Is my Website attractive to Buyers?

[emilyk]

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I would love to get some feedback on my website which I’ve had up and running for about 6mths now. http://www.flavouroftheweek.com.au

I’ve been paying an SEO company to try and increase my page rankings (which isn’t really working). I’m also in the process of setting up a merchant account so that I can accept cc payments – do you think this will make it easier to generate sales?

But I thought it’d be invaluable to get other’s advice on the website – what I could alter, what doesn’t work, etc.

Essentially it’s a jewellery and fascinator store that I’m targeting 14-50 year old women. I think that it’s the best value jewellery store around but I’m yet to attract visitors – so want to make sure that when they do get there that the website makes them want to buy – and easy for them to buy!

Comments of any kind are greatly appreciated!

Emily

[themot]

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I’m just your average punter (not a web designer) but I can pick a lot of things that could be improved.

First thing though. Is this what your aiming to rely on as a full time business or is it just a hobby/side business?

[themot]

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Just to add to the above…

The first thing I would do is change the URL. Some people say it’s best to have a name that reflects what your doing. For what your selling, something perhaps like emilysjewels.com.au Then there are people who say it doesn’t matter if the name reflects what you do as you have to build a brand anyway so they would tell you to have something like emilysplace.com.au.

When i read your domain name I straight away think of something to do with food. It leaves nothing to the imagination and infact makes me think of something totally different to what your selling so I probably wouldn’t even click on it if I was looking for costume jewels.

[Chromatix]

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themot, post: 68017 wrote:

Just to add to the above…

The first thing I would do is change the URL. Some people say it’s best to have a name that reflects what your doing. For what your selling, something perhaps like emilysjewels.com.au Then there are people who say it doesn’t matter if the name reflects what you do as you have to build a brand anyway so they would tell you to have something like emilysplace.com.au.

When i read your domain name I straight away think of something to do with food. It leaves nothing to the imagination and infact makes me think of something totally different to what your selling so I probably wouldn’t even click on it if I was looking for costume jewels.

Definitely agree, the domain name is important, especially for the industry you’re in. Digging deeper into your site and looking at the products they’re quite nice and very glamorous. Why not use these images on the front? The photos that are current on the front seem to be low res, which can cheapens the overall look of the site. Jewelry/luxury brands tend to go for the less is more look and feel – e.g. http://au.tiffany.com/Shopping/Category.aspx?cid=287458&mcat=148204 . All the best with it!

Irwin

[AgentMail]

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Again, average Joe here, but the pictures are of a low quality, and does not make me want to buy them because of this. I wonder as well (being a guy I don’t know) how women feel about buying earrings etc. having not seen them in the flesh.

But fix the images, maybe think about some colour or logo design, as this is quite basic (pot kettle black by the way) and see how that goes

[John C.]

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Hi Emily,

I think the highest priority change you should make is the quality of your images. Jewellery is probably the one product where image is everything, so if people can’t get a good look at what they’re buying, well, they just won’t buy it. Almost the entire site looks slightly out of focus and highly compressed (lots of JPG artifacts).

If you can’t afford a professional photographer, then invest in an SLR with Macro lens, a tripod and a light tent. If you can’t afford all that, then just the light tent and tripod for now – use the timer setting on whatever camera you’re using to minimise shake, or even better would be a remote shutter release.

SEO is important, and there are definitely things you can work on, but my opinion is that it’s probably less important to work on your SEO at this stage as it is to improve the look and feel of your site. You can immediately drive traffic to your site using Adwords while you take your time with SEO, but convincing those visitors to buy from you is the tough part in such a competitive industry.

Cheers,
John

[emilyk]

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themot, post: 68013 wrote:

I’m just your average punter (not a web designer) but I can pick a lot of things that could be improved.

First thing though. Is this what your aiming to rely on as a full time business or is it just a hobby/side business?

Pick away as much as you wish – I can handle any feedback!

I want this to be a fulltime business – I’m willing and want to invest in it to make it work – I guess a lot of the time is knowing how to make it work.

Thanks

[OneArmedGraphics]

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I think the site is pitching to the wrong demographic… it’s too posh for it’s own good. The fonts and site theme are too formal in nature, more suiting a $3000 diamond ring?

How are your images sourced? As others said they are poor quality, overly compressed and lacking the sparkle or ‘pop’ that jewelery should have.

If you want to send me a product image source file I’ll send you back a tweaked image just to give you a comparison.

I’d recommend getting rid of the English Language Union Jack as it’s obvious you support English and may confuse some people who could assume the site is based in UK.

Robbie

[themot]

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emilyk, post: 68046 wrote:

Pick away as much as you wish – I can handle any feedback!

I want this to be a fulltime business – I’m willing and want to invest in it to make it work – I guess a lot of the time is knowing how to make it work.

Thanks

ok, brutal honesty coming at ya!

I was going to say if it’s a part time business then scrap the site and just do it on Ebay. If your going to make a serious go of this then your site is going to need a major overhual I reckon.

1. Talk to a good web designer about getting the site re done, they will address all the design issues. I would say to do it properly you would be looking at somewhere between 3-5k. Show them some sites you like and say I want it to look at least as good as this and have x amount of functionality.

2. As has already been said you need better images.

3. Get a proper logo done. Times new roman should be left in MS word.

4. I searched and searched but couldn’t find a way to contact you…

5. In your product categories you have a number indicating how many of something you have, like it shows you have 2 chains. Ditch this. It makes you look like a start up company. Only show numbers if there is a huge selection.

6. Get rid of the search function. Your store doesn’t need it. Search function is only good on sites with many many items.

All up you just have to decide if something like this is really viable. Is it worth to spend say 10k on this site over the next 6 months in re design and SEO and ADwords? Does it have the capability to generate a full time income or am I better off keeping it on the side and not spend any more?

[TheCurved]

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themots post has some wonderful suggestions.

Your website looks dated and amateurish (sorry). My advice to you would be to search the web for inspiration. See what other jewelry websites are doing and find what you like and copy. Another good place to look for inspiration would be websites that sell ready made templates. Again, you can use these templates as inspiration or even purchase any template you like and build your website from that.

Have a look here for inspiration: http://www.templatemonster.com/category/jewelry/

-Stuart
Web Designer and Developer
http://www.stuartshepherd.com

[RAds]

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I’d be making a name for yourself on eBay first and THEN expanding to your own store once the ebay fees eat too much of your profits away. I know that if I ever feel the urge to buy cheap silver jewellery (which does happen) I go straight to ebay, because the range there is just HUGE and I can pick and choose. I’d never google for it. Silver jewelry is amazingly common and there is just so much choice out there.

Like the others have said, your site really does look amateurish, especially the front page. And even if it did look good, your range is way too small.

If you’re pitching for cheap, and aiming for youngsters, make your site hip and funky. If your stuff is expensive and classy (it isn’t) make the site look formal and beautiful. Make sure every image has a BIG full-size one you can see easily from the preview thumbnails, not that tiny little image you’ve currently got. And get a professional photo of someone in your target demographic wearing a fascinator on the front page.

And as to your individual listings – in such a competitive field, describe, describe, DESCRIBE and then describe some more. http://www.flavouroftheweek.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=15&products_id=28 << take that page. There's no description at all. You need a paragraph of keywords so that if someone is looking for a silver cupid 1cm angel holding a harp (or whatever it is - with no preview, no size, no description and no photo there's no way anyone would actually buy that) they have a chance of finding your site.

[John C.]

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TheCurved, post: 68084 wrote:

themots post has some wonderful suggestions.

Your website looks dated and amateurish (sorry). My advice to you would be to search the web for inspiration. See what other jewelry websites are doing and find what you like and copy. Another good place to look for inspiration would be websites that sell ready made templates. Again, you can use these templates as inspiration or even purchase any template you like and build your website from that.

Have a look here for inspiration: http://www.templatemonster.com/category/jewelry/

-Stuart
Web Designer and Developer
http://www.stuartshepherd.com

Emily,

Stuart’s suggestion is a good one, as are Themot’s.

You are using Zen Cart, so you could easily apply a template over the top of your website. Compare this one – http://osc4.template-help.com/zencart_29011/index.php – to your current site, and I think you’ll already see a big difference… all for about $140 from Template Monster (there are plenty of other themes available from that site and others). It will obviously cost more if you need to pay someone to install and tweak it for you, or if you want a totally unique theme (I don’t think uniqueness is that important, as long as you have a unique logo and product images).

The biggest difference between that template and your site though, is the quality of the product images – definitely something you need to address in addition to the template. Most web designers will not do the photography for you, so you need to either find a photographer or learn to do it yourself. It’s time consuming work that needs to be done well with every single product you list on your site. I personally believe your site will not be successful unless you address this major issue. I’d focus on the photography before tackling anything else. Like everything else, it is possible to learn to do it yourself, but it takes time to learn and then master it – if you don’t think you’re capable or willing to learn it, why not advertise on the bulletin board of a local photography college for a student willing to do some part time work for a small fee per photo? I’m sure there would be some itching for the experience.

Good luck with it.

Cheers,
John

[themot]

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Also don’t forget before you go any further do some worst-case-scenario-figures.

Full time basic wage gross $52k or $1000 gross per week.
cost wholesale of average piece $4 (assumption)
average sale $8
$4 gross profit.
$1000 gross weekly profit divide by $4 = 250 sales needed

An optimistic figure for site conversion is 5% so you need 5000 visitors a week to just make roughly $1000.

And none of that is taking into account all the other costs involved in running the business like hosting, seo, ppc, site design, storage etc.

[RAds]

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themot, post: 68096 wrote:

$1000 gross weekly profit divide by $4 = 250 sales needed
And there are only 39 products on that website, hopefully there’s duplicates of each.

Seeing all the products together, another issue with the images (on top of all the ones brought up previously!) that I can see is the background used for the photos is inconsistent. Your site has a buff and white background, but the images vary between black, white and patterned. Choose one, and stick with it.

With the navigation bar a differenet colour to your main viewing area you might want to put product previews inside a small white box, assuming all your images have a white background. If you’re using a ‘busy’ background (like the fascinators) then use a border around the images to separate them from the page background.

You also don’t have an option for ‘size’ on your rings, nor a sizing conversion chart for all countries. So, there’s something else that will stop visitors converting to sales. Imagine an online clothing store where all the photos are less than 100px wide and where nothing has sizes or measurements listed – would you buy anything from that store?

[John C.]

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I’ve mentioned a light tent a couple of times, but realised that many people might not know what I mean. Have a look at this site – http://www.ezcube.com/ – they have some kits available, or you can find cheaper alternatives or DIY options available elsewhere on the web. The important thing with something like jewellery photography is to have bright even lighting all the way around the product, a clean bright or dark background (high key, or low key), and ultra sharp focus.

I once made a light tent using a cardboard box, a sheer curtain from bunnings and a couple of “Daylight” flurescent globes also from Bunnings – all for about $30. The kits are definitely less hassle and the good ones should come with some intelligent instructions. A tripod is also essential (but a chair or bookcase to sit your camera on can be used instead, as long as you’re not trying to hand hold the camera).

[Author]

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