An old friend approached me because he is wondering why he's not getting many conversions. Since I'm already familiar with his website I'm not able to give him the best reason as to why. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on his Magento eCommerce website? As a first time vistor user do you trust the website enough to make a purchase? Does the navigation work for you? Once you hit the site, click the "Shop" icon to navigate to the store. www.freegoldwatch.com
I wouldn't buy. 1) The theme looks like it's from the 90's. 2) The domain suggest a free gold watch, first thing I see are sunglasses (well after 2 clicks from the Index page - Index/Store). 3) Half the content on the right is hidden. 4) Don't have a clue how to add an item to the shopping cart. 5) Is the shopping cart https ? Sorry, but the whole site looks cheap.
Thanks for your honest feedback slimjim2010! My thoughts exactly. The theme he used was supposed to mimic the old Apple Macintosh look. In my own opinion is scares people away.
I just can't take this site seriously. It reeks of "We're so cool and you're so stupid that you will probably buy from us". "Navigate" is an odd word to use in reference to this site. It isn't navigable. It just feels like an ego trip or a self-indulgent exercise, not an e-commerce site.
I've looked at the site and I can't tell who your friend is wanting to sell to or what I'm supposed to buy. Or why I'd want to buy from him. Your friend needs to figure some things out: 1. What is he wanting to sell? I hope not "free" gold watches. LOL 2. Who is he wanting to sell to? What problem do they have that he is wanting to solve with his product? Once your friend figures this out, he needs to research his target market. What are they buying? Who are they buying from now? What can your friend do that is better or more valuable than what is already out there. Right now, your friend's site looks like a personal site that someone has built for their own enjoyment. It does not target anyone.
Wow, I have to admit, this is one of the worst sites that I have seen on here so far asking to be reviewed. I would never buy from a site that looked like this. It needs to look much more professional. I agree too, I don't even know what they are selling looking at the home page. There should be some type of product on the home page. When you go to click on a product, you shouldn't have to click on it again to see the price. That's too annoying and I wouldn't buy because of that let alone i would have never went to that page if it weren't for trying to review it. The last thing I noticed it that they are trying to sell goodwill clothes for nordstrom prices. Not exactly the best selling tactic especially with terrible models and even worse backgrounds. Its no wonder they're not making any sales.
If you're friend is trying to sell something, and he doesn't have a whole lot of money to get started, he's better off going with a WordPress-based website. There are decent free and premium themes built for ecommerce and some ecommerce plugins to choose from. This works if you don't have a ton of products to sell and don't need inventory management. Otherwise, some free shopping carts include ZenCart and CubeCart. But before he gets that far, he really needs to figure out what he wants to sell, research a target market and get a new domain name.
The sites domain name misleads the user as to what they should expect when visiting the site. The site's design, while a cool idea, is meaningless to the site purpose and will only confuse the user and form a bit of mistrust as their expectations keep getting violated. The actual navigational elements are confusing. The sites main navigation is javascript based so you can kiss any search engine traffic and anyone requiring accessibility goodbye. Your add to cart button when viewing a product requires you perform another action before hitting the button, to enter in your quantity, which defaults to 0 (bad practice, add to cart should add to cart no matter what)... if i then proceed to add to my cart without entering a valid value, which the default is not valid, it gives me an error message to enter in a valid quantity but, at least for me, the add to cart button had disappeared! I didn't check any firther than that, but given the quality of coding and other indicators i'd imagine the site is probably ripe with vulnerabilities too. No offense, but basically your friend fails on all accounts. He doesn't: 1.) Understand his customer. 2.) Attempt to create any sort of branding and product cohesion (free gold watch... ok, wait sunglasses? ok... so sunglasses... ok, wait a Macintosh OS design?!). 3.) Attempt to test for bugs which may hinder the users ability to shop. 4.) Create an intuitive navigation for the user to use. 5.) Create a site which works for both individuals with accessibility problems as well as search engines. The entire site becomes non-functional if javascript is disabled. ... and many other issues. I'd suggestion that he pickup and read quite a few design books as well as some on usability, proper programming practices, and accessibility. Other topics like seo and trying to sell are items he shouldn't even though yet until he covers the topics previously mentioned.
I think everyone else pretty much covered everything wrong with it. I will just add another vote to the "dislike". I immediately closed the site after about 10 seconds, what a disaster.
sorry but the site needs a lot of work before it can actually be a viable commodity. I think many of the replies have covers the many issues this site has.
nothing is for free these days beware what you are clicking when visiting site especially if you do not have top notch security
Thanks for the help everyone! I've stressed all the main points with the owner and they're going to make some vital changes. I'll keep you posted! Also if you want to take a look at the concept of the site the following video is really cool. When you buy a t-shirt, you get a free gold watch. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujnoiMKgTe8
The Alexa rank is 1 Million so a no no for me. I usually buy from sites that a lot of people are buying from. Sort of trend follower lol.. but its safer that way.