SITE REVIEW: jellybabys

Hello,

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk

My site has been up and running for about 24mts but i did not really start to make it properly till around 9 Mt's ago, business is ok but could be doing better.

I going to add better nav tabs in the header, im just looking for a designer to help me, and im planing to rearrange the baby advice pages so it would be set out better, and im planning to add some online games in the near future.

So

Does the overall design suit my line of business ?

Does it look professional?

Is it easy to navigate around?

what you you do to improve it?

Any advice would be kindly received

Regards

David

From a design point of view, your site looks a little disorganised probably because the entire page has a white background. Adding borders or changing background colours will help to seperate your menus, etc and give the site a cleaner look.
As for professional? Hmmm, I've definitely seen worse but that's not to say that it can't be improved. Check out similar/rival sites and compare them to your own, this usually helps you to see what you are doing right and what needs to be improved.

My biggest concern about your site is it's product range, I've got kids and I have never even contemplated using the internet to purchase their clothes, shoes, etc. Because small children (babies in particular) can be way off the mark when it comes to 'age-tags' I would guess that most people would be reluctant to purchase these items online. Personally, I would find a site that sells everyday items like nappies/formula milk/bibs/vests at low prices a lot more useful. Getting your customers to buy in bulk would be the key to ensuring that you can sell these things cheaper than in the supermarkets.

Thank you for the comments, i agree the layout could be better and i will look into that, as to looking how my rivals site compare that's a tough one, i only have three companies as high as me and they earn tens of millions a year, they also spend hundreds of thousand i year to get high up in the search engines and only need images on the main page and i cant match that, so the only way i can beat them is to use SEO skills by adding loads of content to the site and swapping links, but im still ahead of them for some major keywords so that must be a kick in the head for them, money cant get you everything : )



The site does well selling shoes as the ages go from 0-6, 6-12 and so on and the most popular products are the stickers and accessories, i also get a lot of people buy for gifts.

As for selling nappies/formula milk/bibs/vests at low prices, it would be impossible to compete with the likes of mothercare as they import them items in the millions and for pennies, so even if i sell in bulk i could not sell them for what they do.

The site is set up for selling unique products and i get great feed back from our customers saying that they love the site and the products we sell because we differ from the norm, and that's the only way we can compete with the larger stores.

Are turn over for the first 12 Mt's trading was 95k and we expect to double that in year two so we think there is a market for this kind of boutique store.

Thank you for you comments.

Anyone else got sound advice ?

Regards

I like the design. It simple, it clean.

I can't find news letter. Why don't you put member or new letter section?
So that you can send new letter or new product arrival or product even promotion.
It will help you increase your sale.

I thought the site looked good and professional however i agree with daytimetv two much white space. (i ve go the same problem) anyways overall i really liked it. it does look good. nice work

danny

This website looks amazing. It looks very secure, so it makes people want to use their credit cards on it. Also, the colours look good.

Snoop1000

Simplify it a bit. Make it a clean store, easy to navigate and use. Too many bright colors...it's hard to focus on anything.

Work on a better layout.

I do like that you have the hackersafe button, and the visa and other secure logos...It definitely makes the site feel "legit".

Just work on the layout and coloring.

Thank you for your comments.

I like the colours myself and get some great feedback from customers about them and its not that easy to find ones that work together and this the best i could find and do, so for the time being i will have top keep them as they are.

As for the navigation, i totally agree something will have to be done, so im going to work on defining the category area, add better tags in the header with drop-downs, clean up the advice page as that is well to busy, and im going to tidy up the information area too, but im no designer, ive done most of the site design myself but i still have loads to learn, so im going to make the changes but this could take sometime, unless some expert would like to help : )

Regards

I personally think that the purple colour is a little bright......maybe if it is toned down/made a little darker......it would make the colour less distracting and want me to focus more on the actual content. Because otherwise when i try to read the content, it feels like someone is jingling keys in the corner of my eyes.

I also think that if you added a gradient from black to the background colour purple on both the left and right of the white area, that it will add some depth to the page and make the content area stand out from the background.

Hi Again,

Again thank you all for the great advice you have been giving me, i have made a few changes, 1, ive added a small green box to each category name just to show it better and i make the writing a tad bigger, 2, ive totally redesigned the header with new tabs, so i hope this will make it easier for people to navigate around the site.

I still need to change the layout of the advice page and make some other small changes and i also need to get the site validated again, because with the new codes being added has unvalidated it.

This is how the site looked back in Aug's 06

http://web.archive.org/web/200608190759 ... bys.co.uk/

and this is it a few months later..

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk

Any other tips would be great or if most people here like the look and finds it trustworthy i will stop playing around with it, and that goes for the site too : )

As for the design this does come second best, what we are hoping is that the customers/visitors find the site safe and would feel secure using us, so i hope we have done that ok.

Regards

Dave

a little bright your eyes cant stay fixed on something but i do like the layout of the site. some item preveiws menu's are distinguished and clear overall...good site needs some color work, but nice

Thank you for you comments, can any one suggest some colours to use or what to take away and what to replace it with, i use a 21" monitor and i sit back for the screen so i don't get a problem with the colours but everyone says that they could be better so i really need help here.

Kind Regards

Dave

Hello

Its been a long time since I have been here, we have redesigned our store and would love to know what other webmaster think of it?

We launched the site on the 14th and had a 300% increase in sale that day, but the next morning all of the sales stopped and this lasted for two day, then the sales only increase to 1-2 per day, so we are not sure what is going on.

I have tested the site in IE, Firefox and safari and it loads fast for us and looks fine, we are not behind any corporate firewall so not sure if our ssl page IE: checkout is getting blocked?

So if people could kindly have a look round our site and advice us why our sales have suddenly stopped from 20 sales per day to 1-2.

Thanks

http://www.jellybabys.co.uk