Debating on a redesign for my site, any comments...

[Brismom1]

I am debating on paying someone to redesign my site, there are a lot of things that I would like to change and I wanted to ask for some opinions here on if you think site design is a big enough factor for conversions, I feel that it is.


I am wondering if my site design is the reason that I am not converting? :confused:

this is on the kids chair world site.

[retta719]

You've made a lot of changes to your site recently, and I honestly think that it looks pretty great. It's easy to navigate, your colors match what you're talking about, etc...

What kind of changes were you thinking of having done as far as the design aspect goes?

[Kayla Fay]

I also like the design. The sites look fresh and professional, and it only takes two click to get to the product you want to see. Shipping information is easy to find. I LIKE it.

Where are you getting your traffic?

[retta719]

Could it be that a lot of people that come to your site, while they're finding what they need, are really just comparison shoppers checking for the best prices possible or to get design ideas?

Maybe you could incorporate a short report on designing your child's space and charge $7? At least then you'd be finding out which people are the buyers, and you could follow up with those people and remind them to come back and check out new items etc... and you could even include affiliate links to other kid's room products like wall decals, and link to your bedding site. (you could even offer the report on both sites)

Along the same lines, maybe add a blog or newsletter to the site offering a free design idea or tip each week. That way you can reach out to the followers and find out why they're not buying, or remind them to come back and buy what they first saw.

Other than the price comparison thing, I can't really think of a reason sitting here looking at your site that people wouldn't buy from it. If my boys were younger and I was shopping for kid's furniture, I'd certainly order something!

Heck, where were you 10 years ago when I was living in small town nowhereville and scouring the internet for a decent table and chair set for my boys ;) Everything I found back then was pink or princess themed, and it drove me crazy, and they never did get their table and chairs set. I ended up getting some cheapo plastic patio set for them instead and put that in our kitchen -lol-

[Brismom1]

for some reason, the pink is really bothering me, and I don't like how the add to cart button is all the way at the bottom of the product page, and how the picture is on the left rather than the right, also it does not specify shipping on the product page until you get to the checkout, I feel like there are a lot of things that could be improved to help navigate better and get them to the point of sale. :

[Adriana]

for some reason, the pink is really bothering me, and I don't like how the add to cart button is all the way at the bottom of the product page, and how the picture is on the left rather than the right, also it does not specify shipping on the product page until you get to the checkout, I feel like there are a lot of things that could be improved to help navigate better and get them to the point of sale. :

All those things are easily changed without re-designing the site.

For example, the color can be changed in your style sheet. The images for your buttons, is also easily changeable.

As for your images, align them to the left instead of right, and you should be in business. And you can have to "buy buttons": one right under the image (copy the code there), and one at the bottom of the description, as you have it now.

Did you design the site? If so,it shouldn't be hard to make those changes. If you had someone else design it, just see if they can make the changes for you: it will be less expensive that redoing the entire site.

[Brismom1]

I did not design the site myself, I have done what i know how to do so far.

The quote I got for a redesign to change the things that I want and more is 185.00.

That is pretty reasonable isn't it.

[retta719]

185 just for those few tiny changes? I think that's really overpriced for just a few minor changes, most of which is probably in the stylesheet. I'd shop around for a better price.

[Brismom1]

185 just for those few tiny changes? I think that's really overpriced for just a few minor changes, most of which is probably in the stylesheet. I'd shop around for a better price.


Good Morning!
There was actually going to be more than the changes that i listed. LOL

About the stylesheet..... Can anyone give me the code that I should be looking for to change the position of the picture from the right to the left, and how to add the add to cart button to the right of the picture?

I have played around in there a bit but I know if you do one thing wrong it can really screw up the site!

[Adriana]

First of all, save your current style sheet before you make any type of change, so that in case you do mess something up, you can just upload your original and still have a workign site.

Then, make one change at the time. Save your change, and go to your site (specifically a product page), and refresh the page to see what your change did. If it's not the desired outcome, undo your change, and try the next thing.

[Brismom1]

I made some changes to the colors of the text, that was bothering me too.

What do you think? Just playing around to see what works. Does the green text work?

Thanks!

[retta719]

I like the green as the titles and bold points in the center area. I'm not sure about it in the sidebar for the categories though. It doesn't stand out quite as much on the greyish background parts.

[kdbbiz]

It is hard to tell you the code to be looking for in the stylesheet without knowing what template you are using. Is this a Wordpress site? It looks a little like an OScommerce template.

As for the pink, I find it a little hard on the eyes with the color of the background of the site. Just the way they play together is a little off-setting to me. I do like your site idea, excellent products and layout form.

Just a few tweaks would do it as mentioned by Adriana. As for the price of re-design, unless you had a whole list of things to change or a complete redesign of the site, that is way too much.

I would say somethng like $75. Or find someone on here willing to trade services with you or give them something worth that price they could use from your store.

Just a thought.

[Adriana]

I spotted a spelling mistake: "Our Gaurantee" instead of "Our Guarantee", on your top navigation.

[Adriana]

OK, here are a few more comments:

- your category pages are centered, which makes it hard to read.

- your titles for many of the pages are in all lower case letters, agian, making it hard to get noticed

- your titles are also not very descriptive. For example, you have several pages with the title tag "kids chair"

Do you have an account with Google webmaster tools? If not, get one now, and add your site: it will tell you a lot about your site, and it will show you want mistakes/errors you need to fix

Also, do you have a sitemap? If not, again, get one now.

BTW, I like the buy buttons colored yellow instead of your previous color: much easier to read.

[kidino]

Hmm... everything sure looks fine to me. Well, maybe I don't really have experience when it comes to e-commerce site and to know what to look for when it comes to conversion.

But I like Retta's idea on the $7 report. Yeah, do that. And get them on a mailing list. Not only you separate the buyers from the browsers, you also get to survey them, ask question and also send more "persuading" info that might lead to sales.

But if we are talking about conversion here, why don't you take a look at and study your web statistic log. That'll tell you where you visitors came from, what they were looking for, where they landed, etc.

Know this, you'll also know which part/page of your website to focus on.

Looking from the stats and checking your search engine rankings, you can also know existing rankings that you can give a boost on. For example, maybe you found out that you rank on the second page for "pink kids rocking chair" (just an example), what you can do is ramp up your link building so that it'll get on the first page.

Let me tell you my own story. One of my site, I rank really well for keyword "productA tutorial". And in a month, I would see one sale coming from there. But I am also listed for "productA review", but it's on the third page. Now, I know that page converts. And it will convert a lot better if I can get better rankings for "productA review". So I did some social bookmarking and now it's start to move up. I am pretty sure I can get an better amount of sales when it gets on the first page.

By the way, here's something that's bothering me though...

From SEO aspect of things, I think there are things that you can do to improve the site. One thing is the Title for your pages. Just having "keyword" in your title is not really good, because though you may get rankings, it's not really inviting clicks.

And I also see that you have same title for the category page and for the individual product pages. These two should be different to avoid making the search engines see them as the same page. If the search engines see them as the same page, this will affect your listing. The search engine may not list one of them, worse if ALL of your product pages have the same title as your category page.

Each of your products should have a unique title.

Example...

Category: Upholstered Kids Chair
Product 1: Upholstered Kids Chair Black Faux Leather
Product 2: Upholstered Kids Chair Purple Faux Leather
etc...

Another thing, about getting the clicks from the search engines, I think your title should be more than just the product name. So it should at least be something like:

Upholstered Kids Chair - Best Deal at Kids Chair World

Here's my final conclusion for your site. Rather than spending on design (which is already looking good), spend more time on SEO and offsite optimization. Lynn's great at this because I remember last time when she was building niche e-commerce site like the dart store, etc...

And then, not only optimize for the site generally, work on optimizing individual pages, or at least the category pages. If you can rank for those keywords, I am sure you'll get more sales because long-tail, descriptive keywords tends to be used by buyers. But you need to rank for multiple keywords.