I wonder, are people still afraid to buy online?

We have set up an extremely secure website similar to what banks use, yet people still prefer to buy our products over the phone. We have even set up the option to order offline and this hardly gets used either. It's hard to tell what our customers are thinking so maybe some direct feedback from the talented WebProWorld members would give us something to work towards. Please review our site http://www.bionatural.com.au and let me know if you could trust this site!

Thanks

Hello,
Because of your product line, your potential customers tend to be cautious naturally, so I would put your Verisign seal up on top and put a testimonial on each page rather than on a separate page. Youe web site design is fine.

__________________
GSO
http://www.GlobalSpecialOperations.com/
-------------------------------------

Firstly, thanks for the reply.

Do you think its possible that placing the verisign logo at the top of the page is over doing it?

If I see a website with secure! Secure! 100% Secure! plastered all over it I tend be be more cautious than otherwise. Is there a way to gain trust naturally (no pun intended). By that I mean if you pervey your website as a respectable company (which ours is) people seem to trust it more. From other examples, do you know of a website which you would trust 100%?

Maybe people gain trust by seeing a face behind the business? What do you think?

I started from scratch straight out of my Graphic Design course with no knowledge of html, web design, actually... None at all!

Since March 2003 I have managed to get over 50 pages of our website listed highly on google and have transformed the BioNatural website http://www.bionatural.com.au from an imageless website with only information into an easy to navigate online shop with plenty of information, articles, products, images and accessability. I know I still have a long way to go yet.

I am always open to suggestions, criticism, feedback about the design, navigation and accessablitiy of our website? Please comment on the overall design? Any feedback would be great!

Hello,

I think the overall appearance of the site is alright, but as a visitor I was overwhelmed by all the text.

Now to address the issue of prospect phoning in orders, the one thing I noticed was the Toll Free number at the top of the page.

Part of a successful web strategy is to provide online prospects with easy and concise contact information. That being said, I believe it would benefit your organization to to include a live chat application such as Live Person, Site Chatter, etc on your website. Not only would you be able to initiate contact, but the user would be able to contact the sales department at their leisure and therefore feel more secure about the products they are interested in buying.

Just my two cents. Good luck to you!

Your site design is fine and serves its purpose of offering product for sale.

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that those that call in to order ask some questions first. I went you your personal care line. I saw keywords like "All Natural", "No Preservatives", etc. But you don't have any REAL information about the products where you can buy the product. You have the same info in the preview page as you do on the individual product pages. I bet if all your product pages were as detailed as your "BioProtein" pages, you would sell more.

I also agree with GSO regarding testimonials. Put some with the products. It will add credibility at the point of sale.

Another thing is your contact page. It is full of all the important information a person looks for; i.e. contact NAMES, physical ADDRESS, PHONE numbers. But I had to hunt for the link to that information. "Contact BioNatural" is a little uncommon and I missed it in the navigation. Most people see a "Contact Us" or just "Contact" link. It is easier to cater to habit than retrain a human. Amazon.com uses "Contact Us" I would suggest following the big dogs.

The more that I look at it, I think if you restructured your navigation, you might see better results as well. The "Welcome to BioNatural" link in the lower section of the navigation is almost lost and I had no idea what it was. Change it to "BioNatural Company Info" or just "Company Info" and move it up toward the top. The library could go to the bottom along with the Drinking water facts (or move that link to the water treatment page and call it good)

I also don't think you need to put the VeriSign logo at the top of the page, but if it is at least visible within the first screen view (fold) of the main page, (possibly rework and simplify the navigation and you can put it under the navigation) it will still be subtle enough for your taste but get the point across that you are secure.

Hope these comments help.

__________________
Scott Brinkerhoff - Art of Zen Studios
Web Design I Design Monk
© 2000-forever - All rights reserved by me - SO THERE!!

no buys online because your "Order now" link
does nothing - goes nowhere!

kieran.s

You wrote: " It's hard to tell what our customers are thinking"

Why don't you ask them?
Every time you take a phone order, ask a few questions:
1. did you visit our website?
2. why did you call instead of ordering online?
3. do you buy other products online?

,dave

__________________
Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
WebEnhancement Services - Worldwide

I think that the problem is in the way the shopping cart functions. With most carts, you order a product and you automatically view the cart. With your cart, you click on "Order" and it appears that nothing happens. You have to go to checkout to see if your product is actuallly there. I think this is a poor design. I run a site where we get hundreds of orders per month thru the cart. I will also say that some people still would prefer to order over the phone. We get 50% over the phone.

PS..There are still alot of people using 800 x 600. Your site is a nightmare for those people.

Yes. Many people still fear the horror stories of identity theft and the internet is still very new to them. It is a scary place where they have no perceived control over their personal information.

You should be careful making claims like "extremely secure website" as it invites "testers" that can boast about a successful breach of your security.

One thing I noticed was that you are outsourcing your secure transactions (https://secure.pageup.com.au/bionatural/) of which some people can be weary. All the major e-commerce web sites that handle online transactions usually use their own domain (or a their own third-level domain) for the payment portion of the transactions. I know it is expensive but if you are serious about this whole thing get your own SSL certificate and a server that can handle the security issues that come up with processing credit cards, etc.

davebarnes has a great idea as well. Ask your customers if they even know about your web site (assuming they called from a different source). Ask them why they didn't order online.

What is the percentage of sales that go through the web site versus over the phone or mail order (if that is an option)? What is your "offline" option?

Lastly, your site looks very nice, however it needs some organization so people can find things a little easier. It looks like everything is there it just may be hard for some people to find exactly what they are looking for.

__________________
Cooper Griggs
Pure Influence
Aloha, surfing and flower stickers
http://www.pureinfluence.com/

Thanks for the all feedback guys.

Firstly I really liked webventurist idea of setting up live chat or a post,"such as Live Person, Site Chatter, etc" is there software or an easy option of setting this up and moderating it?

Also thanks to ghstdrgns for your comments about the site. I agree that the navigation of the left menu is a bit confusing but I have recently noticed that google is listing these pages quite well, the pages closer to the top rank better, compared to ranking at all for the lower listed pages.

I know the "Order now" funtion is a bit subtle, the light yellow link at the top that says "The item ........ has been added to your shopping cart. Click Here to proceed to checkout or continue to browse." This needs some work. What do you recommend as the best way to use this function? Should the visitor go directly to the checkout page? A pop up window? Any other suggestions?

I appreciate all your comments so thankyou very much

Kieran,
You seem to be doing things right in regards to setting up your site for ecommerce (VeriSign in the right place, privacy statement posted, etc).

The reason your customers might prefer to purchase over the phone could be due to habit. You might want to create some "Internet only specials" and list them on your site and in your catalog and marketing materials to switch their purchase behavior to the web.

You might also try a promotion of some sort that drives customers to the Web site such as a sweepstakes. This will create more awareness of the site and you can capture email addresses and use online marketing techniques to get customers back to the web (newsletter, email, etc).

Good luck,
Louis

Thanks louis,

Great idea. I think online specials (ONLY) would be great to encourage sales. Maybe a one day only sale where you receive 50% off one of our products. I would love to be able to set up a 20% off everything for one day or a week or something lke that, but i would have to manually change the price on every product at the start of the sale and back again after the sale? There are limitations as to what I can and can't do!

Can anyone tell me their first impression of the site?
Did you automatically look at the site closed minded as if we are only trying to sell sell sell ?

We don't want to be perceived as "just a shop" We also have a large amount of information about natural self health. What are your views?

When looking at the site, it quickly came across as both an info & commerce site and I got a balanced feeling between your desire to provide free information and sell product.

One thing that I did not like too much was the search engine taking me to Web links off of your site. In a perfect world (perfect to sell) the info links would not let people out of your site where they can be distracted, start surfing and loose interest in purchasing a product.

There is a company called Alternative Medicine (www.alternativemedicine.com) that does a good job of delivering information but not as good of job as your site in selling. Their merchandise is provided by third-party retailers. You might want to check them out.

Louis

I looked at your site and find it extremely attractive. I am not concerned about your level of security - I think it is fine. Graphics, color and text are good.

Keep on flowing!

Jerome

There's an obvious problem which CS noticed: When a person clicks on the "Order Now" button, the next page appears to be the same as the original. The tiny bit of info at the top of the page isn't obvious enough, i.e. that the item was placed in the cart.

I'd suggest either a different shopping cart solution, or redesign this. I didn't go further, because my immediate impression was that it wasn't working, then I noticed the yellow background, but I noticed it because I buy everything online. In other words I'm very familiar with shopping carts, and also I'm familiar with the fact that every site does it differently, but I prefer a cart that when I add an item, it takes me to the shopping cart, where I can see what's been added, with links then to "Continue Shopping" or "Proceed to Checkout."

I'd ask a few folks - 10 or more - to try your site on for size. Have them try to buy something. Ask their opinions about the process and pay close attention to what they say.

Or, track how often the order now buttons are clicked, without a sale progressing to the check stand.

Here's another issue: I chose this time to click on More Details, and found a nice detailed page, and then I clicked on Order Now. The same as before happened with the yellow background text in the same size font appeared (which I doubt very many would even notice). This time though there is a twist in that it has a clickable link to "Click Here" to proceed to check out, but there is no clickable link to Continue Shopping. Your user must use their back button, not once but twice, to return to the original shopping page. Give them a link.

You may be assuming your visitors are web savvy and I'd venture they are not. Consider that only those that design web sites are web savvy, not the typical user.

Perhaps if you made the text larger in your yellow highlighted area it would help. You might try that, plus adding a link to the additional details pages.

Good luck to you. The site is very nice, and looks very professional. I don't think it's a trust issue at all, but a usability issue.

Kathryn

__________________
Free E-book & Instructions in Using EFT & NLP for Weight Loss
OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com

I have found that with our online web store http://www.mailorderhawaii.com we have increased sales by stating our privacy policy, showing who we secure our pages with, having a lock on the checkout button and showing a lock and encription status next to the contine button on the checkout screens. Apparently when people saw these in place they felt more at ease buying with us.

Hope these tips help you guys as it did us!
Rob
mailorderhawaii.com
Hawaiian Resources Co., Ltd.

Chances are likely that most of these people who have giving you feedback have been in internet marketing longer than I have.

As a person visiting your site to see if I can give any feedback it caught my attention right away. For 2 personal reasons....

1. Your title is catching....it is a part of human nature. As an athlete that plays racquetball comptetitively I try to watch the way I take care of my body.

2. My friend sells water as a career. In turn it made me want to read "Drinking water Facts". I found it to be very informative. To the point that I am going to e-mail it to him so that he can keep it by his side should he want to educate himself.

As a representative for an internet service company that provides a system that the masses of people in America need and will be using in the future I can probably understand how you feel personally about helping others improve their lifestyle. You by their health lifestyle. And me by their financial lifestyle.

I am very impressed w/ your site and I enjoy the fact that you have so much information. I don't ever recall a thin home remedy book. I can easily print important information and review it anytime. Or use it as a reference.

Great Job,

Manny Rodriguez
Overcome Financial Debt
www.overcomefinancialdebt.com

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