Jewelry site to review

[Guest]

Please review my jewelry site.

 

Sparkle Jewels

 

Thanks.

[Victor Wise]

Hi Sarah,

 

The site looks nice.

 

I noticed you only offer paypal as a payment option though, and you require the customer to create an account on top of that. Your giving customers a lot of hoops to jump through here.

 

My gut feeling tells me that you are losing alot of customers during the checkout. The industry average shopping cart abandonment rate is 70% - do you know what yours is? If it is high, some variables you may want to test, short of getting your own payment processor are: allowing checkout without an account and adding google checkout as a second option.

 

With your current checkout, there is one recommendation I would like to suggest on the order confirmation page. Below the button that says 'confirm order', you might want to include text that says, "you will be taken to paypal for payment". I know that when monstercommerce first experimented with paypal as a checkout option, a lot of people were closing the window before entering in their information on the paypal web site.

[usernamenone]

You should set only a height or width for your smal images. This will reduce the squashed affect of your images. Your shopping cart info box top is messed up in FireFox and IE when clicking on to product_info.php. Where have you put your product image? It is over to the right side of the page!

 

I would use buttons that match the dominate site color or at least contrast.

 

http://www.oscommerce.com/community?contri...&category=8

 

I would also change the stock box color #f8f8f8 to either white #fff or #E7DBF2 which is a lighter pruple.

 

Your categories display differently than your subcategories. Can this be fixed?

 

As far as product discription goes, I would think the length of the watch is needed. I have a wide wrist and would not order a watch that could or did not state the size. On the other hand someone with a small wrist needs to know if it will stay on or fall off.

 

Ok think I am done. No, just one more thing.

 

Your header image is a bit grainy due to low end imaging software. There is an opensource software that was originally programmed for Linux that is now available for windows. It is GIMP and will produce just as good a quality image and graphics as my $1,000. dollar software.

 

 

http://www.gimp.org/windows/

 

OK done!

[ebayer]

My gut feeling tells me that you are losing alot of customers during the checkout. The industry average shopping cart abandonment rate is 70% - do you know what yours is? If it is high, some variables you may want to test, short of getting your own payment processor are: allowing checkout without an account and adding google checkout as a second option.

 

Could you show me the article where 70% come from? Our web always ask customers to have an account to checkout.

 

If it's true, we have lost 70% customers? I don't think so.

 

If the store is attracting and the price is good, why people abandon? I think at most 10% people abandon.

 

And in my memory, during all the online stores I have ever visited, only very large store allow customers to check out without an account.

[ebayer]

Here add my suggestion to your jewelry store.

 

You are selling jewelry, not ipod. Your website layout will affect your sales a lot!

 

I suggest you buy a fancy Oscommerce template and hire a freelancer to install for you. I guess totally $200 is enough.

 

But after that, your sales will raise a lot.

[usernamenone]

According to this survey, the top 15 reasons for shopping cart abandonment, and the percentage of subscribers citing each as a reason, include:

1. Cost of Shipping too high and not shown until checkout (69%)
   
   
2. Changed mind and discarded cart contents (61%)
   
   
3. Comparison shopping or browsing (57%)
   
   
4. Total cost of items is too high (49%)
   
   
5. Saving items for later purchase (47%)
   
   
6. Checkout process is too long (44%)
   
   
7. Out of stock products at checkout time (39%)
   
   
8. Checkout requires too much personal information (35%)
   
   
9. Poor site navigation and long download times (31%)
   
   
10. Lack of sufficient product or contact information (31%)
    
    
11. Checkout process is confusing (27%)
    
    
12. Site requires registration before purchase (23%)
    
    
13. Site unclear on delivery times (17%)
    
    
14. No order tracking options (16%)
    
    
15. No gift certificates (11%)
    
    

 

http://www.esurveyspro.com/article-shoppin...nt-surveys.aspx

 

Loosing 23% just becasue you require your buyer to add a user name and password is reason enough to change to checkout without account.