Website review/ E commerce design tips

As many of you know I am in the process of building and editing websites for people who want help. I have taken years of search engine optimization classes and website marketing classes for my own benefit. Many people in my networking groups like the get website reviews just to see how other people view their site.

Site reviews are important because they help the site owners see their site from a potential customers view. Today I am taking a look at a site and I am providing a review for the company. I am posting this review online because other webmasters may benefit from seeing the site, reading the comments and comparing the site to their own. If you have some time and interest please share your input about the site in the comments section.

Site review: Home Furniture

Upon first viewing the page I notice that the site has a calm and relaxed look. The colors seem to compliment the products shown on the page, that is aesthetically pleasing. The site header seems a bit out of place with the rest of the sites color scheme and feel.

I love that there is a toll free phone number listed in the header, it makes the company appear legit and easy to reach. The heading font (“featured products”, “on sale” etc) are a bit hard to read and could be bolder or thicker.

I really like the way the categories are organized and displayed on the main page too! These are very easy to navigate and they make finding what you need faster and easier.

The “advance search” option is not that user friendly, I was expecting to be able to type in what I was searching for but instead I was directed to a page that displayed many items that I could eliminate by selecting my search terms for the displayed list.

When visiting: Dining Room Furniture and Living Room Furniture and Home Office Desks

I found that the descriptions below the thumbnail images of the products were not that easy to read because they were ‘jamming into” the other descriptions. It seems the layout has a problem and is causing the descriptions to be unreadable.

I like the “on sale” column buy was expecting to see the sale price listed, when you are enticing people with a sale do you think they are interested in the price? Maybe listing the original price and the sale price is good, it will show people what a good deal your sale really is.

There are a ton of products on this page! If I were searching for a black dining set I would have to scroll through all 185 photos just to see if you had one! This would probably make me want to leave the site because it is overwhelming and time consuming. Dividing the dining sets into smaller categories by color and style might be more helpful.

Last thing I noticed on the page was that the images weren’t all the same size, this is kind of a nit picky thing but it makes your columns and rows look messed up if the photos are all different sizes.

Hope my observations help the site owner and my readers who have their own websites! Take care and have a good day!