Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

This is my first online store and it took over a month to make it look the way it does.  I worked off a pre-designed template, but had to do quite a bit of HTML/CSS tweaking.  I'm looking for opinions on the website.  Do you like it?  Do you hate it?  What do you like?  What do you not like?  Color, layout, menu, products, prices?  I greatly appreciate your input.

http://www.tangozuluimports.com

Hi,

Your website doesn't look bad, it's clean and organized. My suggestion for the homepage is to create a call-to-action or an area for promotions. Don't go directly into featured products, let your buyer know what the website is about.

- Yiana

Yiana,

Thanks for the feedback.  I'll think on your suggestions and come up with some idea for promotion.    Just curious, I purposely picked items from various categories for featured products, kind of trying to use featured products as a way to introduce what the website is about.  I'd like to hear your thoughts on the shortcomings of my logic.

Again, thanks for your time and input.

Well, first think of how does a user enter your website; via search engines, directly or from a link? If the user, me for example is entering your site directly without knowing what to expect or look for, it gives me a short pause to think about why I'm really there. You want to be able to direct the user of where you want them to go and eliminate that chance of may be leaving the website. This is when special promotions or other call-to-actions give the user the way in to go deeper into the website.

So for example if I enter the website and I glance at your featured products and I don't find right away what I'm looking for, then I will most likely leave. But if for example you had a special Father's Day promotion of say 25% off, I'm more interested to see what I can get, so I continue looking. Do you see the logic? Of course not all users will react the same way, but you want to appeal to the majority. This doesn't say that you have to have a discount all the time, it could be best sellers, new items, group of items under same color/material...

Does this make more sense?

- Yiana

It makes a lot of sense and I completely agree with you.  Thank you so much for your insight!

Great site however the top of the page looked a bit to cluttered (my opinion of course) I like the fact that you talk about the basket.  However  when you started stating saling points "The also make great starting points"  well, lets just say from there on I lost intrest.

Why don't you tell me something about your site instead...like "No registration required" or "Sales"  or "That you site is secure to make me fell comfortable shopping on your site"   you know...something to make me want to stay.  

Also, you new item section....I didn't even notice it.  Why don't you put pictures of the featured items to catch my attention?   All in all, pretty good website.   

Thanks for sharing.

Americasprice,

Thanks for taking the time to review and provide input.  Very valuable opinion.  I will review and make adjustments with some test cases.

One question for you and the general public:  Do "Sales" work well?  I assume they do since some many retailers do.  For us, we truly meant it when we say "bring quality goods at reasonable prices", and we just do not have much room to mark down our prices for sales.

Again,  thanks!

Tango Zulu Imports

I think that "Sales" DO work but it would be ineffective if you constantly have sales. Just have a sale every few months or something like that.

As for the website. It feels a little bland to me. Nothing is popping out to me saying "Hey look at me!" So I would say work on the hierarchy and maybe add a little more color.

Thanks for sharing such valuable info!