What do you think about this website?

[league_of_ordinary_men]

Years more like it. Hostgator is an overseller, one of the biggest. And the moment you start needing a bit of processing power or get a bit of traffic you're in deep trouble due to their (unadvertised, but very real) concurrent connections limit.


You're not getting what you need from Hostgator already (and based on others and my experience with them, with what you are trying to do you probably never will )

Look for a thread on hosting in the TFSA Locals forum for a recommendation (or more).

Thanks Dave we will definitely have a look, thank you. What are you looking for in an online store?

[Mark Atkinson]

The server problem - We are hosting with hostgator and they are experiencing some trouble with there servers due to server trouble over the last couple of months. We host with them because no body in South Africa can offer what we need for the price, we have been with Godaddy before and a few South African hosts as well and our experiences with them hasn't been very good and performance was either the same or worse and it cost more, to be able to get the same package we have now we would pay an arm and a leg locally.

We've had a pretty good experience with Hetzner. With any shared hosting provider you're always going to run the risk of servers being blacklisted etc, so we eventually decided to rent our own dedicated server from them. Even so, if you're a start-up, paying R200 a month is an expense that is well worth the rewards.

As for the actual appeal of the site - Some like it some don't and we respect everyone's opinions. Do you mind elaborating more on which parts feel unpolished, cut off, overlaping and disjointed so we can have a look at them, please keep in mind we do have our own unique style, I mean if we wanted to look like takeallot or kalahari we would go and buy the template and we don't like the same old feel of those sites. Don't get us wrong there good but in our opinion it's been done to many times.

All I'm going to say here is that there is good reason why those sites look like they do and are laid out like they are. They both pay several people significant amounts of money to run conversion testing and turn that data into designs that work. Also, neither one uses a template that you can go out and buy.

Menus - We actually talked about the menu drop out functionality and we are planing on making it easier to use. We are looking into the menu and have a few ideas. Why do you say the images in the menu looks like an afterthought?

It just doesn't look like they were meant to be there. It's difficult to explain but from a design point of view it just doesn't fit for me.

We have seen a lot of temples cheap and expensive and so good and some bad, you of all people should know you use what you got and you make the best of it. You know how much hard work goes into making a good website, to some it might be good to some it might be crappy. If your hung up on the cost of the template rather then the website as a whole and what has been done to get it that way then your judging the site based on the amount of money put into.

I'm certainly not judging the website based on the amount of money put into it, because I don't know how much money has been put in it. What I did do was make an assumption based on the look of the website. How right I was, only you will know.

I've seen some very good websites built using free templates, but they're not something you come across often.

Trust factor - the reason we don't have any phone numbers on the site is because we can't handle all the call's as of yet, thus you will be on hold the whole time and that's bad customer service. We will be adding a phone number in the future once we have the infrastructure. What the address in concerned we are busy moving to a different location. We are working on getting on price comparison engines but we do require some time. The payment gateway we are getting ready to use has it's own SSL but we were thinking of activating our SSL in the shopping cart we just need our host to sort out there server trouble or it might slow us down even more.

How many calls are you expecting, really? One of our e-commerce clients was clearing 10,000 unique visitors a month at a decent conversion rate and up until recently ran as a one man show using only a cell phone. Unless you've got some major investment going in terms of advertising, I'm really not sure what infrastructure you need in these early stages.

[league_of_ordinary_men]

We've had a pretty good experience with Hetzner. With any shared hosting provider you're always going to run the risk of servers being blacklisted etc, so we eventually decided to rent our own dedicated server from them. Even so, if you're a start-up, paying R200 a month is an expense that is well worth the rewards.


All I'm going to say here is that there is good reason why those sites look like they do and are laid out like they are. They both pay several people significant amounts of money to run conversion testing and turn that data into designs that work. Also, neither one uses a template that you can go out and buy.


It just doesn't look like they were meant to be there. It's difficult to explain but from a design point of view it just doesn't fit for me.



I'm certainly not judging the website based on the amount of money put into it, because I don't know how much money has been put in it. What I did do was make an assumption based on the look of the website. How right I was, only you will know.

I've seen some very good websites built using free templates, but they're not something you come across often.



How many calls are you expecting, really? One of our e-commerce clients was clearing 10,000 unique visitors a month at a decent conversion rate and up until recently ran as a one man show using only a cell phone. Unless you've got some major investment going in terms of advertising, I'm really not sure what infrastructure you need in these early stages.

Hi Mark, thanks for the feedback much appreciated. If you have more tips please feel free, the only way were going to improve is by learning and growing. Who know's maybe you will buy from us one day and we are expanding into a whole lot more category's not just PC components.

[TheElectrician]

Hi league of ordinary men,

I agree with a few things that have been said here, especially in regards to the load time associated with the pages. With the large amount you got going on, it doesn't matter what speed my internet is, it is also down to the hosting company. What I would very strongly recommend is that you upgrade your package with your web hosting company to no longer be "shared hosting". It will probably cost in the region of R600 pm, but what it means is your site will have its own server, and not compete with other websites your hosting company has, in regard to accessibility. It is actually a rather quick fix, and I know you can do it in a very straight forward manner on Afrihosts Clientzone. It should propagate within 2-48 hours, and your load time will be a lot faster. This can be especially important as Google likes to give users the best possible experience, and it tends to (albeit slightly) demote sites that have a long load time.

From a purely SEO point of view, I am afraid I am going to have to (in the nicest possible way), fail you miserably. I see you have a very limited back link profile, with no substantial high quality links to your site that Google / Bing can feed off of. I Googled "Buy Samsung products online South Africa", and variants of that; and gave up after a few pages (Which is more than a potential customer would go through). I have repeated this with a few of your products, and I am afraid you aren't ranking I can also assume you have a rather low RFT (Return from traffic), as your site interface, while quite cool and technically challenging to build, doesn't appeal to "web morons" as I like to call them. These are the people who use the internet for Facebook and the odd purchase. When designing something like this, you need to ensure the ultimate in simplicity and functionality. Not every one is capable of designing things like this, and those who can tend to "show off" which detracts from the user experience and lowers your RFT. I have been guilty of it myself, so no judgement is being passed :P...

Spelling is also impeccably important. Not only does it show to a client that you are capable, meticulous and worthy of their money, but Google and Bing rely heavily on it. Why would it rank you if you have the same spelling and grammar as cheap Viagra sites (Excuse the crassness)? Also, if you view your website with Google Chrome, and push "Ctrl and U'', you will see that your HTML coding is a disaster. This needs to be sorted out as soon as you can. This is what a SE reads, and it is akin to the handwriting of a dyslexic blind kid. I can only presume you used a WYSIWYG program to create it? These are a disaster, and I would recommend Wordpress or Pretsashop for the build (Make the template yourself if you can. Artisteer is available for about R600 on their website, and it is effectively WYSISYG, but offline and produces some beautiful code).

Lastly, WHY ARE THERE NO SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS ON YOUR WEBSITE ?!?!?!?!?! Sometimes people need that extra push into buying! If you have a column that shows your 3000 likes and 13 000 Twitter followers (I don't know how many you actually have), then people are going to ease into it; with a small possibility of being angry that they didn't hear about this sooner! People aren't going to put their credit card information into a site they don't know or not sure if others know. Instead of researching you etc, they are just going to use your competition, as clicking "back" is a lot easier than spending 15 minutes checking out your legitimacy. In my opinion, I think the end of the day you have to take a deep breath, look at it, and realize that sometimes design can be sacrificed to increase profit. It can be painful, but sometimes you just have to cry while holding a pillow over its head, hoping it is reincarnated into something better. I also won't go into your metadata or keywords too much, just please sort this out if you can. I'm running out of metaphors.

I have had clients in the online shopping industry before, with testimonials you can check out on my website at http://www.webvitality.co.za. I have increased PAYING traffic by nearly 900% pm in less than 6 months in some cases. If you would like to know more, send me an email at Kyle@webvitality.co.za and I can send you a quote if you are unable to do it yourself.

Good luck with it all,

Kyle

[league_of_ordinary_men]

Hi league of ordinary men,

I agree with a few things that have been said here, especially in regards to the load time associated with the pages. With the large amount you got going on, it doesn't matter what speed my internet is, it is also down to the hosting company. What I would very strongly recommend is that you upgrade your package with your web hosting company to no longer be "shared hosting". It will probably cost in the region of R600 pm, but what it means is your site will have its own server, and not compete with other websites your hosting company has, in regard to accessibility. It is actually a rather quick fix, and I know you can do it in a very straight forward manner on Afrihosts Clientzone. It should propagate within 2-48 hours, and your load time will be a lot faster. This can be especially important as Google likes to give users the best possible experience, and it tends to (albeit slightly) demote sites that have a long load time.

From a purely SEO point of view, I am afraid I am going to have to (in the nicest possible way), fail you miserably. I see you have a very limited back link profile, with no substantial high quality links to your site that Google / Bing can feed off of. I Googled "Buy Samsung products online South Africa", and variants of that; and gave up after a few pages (Which is more than a potential customer would go through). I have repeated this with a few of your products, and I am afraid you aren't ranking I can also assume you have a rather low RFT (Return from traffic), as your site interface, while quite cool and technically challenging to build, doesn't appeal to "web morons" as I like to call them. These are the people who use the internet for Facebook and the odd purchase. When designing something like this, you need to ensure the ultimate in simplicity and functionality. Not every one is capable of designing things like this, and those who can tend to "show off" which detracts from the user experience and lowers your RFT. I have been guilty of it myself, so no judgement is being passed :P...

Spelling is also impeccably important. Not only does it show to a client that you are capable, meticulous and worthy of their money, but Google and Bing rely heavily on it. Why would it rank you if you have the same spelling and grammar as cheap Viagra sites (Excuse the crassness)? Also, if you view your website with Google Chrome, and push "Ctrl and U'', you will see that your HTML coding is a disaster. This needs to be sorted out as soon as you can. This is what a SE reads, and it is akin to the handwriting of a dyslexic blind kid. I can only presume you used a WYSIWYG program to create it? These are a disaster, and I would recommend Wordpress or Pretsashop for the build (Make the template yourself if you can. Artisteer is available for about R600 on their website, and it is effectively WYSISYG, but offline and produces some beautiful code).

Lastly, WHY ARE THERE NO SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS ON YOUR WEBSITE ?!?!?!?!?! Sometimes people need that extra push into buying! If you have a column that shows your 3000 likes and 13 000 Twitter followers (I don't know how many you actually have), then people are going to ease into it; with a small possibility of being angry that they didn't hear about this sooner! People aren't going to put their credit card information into a site they don't know or not sure if others know. Instead of researching you etc, they are just going to use your competition, as clicking "back" is a lot easier than spending 15 minutes checking out your legitimacy. In my opinion, I think the end of the day you have to take a deep breath, look at it, and realize that sometimes design can be sacrificed to increase profit. It can be painful, but sometimes you just have to cry while holding a pillow over its head, hoping it is reincarnated into something better. I also won't go into your metadata or keywords too much, just please sort this out if you can. I'm running out of metaphors.

I have had clients in the online shopping industry before, with testimonials you can check out on my website at http://www.webvitality.co.za. I have increased PAYING traffic by nearly 900% pm in less than 6 months in some cases. If you would like to know more, send me an email at Kyle@webvitality.co.za and I can send you a quote if you are unable to do it yourself.

Good luck with it all,

Kyle

Good morning Kyle, I have to say your comment cracked me up and I get where your coming from, that's why we are redesigning the site and the new one will be up soon and it's like you said sometimes you have to sacrifice design for simplicity for the sake of your clients.You have some really good advise and we already talked about switching to a local hosting company, we will be doing some more work on SEO as well as the coding and all the other things that needs fixing.Thank you very much for the advise some off you metaphors cracked us up, who knows maybe we will make use off your services someday and you can look back at our site and say you had a helping hand in making it what it is now and like we said keep all the comments coming so we can improve and please checkout the new site when its up soon and tell us what you think.

[TheElectrician]

No problems. I like that you dream big too. If you would like advice on SEO, I have just spent 2 days writing in this forum about it. you can check it out here. Feel free to comment in that feed if there is anything you are confused about / need clarification on. I would be more than happy to help. Also, if you send the .zip file to me before you upload, I will put it on an internal server on my hardrive (WAMP), and will run diagnostics on it. That link on SEO and CMS can be found here http://www.theforumsa.co.za/forums/s...93-SEO-and-CMS

[TheElectrician]

On a side note, if I was able to whip up a fully functioning online shop by the end of the week , with all your products / metadata / URLs and tags in a zip file, and then put it on your servers, would you be in a position to pay for it? You can then tweak things like your credit card info etc online after I revoke my access to the admin folder. I have spent 4 years doing this, and am pretty sure I can put you at least 6 weeks ahead of where you are in 2-3 days (I'm very good at my job). I will have my guy send me the site map we use to optimize these things, and I will code your products etc into it in a couple of days. If you are interested, let me know, and you can send me how you want your design to look, and I will sort it out...

[league_of_ordinary_men]

On a side note, if I was able to whip up a fully functioning online shop by the end of the week , with all your products / metadata / URLs and tags in a zip file, and then put it on your servers, would you be in a position to pay for it? You can then tweak things like your credit card info etc online after I revoke my access to the admin folder. I have spent 4 years doing this, and am pretty sure I can put you at least 6 weeks ahead of where you are in 2-3 days (I'm very good at my job). I will have my guy send me the site map we use to optimize these things, and I will code your products etc into it in a couple of days. If you are interested, let me know, and you can send me how you want your design to look, and I will sort it out...

Thank you very much for the offer but we are already almost done but we do like what you do and will be in touch.

[league_of_ordinary_men]

Guys checkout our new look and tell us what you think.There's still a lot to do with regards to looks, SEO.....etc but the basics is there.Please keep in mind the speed, we will be switching to a local hosting company thanks to Dave for giving use the heads ups, we did try to trim the fat so to speak, any advise from our web guru's will be much appreciated.

[IMHO]

Loom, why do you not put the link to the site in your signature. It makes it so much easier to find the site to look at. On top of that, that link in your signature is worth its "weight" in gold, from an SEO point of view.

[league_of_ordinary_men]

Loom, why do you not put the link to the site in your signature. It makes it so much easier to find the site to look at. On top of that, that link in your signature is worth its "weight" in gold, from an SEO point of view.

You think Dave will complain if I put in a little image?hehehe.Have you checked out the new look?

[IMHO]

You think Dave will complain if I put in a little image?hehehe.Have you checked out the new look?

Looks good, but how you gonna get traffic I do not know. Sold anything yet? What is your plans?

Well, image might be a prob, but link is a start...

[league_of_ordinary_men]

Looks good, but how you gonna get traffic I do not know. Sold anything yet? What is your plans?

Well, image might be a prob, but link is a start...

Yes we have sold quit a few things, keep in mind we are busy working on everything from looks to function,marketing,seo the works.What image problem? and we will be adding some of our customers testimonials too. Register with us and checkout our customer service.

[IMHO]

You think Dave will complain if I put in a little image?hehehe.

This image.

[vieome]

Guys checkout our new look and tell us what you think.There's still a lot to do with regards to looks, SEO.....etc but the basics is there.Please keep in mind the speed, we will be switching to a local hosting company thanks to Dave for giving use the heads ups, we did try to trim the fat so to speak, any advise from our web guru's will be much appreciated.

Okay looks much better, still think the amount of product per page is very high, I scroll down, and then got to scroll back up to change to next product, (I got very small screen). Choice over Load, as a customer first I will look for price, so put a few of low price products, if that sparks my interest then I will scroll for more. Second it was quite a mission to fill out details to order a product, the address etc, did not seem to respond. Also dont think Telephone number should be required field in that respect. Just a question is it setup that the more product you order, the price of delivery fee goes down, to the point if the order is large enough the delivery is free?

Is this your site, or is it a site you built for someone else?