maine-flag.com

Posted By: hotwired ()
Posted On: 2006-Oct-20 14:29


Name of Site/Business: Maine Flag Company

Site's Main Purpose: Ecommerce/Sales

Please Review the following:
Does the home page sufficiently convince people to go further into the site?

Does/can the site achieve its main purpose?



Additional Comments/Notes
Hi
This is probably the most common question asked of a site that sells something. "Lots of people are coming - why aren't they buying?" This is a local business that sells flags, poles, and accessories. Target is much of the State of Maine and secondarily the rest of the country. Site has finally been indexed nicely, or rather, ranked nicely by Google but no sales in a couple of months. Prices seem comparable to other sites but ... he gave me the desired layout of this site which is NOT how I would have designed it (he was trying to save money) - so the attractiveness is in question. Any thoughts? Off to review a couple now!



Posted By: eyeguy ()
Posted On: 2006-Oct-26 15:27

In my opinion, this site cries out for a complete makeover.
It appears to have been created as a Microsoft Word document that was saved as html.
There is way too much "Times New Roman" everywhere.
The blue link buttons on the left hide the black text within.
There are way too many link buttons. You can use a javascript for expanding menus and list the main categories. When someone mouseovers these the subcategories will pop out.
I would suggest more uniformity. For example, all the state flags are of different sizes and they are spaced differently.
To attract people's interest, why not have something like the history of the US flag with pictures?
I would put a large USA flag on the front page, since people looking for flags appreciate this.
I would get rid of the excess stars everywhere. The words at the top should be menu links.
This is a nice niche business, and if done with some pizazz, should result in good sales.
Speaking of this, you might consider selling on ebay. Get an ebay name that sounds like your company name.Then when people buy flags from you on ebay they will become aware of your web presence.
Good luck.


Posted By: OAC (Staff)
Posted On: 2006-Oct-27 02:53

From my perspective, the store design is too loud, too big, too everything. It is an assault on the senses. Product information is hard to find, hard to read and is thus, lost.

I understand the owners objective with the red, white and blue ( a good thought) but it is just too much. It would be better to swap the white and the blue - i.e. have a white background etc.

The Ebay suggestion by eyeguy is a great idea.