I have had this website for about 8 months. Although I get about 1000-2000 hits a day, I wonder if I am turning users away with some of the design. Please give me any honest opinion about what you like or don't like about the site.

Also, I will reciprocate any site review....thanks in advance

Sincerely,
Scott

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Tested in IE6 and Mozilla 56k modem 800x600. Text loads nice and fast. Graphics load reasonably fast. Looks good in both browsers. I'm not too keen on the yellow background but otherwise I can't really see anything that would turn people away. Perhaps your hits are not targeted at the people interested in jewelry. A nice design. Good luck with it.

Nick

I just did a quickie look as a potential customer. I couldn't help but notice the red, black, and (grainy) yellow-tan used as the color theme. I visited several other jewelry sites... and they CONSISTENTLY used blue, pink, and blue-purple (and I'm talking about large sites). Blue is a color of trust, and also a beautiful "ice" color that goes with jewelry (stones). There are endless shades of blue that are clean and inviting.

I was put off by the black and red.

You certainly don't have to choose the common blues, like:
http://www.jewelry.com

http://www.BillBarnes.com

http://www.bluenile.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html...1?node=3367581

but color choice sets a mood and inspires buyers. I assume you are a man (Scott) *lol, but experiment with softer colors.

Maybe even consider jewelry shots with transparent white backgrounds that "sit" on the page?

Good luck to you! You appear you have enough skill to do very well.

Keita Rae

I appreciate the time that you took to look at the site in different browsers...According to Alexa, I have slow loading speed, so I am very concerned that I am turning prospective customers away when they come to my site. Thanks Nick!

-Scott

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Thanks for the information Keita!

I never heard that information about blue...I will defintely look into transitioning into a softer color...I have zero artistic ability, so I just randomly selected a color that I thought would be good...

By the way, what part of Jersey are you from? I used to live in Bloomfield/Newark...

Scott

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Just linking to your other post since it has at least one review on it too:)

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=15968

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Please review my site

Unfortunately the other thread was deleted, so I was unable to read your poste...

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I agree with the others that you should change the red to blue. I would move the 'google ads' to the bottom. You don't want to send customers away do You??

Your site loaded at 38.8 sec at 56k. You can check the loading speed of you site here;

http://www.submitplus.com/freeprograms.php?b=loadtest

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Thanks for information about loading speed...I didn't realize that it was that slow! Anyway, I am definitely going to adapt the color scheme and trim the page size.

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Hi Scott,
Your jewelry is nice stuff. The evil eye stuff is a little overwhelming, so you may want to break it up the display a little. You may want to rethink your navigation and specifically the home link which opens a new window when clicked on. The offending code is
specifically the target="_blank" attribute.

The colors are a big problem as others have pointed out. You may want to consider hiring someone with some artistic merit and a strong knowledge of web design to help you with the site. There are many people in these forums that can help you or recommend someone.

Lastly, stop using PayPal for your credit card processing if you can. There are a few threads here that discuss alternatives.
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=13186
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=13310

Good luck and review my site too please!

Cooper

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Cooper Griggs
Pure Influence
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http://www.pureinfluence.com/

Cooper-

Thanks for the comments...unfortunately, I do not have the funds to hire someone else to do the web design. As a result, I have to figure out how to do this by myself.

In a couple of weeks, I am going to sit down and redesign my website taking into account all of the advice that people have given..

One quick question: How come you recommend me not using PayPal?

Thanks...

Scott

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Well, being in your shoes myself at one time all I can say is that you have a lot of reading to do. Design books galore. I can recommend one that is quite good. Lynda Weinman's Designing Web Graphics 4. I have version 3 and have read some of version 2. They are very good books for a novice graphics designer.

I have used PayPal in the past and they are ok at what they do, but they have questionable practices and I have heard some horror stories about their (lack of) customer service. WPW has a wealth of information on them if you go searching for it.

Good luck Scott!

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Scott,

I find that simplicity is the best rule for setting up an online store. I shop in online stores that are simple and leave ones that are complicated. The products should be accented by simple presentation, easy navigation, and almost invisible store-front.

Re: simple presentation - I find the most attractive presentation for products like jewelry to be the floating approach (see this ring - http://graphics.samsclub.com/images/...6895103_L4.jpg ). When you cut the product out of its background and allow it to float on the page, it becomes very appealing to a shopper. Take a look at the jewelry sites that sell things this way and try to copy them. [Okay, it may take some time to learn how to work on a photo to remove the background, and it's time consuming, but it is very worth it. There are tons of online tutorials to show you how, look for background removal or extracting tool tutorials.]

You seem to have the easy navigation down. One click under bracelets, and I can buy one. The trick to getting the sale is having someone click on that item to get to the buy page.

This is where the almost invisible storefront comes in - a shopper should not notice the windows, door, shelves, and other amenities in your store. They should see the product. That is, they should not notice the fonts, colors, graphics, etc. in your store. This is best done with uniform fonts, like arial/helv throughout and in the same size. Different fonts and colors on the page distract from the products. The color of the text should be black or blue or another color that can be very easily read on the background you have chosen. The easiest background from a shopper's perspective is a light color and not a graphic. Any graphic, even if it's subtle, like grainy sand, distracts the eye from the product. The idea is to get the persons eye to go to the product and click on it and then like what they see sooo much in that photo that they click on the buy button. The best description that I can give you is that the page should look crisp and the product should pop off the page.

Personal aside - your products are very pretty. The colors are bright, and the designs are attractive. I would buy them even not looking for an evil eye product. You might consider reducing the number of times the term 'evil eye' appears (from each product listing on the left), and consider having it appear at the top left or something similar. CAUTION - reducing the number of times 'evil eye' appears might negatively affect your search engine standings for this search phrase, so please think about this before considering my advice.

I have had an online store for 4 years - http://babybrazil.com and have learned a lot in many years of both selling and buying. I copy what I like on other websites and keep track of what is working and what is not. The other thing that I find helps is to rotate product groups on the first page and change photos occasionally.

Last thing - click trails tell the truth. Follow these to see where your customers are losing interest.

These are just some ideas that have worked for me and things that compel me to buy online. Hope they help.

Therese

Therese,

Wow, that was a lot of useful information!

I definitely agree with you and the others that the sand background has got to go. Sometime this week, I will start the process of redesigning the whole thing.

Thanks for the information on photo tutorials, I will definitely look for them. It is interesting, because I also wanted to change the appearance of the item and make them more noticeable.

Unfortunately, I kind of have to keep the navigation with the constant use of "evil eye". I have the top spot on Google and don't want to toy with anything that will drop me in rankings...

One question...you talk about pressing one button to buy the merchandise. Where is the button on your website, where I can purchase the women? :-)

Anyway thanks again for the comments!

Sincerely,
Scott

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I'm glad some of my experience (defined as knowlegde through suffering) can be of help.

As for the women, I wish I could get model time on sale. Good luck with buying the whole package--you'll definitely get more than you bargained for!

Therese

Hi Scott

You have a nice range but I agree with what the other folks here have said - your site's visually too busy; its trying to emphasise everything (that spelling isn't wrong. The Brits taught us Indians to spell and I'm too old to change now).

YOU need to decide the heirarchy of what gets how much emphasis; what you want folks to see first, then next and so on. You are the store owner and you need to tell folks how you'd like them to behave when they're on your turf. Visitors aren't equipped to do this, they don't know what you have; we need your help to tell us where to focus.

Your product obviously has to be the hero and everything else must literally pale in front of it. So, just shift to very pale colours for everything else. I'm not joking. Its worth doing. I've seen a jewelery site where there were no colours used at all, just shades of grey, except on the products, which obviously stood out dramatically. It was an Italian site and looked very, very stylish. Its simplicity gave it that look.

Another thing to do is to stick to using one font (or a maximum of 2) and in not more than 2 colours. Avoid italics, bold types, too many type sizes and other such attention drawing devices unlss you want attention drawn there. Don't spread the emphasis equally to every element of your site.

I do hope this is useful. I'd now appreciate a completely brutal critique of my website http://www.badlani.com/bags/

All the best!

Hi Mizambar,
I like your site and don't think it has anything to do with your design of the site. I believe (and this is only my opinion) that there is a LOT of websites out their that deals with jewelry and it's hard to compete with all of them. But I really believe you are in the running. Keep it up.

I feel a nice strong logo might help as well. I'm sure a logo designer will have a field day with the evil eye concept !

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Please forgive this post here, I could not find your site review request posted in this forum.

How does one search for your clothing based on available sizes? I know someone that wears D-cup size tops and it's a pain to search through every product only to find that not all sizes are available for each one.
I like the site lay-out, the speed of the page loads and the larger pictures to view the products, I just wish you had a way to see certain products based on available sizes.

Thanks! :)

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

Mizambar,

I checked your site from home (using a 56k modem) and your site is a little slow to load. Try dumping the banner at the bottom of your page, it's being served from elsewhere and you may save yourself a few seconds on page loading speed.

Also, the comments another WPW member made about your images i.e. place them on a white background, are very valid. It takes a little longer to do but the benefits are twofold: (1) Your pictures will look far more professional, and (2) they won't be so large - less colours in the picture means a smaller file size.

Good luck.

Tom

First off you need a logo then you need to take the header from the top of the page remove the website address and design it so it tells something about your business.

The text at the top of the page in the red has nothing to do with selling to your customers so I would remove it.

I also agree about changing the colors. I would also keep the text color layout and look the same threw out the site.

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Hey Scott--Don't know if you are still fielding website reviews but in terms of extending your email marketing, your subscribe form should be on the index page and any other page you feel shoppers are looking at frequently. You should be offering customers and prospective customers new product information as well as coupons via email they can use on your website. Have plenty of links of your products from the email back to the website to drive traffic.

If the Yahoo groups form isn't working out for you, Zeop is a free email subscription tool that, once you register as a webmaster, issues an HTML code for a subscription form you can place anywhere on your website. It automatically emails a confirmation of the subscription and then stores the address until you are ready to download. The system is secure and can be found at http://www.zeop.com/

Good luck with your online business.

Hi
You reply in another topics as you agree with me for the landing page. I review your webpage and it seems like you've done this website by optimizing all your pages : text links, headers, contents.... good job but at the bottom I've seen a kind of links to "doorway pages" or "cloaking" that is well done too. Why don't you have a logo ? it could give you more credibility and add a alt tag.
Can you review my website http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...493&highlight=and
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...801&highlight=
Thanks

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I think the design is pretty solid. The one thing I would do if I were you is get new pictures. The current pictures just didn’t wow me at all. I’m sure you have nice stuff, but it doesn’t come across visually. I’m a guy that doesn’t wear any bling bling, but from what I can tell from my wife it’s not like shopping for a new toaster. It’s an emotional experience, an “I gotta have it” experience. Do your best to show your prospective customers what you see.

Thanks,
Tom