Well, I left my job six weeks ago. I'm now a full time keyboard jockey and the money is fast running out.

I launched an adwords campaign today that will clean me out fast if I don't sell goods. No sales, no food.

If anyone can see ANY good reason why my site would not sell the goods on show I'd really, really appreciate the feedback.
Ampalian Direct Jewellery

Thanks

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Malcolm Cooper
Internet Marketing Business Tips

Nice looking clean site, it was easy to move around your site. Kudos for the photogrpahy of the items and the layout of the site. It is a very easy site to navigate.

First, when we are talking about jewelry, make your money-back guarentee larger, more prominent. You need to reassure the customer that if they dont like it they can return it.

Second, after selecting an item and adding it to the shopping cart, when i clicked on the picture I was presented with a nasty SQL database error.

Finally, the checkout process. From an American standpoint, I find it a little odd that a retailer who has been in business as long as you have, and who is now adverturing into the online field can't accept credit cards other than through Paypal. Re-entering the shopping cart was easy after I logged back in, however, I could not find a way to get back to the shopping cart to see what i was going to purchase or to change the contents.

I hope some of this helped.

Robert Adach
Marketing@digitald.tv
WANT TO MAKE $50 BY SWITCHING FROM CABLE TV
Visit http://www.yourdigitaldestination.com

All in all a well designed site, however there is an amateurish feel to the opening page. The pictures of the jewelry do not match, and do not create a good impression as a whole. They are of different sizes and quality, some are closeups, some have background. I would suggest only one picture of an impressive, glittering heap of jewelry and category links listed there under. Also I would suggest less text in the header.

quote: "Fine Jewellery from lifetime craftsmen Jewellers. Engagement Rings, Wedding Rings, Eternity Rings, Signet Rings, Necklaces, Earrings, Bracelets, Pendants, Chains. Diamonds, Emeralds, Sapphires, Hematite and many other precious stones hand set in beautiful pieces fashioned from Silver, Platinum and Gold. We also sell other wonderful and interesting items that our discerning clients may be interested in."

For instance you could shorten it to:"Fine Jewellery from lifetime craftsmen. Rings, Necklaces, Earrings, Bracelets, Pendants, Chains. Precious stones hand set in beautiful pieces. Also other wonderful and interesting items."

I once learned that when selling one should allways avoid words such as sell, buy and price in the sales pitch. Hope this helps.

I'd also like to see no backgrounds in pictures. The Exclusive & Vintage and Handmade and Bespoke pictures don't fit the rest which looks unprofessional. You have to make people believe that you are a serious, establshed, professional company before they'll trust you with their money.

I'd also make the pics slightly smaller and arrange them all so that you don't have to scroll down to see them. It's a balancing act to stop your site appearing to cluttered, but you want to make an instant impression. Not everyone will scroll, people are lazy.

Your big section of text in the banner, could be put somewhere at the bottom of the page. It's clear what you do so the only purpose the long text serves is in attracting people from search engines. It doesn't need to take pride of place.

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My sites:

www.GatewayLeeds.net
www.EssayGenerator.com

I thought the site has nice kiss element to it. Only two things of note from me:

1. Green photos. Wow! Made me a little sick. Major green-liness. I think the color blend with the products is disorienting and misleading. When you mix green with gold, you'll not get the splendid gold that really is. Mixed with white, as is typical with most products (exception being natural backgrounds), it will enhance and bring out the true color of the product.

2. I went to Garnet, and was hoping to see some products along this line ... nada. If I'd wanted a garnet ring I would have moved on to my google toolbar which is only a mouse move-click-click away. A link to your products sorted by material (by the way of garnet for the garnet page) would have been perfect. Read - click - buy.

Best of luck to you. I know it aint easy out there (in most industries).

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Keith D Commiskey | Web Tools / Web Store Catalog / Free Hall o’ Fame

GiftsForYou.Biz | Crystal Figurines, Crystal Gifts

I started a Jewelry site similar to yours a few weeks ago with a couple of friends, and the advertising is starting to eat up everything. I am in the process of tweaking the keywords to eliminate the cold leads, or lowering the cost for cold leads.

One look over your product details, there's a COMPLETE lack of item description/copywriting which means your site might not rank well for your keywords naturally.

We sold 2 orders in 3 weeks. That's a laughable ROI considering I do much better with my mlm product sites with a few thousand customers. And studying the leading jewerly sites, they have 100k inbound links.

I have never worked so hard on SEO for a competitive term as "jewelry". And I know there is still so much more to do for our jewelry site. Let me know how your site does in the next few weeks.

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Static HTML Shopping Resource Promotion
Herbalife Products - ShapeWorks

Thank you all for taking the time to have a look and post your comments. It's greatly appreciated. All taken on board and my thoughts are as follows, I hope this opens up valuable discussion:

The overall design is partly dictated by OSc and I've never been keen on its look and feel but it's well supported and adaptable where so many eCommerce solutions deliver very rigid results. I'd like to do some business and plough some money back into cool design. Chicken and egg situation.

It might be useful to tell you who the benchmark competition is. It's geraldonline . com That's the business that I need to target.

Site search is something that a lot has gone into to create a USP. The main OSc search was neglected a bit whilst work continues on the category sort. The idea here is that a user can resort the category placing all Sapphire items at the top of the category view for example. It will also have sort by price, both high and low first order.

I'd like to employ more elegant fonts in keeping with the theme but I also want text not graphics ??

Currencies were playing up a bit and temporarily disabled but the intention is GBP, USD, AUD, EURO, YEN

The header text is very controversial. No one is offering me big bucks for a banner right now and as Google uses the first text it finds as the site description I've provided it. It needn't be permanent but I'm trying everything to get up the search engines. I can't afford to maintain PPC.

I agree about the colors and I've tried many combinations. The current scheme majoring on Aubergine and Green, I'm happy with. OSc still looks rudimentary and inelegant and needs a makeover or skin. I'll change the lizard colors to suit the final site rather than try to make the site suit the lizard.

The vast majority of comments about the photography have been surprisingly positive. These have been an awful lot of work and I've had to learn on the job of taking close to 1000 pictures so far. I've got better along the way. I now take between 2 and 4 shots of each item, some on glass and some not. Dark green works well as a contrast for both Gold and Silver and was inspired by the Harrods of London corporate color scheme.

There are currently around 260 individual products on the site. I want to expand this to around 2000. Additional images will be provided so will have various backgrounds which will dilute the green "in house" photography to around 1:10.

A few USP's

Whilst competitors quote 2-3 weeks delivery on many items I will deliver within 4-7 days, on everything, worldwide!

We really can offer an in house bespoke service. We can make to a customers specification, and fast. The workshop and the skills are right here, in house.

Category sort will show you a whole department but order all of the goods according to your preference.

Free delivery worldwide on all orders over £100. Delivery below £100 is only charged at net cost. UK £4.49 RoW £8.98

There will be a choice of 2000 items.

Price range £1.99 Silver Stud Earrings to £50,000 4 carat Diamond & Platinum Solitaire.


Any further input is truly welcome. I'm taking it all on the chin and it is steering the development of the site.

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Malcolm Cooper
Internet Marketing Business Tips

Greetings - Malcolm!

I see you display the "Square-Trade" logo on your index page, so I must assume you are offering your jewelry wares on eBay.

If you have not considered the $9 @ month expense - you may desire to open an eBay store. It provides great exposure & return customers. This is how I found my online jeweler & have spent thousands of dollars at his non-ebay store thus far. Don't worry 'bout the competition on eBay - you are there to market "your" wares to millions of buying viewers.

BTW - I love the fact that my jeweler sends multiple items for a mere $4.95 - I always know my shipping costs up front. If you desire to know my jewelers website for comparison value - just private message me - he wholesales & buys from folks like you to resell.

Cheers!
Max

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Maximilian
Maximum Beauty Products Supply Stores

Cool! nice look & feel site, 2 thnumbs up for a clean & well designed site.

marthonie

http://www.marthonie.com/temp