Hi,
Just finished publishing a new line of products on a year old site Medical Scrubs, Nursing Uniforms, Lab Coats, Accessories from MedicalScrubsRus . Starting to get good traffic but no conversions. About 75 % exit from my home page. Any ideas out there? Thanks .. I really appreciate the help.

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JBW
www.thelaserveincenter.com , www.medicalscrubsrus.com

Logo: What do the red squiggly lines represent? I don't see the connection between your logo and your product.

White text on blue background is too hard to read. Photos are grainy and blurry which gives an unprofessional look to your site.

Otherwise, I like the layout and the navigation works well.

I looked at it in Firefox and in IE, and in both the header graphic up top right is distorted and makes the people look short and fat (compare with proper image on the scrub sets page. BIG difference!) It isn't the best possible presentation of your product for people to be presented with first. Also, the navigation next to that image doesn't contrast enough with the background, and the text is way too tiny. It would also be better as a horizontal navigation above the image.

Logo shows white jaggies around it, as if someone transparentized from a white background without knowing how to do so, and it looks unprofessional. I also agree that the logo could be much slicker, this one does you no favors. Having this professionally done will get you back much more than it will cost you.

But you ask about why people don't go further. How about moving the images up? How about some sale items with prices on the first page? People couldn't care less about free shipping if they don't know how much the product costs. I also agree about the quality of the images. It looks like you took someone else's jpg images then resized and recompressed them. Making images into jpg files should be the last step since jpg is a lossy format. You need to start out with high resolution images. And when working with them you need to keep the same aspect ratio of width to height, or you end up with images that are distorted.

So the bottom line is that you're not giving people any reasons to click inside. Sorry to be harsh, but this looks like amateur hour and you're not developing any trust here. If people see an unprofessional looking site they will go elsewhere.

A side issue--
If you're going to have a blog, it should be ON this domain. It does nothing for you over at blogspot. Install real blog software such as wordpress (from wordpress.org) or movable type and import your blogger posts. Configure it to ping all the update services. Import the shopping cart RSS into the blog, and vice versa. Oops-- No RSS feed on the cart? Many missed opportunities there.

I'm also going to mention that this cart software generates really messy and old fashioned code, and the code to content ratio is awful, not to mention the inline javascripts and embedded css which can both be placed in their own files and called in, which allows caching. There are better much better carts out there. Cubecart, the newest Zencart, and OpenCart are all much better at generating clean code.

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Custom WordPress Themes, CubeCart templates, ModX templates, Movable Type templates. ~ B1tchslappin Political Blog ~ GreenSpeak Community Action

In addition to bj's always impeccable critique, I would have to add that your page looks remarkably similar to the pages which come up on domains parked with GoDaddy! I imagine I am not alone in responding automatically by clicking the back button when I see these pages.

In the vein of aidsntcg's critique, your visitors aren't interested in your logo and they already have the URL in bold at the top of the browser window and in the address box, its much to big. The above the fold space on your page is too valuable to waste with a logo that's A. barely capable of telling the folks what you sell; and B. not that attractive or readable. You would be much better served with a logo that says: WE SELL MEDICAL SCRUBS.

Top of the page graphics that are distorted, and/or out of line with intended container, scream FLY BY NIGHT. Not at all the impression that instills confidence in these days of increasing and sometimes unwarranted scare publicity about Internet traps and pitfalls.

Of course I don't know much about your industry, but after viewing your prices they seem quite reasonable. If your shipping is also reasonable and your selection is great, your site would seem to represent quite an opportunity to do lots of biz. You should invest in 1. Professional graphics advice. 2. Professional usability consultant. 3. since your line is not that extensive, a custom site and shopping cart wouldn't be that expensive. With a custom site you could have much better (easier to promote) URLs, cleaner (easier to promote) pages, and lots more opportunity to test ways to tempt your visitors to convert!

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Sell the tourists
kulawebguy

Thanks for the great advise! I will consider all your suggestions. Already dumped the logo .... your right it took up too much valuable space. Hope to have the other things in play shortly as well. Thanks again for the great scrutiny, I really appreciate all you do. Being a newbie at not only web design but also retail sales I have much to learn ... but I am lovin it!!!!

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JBW
www.thelaserveincenter.com , www.medicalscrubsrus.com

MUCH better visually!

This skin still wastes whitespace at the top, but on the average window size to mimic resolution of 1024 x 768 I can see the full first row of product images with their prices, which is a big improvement.

The (numerous) problems with the code are still there. I really think a change of cart software would help. The more validation errors there are, the more likely it is that spiders have a problem accessing your inner pages, which could in part account for your high bounce rate.

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Custom WordPress Themes, CubeCart templates, ModX templates, Movable Type templates. ~ B1tchslappin Political Blog ~ GreenSpeak Community Action

I still think the logo starts too far down the page. You can get rid of these lines:

<meta name="Author" content="Jeffrey Ware">
<meta name="CATEGORY" content="home page">
<meta name="Reply-to" content="jware@myactv.net">
<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
<meta name="Copyright" content="2006 Copyright">
<meta name="rights" content="Copyright 2006. All material contained herein is owned and protected. Any attempts to reproduce this information without the express written consent from the owner will be prosecuted.">

You shouldn't have two different meta descriptions. Google will sometimes use these as the snippet on the SERPs pages, so make it count.

<meta name="Description" content="This page contains medical scrubs titles, contact information, uniform scrubs order forms, medical scrubs color chart, navigation bar. Specials for medical scrubs, nursing accessories are also found here.">
<meta name="Description" content="Excellent selection of quality medical scrubs, uniform scrubs, nursing scrubs, lab coats.Free Shipping. Group Discounts.">

And should put your CSS and Javascripts in external files.

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Thanks again. That's easy to fix ... I should have seen that one. But --- that why I need new eyes. You are all great!!!!

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JBW
www.thelaserveincenter.com , www.medicalscrubsrus.com