How important is graphics on your home page?

[Curve Appeal]

I sell lingerie, and I know content is important for search engines, yet when I search for Lingerie.. most sites have large graphics of what they sell. (and I always thought speed matters)

my question.. do I have enough, should they be bigger?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[incrediblehelp]

Why not simply offer a pop-up to the larger image?

[thindenim]

Agree with incrediblehelp and I would recommend Thickbox for the pop ups.

[gamblingcasinodirectory]

i think you are correct about speed but i have found if you offer a high quality 'click to enlarge' button for most product images.
But on your home page people need to know the price. be upfront with your pricing and so on the home page have a product 'special' or just a product with a price as an example of what is to offer.
People spend a few seconds on home pages and leave if you keep them guessing with too much text and not enough product.

sorry one more thing with your site is the left hand menu -- toooooooooo messy. have to separate your products from you services so people look at the menu and find what they want easily. if you want to see one of our sites we just started to see what i mean.

on y va
http://www.invisiblebra.com.au

regards
stan

[Curve Appeal]

Originally Posted by gamblingcasinodirectory

i think you are correct about speed but i have found if you offer a high quality 'click to enlarge' button for most product images.
But on your home page people need to know the price. be upfront with your pricing and so on the home page have a product 'special' or just a product with a price as an example of what is to offer.
People spend a few seconds on home pages and leave if you keep them guessing with too much text and not enough product.

sorry one more thing with your site is the left hand menu -- toooooooooo messy. have to separate your products from you services so people look at the menu and find what they want easily. if you want to see one of our sites we just started to see what i mean.

on y va
http://www.invisiblebra.com.au

regards
stan

Thank you for your help and advice. Unfortunately, my host doesn't give me the option of separating my index and neither does it let me list items with a price. :( I would love to be able to do.

Any suggestions on how to incorporate those two ideas with maybe html?

[Curve Appeal]

I added a few items to my home page...

not sure how I can clean up my index though...?

[gamblingcasinodirectory]

that makes it difficult. because i only know html, the site we started, invisiblebra, i did only using html and using the paypal shopping cart. so you just add the html code with the buttons and you have an ecommerce site that you can manage yourself. the only thing is you can't have an inventory like you can with a true shopping cart but we get around this by either removing the product if we no longer have it or just restocking. you can refund the person if you don't have the stock, so it is very easy. so with free hosting with doteasy.com and a paypal shopping cart, a website template to model off and we have this site up and running for $200 and no ongoing fees, no hosting, no ssl, no webdesigner fees or update fees.

as far as you menu goes if you can change the order to have your products at the top of the the menu and the services at the lower part, then that will increase the ease of use, i would think.

to put a price on the home page, what you could do is add an image that is infact a price, then upload that image underneath the item for sale or on write it at the bottom of the product image,just extend the canvas to have this. you should be able to upload images to your home page and so the image text may say 'Bra Set Special - $29.95 - Click Here' and the image is hyperlinked.

--- also with the menu, you could separate each part by just leaving one box blank, or by having a heading in capitals like 'PRODUCTS' and 'SERVICES' and 'INFORMATION' etc.


-- just saw you products on home page - thats what i meant that hot, hopefully it will help, but please don't blame me if it doesn't
ok

** and i would say get rid of the 'site you recommend' - it takes a lot away from your products and your site and one link doesn't work and the other is your bidvertiser which is crap for people buying lingerie.

[Curve Appeal]

ok.. i got rid of all my informational links on the left index and did them at the footer with html...

What is wrong with the bidvertiser links and lingerie?

[gamblingcasinodirectory]

i think that those 'sites we recommend' diminish your focus on the home page and on every other page. it distracts from what you want YOU have to offer. having these links are not applicable to your customers especially the bidvertiser, which is only for webmasters not lusty lingerie shoppers

good luck with the changes - looks more structured now i think - and remember to no always have slim girls on the home page because 50% of the population is overweight so include a percentage of plus size on your home page - i think anyway but you will know who your clients are from your sales

good luck

[Curve Appeal]

thank you

[wsmeyer]

The question is for your product what converts sales better, more information, or more pictures. I'm certain that Victoria's Secret spent a considerable amount of time and money market testing that exact question, and one look at their site tells me the results weren't even close.

William.

[Curve Appeal]

Originally Posted by wsmeyer

The question is for your product what converts sales better, more information, or more pictures. I'm certain that Victoria's Secret spent a considerable amount of time and money market testing that exact question, and one look at their site tells me the results weren't even close.

William.

Good point.. never thought of it that way!

[sub_kovert]

Hello Curve Appeal,

In my opinion, the site layout needs work. I would definitely seperate the main navigation from the product categories, The header is too big, shrink it down to allow more space for your product. I would also style the product panels in the centre, including the links (these look like browser defaults to me).

The page also seems to have lots of blank space at the bottom (for me in firefox), you can scroll down forever...clean up the HTML. Viewing the source, your doctype declaration starts on line 123, why all this blank space? Your CSS needs work, only about 5% of your markup is actual content.

The bold text and descriptions at the top of the page don't do anything for a visitor, this content seems that it has been written for search engines rather than humans - makes no sense. I would concentrate on writing accurate and valid descriptions for the specific type of product you offer, say why you are the best at what you do.