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Peer Review of Ruthie's Music
By Jonathan Hilgeman
Contributing Writer
Article Date: 11.21.02
When I first read your statistics, I found it hard to believe that 1300
visitors only turned 6 - 10 orders, but I'm assuming there's something more
going on behind the scenes, since we didn't have a good summary of the log
data.
First, in order to ensure that you start with the most accurate information,
you should verify that you are counting unique visitors, rather than the
total number of hits. In reality, you might have 200 unique visitors per
day, with each of them averaging 6 to 7 hits on your site. A good log
analysis tool like Sawmill or Webtrends should be able to give you this
information, or you can also go with a simpler service like Counted.com,
which is the best 3rd-party service I've found so far and offers some nice,
compatible, information-gathering features. Your most useful information
will come from your web logs, though.
Next, assuming a low 200 number of visitors, this indicates that visitors
are probably having trouble navigating, or are just not finding what they're
looking for. In this case, your best bet would be to start analyzing the
paths taken by visitors through your site. Where are the entry pages and the
exit pages? What keywords are people searching for when they find your web
site? These are questions whose answers will provide some insight into what
areas need to be worked on.
Third, exit pages are important! I noticed that you have some links that
direct visitors away from your site. For instance, if people go to the Sheet
Music section on your site, there's a search box that goes to a different
sheet music store - AND - that search box is at the top of your page! That
has to go, or be moved to a links section or something. However, exit pages
in general will indicate the point at which the visitor decided to just give
up and go somewhere else. You want to focus on fixing any problems with exit
pages so that some other page, preferable the "Checkout Successful!" page,
becomes the primary exit page.
Fourth, you may want to consider standardizing all image sizes on your site,
so visitors' eyes can follow clean, invisible lines that divide up the
sections. This may mean re-doing images and adding white space on sides to
make them fit into the standard size, but it's worth it in the end.
Visitors/Customers like consistency throughout the site (i.e. a small,
subconscious complaint might be that Harmonicas' starting price is $4.00 -
with decimals - while the product next to it starts at $65, with no
decimals).
Fifth, reduce the size of your free shipping ad, and center the text
vertically - right now it leans towards the top of the image. I suggest then
moving the smaller free shipping ad up to the empty space located to the
right of the site logo. This will give you some more real estate on the
actual pages to work with.
However, don't let that extra space go to waste - add a "Quick Product
Search" box to the top of every page. Don't make the visitor click on the
Search page in order to search your catalog. People are lazy - you want to
give them the ability to search quickly and find the product they're looking
for with the least effort.
Seventh, while I'm talking about navigation, I would suggest coming up with
a better product navigation system. Currently, you have some
not-so-intuitive navigation. If I'm looking for Harmonica accessories, I'm
not going to click on the Harmonicas link on the first page unless I'm
desperate - I'm expecting to find just Harmonicas for sale when I click on
that link, not Harmonica accessories. This goes for all your product
categories. You may want to add text above the "Prices start at $X.YZ" that
says "Harmonicas, harmonica accessories, and how-to guides!" You might be
turning away lots of potential customers that just figure they have the
wrong store for accessories.
Eighth, you have a LOT of instruments. Visitors looking for just a guitar,
for example, may be overwhelmed by the different types of guitars. A
drop-down box might be helpful in this case, with the first "product" on the
list being a 5-minute guide to the difference in guitars. That guide can
potentially draw the customer in more, and give you a chance to really sell
the customer on the idea of buying X guitar. A 5-minute guide for each
major/popular instrument might be a good investment of your time, but it
would be best to first find out what people are searching for in order to
find you.
In addendum to what I just said, you may want
to consider a navigation system that divides up your products
into categories like "String, Wind, Brass, Percussion, etc..."
I can't remember all the different categories I learned way
back when, but you'll probably have a good handle on what the
proper divisions would be.
Ninth, drop the clipart on the front page. Sorry, but it doesn't mix with
your current product photos. If you want to go with a holiday theme,
visitors will get a kick out of seeing a Santa hat worn on the end of each
product. This can be done digitally, but if you have the time and resources,
it would be better to set up each product for a photo shoot.
Tenth, the product photos themselves are decent, but here are some
criticisms:
- A lot of them are a bit bland and almost 2D. The harmonica, congas, and
violin outfits are good examples of GOOD pictures, while the Casio Keyboard,
and Microphone photos could use some serious work.
- The JPEG compression slaughters the photo. Yes, it might make the file
size smaller and the page load faster, but decreasing the amount of
compression might be a better investment. A BIG portion of the load time
will be the time taken by your browser to connect to the server and retrieve
each picture - each picture is separate and must be requested separately
from the server. Once the download of the picture begins, it is a constantly
flow of data, so things flow much faster, and you can spare an extra 500
bytes to 1k, or even more, if it will improve the quality of the image. If
all your product pictures on your front page ended up being 2k instead of
1k, you probably would not notice any more than 1-3 seconds of extra load
time on a modem connection (remember that people are going to be busy
looking at the top part of the site while some of the pictures are the
bottom will still be loading). Remember to re-save the images FROM THE
ORIGINAL image, otherwise you'll just be adding compression onto an
already-compressed image and it will look even worse.
- The lighting on some of the pictures is pretty poor, as well. While the
violin outfit picture has a good set up, the case is so dark that it begins
to blend in with the darker portion of the side of the violin. Adjusting the
Levels of the image in Photoshop can clear this up easily and quickly (if
you're new to manually setting Levels in Photoshop, you can just drag the
middle triangle towards the left to lighten up some of the darker areas).
Like I said above, start with the original image, though.
- For "Fake Books", it would be helpful to see it as a close-up photo of
the books, instead of just a scan of the cover.
These are all the suggestions I can provide based upon the information
given.
About the Author:
Jonathan Hilgeman,
http://NaturesFlavors.com |
