Thread: Critique my site

www.soycandledepot.com

Opinions, recommendations, bashings…all are welcome. I’m looking for honest feedback on our site’s design, organization, graphics, layout, verbiage, etc.

Thanks for your time.

Hunter:

I like it. You've done more/better skinning than most people when they launch a storefront.

Now for the honest part. You have a nice big/wide expansive layout. This is inviting and good. But then your header area is quite crowded and your very bottom footer too.

I would recommend trying to introduce a little more spacing in the header somehow. Maybe put the credits cards under the free shipping and shopping cart icons and change the credit cards to smaller versions (like 16px tall). Credit card acceptance is sort of implied/assumed for e-commerce these days and doesn't necessarily merit that much header space and attention. You could also move the credit card to the bottom of the left nav or even the footer. If you have resizeable graphics, you may also shrink the main logo just a bit like 30 pixel less width.

At the very bottom footer you should add some padding/margin around those logo "Made in USA", "Support American Farmers", etc... Even with 1024px monitor width you have plenty of space to push these apart a little bit.

IMO, your contact page should also re-iterate all of your contact information including phone number and address.

These couple crowdedness issues aside, I think the majority of the store layout is excellent. Nice and simple category and product pages, good quality photos. Keep it up!

Andy

Here's some of my thoughts, too. I love the clean lines.

1) I tried to sign up for your email notifications and found I didn't want to bother with the captcha bit - I tried and failed the captcha box the first time and now I really didn't want to bother anymore. We all know why you feel obliged to filter submissions, but I'd be really tempted to find a solution that puts the burden on you rather than on the subscriber. I'll be hosting a webinar which will focus very much on these subscriptions later this month. Think, too, about the position on the page of your signup box - as you build more and more categories of candles, you may easily push the signup under the fold and that will be a real shame. I'd be really tempted, if I were you, to put it above your nav. It's important enough.

2) there is a little bit of confusion in your product mapping. I was a bit puzzled to see "birthday" as a scent, and then to see "vanilla" as a collection. Remember that confusion leads to nervousness and drives potential customers away.

3) Great work with your phone number. It is in exactly the right spot and shouts out. I applaud you.

4) One day, I'd recommend you invest in your search.aspx page. Typically 25% of your shoppers will use your search box and (hopefully!) that'll be a lot of people. I'm guessing that your visitors would love to see thumbnail images of the products, and couldn't care less about your sku, so you might want to work on that.

5) I find my way really easily to your product pages and like the first impression and then, right at the last minute, you spoil it! I'm sorry - please don't mind me telling you this, but you give me a drop down box that say "15 oz YOUR PRICE $19.95 SALE PRICE $14.96". Guess what I think??? why can't I have the sale price?? I am confused. I look around to see if there is a membership that I have to join to get the sale price. I can't see anything, but I'm not going to risk paying more than I need, so I leave. I think what you mean is "regular price $ 19.95" .... do you? I really urge you to change the wording, because when I step inside the mind of a shopper I am both confused and mildly offended and that's a shame because this is a great looking site with clear navigation and good images.

You probably hate me by now. Let me hasten to tell you that I think you are fabulous. You have optimized for soy candles pretty smartly. You have really thought about the words for your policy pages and they are considerate and intelligent. Your site is stable and clean and I actually bought a candle cuz I just long to know what vanilla and tulips smell like together.

Thanks, Andy. That was fun and i hope more people will add their own thoughts, and be brave enough to volunteer, too.

that's a fast site. Who are you hosting with?

I would look into changing the category image headers, they don't seem to "fit" to me.

I've also had better conversions when I remove the cat menus from createaccount.aspx to order confirmation.

What I really like: the 10oz, Toppings, 65-115hrs images. Those are spectacular and very informative.

I also like the CC logos at top. I know it may seem a little obvious, but I like it. It might get people in the "mood to buy". I think I'm going to test something like that soon.

Ben:

re: header area is quite crowded and your very bottom footer too
I completely agree. After your comments I shrunk the images in the top right giving more space between them all. Adjusting the logo is on my to-do-list. I also added padding to my footer graphics.

re: contact page info
Updated. I should have caught that in beginning =) Thanks.

Jo:

re: captcha box
I disabled the captcha box. I think I've found a few issues with the functionality so I'll email support. My overall goal is to write a plug-in for Mail Chimp to handle all email subscriptions.

re: Search page
Agreed and on my to-do-list. I swear there was an appconfig to enable images in the search results but I haven't had any luck finding it yet.

re: pricing text
Adjusted. Good catch! Thanks.

Your candle should be on its way. As soon as I receive the tracking numbers from our distributor I'll send them over =)


osdude:

re: hosting
Shared hosting with AppliedI.net.

re: cat headers
This was actually on my to-do-list. Your right, they don't fit and we'll be switching them out.

re: icons on product page
This is one of the ways we're trying to distinguish ourselves from the competition. If you're a visual learner you’ll jump right to the images and skip the text description and still receive most of the product info you’re looking for.

re: cc logos
Check out the link below for a few great CC vectors.
http://www.kpao.org/blog/2009/02/vec...redit-car.html

Thanks to all who weighed in on our site. We really do appreciate your critiques, suggestions and opinions. Keep them coming!

Osdude:

Originally Posted by osdude

I've also had better conversions when I remove the cat menus from createaccount.aspx to order confirmation.

I'm attempting to do this. Could you take a look at http://forums.aspdotnetstorefront.co...ad.php?p=94291?

Thanks.

Oh, that's for v9 storefronts and I haven't "made the switch".

I am still using v8, even though I can upgrade to v9, I haven't. It took me long enough to learn XML and 8 that learning something completely new isn't something I want to do before the busy season.

I love the speed on your site. Are you using the latest version of 8.0 or an earlier one. I have a site with speed issues. I'd love to get some tips on how yours is set up to move so fast with all that inventory.

Dsi2,

To be honest I haven't done anything beyond the norm to increase the speed. I'm using v9013, caching is enabled and I've kept all images on a site to a small file size. I'm hosted with Applied Innovations and must have lucked out and was assigned to a speedy server.

Can anyone else shed light on steps you've taking to increase the storefront's speed?

Thanks!