By looking at my site, it should be obvious that I'm neither a programmer or a designer. I am a businessman who had NEVER thought of running a website can be so difficult and HOPELESS. I have been working at my site with some outside help for about 6 months and don't know where to go from here. My online sales were about $500 last month and spent about as much in promotion.
HELP!
Chris

I'll leave the doctype, tables, skimpy keywords issues for others. Users dislike horizontal scrolling -- it's a fairly well know usability and design issue (width = 1000px on your source code, undoubtedly to accomodate the page layout, not what users find readable. Very Ice. You want to study up on Liquid Design).

You may not have considered the web as part of an integrated marketing effort. You may want to try to drive more business from existing customers with sales letters, promotions and so on. This could be email letters but also physical mailings. You may be able to interest people in signing up for an emailed "project of the month" letter.

You may want to collaborate with logical joint venture partners on cross promotions. Sales offering 20%, 40%, or 89% have no information meaning, most especially online. There is no point of reference or context for shoppers. While percent off is completely understandable internally, it just marks you as a discounter. This means, eventually, you will train consumers to buy when there's a sale -- not otherwise.

The site has little to distiguish itself as a unique resource. You may want to check out a site like michaels.com, which is organized by theme. This may drive more sales, and (should have been) a focus of user testing before the site launched.

The problems is, I don't understand what the problem is. I'll admit that I'll never be able to design my site like michaels.com nor I have time to learn. Can someone take on my site and make it work?

Chris

I would definately scale down the width of the site.

Although I have frames on mine you can see all information without having to scroll too much (well hopefully) as not all monitors are set up the same.
http://www.mediacases.com/index2.htm

It just needs a little tweaking and it will be just fine.

Diane

ya, you're right - my maple leaf needs improving (as per your review of www.e-ca.ca). Will do ASAP - thanks.

As for your's, I don't like the side-to-side scrolling, either. Also, your far right column is too long. Perhaps remove all sub-categories (eg, candle base, candle oil, etc), and use only the main headings (eg, candles).

Looks like there is a lot to see and buy, though, and that keeps people interested. And the Random Picks is a very cool marketing concept, using a simple refresh.

Having read your previous postings, I know someone who can help develop a portal for you, cheap. May be just the thing you need to manage a site with nearly 5000 items (I've heard that database-driven portals are good for large inventories, but really can not say for sure - any input from others???). Anyway, send me a reply, if interested in the referral.

O.K.
By popular demand, and a good one, I had eliminated my right column which was causing my site becoming too wide. I had a list of about 80 different categories and sub-categories at my right column and now I'm afraid they'll not be able to find what they are looking for just by looking at my Categories on the left side.

One of my major problem is categorizing 4800 products. Any suggestions?

By the way, thank you all who had reviewed my site and if I forgot to reciprocate, let me know and I'll give you a honest opinion.

Thank you for your off board message :-)

I think you will find that your biggest problem is that you have design to a fixed pixel width. You are better fixing it as a "%" of the screen size.

Not a fan of the colours. They are a bit insipid at the moment, I think you can use the same colour scheme, but with more depth.

The promotion at the top makes the page look as if it has been tacked on (which it probably has been). You should incorporate it somewhere on the page. Maybe have a this months specials section near the top.

Your navigation buttons take up a lot of unnecessary space that should be taken up with more relevent data. A more streamline navigation will work just as well without taking up so much room. It would also allow a better position & size for your logo, which is important in establishing the identity of your business.

Your left hand table could be narrower, giving more display space for your products, or incorporate the table you deleted?

You need some sort of description as to what you are. Shopping carts often forget this feature. Would you buy off me if you didn't know who I was?

You need to look at the page & think, would I buy off them? Do they look reputable? Then look at how the user would navigate around your site. It is easy? Do they have to look around for what they want? Is the product described well enough? etc, etc

I actually think this site categorizes them quite well, & it has easy navigation. Worth a look ...
http://www.hairsupply.biz/
It is one of the better ones I have seen. The software I think has been obtained from http://www.mals-e.com/

Otherwise, you can check into the Programming section of the WPW forum & ask the pros what they think as far as categorizng it.

Alternatively, you can contract someone to build your site & have it SEO'ed.

Best of Luck !

Cindy

__________________
Web Development Community ::: Forum ::: Library

It' time for Progressive Web & IT Development!

This is a GREAT forum. Wish I had known about this forum before I started. I know I have to hire a professional to overhaul my site. I need to go to Database forum and Search Engine forum, not to learn and do it myself but find a knowledgable pro.

I thought my site was good but now I know otherwise.
What you people told me makes a lot of sense, specially...
Dcrux and Matauri, Thanks alot.