Name of Site/Business: Alexander's Playroom Baby Boutique

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?

Navigation. Is it clear and easy to understand?

Appearance/Attractiveness

Typos and grammar

Search engine marketing. Can the pages be reasonably well indexed by search engines?



Additional Comments/Notes

Hi there,
I have had a quick look and think you have a bit of clutter on your pages...
The search engine spider has to wade through multiple items in your code to get to the information of what your pages are actually about. In many cases it seems your content is very very thin.

I would rationalise all the bits and bobs (hacker site, labels and links for this and that....outbound links and ads etc.) and focus on providing unique copy on each page, especially the product pages and the product description.

Google appears to be unhappy a bit and you could be being read as having duplicate content due to the weight of the template base being the same on most pages (and overpowering any content.

Try to look at this from your potential customers point of view, they want to buy product not be confused.

Attention to title tags would be good, especially on the home page.

I don't see meta description or keywords on most pages. Contrary to what some might say these are important for various reasons - one of which is to weigh various factors (these might not be important for ranking but rather for associations with other pages etc.)

Nice product range, but needs to be more Mummy friendly in my opinion.

Developing some unique information pages about safety, usage etc etc whatever might help as well. i.e. What is Colic, how to deal with it and how hard it is for the mum & dad.... link to what products to buy for it.

If you make your pages useful you will find people will link to it naturally and promote it to others via word of mouth. They first have to find it - as you know

Hope that helps!

Sorry, I missed the "Pregnancy & Baby Info" pages...
That's the way, build that out and link it back to related products etc.

One more think - Consider not starting every page of the website with the same beginning for the title!

The title of the page is important, describe what is on the actual page. If you must put your business name, then put it well to the end, but I wouldn't suggest using it apart from your order info, contact pages etc.

Thank you for your review. It is very helpful. I have made a few changes based on your review concerning the ads, links, etc. I use Miva Merchant 5 and although it is a great shopping cart it has a lot of downfalls. One of them being that the meta tags are global.

I am unsure of what you mean by Google having a problem with duplicate content because of the template base being the same on every page. Can you explain?

Thanks,
Maria

I really like your website. I liked how it was well-organized and I like your theme too. There were a few things I suggest you change. The pink navigation buttons were hard to read, so I suggest you change the text font color. But overall I liked your website and I think it has potential. Good luck!

surely Miva would have a module to allow for unique meta tags??

I want a pair of "Learning Shoes on Little Feet" - you have some lovely items!

Googlebot spiders through your pages and reads the code, so if it thinks a lot of pages are the same with blocks of info duplicated on each and without sufficient unique copy - the pages may be deemed as duplicate or unimportant.

You can read more about this, it might be helpful...if you continue improving and adding content, then things will get better for you...
Google's Duplicate Content

Yes, Miva does have a module to fix that problem. I have not purchased it because I'm not sure if I want to invest any more money in this shopping cart. I've had to buy so many modules to just make the cart work properly for my site. Simple things like sorting and arranging products and categories and charging sales tax, etc. They seem to nickle and dime you to death.

I have another domain that I am using Zen Cart to build and so far I like that cart better. So I am considering moving my current site. .I figure since I am not getting much traffic and Google has me in the nowhere land it won't hurt that much.

Thank you again for all your great advice. It is much appreciated.

Maria

Instead of wasting time learning a new cart, you would be far, far better off improving/adding to your page content, as excell suggests.

In addition, while you may be in Google nowhere land at present, don't forget that if you install a new cart, your links will change - i.e. your page names will change. This means that you will immediately return to the back of the queue when it comes to PageRank. At present, your site is doing a jail sentence, in terms of PageRank. At the end of your sentence, you'll get better PageRank and thus better rankings. If you change your links, you start your sentence again.

I do know that I will be starting from scratch again but, I never thought of it as a jail sentence. I will definitely think it through before I make up my mind. Thanks for the enlightenment! I am working on getting more content to my site and I have added a lot of links lately. I have noticed that Google crawls my site a lot more frequently then a couple of months ago so maybe that is a good sign.

Thanks,
Maria

Hmm... I am not convinced.

If handled correctly a fresh website is not necessarily going to cause problems...and often can indeed be a "get out of jail free" card...

It is an excellent sign that you see that Google crawl is interested. What they want is well formed,accessible and great content, it is what they want to serve in their results.

I would like to add to OAC's concern in regards to testing, do not be hasty to jump from one ship to another without allowing time for full assessment.

Run both systems and compare... ease of use, cost and results are all factors, at the end of the day you gotta sell me the Learning Shoes - that's all I care about.
focus on target market.

Shakes:

Overall, like the site. You specialize in stuff for baby, so great colour schemes.

I like the articles as well, although I would read what other people have written for ideas to write articles for yourself.

I like the fact on the link page when someone clicks, it opens in a new window (something I didn't know I could do until recently), but I do not understand the reasoning behind all the links; are you carrying these products or having them drop shipped from a particular company that requires it? Are these companies in a networking group that you're helping out? If not, I respectfully suggest dropping them, as I was advised to do by my webmaster.

I realize that you have "stock" photos of favours on your site, but if you are familiar at all with photoshop (and have the time), I'd crop the favours out of the background and create your own background, as anyone who's shopping for favours will be able to tell that you are just a reseller and it won't look at all unique (which is why although I get party favours from the same sources as you do, I currently don't have any on my site, as I don't want the same pics and don't have the time to crop everything), as they're probably checking out multiple sites.

I noticed with your diaper cakes that you have a dark background. I realize that this is to showcase the diapers, but perhaps a dark blue or darker neutral (off-white) colour fabric background would look better?

Also: You have company names on your links page. If I were shopping your site, saw them and didn't want to pay you your price, I'd simply go to the company's website, order some ingredients, and make my own cake. You'd be surprised that some people will go to the trouble to not pay you, (thinking) that they'll save money by doing it themselves.

I realize you are in Altamonte Springs and may not have a large population, but I actually think you are under charging for some of your diaper cakes; I make them and know how much effort goes into them (as does Mr. BasketCase, as I sometimes make him help me ).

Just my opinion, for what it is worth.

god bless.

have a nice day.

excellent points basketcase - unique, user friedly and focused content wins the day! It's worth the effort.

Basketcase,

Thank you so much for the indept review. I will definitely take your suggestions into consideration. You lost me on the part about the company names on my link pages. The majority of companies I buy my supplies from for the diaper cakes and gift baskets are wholesale only so how could someone use that info to buy their own supplies? Or am I missing your point?

I have considered doing the pictures in a lighter color. I use to have them on a white background and they seemed to blend in with the background.

I am getting ready to get rid of some of my links on my link page. When I started out I only did reciprocal linking because I did not know it was better to get one way incoming links.

I have already started writing a few of my own articles also to add my site. In fact I published the first one last week on Baby Shower Food Ideas.

Once again, thank you for all the great suggestions.

Maria