Site needs to suck less

[Gablablah]

Fuck it, here's one of my sites. Tear it to shreds, I don't care. I just need to up my game. PPC traffic hasn't seemed to do too well, since these aren't typically quick buys for people. I've gotten some search engine, youtube, and yahoo answers traffic so far, but I'd like to revamp everything and make more money than I am currently with this site.

http://www.sxbasses.com

 

[nachoninja]

She could have made something that looks better:

 

[Gablablah]

Don't out my designer

 

[emp]

OK, working on a thorough review now, but to not be too nice, I am going to wrap it up in Wf speak. Fuckers!

::emp::

 

[emp]

Bucket of Fail

Design Grid

Think of your page as lying on an invisible grid. All the page elements follow this grid.

This is actually not that hard to do, as HTML / CSS follows a box model anyway.

So here we go.

I have outlined the current gridlines on your page.
Vertical:

This, frankly, is what I call a fucking mess.

So what to do?

Easy, we reduce the mess to a few gridlines we would like to follow. Outlined here in pink (as this is a gay webmaster community, after all)

So now all ya gotta do is move the elements around to adhere to those lines.

Moved the logo and the header text, the buttons and braking the text to stay in line.

Also moved the footer, and removed the lines in between elements.

And remember: For fuck's sake, do not center text.
This is how it would look now.

Making the "shop more" button fill the whole center. And moving the ads from the sidebar into the content area.

The idea of the sound bites is a good one. Please, include it in the front page as well. The text DOES SAY "click play to hear..."

I think you can loose that "rondo music" button, but that is something your analysis has to tell you.

For all this to not happen, I recommend using a CSS framework.

It really is easy and will take you about 1 hour to learn (and after that, only 5 minutes to spit out a rough layout)

I use blueprint (http://www.blueprintcss.org), I think YAML (http://www.yaml.de/en/) and 960 Grid System (http://960.gs/) are also popular.

Colours

Who has a nice happy tumour growing on his visual cortex? You do!

And thanks for looking at that site, I have one, too.

Seriously, who scraped out your retinae and replaced them with those of a mole?

Please, go check kuler (http://adobe.kuler.com) and choose a good color scheme.

Choose one that goes with your logo, then decide which element on the page should have which color and stick with it.

Here is a try with a black background:

OK, so much for the design.

Now to some on-page SEO.

Descriptions:
Write some more text. Wow me into buying one of those.
If possible, write enough text to fill half a page.
Make a "more" button for each guitar, leading to a detail page for each one.
SEO the shit out of title text, etc..
Include several pictures of the guitar on that page.

Links:
Customize the "Buy bass from Rondo Music" link.

At the very least, it should be "Buy this bass from Rondo Music"

At best it would be "Buy the SX Jazz Bass from Rondo Music".

If possible, link to THAT product page directly.


Good luck, there is a lot of work ahead of you.

pff...I should start charging for these.

::emp::

 

[Gablablah]

Thanks a bunch. I've just been using simple wordpress sites so far so my freehand HTML and design is definitely shit. I'll get to work on all that and report back. Not sure why all those audio players are showing up at the bottom for you instead of next to the basses. Guess I'll fix that too.

 

[dewme5]

That's what I'm talking about emp. As another n00b, this is very constructive criticism. Taking the time to fix stuff with screen shots. Def +1 rep.

 

[emp]

FUCK YEAH!

The guy went ahead and redesigned the page.

Congrats Gablablah, looking better now.

Wanna share how things improved on the business end?

::emp::

 

[xmcp123]

I'm not a landing page god or anything(techie at heart) but I whipped a few modifications I'd do/test. Whipped up a quick photoshopped version(my screenshotter fucked it up a little, but it's more or less right).
The modification on it I doubt the most is switching to "Send Me this Guitar". Probably an "Add to cart" would suffice.

The points behind the mods:
-Make testimonials seem more legit(email ex customers, most will be happy for the publicity for the band).
-Show some competing guitars to keep them on the site if they don't like this one.
-Make the order button grab more attention than the button to list other guitars(which doesn't make you money)
-Add some color

 

[WebRef.eu]

You may find these conversion rate optimisation tips helpful.

When I look at the site in IE7, it is asking for Windows Media Player add on (you know, the beige top bar that pops up). That isn't good for conversion. The site isn't rendering properly for me in IE7.

I would focus on special offers and incentives. I think basses are a tough sell as many will want to try them in a shop.

Rgds

 

[Gablablah]

Heeey, wasn't expecting a revival of this thread. I've been doing some other things but I guess I have a lot more to do now.

Issues
- Navigation bar. Thought I had checked it in IE, but just now saw that the nav bar is way fucked up for me in IE. Any recommendations for a better one?

- Sound clips. I think the sound is a good selling point for these, since most cheap guitars don't sound that great. Should I just have a link that goes to an mp3 instead of an embedded player?

- Affiliate links. Rondo Music's affiliate program doesn't have affiliate links direct to the specific product. The best I can do is link to the page with all their basses. That was kind of the point of the big "see all available basses" button.

I know my market is out there, just not sure how to grab them. Here's a thread from the talkbass forums, where there's practically an SX cult. This is a continuation of 5 previous threads that all reached the post limit.

Essex Bass Club (Part 6) - TalkBass Forums

so the people that know about them pretty much think they're the shit. I've been a member there for years, so I wouldn't want to do anything spammy that got my IP banned.

 

[Etherswift]

You may find these conversion rate optimisation tips helpful.

When I look at the site in IE7, it is asking for Windows Media Player add on (you know, the beige top bar that pops up). That isn't good for conversion. The site isn't rendering properly for me in IE7.

I would focus on special offers and incentives. I think basses are a tough sell as many will want to try them in a shop.

Rgds

stop spamming, idiot
--

ontopic: the site looks good (compared to the previous design, it's an obvious improvement)...

one thing that I've noticed off the hook, at a quick glance, is that the orange "See all available basses" button is kinda out of place..
What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't have too many colors on your page..I know you want that button to stand out, but don't ruin an otherwise nice and well-rounded site for an "attention grabber"..
you could use the same beige color for this button as you've used for the buttons in the top nav - it will blend it nicely

also, you could try to make those testimonials stand out a little bit more; use an image of a stylish quotation mark or something to make that section look better.

good luck !

 

[stmadeveloper]

Emp - Xmcp both deserve some kudos. That was way over above and beyond.

You should thank them with beer, women, or treasure.

 

[Gablablah]

So the site is pretty messed up in Internet Explorer. Aside from the navigation bar, I've been trying to figure out how to properly display the body. I narrowed it down to a particular problem. This is a simple page I made to show it.

www.sxbasses.com/samplepage.html

Ignoring the white background space and where the text "should" be, according to the framework, the bottom paragraph is supposed to extend as far to the right as the first one. Firefox displays it right but Internet Explorer adds space to the right. That's what's fucking up the "Customer Comments" part. Anyone familiar with CSS Blueprint know what's going on? The source code is pretty simple on that page.

 

[emp]

You used blueprint and it fucks up?

I'll take a look tomorrow..it is night here and I should be sleeping.

::emp::

 

[emp]

OK, this part:

<div class="span-24 last">

should look like this:

<div class="column span-24 last">

:error::error::error:

::emp::

 

[daewon106]

Overall, awesome improvement I have to say. You got to hand it to emp, great work.
One criticism. When I see any kind of electric guitar, I think rockstar band or some "type" of music. But when I see your site, I see a boring music shop with a bunch of basses. Try to get the person excited to buy a bass guitar.