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some input please


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Hi i have installed cubecart and love it.. and i am getting 200+ hits aday. but no sales :-( so if anyone can look at this site and give me some input i can use it..

Thanks

Afksky

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Thanks for the link. I personally found the pinkish header a little bright for my eyes (dont like bright light though) and struggled as the text on the header looked a bit blurry (maybe that is just old age).

Liked the purple marble background but not sure about the blue in the boxes.

Shame you are not in UK as I really liked your stock for my gift shop!!

If you are not getting any sales how come the sales today is set at 58?

Also, Your name is JW Specialities but that isnt what your logo says, wherever that appears is misspelt.

Where are your hits coming from? I get around 50 hits a day and hardly have any sales, but most of them come from the Cubecart forum or outside of the UK, people who are looking at the cart and not the products.

My website stats show me which hits have come from search engines and the search phrase used. These help me decide what my product range should be.

I have been up and running since June now and am averaging only 1 sale a week, but it was only 1 sale a month when I first started.

My advice is it all takes time but spell your own name correctly!

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I Do sell in the UK at a lower price. please pm me for info. as far as to where my hits come from i do pay per click on google and others as well as good META tags..

as far as the misspelt JW Specialties if you see this on the site somewhere let me know cuz i dont see it... then again some times i cant spell worth crap. :) but anyways thank you.

Oh and the orders today never changes its just there to try and get people to buy.. like you see on some website as sale ends today but the sale never ends..

AFKsky

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Very nice use of jewel tones. To balance the page, maybe you could lighten the page background but darken the header by incorporating the dark purple and tourquoise?

My only other recommendation would be to remove "Search:" from your search box since the box title already says "Search our site". On smaller monitors (like the one I'm using right now), the word causes the box to be disproportionate to the boxes below it.

Good luck with your site!

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Hi afksky,

I have several suggestions so far that may help you. Please keep in mind that my criticism is constructive. We work with the same 'manufacturer' it seems. How cool! :)

I run three retail websites successfully, and have merchandised and managed large volume retail stores for years, so here's a bit of my experience from both web design and retail merchandising experience.

First, the color scheme could stand to be lighter mixed in your hex codes. For the table background you're using I would suggest hex #E9D7FD or similar to look like this. The logo bg is a bit hard on the eyes. I suggest tweaking the gamma or the brigtness/contrast to flow with the textured background you have.

The colors need to be welcoming and inviting. Flashy, brighter colors are normally reserved for high tech or service-oriented dealers to make a presentation that justifies someone spending three figures for just a single item as opposed to items that are 20-40 dollars. Know what I mean? Keep the colors simple, preferably light so that while your customers are shopping page after page it's not a strain on the eyes to read text and view images. The odd and even row color scheme that you've chosen is a bit dark for the black text and needs more contrast.

For product and item-based sites where your customers are looking to buy gifts, they need pictures to catch their attention. Retail is heavily based on seeing the products available and needs to be especially attended to since web customers aren't able to actually touch what they are buying until it's received. I noticed that you have removed the image folders or images that would normally go where your categories are. I think this is a very big err, personally and I very much think that adding some type of product picture will allow customers to stay and browse for a bit.

Your site is currently more text-based and requires your gift shoppers to dig deeper below the text links to get to any images. Add product pictures to your categories that will represent something they might find in your category. I've done the following with my store which you're free to emulate with your own images. Click one of my main categories such as Candles or Culture&Theme to view the subs and it's product images galore.

Next, I think most of us designers these days are doing site building geared for a viewing resolution of 1280x1024, even though a great deal of people are still on 800x600.

Your main page category list in the left table is very long for me even on 1280x1024. I still have to scroll down to get a view of what exactly I'm looking at in its entirety. I don't want to imagine just how much someone will have to scroll if their res is 800x600.

As much as possible you want the information and available products to "pop" and be fully presented in the space that is "in the face" of the person browsing your site.

Next, by making the pumpkin or your seasonal image smaller, or by making the image shorter and rectangular and like a banner, this will shift everything upwards so there is less need to scroll and the site presents the categories/shopping departments there directly. I concocted this in a few minutes, you're welcome to use it or I'll gladly whip up a more elaborate one if you'd like.

LS014997.gif

By having to scroll and not seeing a keyword in that space that my eye will catch... such as "Gifts" in your categories underneath your welcome note section, I'm probably likely to just move along to another site.

What you've done exactly right is that you've kept your left and right table box numbers to a minimum. You don't have too many boxes and the USPS Tracking option is a great tool to have readily available upon entering your shop. The customer testimonies at the bottom is a very nice touch. And it's certainly nicer than the sad designs that our wholesaler had to offer for an arm and a leg.

HTH

edit: here is a sample animated logo I made up real quickly to match the Iris theme image pack you've switched to. :) It will highlight your company name by looping three times upon the customer's entry and then cease so that the animation doesn't become a nuisance during shopping. If you've missed the animation just hit your refresh button.

afkskylogobyasillyshopper.gif

Edited by asillyshopper
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Hi Afsky,

can I be honest ??

This is JMTCW and only my personal opinion. I hope you find it at least slightly helpful.

I'm certainly no great ecommerce success myself ;-) But these are some of the guidelines I try to follow.

Apologies if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs.

IMHO the offer of the day for first 10 customers per day comes across as "desparate" not fortunate. Sorry :-(

Your logo totally sucks as does the gradient filled mast. It looks cheap and tacky. And doens't match the ethos of the "gift" products.

The colour scheme isn't my bag. I wouldn;t say bright, but is it gawdy or luxurious?

More importantly I don't know if it suits your target audience, who are presumably from your product range "older" women. You should market research your target audience on what they'd prefer to see.

It doesn't appear to me to be a younger persons site?!

One main problem is I had to search your ENTIRE product range to find two things I half liked. A third I found by accident. That isn't a reflection on anything other than navigation and presentation.

I don't like the fact that there was no really cheap inticing items to buy as a test throwaway impulse buy. These build trust in a store IMHO.

You say 500 hits, but are these full page hits or element hits. ie a page with 10 graphics on it (including buttons) would count as eleven hits for every page/view, refresh, or back. So that could be 5 people browsing back and forthe over a few pages.

I'd love to know what keywords you chose to attract people from google. Does your store fulfill these desires "easily"?

You say hits, but on what pages. Only home? When do they leave? How many make it to checkout and the exit. What are the least visited parts of your store? How many unique visitors.... etc..

This is the real art of ecommerce. Building a store is only part of the vehicle for it.

From the front page do I know what carriage will be, how to pay, how reputable you are. Yes to some in your case....

Who are yor three biggest competitors and what do their sites look like and why?

I humbly feel you're missing the key ingredient but I don't want to say what that is.

Lastly you know what the golden marketing rule book says don't you ?

The four letter acronym one?

How many letters have you covered with this store ?

Not meaning to be harsh. You've done a good job. I appreciate the effort you must have put in to it.

But you've asked about increasing (and converting) actual customers, so a little way to go yet ;-)

EDIT

Whilst composing this tomb I see asillyshopper has added some great suggestions too.

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This is the type of input i need.. from what i have seen from you guys the colors got to go.. and yes it is 200 unique visitors in trun cost me $20.00 aday. as far as to where they go they do look around a bit.

i do thank all of you who are helping me here.. i really do thank you!

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I just had to stop and say WOW OMG what a difference from the previous!!! :)

Adding the product images to your categories has made a tremendous difference alone.

I hope to hear that your browsers will be clicking through to different pages more often after it's all set up! YAY!

It may just be that my eyes are tired but I do think that the table border background color that was suggested previously could stand to be just a tad lighter, ie hex #efe9f0

I'm just in awe of how different it looks already!!!

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I think I am Just about done :)

I did buy a templet but was not able to use it :) oh well I think this new look and the mods I made and used are going to help..... have a look and let me know. I still need to add more Pic's and sorten the List up.

Later

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Yeah its sweet... I am hopping to start to do i nice custom mod like that soon. but my graphic skills really S*CK.. and thats no joke my 2 year old kid can draw better then me LoL and that no jock :).. But of course i cant spell to save my life.

Oh well.. I did buy a theme BUT its way too white for me.. nice but way too white..

Cheers

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Guest twisted

Ya know....you never did tell me WHY it wasn't suitable.

If all you need are some color changes, I'd be happy to do that for you, afksky....no additional charge.

That goes for anybody. If you are interested in, or considering purchasing any of my "stock" make-over packages, but are'nt too keen on the colors, I will be happy to change the colors of any pacakge for no additional charge.

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Is it just me? I got this at the top of your page. . .

Warning: ob_start(): output handler 'ob_gzhandler' cannot be used after 'URL-Rewriter' in /home/www/jandwspecialties.com/header.inc.php on line 8

I haven't the foggiest what that means. I used Mozilla Firefox to look at your site.

Sharper thumbnails with better contrast will pop the images outta' the page more. Table on the right hand side has words cut off. I'm assuming you're selling a wok, all I saw was wo. Not that I haven't wanted a wo now and then, just don't think you have them.

:unsure:

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alan53-

I get that warning message on a few sites out there while using Mozilla. There is no warning present in Internet Explorer though.

The problem is a bit of code some store owners have installed in their header.inc.php pages that allow pages to load faster. I installed the code as well and discovered the warning immediately, so took it back out. Not sure what to do to get the code to work properly without getting the warning....

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booker:

The problem is a bit of code some store owners have installed in their header.inc.php pages that allow pages to load faster. I installed the code as well and discovered the warning immediately, so took it back out.

I was dealing with that issue for several hours last night and ended up having to take a mod that keeps the login. It was conflicting with the cookie settings on entrance one way, and when I modified the code it would conflict with something during checkout.

It inconsistently popped up when entering the storefront. Almost 100% of the time when hitting the link from Favorites, and about half of the time when typing in the url. :unsure:

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QUOTE 

Warning: ob_start(): output handler 'ob_gzhandler' cannot be used after 'URL-Rewriter' in /home/www/jandwspecialties.com/header.inc.php on line 8

This I Will check in to this..

I'm assuming you're selling a wok, all I saw was wo. Not that I haven't wanted a wo now and then, just don't think you have them.

I dont have wo... or woks but may I ask whats a "wo" or a "wok" :unsure:

The problem is a bit of code some store owners have installed in their header.inc.php pages that allow pages to load faster. I installed the code as well and discovered the warning immediately, so took it back out. Not sure what to do to get the code to work properly without getting the warning....

yes this code really only works with IE and 95% of shoppers use IE.. just on one buys :wub:

I was dealing with that issue for several hours last night and ended up having to take a mod that keeps the login. It was conflicting with the cookie settings on entrance one way, and when I modified the code it would conflict with something during checkout.

It inconsistently popped up when entering the storefront. Almost 100% of the time when hitting the link from Favorites, and about half of the time when typing in the url. 

That just dont sound good

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