Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I would truly appreciate it if you could take the time to critique my website.  I've been in business for 2 years, and would love to have some honest feedback so I can improve.

Thanks in advance!

Terry

Beachbitty.com

The first thing I noticed when I went to your site was the warm colors. It follows the content for sale mood perfectly. When it comes to websites, especially ecommerce websites, I always stress the importance of a modern and professional logo. I would put some money (no more than $300) into getting a logo done by a designer. There are some errors in some parts of the site that create funny looking glitches such as the top of the website. Next to the top menu there is a random orange bar to the right.

Some aspects of the website are a bit flat but that isn't a big deal. I'm a stickler for design (I used to freelance) so I see these things but normal customers might not. I would move the "Quality Beachwear At Affordable Prices!" bit off of the top and put it in the banner next to the logo. Not too many people see it up there and when they do it looks like it is an advertisement.

Your website has very SEO friendly links; I've never actually seen an ecommerce site rewrite URL's quite like yours. There are some errors with code that cause header titles to mess up. For instance http://beachbitty.com/malahinivneck.html. If you look at the top of your browser window instead of Malahini Woman V-Neck you see Malahini Woman<br>V-Neck. Simple fix.

I would probably work on a sitemap that is less confusing than yours. There are a few free tools you will be able to find on the internet to help you create a better sitemap. Overall the website isn't bad. A lot of images, however, appear to be saved as lower quality images. This gives them a blurry appearance (the verified and credit card images mainly). I would try to find sharper images, they might take up a bit more space and make your site load a few seconds slower but it will be worth the improved look.

If you have any other questions please feel free to send me a message.

Using Yahoo's ecommerce has some limitations for design and SEO.

A few points:

You have way too may keywords in your keyword meta tag - Plus none or the major search engines look at the keyword meta tag.

If you mouse over a menu item  you'll notice the alt tage for the item shows "<font..." this should be corrected as this will be read my search engines.

Your title tags for each page seem to be good. Be aware that the name of each menu item and pproduct link are important in search results so be sure to use words that make sense - word that people wouldl use to search for the item.

In your site map you show "clearance" items, but I didn't see a link to such items from your home page.

Just like a bricks and mortar store, is it a good marketing practice for ecommerce (online stores)  to offer "sales" or "sale items".  It might be a good idea to have a link on your siter for such sales.

Shipping - The cost of shipping can be an issue for online shoppers and studies have shown it is a top reason for shoppers not completing the sales transaction. You might looks to see how many abandonded shopping carts you're experiencing to see if it is a factor in your sales.

Design - while you are limited in what you can do for design with Yahoo ecommerce, recognize that your home page has a lot of products displayed. Will people scroll down the whole page to see what's shown - I'm not sure. But you should make sure that your strongest marketing message and/or product(s) you want to sell are seen first.

~roland

Following are the factors stated below to improve traffic


1 High quality, unique content
2 Keep adding content
3 Memorable domain name
4 Buy the wrong domain name
5 Easy to read domain name
6 Keywords in image files
7 Serious keyword research
8 Improve page titles
9 Organic SEO
10 Submit to directories
11 Submit to niche directories
12 Article distribution
13 Write articles for other sites
14 Submit articles to www.vnrao.net
15 Submit hints to blogs
16 Keywords in online profiles
17 One way links
18 Invite others to publish content

Hi Terry,

Those are all good comments above.

Read this article Let a Professional Design your Business Logo

Your visitor should be able to tell in just few seconds what your website is about. When I looked, I knew it was something about the beach, but I couldn't understand what it was and why you have that group of girls photo. Having that intro text at the top doesn't do much for the visitor, show the products first.

I can give you a full video website critique if you're interested.

Take a look at some of the samples of Video Website Critiques

- Yiana