OK, so we've been working on this site for a while now and I've been hesitant to get it up here for review until now. Still a lot of work to do, but I have two main questions from two different perspectives.

Bau Outdoors

1) From a user point of view, does the site work well? i.e would you guys say it's simple to use/intuitive, friendly and conducive to trust...?

2) From an SEO point of view: On individual product pages, we have placed "You may also be interested in" links to other products. Is this a bad idea in that it 'dilutes' that pages' juice? I have noticed pages that are rising in the SERPS well, seem to be those with less out-links.

Any advice very welcome indeed - we've looked at this so much, it's become a little difficult to be objective!

Tom

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Bau Outdoors contemporary garden furniture

1) From a user point of view, does the site work well? i.e would you guys say it's simple to use/intuitive, friendly and conducive to trust...?

Yes . .

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You do have two small issues that may help you in both trust and SEO.

1. Once you enter an https page you can not leave the https even when viewing a non https page.
Add a product to your cart.
View the cart.
Now click home or any link in the nav bar.
2. Instead of "products.aspx/75/ketch_garden_bench.html" Can you place a URL rewrite so it will show something like "garden_benches/ketch_garden_bench.html" This I think will do three things for you.
1. Shortens your URL.
2. Makes it easier to remember.
3. Better keyword density in the URL.

Notes:
Contact should have an physical address. Other then that a security seal like McAfee or some other trusted site seal could help.
Up selling on your product pages does help in sales and helps in distributing PR. But I feel the long URLs are not helping your PR in your inner pages.

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Both great responses! Thanks Tubby!

Amxfan, really appreciate the feedback on this - I'll have a chat with the developers...

Probably a bit of a novice question, but what does anyone think re' the "items you may be interested in" links at the bottom of the page. Does having increased outbound links from a page tend to reduce it's "SEO Power!"...

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Bau Outdoors contemporary garden furniture

Apologies amxfan - I see you responded to this already...

Long URL issue noted - nice to get pointed to something tweakable...

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Bau Outdoors contemporary garden furniture

I like outbound links. I like to try to use them to add relevant content. sometimes I think I am more concerned about the wording of the outgoing text link than the webmaster is about the wording of the incoming link. I never take outgoing 'Link juice' into consideration.

some wpw members guard 'link juice' like a precious commodity. . I am more of a "Drinks on the house" guy.

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I like it.

It's decent and good looking site. But I would change middle yellow box to some other color, may be with green or sky blue as in right side small boxes.

Otherwise it's cool site

Thanks.

Hi SEOMG.

From a user point of view it's ok. I think the menu links on the left hand side could do with being a bit bigger and spaced out. The links at the top need hover and active styles, this might not be hugely important to you but its nice to address these sort of accessibility issues nowadays!

From an SEO pov i'd say it needs some work. As Amxfan mentioned, the URLs could be better. Theres also a lot of on-page code (which you could strip) but very little textual content. Your home page has no proper headings, textual content, in content links etc.

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I like the site, from a user standpoint. Easy navigation, quick loading, good quality images. From an SEO standpoint, I think you're likely to have a lot of problems getting it into the SERPs. Very little text for the SEs to sink their teeth into.

I didn't see any reference to the method of shipment, either on the Basket page, or in the FAQ. I would want to know how it's going to arrive at my home, before placing an order.

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Nice looking & funtional site, but the yellow spinny flash on the home page would send me away - it just annoyed me! And I couldn't really tell what the things you featured were as they just had a product code (I think!?). I think you'd be better off with a static image and some blurb about the company where that is - something se friendly to give the home page a bit more text. But other than that nice design, nicely written descriptions of the products etc.

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Basically it's a nice looking site. I hate the yellow spinning thing in the middle. Sorry
Categories could be a little darker font...baby boommers have diminishing eyesight.
Overall a nice site

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Like so many before me, I like the design. Functional and to the point. I too dislike the spinning thing. Awful. Physical address for this type of business is a must have.

I like the site layout, menu text could be a bit darker and 1 pt larger. Animation in a site should enhance the user experience. The FLASH spinner, I would like to control it. Its movement was a bit annoying. I would have the user have to click it to get it to move, then it would be a cool addition!

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Great site, visual feast and well cross linked.

Good luck with it

I do like the design. I like the look of the square blocks on the "products" page better than the way they look on the home page. I'm not sure what the flash animation is doing on the front page, it seems to be spinning randomly. Looks good overall!