am just not spending money at the moment. My business has dropped off over the last couple of months and until things pick up here - my purse is shut tight.

What everyone else has said is absolutely valuable, however I would guess that it would be hard to implement when one isn't making any money. Yes, fixing your website is important, but I would be asking you what sort of marketing programs are you implementing at the moment?

Please don't be discouraged, keep going ... and hang in there - you have some great looking items and I know that when I can start building up my disposable income I will be certainly visiting your site again.

[Adam Randall]

Originally Posted by Elizabeth Richardson

Hello Larissa,

• Keywords - Your meta keyword selection looks good. Your meta -description is OK. When choosing these, you must think of the words or phrases that someone else might type into a search box to find what you have to offer.

• Improving Traffic Flow - I notice you have lots of outbound links! Have those websites given you a reciprocal link? Getting links to your website from other relevant websites will improve your traffic flow and search engine ranking, especially if they are high ranking for the keywords you have selected.

• A Warning For Everyone - Hotlinking your email address on your website is the number one cause of SPAM, as the robots come in and harvest your email addresses, sometimes in only a matter of days. It's best to use a contact form with an anti-spam question or maths challenge OR disguise your email address by writing it something like this - admin [at] totalluxury [dot] com [dot] au

I wish you all the best with your website...we just keep on learning.

Elizabeth

Hi Elizabeth
Just on the two points above, meta tags are as much use as defragmenting your hard drive.
All meta tags do is tell your competition what keywords you are trying to target. Google ignores them and has done since about the mid 90s.
I wish it was that easy

more info

I used to agree with you on the other point as far as having a the email disguised, however I have gone the other way these days, I have an excellent spam filter service that gets rid of the rubbish anyway and I prefer to ensure less barriers between us and potential clients contacting us the better.

Most people I find see the captcha software and cant be bothered filling it out, which is why I stopped using it.

Ah almost forgot, its 3 points Rather than reciprocal linking, it makes far more sense to put things on the site that people want, articles on relevant subject matter etc etc, that way people will link automatically.

Google has stated quite recently that artificial linking practices are not worth the effort, this includes paid links and reciprocal linking especially if overdone.

The idea is that only a good page that stands on its own is worth linking to.

Ultimately getting a worthwhile web site is just like any endevour, it requires hard work, planning, knowledge and or lots of money and of course time.

As far as the site itself, I agree with all thats been said before:

Larissa, you seem to be targeting the key phrase "total luxury"
My question is why?

According to Google, nobody on the planet searched for that key phrase during december and only 880 people have ever searched on that term, I am guessing 1/4 of them may be you checking to see if you rank for that phrase. While these figures may not be 100% accurate, they should be telling you that you are wasting your time focusing on that phrase.

Your business name is total luxury, this means nothing as far as online shops are concerned.

You need to ask yourself this question:

What are my clients using to find me?

Some ideas:
Fashion hand bags
designer hand bags
womens hand bags
large hand bags
leather hand bags

Now instead of putting "Click for full product range" in the premo spot on your front page which I might add you make page one on google for, why not put click for leather handbags ensuring only leather handbags is linked.

Get rid of you business name out of the title bar, its a waste of time.

Instead of "free gift" which is pointless why not have "free ladies handbag"

You need to remember google is not magic, it searches words and links, if you dont give it the right words, nobody will find you.

On a positive note, it seems a lot of effort has gone into the actual shop side of it and I think once you get visitors, you might get some sales.

[Lucki]

I agree having the black background is not very appealing. White generally is a better background colour. I had the same problem when we were told our original website was 'dark and boring', it was against a brown background.

Try and keep your images consistent, against the same coloured background. If you have photoshop this will help with fine tuning the images.

Also google analytics is a free tool and can help with where your traffic is coming from, keyword search. It basically gives you free data about how your website is working for you.

The downturn in economy is also having an effect, I recently read that numbers had dwindled for online shopping. However, this is the perfect opportunity to get creative, work smarter and try new things.