Help Please, Market Research

[speedchick]

Hope this is in the right place, but I am looking for help from you guys.

Everytime my jewellery gets a mention on here, there is a flood of hits on my website, over the past month there has been just short of 400 hits from PH alone, (with a very respectable bounce rate, time on site etc), but no sales.

So, in the interest of market research, I know that PH has a very varied demographic, so just wanted to know if you could all tell me what it is that made you look, have a good look round the site but not buy anything. I could do with knowing how to turn the hits into sales.

I tend not to duplicate stuff, and I think my charging is pretty reasonable (I only charge for the cost of materials plus some more for my time in making it)

Are the items not yours/your other half's style, are the prices too high or low? Or is it something else? (maybe if you fellas could ask your other halfs to look and give their feedback?)

I promise not to be offended by any feedback, I really do need the feedback so please be honest, if you would prefer not to say it on the forums then feel free to email me with your comments, as I said I really need to know what I am doing right/wrong and how to convert the hits into customers. And PH is the biggest source of hits/visits that the site has.

So I now leave my fate in the hands of you guys, and thanks in advance for any help/assistance you may give.

x

[Penny-lope]

Prices seem very reasonable...and a wide range of stock

But not really my taste, all though I did love the cluster ring

Oh and decided to view the site, after you'd mentioned on here

Edited by Penny-lope on Wednesday 31st December 10:51

[hornetrider]

I think your website just fell over

Got bored waiting!

[dickymint]

Will show the Wife later. But you should know that Spybot warned me of your site trying to make a Global change entry on my PC. Probably quite harmless but I denied the change.

[Ace-T]

Jo is this a business or a hobby?

The reason I ask is because the site comes across as a hobby site that you occasionally sell stuff from. The content you have (saying 'hi and welcome'), the font you have used (Comic sans I think?) and the layout does not give the impression of a professional business - and that is before we have even got to look at your jewellery.

Some of your photos are good and show the jewellery off nicely (although the cutting to a large photo is irritatingly slow). Some of the photos, again, give an amateurish look to the proceedings though and it is that feel which may be putting people off buying.

The descriptions of the items in that horrible font overwhelm the fact that the price is outstandingly cheap. However once you have the impression of 'amateur' you are not surprised and pleased by the price, it reinforces the impression.

Sorry to be harsh on this but you need to decide if this is a hobby or a business and make appropriate changes to the image you want to portray.

Trace

Edited by Ace-T on Wednesday 31st December 11:13

[R2D2]

Sorry but I dont like the site, too much crap on the front page that doesnt need to be there. All you need really is a simple and tidy layout showing the products and how to pay etc. I didnt even bother looking past the front page - sorry!!

[Brown and Boris]

I can't easily see the link to see what you actually sell . I like to be one click fro pretty pics. As the pic on the arrival page didn't inspire and the link to other products wasn't imediate and obvious I was gone. I think I found the link to the pretty things (the top left?) but it didn't work.

I need to see product straight away as jewellery is a visual thing ( we are not buying 13amp plugs). I alos make a judgement about the style/type of stuff you make from that arrivale page. To me it looked a little bit hippy/ethnic=turn of (may be a turn on for others). If I had seen something like this; http://www.auroradancewear.co.uk/acatalog/055-deta... I would stay but need to see a few ideas, one of which may catch me.

[phylet]

Fix your website. Change font and background to something more professional. Its a little cluttered too a fair few things that are not needed on the front page; to that note, the 'front page' should be your shop front too, straight onto the goods, anything else is a waste of time.

[speedchick]

Ace-T said:

Jo is this a business or a hobby?

Mostly a hobby, but I would like it to pay for itself (it's costing me a fortune in beads )

[97octane]

All looks like nice enough stuff, but not up OH's street. She is not into beads etc, only owns 8 pieces of jewellery (Eng ring, wed ring, silver bangle, silver necklace, 3 prs earrings - all simple designs, solid precious metal with single gem stone, and rarely wears more than 2 pieces at a time).

The website is a bit of a mess, however. Really put off by the PH wavey and the script-like font on a white background. Looks a little home-made. A professional web-designer might be a good investment.

I looked because you are a PHer with a sexy handle, you need the same kind of hook for your products.

Sorry (don't flame me!)

[speedchick]

I'm not going to flame anyone, as I said, I'm not going to be offended by anything, that's why I am asking for input of what does and doesn't work.

Am taking on board all the comments, will draw up a list and get to work on revamping the site, I knew it needed some revamping, but I can't see what (you know what it's like when it's your own stuff!)

So I need to get the online shop as the first page then? Maybe with some pics that link directly to the relevant section (like a clickable picture of earrings that takes you to the earrings page?) And the 'about me' page etc needs to be further back?

[alfa daley]

I would suggest losing any use of fonts that are comic sans or similar for a more professional look. Also why not have an image of your product at the top of the page rather than the welcome to my site message and smiley face so that there something of interest as soon as they land on the homepage.

[speedchick]

Ace-T... re the pictures, it's very difficult to photograph jewellery, and more so when there are crystals involved as there is always one that will throw back what ever light souce and create a sparkle. There isn't anything I can do about the 'morphing into a bigger picture' thing as that is part of the package.

But am bearing all this in mind, maybe time to charge the camera batteries up and take some better pics (if I can get some decent daylight!)

Thanks so far chaps

[mr_krissy_kris]

Can I be the first to say you’re very talented!

IMO most of the points I would of raised have already been said. The site looks like a free "Geocities" page from the late 90's but a decent web developer will have that sorted in no time.

Have you been in contact with any local or even national boutiques? Camden Market and surrounding shops would lap your jewellery up.

[Astacus]

Speedchick, I can only echo what everyone else said about the font you use, so I wont say more about that. I agree you need to go straight through to the products from the front page too.

I would remove all the super friendly stuff from the front page and make it look more professional. Any click through button really needs to be more obvious too. I always find it a little frustrating trying to work out how to get from the front page of a website to what I want to buy.

I would also add that the photos have little impact, as they are too small. The actual products look good, but its hard to see them properly with such small photos.

[Scraggles]

never saw the site mentioned, so taken a look at it, ran a whois check and found it strange, seems the registered owner is Jo, but the registered address is the same as that of the web designer in london, while her address is listed on the site. But as the site was made with the out of a box set from www.mrsite.com not really see the need for the guy in london

As for the stuff, looks pretty good and might well order stuff in the future - if ordering by paypal, can you use credit cards as my paypal account was deliberately allowed to expire after reading their terms and conditions in depth

Prices all look good, but being a guy have little need for earrings and necklaces, sister used to be into silver jewellery and recall she did make the odd bit of stuff for men, maybe something to consider ?

checked the metatags and searched for some of them and did not find your site in the first 10 or 20 hits, even when trying to search for

"Beaded Jewellery" +jo +francis

only hit on the sites that mention you...

looked at the MSSmartTagsPreventParsing thing and seems to be from something that was happening around 1995 ?
"Some webmasters leave this tag in in case MS do decide to release this in future versions of their browsers. To have this tag or to miss it out makes no difference at the moment."

robots tag - check out http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum8/1235.htm

NOT meant to be taking the piss, just some helpful pointers / suggestions...

[FastLaneGirl]

Being a girl I'd thought I'd comment

Agree with the others that the website is messy, the Comic Sans does it no favours nor do the smilies or all the 'xx'. I found all the codes irritating, as an example, you list some bracelets that go well with earrings "Code FS897" (or whatever) but it would take me ages to trawl through to find the matching earrings.

I followed one of the links on your 'Links' page, and found a lovely jewellery site, but they did not return the favour and link your website. I have no idea how this usually works, but if I were a jewellery designer, I'm not sure I would (i) link to other jewellery sellers or (ii) link to anyone who wasn't prepared to link back to me!

On a purely personal note, the jewellery is not to my taste. If I had a 12 year old niece I may buy something similar for her, but it looks aimed at the teen market really, and I'm not sure they would be prolific online shoppers, they tend to go to Claire's Accessories or TopShop! If you were selling intricate beaded & wirework designs at a higher price, more 'occasion' jewellery, it would probably have my interest & I would splash out on a unique design, but (and I really don't mean this in a horrible way!) it looks like the 1001 other similar designs I could get at a market, in the high street or from Ebay. The other thing may be to offer more custom designs. You do say things can be made to order etc, but would it be worth focusing more on this aspect, at higher prices, so buyers feel they are getting something special?

Hope this doesn't come across as too harsh It's not intended to be, purely my own personal thoughts & I couldn't make jewellery for toffee!!

[recalluk]

Photos :

Jo : To improve the pic of the photos no end .. google "light tent" this will improve the quality of the pic no end for very little cash :

Here is a link on how to make one :

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-...

[Dick Dastardly]

Do you make any money from Google Adsense? If not then drop it as Adwords on a page that's trying to sell you something isn't good. It takes some of your traffic somewhere else (often a competitor) and doesn't give the impression of a professional retailer.

[Taita]

Definately time to look at a more professional site, maybe through a CMS solution that you could update yourself? There are quite a few around, with varying levels of complexity.

If you want to go that route, or get quotes etc, there is plenty of advice in Computers and Stuff

T