Need your advice to improve an ecommerce store

[stranger]

I have to improve this store randttreasures.com/
I'm not a owner of this site. I got it to manage.
I only have these two points in mind for now.
1. Set up a new template instead the current one because the site looks incorrectly on iphones and ipad - iPad Peek / iPhone Peek
2. Probably, start a blog about different collectables.
Please your suggestions?

 

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[brycer9]

Why are you building someone elses dream instead of your own?

 

[stranger]

Why are you building someone elses dream instead of your own?

Robert is my good friend and my best business partner.

 

[ableme]

I agree about the current template! But not only change it for the iPhone/iPad, I would make it better for regular browsers as well. The transparent menu navigation is not doing it for me. I would put some categories down the left side where it would be easier to navigate from, as well as not cover up the page you are currently viewing.

Another thing I would do is move the product pictures up(at least above the fold) and make them bigger. After all, it's all about the products! But you can still keep the text you have on the page, but maybe move the Specimen Shells/Collectible Coins/Christmas Ornaments paragraphs off the homepage and onto their respective pages to add more content to them.

I would also use some form of analytics program to get an idea on what/how your website is performing while you make the changes.

 

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[stranger]

Please, I'm waiting for some more advice from members.

 

[libertad1312]

I don't know much about design, but to me the pages looks pretty old and boring and he product pictures are horrible.
It looks unprofessional and I would never trust this page my money and buy there.

Here is a list for good advise on pictures:
Big List Of Product Photography Tips For Etsy Sellers | Handmadeology
In short: build your own lightbox (10min time and for free) and take high quality pictures on a white background (probably the easiest to start with) and edit them so they fit on the page. have different shots for each item.

 

[royalasg]

you have touched the right point. as you said that you are going to buy a template to solve iPhone issues or whatever device it will show, then you should buy "Responsive" template. Cos, responsive template is built in such a way that your site will appear depend on the device, you dont need write any extra HTML for in your template.

And blog is a great idea to promote brand.

 

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[Torlock]

If I were you I would firstly revamp the entire site onto Wordpress and add this with Magneto for the E-commerce side of things. Not only will this make the site easier to use from the back-end, Wordpress also has a huge community, plugins, themes that you can use to your advantage.

As for the theme I would invest in a $30-$40 responsive theme from themeforest. I would also highly recommended that you get on that is minimal and bright as this makes it easier to navigate for end users.

Get a brand on the go something sticky that people will remember and then keep your site within the same colour scheme. Usually something like the whole site being white with black/grey text and then stick with one secondary colour for all the other little extra bits. Be consistent.

SEO. Optimise the site to the limit and then some more. With Wordpress I would recommend Yoasts all in one SEO plugin, this provides in-depth optimisation right down to the details.

You also want customers to be directed to the money maker. At the moment the homepage looks like and about us page. Make a compelling call-to-action as soon as people hit the site. Make sure that people know where to go next straight away. Things like special offers and so on always increase the chances of this if executed correctly.

Look up your competitors and get some ideas. This is always a good way to improve sites, you never know you might see something they do and say 'I can make that even better'.

And lastly, if you do decide to go with Wordpress here are some extra plugins to further improve the site:

W3cache (to speed the site up)
WP Super Cache (same as the above but only use one of these plugins)
Marketpress (for e-commerce)
BackWPup (for backing the site up)
Fancy Excerpt (does what it says on the tin)
Microkid's Related Posts (if you do decide to add a blog this is always handy)
Scroll Triggered Box (get people on a newsletter for potential future deals too)

 

[Thriftypreneur]

If I were you I would firstly revamp the entire site onto Wordpress and add this with Magneto for the E-commerce side of things. Not only will this make the site easier to use from the back-end, Wordpress also has a huge community, plugins, themes that you can use to your advantage.

As for the theme I would invest in a $30-$40 responsive theme from themeforest. I would also highly recommended that you get on that is minimal and bright as this makes it easier to navigate for end users.

Get a brand on the go something sticky that people will remember and then keep your site within the same colour scheme. Usually something like the whole site being white with black/grey text and then stick with one secondary colour for all the other little extra bits. Be consistent.

SEO. Optimise the site to the limit and then some more. With Wordpress I would recommend Yoasts all in one SEO plugin, this provides in-depth optimisation right down to the details.

You also want customers to be directed to the money maker. At the moment the homepage looks like and about us page. Make a compelling call-to-action as soon as people hit the site. Make sure that people know where to go next straight away. Things like special offers and so on always increase the chances of this if executed correctly.

Look up your competitors and get some ideas. This is always a good way to improve sites, you never know you might see something they do and say 'I can make that even better'.

And lastly, if you do decide to go with Wordpress here are some extra plugins to further improve the site:

W3cache (to speed the site up)
WP Super Cache (same as the above but only use one of these plugins)
Marketpress (for e-commerce)
BackWPup (for backing the site up)
Fancy Excerpt (does what it says on the tin)
Microkid's Related Posts (if you do decide to add a blog this is always handy)
Scroll Triggered Box (get people on a newsletter for potential future deals too)

Pretty much agree with all of this.

Your first priority should be a complete redesign of the site itself. Graphics, layout, search engine optimization, pretty much the whole thing.

The product pages don't even have a description of what the product is, what it's made out of, and why your customer should by it. Descriptions on product pages are search engine food.

Completely re-designing the site and product pages and optimizing them for search engines will probably solve the vast majority of problems this site is experiencing.

 

[stranger]

The product pages don't even have a description of what the product is, what it's made out of, and why your customer should by it. Descriptions on product pages are search engine food.

I'm suprised about that point, because every product page and every item has a discription.

 

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[stranger]

If I were you I would firstly revamp the entire site onto Wordpress and add this with Magneto for the E-commerce side of things. Not only will this make the site easier to use from the back-end, Wordpress also has a huge community, plugins, themes that you can use to your advantage.

I get your points, but i prefer Open cart to magneto. When you have over 1500 items for sale, OC is better. I ran 1 store with WP, and yes, this is super easy to manage. However, Magneto is very limited. Also, this isn't a good idea to close the customers' accounts to move onto WP.

 

[Chris_Willow]

I'm suprised about that point, because every product page and every item has a discription.

You have to scroll down the page and click "Description" to show the description. It might as well not be there at all.
I'd bring it closer to the top and increase font size.

Other basic stuff you can fix:
The semi-transparent drop down menu is hard to read.
The headline lacks value proposition
And you've forgotten a placeholder text in top right menu: text_shopping_cart

 

[stranger]

You have to scroll down the page and click "Description" to show the description. It might as well not be there at all.
I'd bring it closer to the top and increase font size.

Yes, I understand what you're saying about. Really, no many visitors click products on a frontpage, most click the categories to see our products. Anyway, i'll try to fix that stuff.

Other basic stuff you can fix:
The semi-transparent drop down menu is hard to read.
The headline lacks value proposition
And you've forgotten a placeholder text in top right menu: text_shopping_cart

Yes, this 1 of the reasons why we want to upgrade the current template.

 

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[stranger]

So, i'm unsure about a blog. Maybe it's better to put new articles just as new information on the store? You can see there're some articles already. What do you think on this?

 

[Thriftypreneur]

I'm suprised about that point, because every product page and every item has a discription.

Antique girl with a nuff - museum specimen

Oh, my mistake, I have to scroll allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down to the bottom of the page and find a tiny tab that says description. Viewing a couple of the pages, I simply thought there were no descriptions. I imagine many of your visitors think the same. The fact that, after browsing a few pages, I didn't even think there were product descriptions should be alarming to you/the owner.

The site design shouldn't make people work. Which is one the reasons why it needs a complete overhaul.

 

[stranger]

Antique girl with a nuff - museum specimen

Oh, my mistake, I have to scroll allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way down to the bottom of the page and find a tiny tab that says description. Viewing a couple of the pages, I simply thought there were no descriptions. I imagine many of your visitors think the same. The fact that, after browsing a few pages, I didn't even think there were product descriptions should be alarming to you/the owner.

The site design shouldn't make people work. Which is one the reasons why it needs a complete overhaul.

Good sarcasm. I just imagine how many sales we'll get after fix it. hehehe.

Really, you're right, and we'll fix it.

 

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[ksam]

Recently I have tried this method to improve my website and it seems to work well. Maybe you can try the same strategy:

1) Start with your marketing. What's your major marketing channel? SEO? PPC? Newspaper Ads?

2) Say you mainly do SEO and you sell iphone 5 case. Set up a survey on Craigslist. Ask people to search for iphone 5 case on google (e.g. buy iphone 5 case) and review 7 to 10 websites that sell that product. Ask them what they think of each website (good & bad) and give you a short list of companies they like. Tell them to choose one company that they would have made the purchase if they were looking to buy and explain the reasons behind it.

They will tell you some of the stuff they really like and some of the turnoffs from your competitors. Re-design your website based on the feedback and start doing usability test and a/b testing to optimize it.

3) Give them THAT product, in this case an iphone 5 case, as the incentive for the survey to make sure these are the people who really want the product, not just some random people on the internet.

Hope that helps.

Sam