Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hello,

 

I am new to posting here but have been reading some great and informative posts here for awhile now.

My company website is www.homedoodads.com

For a little background on our business, we started it just over a year ago now just selling new housewares on ebay and Amazon. As our business grew we thought it would be wise to branch out some more so about three months ago we created an Amazon store. Although the backend was helpful in that we had a shared inventory between "our" site and our Amazon listings, the overall design and ability to expand the site seemed to leave alot to be desired.

We recently switched our hosting to BigCommerce which is a great all-in-one solution for newbies like us. We've found it to be very easy in adding our inventory and changing the design as we wish. We did the initial design ourselves using a standard BigCommerce template.

Our goal with the website is to take all of our eggs out of the ebay and Amazon baskets and grow our brand through our own site. We are getting a decent amount of traffic, mainly through Google Base and from inserts in our packaging to current customers.

I've been trying to work on SEO, adding metatags and titles for every product, and our product web addresses are SEO friendly so I assume that will help? (Remember, newbie here)

So I guess I am asking for some general comments and suggestions on the site overall and some general advice on growing our web presence.

Again, our website is www.homedoodads.com

Thanks for your time!

Todd

 

I'm looking over the website and it does look very nice. It is very clean and products are easy to find. SEO does help because it will make things more readily found and should increase your sales although the numbers might be debatable. My one recommendation is that you look around for a local graphic designer and get a logo designed that will make people feel more comfortable and willing to buy.

I'm not sure who designed it so please keep in mind that I am not trying to insult them. Your logo is a bit outdated and when compared to logos of larger companies it doesn't really match. A more professional logo will help customers and possible customers trust your brand better and will be more willing to lay some cash on the line. You should be able to get a local designer to design a logo for around the range of $300-500 and you can always find freelance designers on the web willing to do it for $150.

Thanks for the kind words and advice Eric.

That was our goal in designing the website, to keep it pretty clean and clutter free. I definitely agree on the logo issue as well. That was one area I have made as our next priority to help bring a more professional appearance.

Any one have recommendations for a logo designer?

 

Thanks again,

 

Todd

SEO- because your ecommerce program does generate web page titles based upon the content, it is important to carefully select the words you use for each of your product categories and product names.

Having your domain name in the title does not add much SEO value. 

 

~Roland

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Hi Todd,

I can help you out with the logo design. I'm a designer and I wrote the article Let a Professional Design your Business Logo

About your website, it's really basic, nothing really jumps out and call the visitor's attention. Your free shipping offer is a great idea, but it doesn't stand out.

You need to create some kind of offers/sales not just feature your products.

Also, you should have an editor review your text. Some items that I clicked on had spelling and grammar mistakes.

If there are no products in the category, the category shouldn't really be there. Your left navigation is a bit too much, you shouldn't have subcategories visible under categories on your home page, it's just confusing. Make it easier for people to browse for what they're looking for.

- Yiana