SITE REVIEW: www.redcellpaintball.com !UPDATED!

I don't like how the store portion is wider than your masthead - but otherwise, it's a nice looking site.

I also think you should have use a local web hosting company - but I'm kind of biased on that angle... Coz we're also in Loveland, Colorado!

webyourbusiness,
Hey I have seen your offices on 34 (I think). Trust me we would have desired to go local with everything but our hosting is specific to the software we use (Ablecommerce). At least we can keep you guys in mind for the future, if they ever allow us to host anywhere else!

Yes, our office is just off Highway 34 in one of the office buildings on Topaz Drive - right behind McGrath's bar and restaurant!

We have signage you might have seen from US-34 - and our office looks kind of like this... office photo found here

I'm interested to know - why ablecommerce?

My take on AbleCommerce is that It's quite pricey, is server based (a model I don't like for creating catalogs, but for maintenance it doesn't matter is you have broadband) and it uses aspx or cfm- neither of which are as search engine friendly as they would lead you to believe (not being indexed by many minor engines/spiders - which will definitely NOT help with the majors).

For similar or perhaps more functionality, I would have recommended Actinic Business, or for similar functionality with a much lower price tag, I'd have suggested osCommerce or Zen Cart as practically FREE options with the ability to code your own functionality (and even include the forum within the framework of the store).

Don't get me wrong - you have a pretty nice looking site - but your choice of ecommerce solution puzzles me a little - I'd like to know what went into your decision making process(es).

cheers

Greg

Well I don't know what you consider "pricey", we payed about $1000 for the software, support, and any updates that they release for a year.... We have a software that is fully customizable from anywhere day or night, changes are all real time, it is intergraded with UPS World Ship, FedEx, USPS, Quick Books, MS Money, tax software, inventory software, etc. It allows us to edit anything we want, build and place products and product categories how ever we want, setup up sell options and kits, calculate shipping based on weight or allow free shipping on some item and not on others, keep all customer records, create custom email campaigns, allow members only areas, create specific thems for the whole site or just for one page, just to name a few! Oh and the best part is that it is all user friendly and we don't have to pay someone every time we want to change it! If your company can do all this for under $1000 then we made a huge mistake! Please let me know if you feel you can compete with ablecommerce, but for now we are very happy with what we got for $1000. Also let me know if you guys do any .aspx SEO. Thanks! Ian

like I said - Actinic Business does this.

Well, I checked out Atlantic Business and it doesn't seem to compare. First off you have to buy the business software the order manager software and the support all sperate for a grand total of a lot more than $1k. Second, from what I read you still have to find someone to develope your site. Third they are not based in the USA. I will stick with what I have, but thanks for the advice.

You don't need order manager - you can develop it yourself - it's a moot point though - you already have AbleCommerce.

fwiw - we sell Actinic products and have been involved with Actinic software since v3 - a total of 7 years now - 80% of licenses of Actinic we sell are to owner entrepreneurs who intend building their store themselves.

regards

Greg

No you are right I don't need the order manager, however if we were comparing the two softwares then we would have to ad that in there because those are features that Ablecommerce already has. You are right it is a moot point! So you never answered my question though... Does your company do SEO stuff?

yes, we do SEO work - but I would need to know a lot more about the control we have over the HTML in AbleCommerce before I could commment on our ability to do much with it.

Everyone check out the forum!

http://www.redcellpaintballforum.com

OK, Im starting to think the site is missing a professional e-commerce feel... I might be wrong because I spend 8 hours a day looking at it... Please give me some more feed back! thanks guys!
Ian

1. what makes you say that? Sales or lack of sales?
2. who is your target audience - explain in as much detail what your:

i. average sale would be and to who
ii. ideal sale would be and to who

3. what your results are to date - ie, how far from your ideal are you...

simply reviewing your site without having information on your target audience is a total waste of time - it's all integral - you have to hit your audience square between the eyes - being too low or too high is NOT going to work...

ie - if you're a used car dealer and you want to sell to young kids, filling the lot with EXPENSIVE cars is stupid.

Putting the old beaters at the front of the lot might be bad for bringing in the people who are purchasing too... but NOT HAVING lower end product will also hurt.

For the most part, building any web site should be part and parcel of your whole marketing strategy - and it should be consistent with your marketing goals.

You may be able to build a web site, but it doesn't make you a professional web consultant...

In all seriousness our sales are way way up we did more in sales in the first 9 days of Dec than the whole month of Nov. and thats a lot for us! So I am not complaining about that nor do I think we are not hitting our target audience, but there is always room to improve and thats what I was asking for, hence the "web site reviews forum". I would assume that most people can figure out that our "target audience" is made up of people that have money to spend on paintball products. Because of the season we are selling a lot of christmas presents which means a lot of parents buying from us. I wasn't asking for a "professional web consultants" opinion as most people on this forum would not give themselves that title, though a lot of them are. Its just that I have been looking at the site everyday for 8 hrs a day and at that point it starts to look bla. By the way webyourbusiness I personally worked for a quote unquote "professional web consultants" company in Fort Collins, and that is why we did not go with a local company. The staff included about 12 HP lay offs that were real good at HTML and thats about it. You seem a little bitter about the fact that you didn't get our business?

Really I was just looking for some fresh reviews!

People that buy paintball products is not useful as a target audience... information on demographics of people that purchase would be,


no - I am not bitter about getting your business - I was trying to help.. oh well....