Website Review and Suggestions

**Branden Thomas** · 02:45 PM

Hi,

Im hoping that some people could take a gander at our website and let us know what you think about the usability, SEO, compatibility issues etc.

The site is almost one year old and much work has been put towards all aspects of the website. Any comments regarding selling points such as shipping, pricing, sales or any thing like that would also be well received.

Gift Baskets
(don't mind the anchor text

)

Any comments will be hugely appreciated!

**StylaStyla** · 03:36 PM

Hi

I'd put the corporate banner (which is currently at the bottom) to the top right above the 3 sets of products to promote it more.

Add "wine" "chocolate" to your meta;keywords.

Make the telephone number more prominent to encourage people to call - better sales turn-around with calls.

Login at the top right is not really noticable.

Infact, I would redo that top right header. The left side with the logo is fine but it is rather sloppy to the right. The placement of the search box, contact number and login can be handled so much better.

The product description pages are nicely done - very quick loading tabs and a lot of information at hand if I needed it.

no browser issue on IE7/8 FF3 Chrome

SEO is pretty good for a shopping cart - better than most I've seen.

well.. that's all for now I guess..

**Branden Thomas** · 09-15-2009, 04:14 PM

Thank you for your review, I believe your right about promoting the corporate orders more. We have found that many of our orders are office orders. I'll have to put more thought to the banner as it currently only brings them to the corporate category.

If I add wine and chocolate to my meta keywords wont that dilute our chances of coming up for gift baskets on google? we are (thankfully) coming up on google in the 18th page.

I like your idea of making the telephone number at the bottom of the page more prominent. We have had a good amount of call-ins that have converted to sales, especially after adding the footer phone number.

After you login the empty whitespace does fill in with more links such as shopping cart, account etc...

Thank you for critiquing, its always a good idea to get multiple feedback from others.

As a side note I am willing to help you by bookmarking something for you or something like that if you do me a favor. Will you either bookmark our website www.ribbonsbaskets.com or push up the google listing with the keyword gift baskets. I'll do the same for you if you'd like...

**Branden Thomas** · 09-15-2009, 05:30 PM

any more comments would be great

**StylaStyla** · 06:56 PM

I was actually referring to the phone number at the top of the page. I now, with nearly every website I work on (depending on the industry) encourage a impact presence of a telephone number simply because it allows you to draw the customer in and make a better impression on the phone.

I don't think it will dilute it because it is still relevant to your pages. I'm not an SEO expert so I can't say for sure but I've optimised a few websites with 1st page rankings (I'm not talking trivial keywords) and so it has always been fine. Consider this; "chocolate gift" or "wine gift" may result in less of search engine presence for you. I guess it isn't too much of a loss should you decide not to add it since you have these keywords in your links/categories/h-tags and product pages.

Because my bookmarks are so disorganised - I will bookmark it but can't promise you how long it will be there for..! You don't need to do anything in return.

well.. good luck!

**Branden Thomas** · 07:54 PM

should I add the keywords wine and or chocolates. Or do you suggest using wine gift and chocolate gift? I'll do anything that might garner more visitors as long as they are fairly targeted.

also wondering i know your not an SEO expert but you might have some insight, do you think it's important to have a high keyword density in each category. I am going to work on an aim of about 3.5% for the related keyword on each page.

thanks for the bookmark!

**StylaStyla** · 08:11 PM

just add ".....wine, chocolates,...." to your keyword selection - you don't need to go into specifics since crawlers will determine the rest by relevancy with regards to your content.

As for your second question - I am not too sure - I never actually studied SEO. I studied XHTML and the semantics of it all which covers how to start a good foundation for an optimised website so whenever I make websites, I just know how to approach it. I can see from yours that you have key areas covered - especially for a shopping cart - It looks like a oscommerce/creloaded system?

Your question goes deep into the SEO market and so I would recommend you head over to http://www.webmaster-talk.com/seo-talk-forum/

**Leopard** · 09-15-2009, 08:11 PM

You need to make the spacing the same throughout.
Those three things under the rotating ad have weird spacing, and they should be fixed to have the same as they do on every other side.

**Branden Thomas** · 09-15-2009, 08:17 PM

Will do conqueror, thanks for the help.

Leopard, are you referring to the two rows of products under the flash presentation. Are they not properly aligned? I was afraid of this, let me know if you see any other browser compatibility issues.

**thefandango** · 09-16-2009, 06:13 AM

I really like it, very barnes and noble! Perhaps a touch more colour as its floral?

**marynorth21** · 09-16-2009, 08:21 AM

I like your template rather than the first. Makes me relax and want to purchase.

**Brian07002** · 09-16-2009, 10:44 AM

problem is that in ff 3.0 your leftnav is overlapping your topnav (breadcrumb nav)...I suspect this would occur in any version of the browser if it's a positioning error...Anyone else notice this? Color scheme is ok, but I would not feel comfortable as a shopper there as there's *alot* of simple things that could be fixed...

**Branden Thomas** · 09-16-2009, 11:41 AM

Thank you for all the great feedback, I appreciate all the comments!

Mary, I was wondering what you’re referring to when you say… "Better than the first"

Fandango, thank you - what other colors do you think I can incorporate in to the site that would go well with the brown tones. I try to stay away from blue as it does not seem to go quite well with brown tones. I do try and incorporate yellows, oranges and reds. The banner bar at the top used to be red.

I totally agree with you Brian, there are still small design and development issues throughout the website that need to be corrected which I also believe really turns off potential customers. The problem that you experienced with the breadcrumb is not one that happens in most situations. I actually had many design compatibility problems with this before and thought that I had fixed the issue. Could tell me what browser and OS you see the problem in. This way I can find the compatibility issue and hopefully fix it.

**activegamez** · 09-16-2009, 11:13 PM

Oh wow, impressive!

**qstation** · 09-17-2009, 05:42 PM

Very nice design. Clean, professional and easy to navigate.

Nice job.

**smithpeter018** · 09-18-2009, 02:53 AM

cool color scheme

**mandela10** · 09-18-2009, 06:26 PM

Very cool site, like the design and the way the products are arranged, Nice work.