Current design for sound machines direct

IMPORTANT CHANGES:

1) Instead of "view Item" link in each item, use BUY NOW.

2) Instead of putting a section for blog, you may want to put list of Top selling items there. Being an e-commerce site, you want to use every pixel of your space to sell.

If you still plan to put the blog there, just reduce the size.

3) Instead of using "$$ FREE SHIPPING $$" on every item, just display it prominently on home page and remove it from each item.

4) There may be many sites offering similar products. So why should I buy from this site. Give 3 to 5 reasons why I should buy from you.

You may want to include things like "Free Shipping, 30 day money back guarantee, friendly customer support, etc."

5) Apart from prices, display % discount for each item. That way you can make user feel that he is getting good discount.

MINOR CHANGES:

1) Search box should be on right. "Follow us on" box can be on left.

2) "Items in Cart" font needs to increase.

3) Put product names in bold and increase font size.

4) Yellow color in "Become a fan on" does not goes well with the background. Use white instead.

5) Increase width of "Clearance area" box so that it matches with width of below sections.

6) Increase font size of text in the menu. They are difficult to read.

Hope this helps.

this site looks 'old' - something done 10 years back. i think the best idea would be to scrap what you have there, get a better designed template and put ur content there.

and for what u have here:

• redesign your logo, stay away from italics fonts.
• the purple/blue top band you have up there is really muted- try some other combination of blue and orange.
• for the nav you have (home, shopping cart etc) make the height bigger. Options such as, shopping cart, your account and logout should be together.. may be at some other common place (may i suggest, top right.)
• make the whole page wider- use more space for left and right columns, right now they are too narrow..
• adding the "welcome to.." message is really old style, instead try to put something more meaningful.
• and of course, make the search box bigger- i mean really big.. place it somewhere else. (again, may i suggest, somewhere on top right.)
  • and i hope, there will be a footer.

Hello Mike,

sorry to break this to you, but this is a perfect example of how things should not be done. Website looks like something you would see around the .com boom times.

I know you want feedback on how to improve, so here's a couple of things that are bad right off the bat that you can probably fix without redoing the whole thing:

1. Why is the shopping cart not in the right upper corner?
2. There is no specific color which would indicate an action - blue, red is all over the place and the background is purple, the navigation elements are purple, etc. The best thing would be to remove color altogether and then make only the checkout button, the cart, the add to cart buttons of a specific color. Control the focus of the user, don't waste it.
3. Why do I care about a blog or forums? Shouldn't you help me pick a machine? I would almost kill all the other information and have a big call to action to find just the right sound machine.
4. Every single element on the page is designed in a different style. The clearance area button uses different fonts than the rest, the categories on the left are styled like the search button (white on blue)
5. Do you really expect anyone to read the blog on the right column in that tiny font? If you want SEO value, dump it below the product grid, somewhere where only the search engines would see it and limit the distractions of the user
6. There are too many categories on the left side. I can't visually "grasp" all of them and I quickly lose interest. Information should be "chunked" so that a visitor can quickly parse all categories and visually be able to differentiate between them

I would recommend starting with an e-commerce site that is really crisp and clean and going from there.

Here's a link for inspiration

I have to say that I did give it a 3 stars on the purpose because it's usable, now I am not your typical user so I don't know what to look for, but the search works, the products are there ... basically the backend development is good.

The big problem is with the design and the feeling, the perception ...

First the design it's like from the early 90's and I don't trust the website, it doesn't feel professional.

There are a lot of usability problems to, for example the search is to small, I had to look for it for a couple of seconds, the shopping cart is not visible enough and so on ...

So what you need is a redesign, you can find a lot of skilled designers in this community if you need one.

Good look, Cheers.