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osCommerce

The e-commerce.

Bit Quiet on the shop front.


jools

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Hi there,

 

We are UK based and things seem to be really quiet at the moment. As in not many people buying! Anyone else out there experiencing the same? Do you think it might be because we, at this moment, only offer PayPal and Cheque/Postal order as payment method? Or because the site looks crap!?

I would be grateful if someone could have a look round our shop Bedibuys, and give us some advice, please.

 

Julie :blink:

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I my opinion, PayPal drives more business away than brings. I do not say that from any facutal knowledge of some survey. I say it from my personal encounters with websites. If they only offer PayPal as there form of payment I will never buy from them. Although PayPal is a great service, it screams "Amature". I just does not give me the feeling that I will get what I am paying for. I would get a merchant account personally. Which one? I don't know, I have a post asking that question myself.

 

 

Second, I would take off the instructions stuff from the main page. Again it feels as if it is a "diffrent" type of site. Most people who shop online know how to work a shopping cart. If they do not put up a help me link or something. No one wants to come to a site to spend money and right off the bat told the exact procedure IMO. The only stuff on your main page should be product.

 

 

These are all just my oppinions. I am new to ecommerce myself. But as a consumer, those are the things I was turned off by that site. My wife does buy bedding online so it was not the product itself.

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Que,

 

Thankyou for taking the time to look though. I understand all of your points, and am continually making efforts to improve things. Although I am a little slow at it as my understanding of codes etc, is severely limited.

With PayPal though, we are a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place, as we cannot afford a merchant account at present i.e. need to make more money in order to get one! lol

I appreciate your comments. Thanks

 

Julie :)

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Julie,

I love the colour of your site, but I would probably add a sample product graphic on the right hand side top to get peoples initial interest to want them to scroll down or peruse shop further.

As for Paypal, well I was also in same position when I started in regards to expense and also chose this route. I have had no problems at all. I also accept money/order direct deposit. Paypal is utilised by over 40 million consumers/businesses and most people know it's ins and outs by now, I find it convenient as a consumer and because it's so well known personally prefer to submit my details via paypal secure site in preference to online credit card forms. I just feel safer and know it's tracable every step of the way. but that's just me, everyone is different.

Perhaps your slow trade is due to your sites ranking. A simple check of ranking.com did not show your site as being listed in their data base. How many hits are you getting a day? When I started I was ranked 753,427, I am now 14,334 and falling and number #1 in my category, with orders steadily coming in (via paypal), and in the midst of setting up my store front. Simply having a great looking site does not guarentee visitors, you have a lot of competion out there.

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you have a lot of competion out there.

Not only do you have a lot of competition, but you're linking to some of them from your store!!

 

It will never cease to amaze me that people will offer external links from their catalog. To me, it's like telling your customer that there are better/other places to go, so why shop at your store?

 

The first thing I would do on your site is to remove your links to sites like 1st-in-Linens.com, BuybyPost.co.uk, etc. Once you get them in your store, you want to keep them there by offering them quality products which are visually pleasing to view, and make it easy for them to buy ( and psychologically hard for them to say no! ). :)

 

It took me 3 clicks to get to a Bratz duvet cover. Could that be accomplished in less steps?

 

On that product page, there is a nice image, but no additional information. What are the dimensions? What's it made of? Is it washable? ( Very important as the mother of a young child to know whether I'll be able to throw it in the washer and dryer after a bout with the flu! )

 

Many of your images aren't of the best quality (i.e. the Disney, Harry Potter, etc. logos at the top of the page). I'd be inclined to place them lower, and showcase one of your products nearer the top. Put the logos at the bottom, if you need to have them there at all. How about a 'licensed products' category so people know you have them, instead?

 

I'd also recommend doing some customisation of your site. A little bit of polish could make a world of difference in invoking confidence from your store visitors.

 

HTH,

 

Terry

Terry Kluytmans

 

Contribs Installed: Purchase Without Account (PWA); Big Images, Product Availability, Description in Product Listing, Graphical Infobox, Header Tags Controller, Login Box, Option Type Feature, plus many layout changes & other mods of my own, like:

 

Add order total to checkout_shipment

Add order total to checkout_payment

Add radio buttons at checkout_shipping (for backorder options, etc.)

Duplicate Table Rate Shipping Module

Better Product Review Flow

 

* If at first you don't succeed, find out if there's a prize for the loser. *

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I agree with a lot of TerryK's post, but wanted to add a couple more things. Add pictures above the crease - at the moment I have to scroll down to see any, you need to hit with attractive images as soon as they land on your site. Include some images in your header. Enthuse about your products. Add Dora the Explorer to your range. ;)

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I like the colors very cool colors. The spice should come from your pictures not the text. Play down the text. Maybe widen the box lower the font size, bring the pictures up where they can catch the eye. The others are right lose the links to your competators, keep'em in house. Instead you might insert the contribution scrolling best sellers, change name to Name Brand Products, put it under catagories and let it scroll the manufacturers logos. That way they can click the logo and pull up the name brand goods for that maker. I count 16 catagories in the catagory box and 15 small poor quality pictures. Reduce the quanity of pictures and replace with quality ones. Bigger and brighter. Remember the old saying "one picture is worth a thousand words" well if you don't think that is true just ask yourself why are there so many tele commercials???????? You got a nice site, it just needs a little jazzing up a bit. And get on the search engines, it takes up to 90 days to see results but believe me, if they can find it they will come.

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Hi I like your site but would change a couple of things, first I found the white background too white maybe try a very pale blue from your logo try #FBFBFF or even a pink version of white #FFE7FF that would blend nicely :P . The other thing i'd do is ghange the oscommerce buttons & pictures throughout the site. This was suggested to me for my site with instant benifits. I would also make the commitment to merchant banking, you'll get a lot more customers. Good luck anyway I love your products.

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I'm UK based as well and was in the same position as you in affording the merchant account. In the end I took the bull by the horns and stuck it on my credit card. As a single mum with 2 kids I needed money to get by!! It has worked well for me and I had paid back the credit card before the first month! I would say go for it. I use Worldpay - easy to install and reputable.

 

About your actual site - I think the images need to be refined - the ones on your index page are a little poor quality. Have you tried the big/little images mod - easy to install and allows 2 images to be uploaded for each product.

 

The site seems to be a little bland (sorry) I think it needs jazzing up a bit. It takes time but is well worth the effort. I have to say - dont link to your competitors! Get them to buy from you! Your store has items people will buy. Especially with the way kids change their ideas so bloody often!!

 

Good luck with everything.

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Hi, this is my 1st post with regards to anything "oscommerce" & I've downloaded 2.2 & probably won't upload it for ages but looking at the responses here I won't be hanging about!

The BEDIBUYS site looks fine but I agree that linking to competitors is bad for business.

Paypal is getting a bad name due to it being hacked constantly & lots of money (reputedly) going missing. Try using Nochex instead/aswell. It's dearer and isn't merchant banking but it's secure & might help them part with their hard earned dosh ;)

I think that your "quiet time" could also be put down the time of year too! A lot of small businesses are feeling it as well :(

Good Luck, I'll hopefully be back with my own "shop" soon :)

 

 

ps: IB is the no1. in message boards B)

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Hi everyone,

 

I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I understand all of the issues and have been trying hard to resolve them, but sometimes when its your own, you don't see things as clearly as others! lol

The images that are on the bottom of our page, for our categories, I have never really liked anyway, but I do not know how to get rid of them....I have posted on here a while ago, but no-one replied :o , so if anyone can help me on that score, that would be great! Money still a bit of an issue at the moment, but as soon as I have enough, I will be sorting out WorldPay! :D I've always thought that could of been a bit of a problem.

Why I posted in the beginning, was that since our shop had opened, (jan 04) we had been quite busy! But only in the last month has it gone a bit quiet, but (fingers crossed) it picking up now!

Would it be possible to have a look at your websites? I'd like to get some ideas of what others are doing too.

Once again, many thanks to everyone!

 

Julie

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Would it be possible to have a look at your websites? I'd like to get some ideas of what others are doing too.

 

There are lots of examples here

http://www.oscommerce.com/shops/live

 

I would certainly remove the commercials (or whatever it is you have right below your shopping cart) it's very distracting.

 

When creating an account the country has to be filled in, but the only country is the UK. It is possible to make it preselected, it makes life a little easyer for the costumers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

H,

Now for my two penny worth...

 

I think you have the basics of a very nice site, I can see that you have done some work on it, the colours work well for the intended target client, the only problem I have is that it looks a bit fragmented and messy.

Why not remove the table borders or reduce them to a single line 1 or 2 points wide?

Remove those falshing gifs, they take your customers eye off the very thing you want them to look at, move the images up so they are visible with out scrolling.

I would also add a border to your images so they stand out from the background.

Pay pal is fine when you are starting up due to th ecost of Merchant accounts, but I know they put customers off, if they are using it for the first time them they log in with you and then log in again with pay pal.

 

I would even go as far as to say Lighten up your whole index, remove loads of the images, put up attractive photos of selected products and let the store draw you client in via the menu's.

 

I just looked around you site, why not sell by theme as well as by product type ? Disney, groovy chick, football etc...

I might even buy one of your groovey chick water bottle,s ! For my little one not me.

Over all you have done a great job, most of your hard work is done, just a nip and tuck to finish.

 

Nic

Sometimes you're the dog and sometimes the lamp post

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My Contributions

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NO offense meant, but I thought you were joking when you said the site looks like crap, I would never ever ever buy from a website that was that poorly contructed the design is garbage you might as well have never made any changes to the orginal os commerce look everything is disorganized the products look horrible against the background. If I were you I wanted to drum up business I would hire a professional designer to fix what you have there

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I bet you have quite a list of to-dos by now so i am not going to add to it. I really just felt bad for you after that last brutal post. There are tons of sites out there that make yours look like a trophy. If you want some professional help, ask around here. MOST people here are professionals helping the community in any way we can. If you can't afford to pay for design, look to some simple mods that can help you out (I recommend STS which is awesome for implementing design to OSC). You migh even offer to barter some goods for assistance if you really want to get your store up to professional standards.

 

In closing, don't get discouraged. keep working at it and learning. Sometimes it is difficult for masters to remember the days when their best work was in the trash.

 

Have a great day and good luck!

 

John

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