Hi New Member Here - would appreciate feedback about my website

[gidiefor]

My website Canal Street Cutlery | Pocket Knives | Collectible Pocket Knives (http://www.droppointhunter.com) has been through a three year evolution where I've learned quite a bit on my own and I'm looking to grow further. I work with American Cutlery Craftsmen and this site and my business plan revolved around supporting what they do. Constructive feedback would be appreciated. I can tell you a couple of things I am not happy with - I am in Drupal (gasp!). My Shopping Cart is very limited. And I grow more and more disenchanted with my side columns. Also I use a lot of copy - I think the copy is good and has gotten better - but I also think most of my pages have a lot of copy.

Thanks again for any constructive feedback.

[Carsten]

The entry page to me looks rather inviting. But when I go to the item-pages I'm struck by too much text, though this seems to be well optimized for SEO. Also concerning SEO you should add individual meta-descriptions to every single site. These are rather important for Google. Also you could add alt-tags for the included pictures. Which are helpful for your pictures to be found in the Google picture search. The text on the left sidebar would be better placed on a separate page with an obvious link instead of showing it completely on all pages. The product decriptions could need some formatting and highlighting in order to ease the readability.
Just my opinion. Hope that helps.

[vangogh]

Welcome to the forum gidiefor.

I have to agree with you about how much copy you have. It is a lot. My first impression when I land on your home page is a good one. It's pretty clear what the site is about and what you sell. The image looks good and the background sets a mood. However, even scrolling down the home page shows more content than I expect. It strikes me that the design aesthetic is going for elegance and luxury when I see the home page. Filling the rest of the site with too much content sends the exact opposite message.

On the interior pages it's hard to know where to look, because there's so much information. How much of it is really necessary? The sidebar on the left starts by letting us know you have financing through PayPal. I don't care and won't until I'm entering your shopping cart. That's where that information belongs. Similarly below the PayPal message is another message about shipping. Again I don't and won't care until I'm ready to buy. With the list of products in the center it's again a lot of information. You don't have to tell me everything about the product on the category pages. Just tell me enough to help me decide if I want to know more. The image and a short sentence or two is all that's needed there.

The right hand sidebar is packed with info too. The points of interest are nice, but I don't think they need to be on every page. Probably one link somewhere in the navigation that leads to a section about those points.

I think cleaning up the design would do it a lot of good. You have a good product, good images showing off the product, and clearly a healthy amount of content. Those are all good things. I think a better aesthetic would be to follow the lead on the home page. Open up the design and allow for more space. You don't need or want to fill every bit of space with content. Let the products breathe. Don't have them compete with too many other things on the page. The space communicates luxury and quality. You can also try to emphasize the idea that a lot of craftsmanship went into the product.

Look over the site and decide what really needs to be there and start cutting away ruthlessly. You can get rid of both sidebars and not really lost anything. You might change the navigation into a vertical list of links. The links are tiny now and hard to read. Place the links at the top of one sidebar and only use one. Give some space between that lone sidebar and the rest of the content and I think you'll find the design communicates the products much better.

[gidiefor]

Thank you Carsten and vangogh - I appreciate your thoughts. I am considering a revamp right now - which scares me. I have to leave Drupal for one thing, because I don't have access to a lot of folks that work with it and the ones I do are scary expensive - and have led me to the point I'm at now. I'm concerned about Word Press for security reasons, but I am going to be running a test site in word press for another project I'm taking on, and it does seem to be a lot less expensive to work with and provide significantly more options. I am going to need to work with someone I trust and who will help me make effective transitions.

I have so much text is that most of my buyers need to hear certain things before they buy. The volume of our online purchases has nearly doubled in each of the three years that I have been running the site and it's largely due to language and content - which is important to our product. Pictures alone don't sell. My buyers need to understand why they need to spend $100 on a knife that looks like knives that are $9.95. We mix market and I tour a lot because it allows potential buyers to pick up the knife. Generally speaking I have to find a way to get them to slow down and smell the roses.

[gidiefor]

…but as I said in my first post - I recognize the problem with the amount of text and how it appears on the page

[Harold Mansfield]

Thank you Carsten and vangogh - I appreciate your thoughts. I am considering a revamp right now - which scares me. I have to leave Drupal for one thing, because I don't have access to a lot of folks that work with it and the ones I do are scary expensive - and have led me to the point I'm at now. I'm concerned about Word Press for security reasons, but I am going to be running a test site in word press for another project I'm taking on, and it does seem to be a lot less expensive to work with and provide significantly more options. I am going to need to work with someone I trust and who will help me make effective transitions.

No site is secure if you don't know how to take simple precautions no matter what platform you use. What people perceive as a security issue for WordPress is the fact that most amateur users use the default username, and location of the log in page. It's not WordPress that is unsecure, it's users that leave default settings. If thousands of users do the same thing over and over again, of course hackers will notice a pattern.


I have so much text is that most of my buyers need to hear certain things before they buy. The volume of our online purchases has nearly doubled in each of the three years that I have been running the site and it's largely due to language and content - which is important to our product. .

What you have described is no different from any other ecommerce site. But you've come here because something isn't right. Content is important, but the way you have it presented doesn't help you. It's actually working against you and it's overwhelming. Users actually need to wade through all of the content to get to what is most import about the product that they are interested in. It's visually cluttered, so it's distracting.


Pictures alone don't sell. My buyers need to understand why they need to spend $100 on a knife that looks like knives that are $9.95. We mix market and I tour a lot because it allows potential buyers to pick up the knife. Generally speaking I have to find a way to get them to slow down and smell the roses.

Pictures are very important to sales online. Users need to be able to envision themselves using your product as well as get a good look at it. Getting them to slow down before a purchases in usually the opposite of what retailers want. Retailers spend significant time and money studying how to get people to purchase faster, while still providing the necessary information to sell the product.

Basically, yes informative content is important, if you know how to use it to benefit the overall presentation of your site. Content just for the sake of content actually hurts you.

You have a few basic mistakes on your site that could easily be cleaned up. If you are doing a redesign, that would be a good time to address them.

On The Home Page: It starts out great with a nice image, but then starts to miss some huge opportunities...

The black background is drab. I would use an image that signifies what people use your knives for. Hunting, Fishing...whatever.
You should put this slogan "Old World Artisan Pocketknives that Inspire the Human Adventure" on the home page image instead of "Come on in and see our Beautiful knives". They're already on the site. They should be seeing product. Not an invitation to click here to see product.
Navigation font is too small. Navigation is also out of order. If your logo isn't going to link back to the home page, then "Home" should be the first item.,
I would also simplify the navigation items. Use simpler words with direction, eg:"Shop", "Featured Products", "Custom Designs" or whatever applies.
The sidebar navigation "Points of Interest". isn't very interesting. No care was taken to present those pages well. It's also "hidden". You need to go to another page to see it. All navigation should be accessible from a central location...unless it is category specific.
Also, why does the name of the company seem to be "Drop Point Hunter", but you keep referring to this "Canal Street" branding?
The door knocker is cute, but you really should have featured products on the home page that people can immediately put into their cart.
If you have a retailer, you should present the location better. Maybe a Map.
You should promote the shows you will be at in your blog and link to the posts for more info and directions to the show.
You have conflicting blog links. You have a Blogger logo at the bottom of your page (that hasn't been updated in 3 years), that takes you to a different blog than what is listed in your navigation.

Product pages:

Each product needs it's own page. Not one page with a list. This is hindering you both in SEO and sales because...
Pay Pal buttons on each product take users away from the site. It makes it difficult to buy more than one item at a time, and the lack of an actual ecommerce solution misses all kinds of opportunities for additional product information, images, and reviews.
The 2 side bars are completely misused and makes your product page cumbersome. Shipping info should be on it's own page and the right side bar should be cart info, and featured products

Everything else is just styling. Most of it is pretty plain, and it seems that everything is just plopped in. Looks like you have some decent images and other collateral, it's just not being utilized properly to promote your brand nor sell your products.

Lastly, I was shocked to see that you have an actual retail location. I actually did a Google search just to check. There is NOTHING on your website that says that you have an actual retail location. The only address you give is a P.O. box in a different city than your store location.

In spite of all of this, you say sales are good. Makes me wonder how much better they could be.

[gidiefor]

Thank you Harold,

That was some very sharp stuff (no pun intended - lol). I am going to spend some time digesting what you said and parse it out. Thank you for taking the time to look at my web site and write down those thoughts. I think that was a pretty thorough critique, and it is much appreciated.

Michael

[gidiefor]

By the way Harold - We used to have a retail location for droppointhunter.com, but closed it in April of 2011. We recently (in May 2013) partnered with a retailer near us (Kenco's) and have just begun the process of growing that relationship.

[Harold Mansfield]

By the way Harold - We used to have a retail location for droppointhunter.com, but closed it in April of 2011. We recently (in May 2013) partnered with a retailer near us (Kenco's) and have just begun the process of growing that relationship.

Ah. That makes sense then. Partnering with retailers is a great idea. Make sure that you give them a good listing on your re-design with contact info and maps of their locations.

[vangogh]

I just want to reiterate what Harold said about WordPress being secure. It's about as secure as any other platform and probably more so. I think it gets a poor reputation at times because it's so popular and it's natural for it to become a target. Years ago it might not have been so secure, but the last few years the WordPress team has done a lot to make WordPress secure. There's also an advantage in it being so popular. If it does getting attacked more often it more quickly brings to light potential security issues and the WordPress teams fix them incredibly fast. I've read about a security hole and within a couple of hours there's an update for WordPress to fix the hole.

In other words don't be afraid to use WordPress because you think it's less secure. If anything it's probably more secure than any other platform you'd use.

[Carsten]

I'm not sure if it is necessary to switch the site to another CMS. Once it is setup Drupal is basically not to difficult to administer.
The sidebars e.g. are included as blocks which you can easily edit separately each in your admin. I would focus on the update and formatting of the content and not to transfer to another unknown CMS. The only point which is a little bit more difficult is the update of the theme. But this would be the same with Wordpress too.
I run websites on Wordpress as well as on Drupal. WP is real fun, but I like Drupal too. It is very solid and very powerful.

[gidiefor]

Carsten,

I have to tell you that when I stick to the set up as designed - I guess I have learned it well enough to edit it within it's framework. When I attempt to learn drupal to make structural site changes, or even modify things in the site - like menu text, heading text and colors - I am mystified. There is a lot of incomprehensible things I have to wade through. I am afraid to call my designer - at $175/hour to help - because even the smallest of items end up costing me big bucks. FOr instance - I wanted to change my shopping cart so it didn't except just paypal. I got a $2,500 quote for it. That seems excessive to me, and I feel stuck!

I realize that this is probably a trap at least partially made by me, because I did have a choice in how I wanted to proceed at first, but I wanted my site up and running and went through a few designers until I found someone who got the job done quickly but expensively. I didn't know from drupal and still don't - my web designer recommended it because that's what she and her programmer work with. I have subsequently found it difficult to find someone who will play reasonably with me in the drupal environment.

[Carsten]

What you describe sounds like the way how I started into having a website setup. The same like you I had a recommended webdesigner who later wanted to get paid for even the tiniest little change. That's the reason why I slowly started to get things done by myself. First I learned to manage simpliest HTML-coding. Because I wanted to be independent from those kind of money burning website gurus I had the ambition to do more and more things on my own. As I'm working with common CMS I mostly find a lot of knowledge and answers for my questions in specific discussion boards or on Google.
When your website is running well and, as you have said, driving in lots of paying customers do the change step by step and don't tear it down completely. When you transfer all the content to a new CMS this will probably also harm your google rankings.
Do you use a webtracker? Where do your website visitors come from? If Google or search engines in general are your main traffic source you will - at first - ruin your traffic with a new CMS.

[gidiefor]

Carsten, I used to have a web-tracking service (Visistat) - and what brought on this problem was my servicer's contract moved to Hitsniffer from Visistat. I couldn't get into the pages to put the new API code in - and that's when I got into it with my web designer. They won't show me how to do a simple thing like update page code. And they won't update any code without being paid. Right now I am working without a web-tracker, my service even had a problem updating the page code even with all the passwords, because they don't understand how to work in the drupal environment - or something. Then I had a friend who is a webmaster for another website try to do it and he couldn't either. So in that regard I am rudderless. I have tried to get into it myself but am quite intimidated by it. I think you make a valid point with regard to change.

I primarily drive sales through shows, Facebook and email campaigns. I have developed a great style for my emails, my list has grown to 3000 addresses this year, and they drive 80% of our business.

My higher visit and customer areas are in Texas, California, and North Carolina, my midrange visit and customer areas are in the midwest and the south Virginia to Florida, and I had a moderate customer and visiting base in the Northeast (NY, PA, NJ, Mass, Conn). Learned from prior web tracker and actual sales.

We are on pace to hit $170K-$180K in Sales this year. Last year we did $119K. The year before $70K and the first year $36K. If I break $150K I am forecasting a small profit for the first time.

[Carsten]

In my eyes you need to get out of this blind flight concerning your website visitors at first.
If it is not about template creation Drupal is not too difficult to administer.

You've got login data for your admin-site?
Have you ever been in the admin section?

[gidiefor]

No I've never been in the Admin Section

[Carsten]

You have login data at least?

You have the possibility to get them from your web designer?

[gidiefor]

Yes, I have log in data.

[vangogh]

That $2500 to expand beyond PayPal does sound excessive. Most shopping cart systems will have settings that let you add more payment options without too much difficulty. That said, I don't know specifically what cart you were using and what payment processor you wanted to integrate. If someone had to write the code to make it work $2500 isn't out of line. I can easily see it legitimately costing that much.


I had a recommended webdesigner who later wanted to get paid for even the tiniest little change.

Should they have done the work for free? Even the tiniest thing takes a few minutes to do. If I have a client who's been with me awhile and sends consistent work my way I'll at times toss in a freebie if it's only a few minutes. However, it depends a lot on how much work they send my way. If all they send is tiny requests then I'm going to charge them all the time. I might not send an invoice for each change, but I'd likely work something out where I send them an invoice at the end of the month that includes all the changes. It's hard to stay in business when you do everything for free.

It really depends on the client and how often they send small requests.

[Carsten]

Should they have done the work for free? Even the tiniest thing takes a few minutes to do. If I have a client who's been with me awhile and sends consistent work my way I'll at times toss in a freebie if it's only a few minutes. However, it depends a lot on how much work they send my way. If all they send is tiny requests then I'm going to charge them all the time. I might not send an invoice for each change, but I'd likely work something out where I send them an invoice at the end of the month that includes all the changes. It's hard to stay in business when you do everything for free.

It really depends on the client and how often they send small requests.

Well, my phrase was written a bit mistakable. Should say "... who later wanted to get overpaid for even the tiniest little change".
Of course people shall get paid for their work as well as I want to get paid for my work. But when the payment/work ratio is getting exorbitant out of balance I'm not happy about this. For example I got a three digit invoice for a quarter of an hour of work (updating of two sentences in an HTML order form).

But in the long term view this was good for me because I have learned to do many things in HTML, CSS and a bit PHP on my own.

[gidiefor]

The issue for me is not the paying of support staff, it's the affordability of what I can pay them without going out of business. Right now taking $2,500 out of my budget for support work would pretty much do me in. It's not like there would necessarily be a measurable financial upswing just because of the site work.

The bottom line is that I am a business man trying to stay afloat, and make it to profitability which I am starting to get a whiff of. I need to take reasonable steps to improve myself. I can't afford to pay the tariff I am being quoted, and so like Carsten I am pretty much forced to see what I can do to become more self reliant.

I appreciate the suggestions and comments from everyone. They were enormously helpful. I just found something called Learn to code | Codecademy (http://www.codeacademy.com) and I am learning about html, and css. Their basic class is going to teach me how to up load a simple website after having coded it. I hope to have enough confidence to go into the administrative section afterwards and do this stuff myself.

[billbenson]

What are the security hacks that you have seen in the past? I'm not specifically talking about WP but how do you keep a site, CMS or custom secure?

[gidiefor]

Bill, I haven't seen any hacks - this is what my web designer told me when they sold me doing the site in Drupal

[vangogh]

But when the payment/work ratio is getting exorbitant out of balance I'm not happy about this

Understandable, but it really does depend on a number of things. I've seen people think $25 is an exorbitant price to pay for something that would take 10 hours of work. Changing a couple of lines of text shouldn't take more than a minute or two, but it's possible it took more time to find the couple of lines to change. I've seen sites developed in a way where I've had to spend an hour hunting down a single line of code. Once I found it it took 2 seconds to change, but that doesn't mean the price for the change is based on 2 seconds.

I'm not suggesting that was your situation. Just saying sometimes what looks like it'll be easy to change from the outside, isn't so easy once you're behind the scenes.Sometimes the reverse is true as well and what looks like it will be difficult to change from the outside is quite simple. It depends.


I am pretty much forced to see what I can do to become more self reliant.

There's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, especially early on in a business, we have more time than money and so we learn and do things we might not do if we had more money. However, keep in mind there's an opportunity cost. It's possible the hours could be put to better use doing something that will more directly lead to revenue for your business that can be used to hire someone. Nothing wrong with doing it yourself. I do that a lot. Do keep in mind though, that it's not always the best option.

[gidiefor]

So much for self reliance. I took code training in html, css and php and tried to develop a little confidence. Then, I went into the administrative section of the website - after tracking down all the passwords. After going in, it all looks like files with funny names on it. Even opening some of them up was bewildering. I knew what the data files were and recognized them - but as to the rest of it - to say I don't know what I'm looking at, or looking for, is an understatement.

[Jayde]

I do not like knives, I would not be your customer.
I am also not a tech person, or a web developer.

What I can tell you, as a professional woman looking at your site... it has a lot of information, BUT if my goal was to purchase a specific knife as a gift, or for whatever purpose that would land me to purchase a knife, I would simply look through your inventory (which I found easily) and select a knife, make my purchase and move on. I don't have any complaint nor do I have any advice.

Good luck!

[gidiefor]

Thanks for the feedback Jayde. I appreciate it.

[Carsten]

After going in, it all looks like files with funny names on it. Even opening some of them up was bewildering. I knew what the data files were and recognized them - but as to the rest of it - to say I don't know what I'm looking at, or looking for, is an understatement.

To me this doesn't sound as if you have looked into a Drupal admin section. This should be rather clear and well arranged.

[gidiefor]

Carsten, there is nothing in the account that says Drupal admin section

[Carsten]

Your contact page says it is "Powered by Drupal"

Read my PM?

[vangogh]

So much for self reliance.

It's not as easy as it looks. :)

I hope you won't give up though. The more you started recognizing some things inside a file the easier it starts to get. What it might mean for now though is that for certain things you probably need to hire someone or find someone to help. In regards to adding PayPal to a shopping cart I can't imagine it should cost that much. Most every cart I've seen comes connected to PayPal and for the most part they only need PayPal to be turned on and for you to add your login details.

[gidiefor]

Van Gogh,

I never thought it looked easy - what I thought is that there are certain things that look fairly straight forward. But that I was poorly informed and that the experts I've worked with are not as forth coming as they could be. I kept being told what's good for me without understanding what I'm being told. Different experts contradict each other - making it even more confusing - and then there's the bills.

I would love it if someone could help me de-mistify what I'm looking at. Hopefully I will - I am not giving up. But I am friggen frustrated as all get-up.

[gidiefor]

One good thing has happened though - through poking around I realized how to engage hitshiffer - the file had been planted in there and I found it - and I found the corresponding block on drupal in the administration pages - I was able to enter the code hitshiffer gave me and ba-da-boom it connected.

[Harold Mansfield]

Van Gogh,

I never thought it looked easy - what I thought is that there are certain things that look fairly straight forward. But that I was poorly informed and that the experts I've worked with are not as forth coming as they could be. I kept being told what's good for me without understanding what I'm being told. Different experts contradict each other - making it even more confusing - and then there's the bills.

I would love it if someone could help me de-mistify what I'm looking at. Hopefully I will - I am not giving up. But I am friggen frustrated as all get-up.

I think your frustration may lie in the fact that there are many different ways to build a website, and the web itself can be a little complicated.
It's pretty difficult for a service provider to teach you code, but they should be able to teach you how to use what you have provided that they haven't sold you something that only a programmer can run.

It's true that a decent service provider should be able to asses your needs and recommend the best way to go in their opinion, but you have to realize that not all are going to have the same opinion, and many (like any other business) will steer you in the direction that they want you to go, so that they can get your business and your money.

Every platform is going to have a learning curve. There is nothing out there that you will be able to operate and manipulate without learning SOME code...at least basic HTML...and the particulars of how it works. However, a basic understanding of HTML is not going to be enough to allow you to do file edits and customizations on a platform that you don't know how it works. It took most of us years to get proficient enough to do that on the fly.

In my opinion, WordPress is the easiest for a non web person to work with and learn. There are plenty of tutorials, help articles and forums to help you learn how to do thinks with it. But people who work with Joomla, Drupal or what ever else, think that their favorite platform is easy.

I give my cleints training and install How To videos for them to watch and learn as they go. But that's not going to show them how to be as knowledgable as someone who does it everyday for 5 years.

Part of getting the right platform is doing homework and talking to others. Finding someone to build a website is not enough. You need to find someone who works with the platform that you have decided to use. That means you have to decide that before you finally hire a web designer.

Yep, it's frustrating and there is a lot to learn. For everyone.

[vangogh]

I never thought it looked easy - what I thought is that there are certain things that look fairly straight forward. But that I was poorly informed and that the experts I've worked with are not as forth coming as they could be. I kept being told what's good for me without understanding what I'm being told. Different experts contradict each other - making it even more confusing - and then there's the bills.

I would love it if someone could help me de-mistify what I'm looking at. Hopefully I will - I am not giving up. But I am friggen frustrated as all get-up.

I hope my post above didn't come across obnoxious or anything. My it's not as easy as it looks was meant more in fun than anything else.

I can understand your frustration. Whenever a client asks me why I did something I always do my best to explain why. I can't necessary spend the time teaching them how to design or develop their own site, but I'll gladly explain why I chose a certain color or placed certain information here instead of there. The contradictions exist for a few of reasons.

1. There's no single way to design and develop a websites. You have certain goals you want the site to achieve and there will be a number of different ways the site can be designed to achieve them. It's probably not really contradiction sometimes as much as it is different opinions on how to do something.

2. Sometimes (and this is true of pretty much all businesses) people make recommendations based on what they specifically know and not necessary what's best. Like Harold said, he and I recommend WordPress. We both think it's easiest to use for people looking to run a site. Of course we use it all the time so it's pretty easy for us. A Drupal developer or Joomla developer or any other CMS developer is likely to think what they work with easiest and best.

You should never be left with someone telling you what's good for you and expecting you to just accept it. Ultimately it's your site and you should be the one making the decisions. Again I always do my best to explain why I've designed something a certain way. I would hope people come to me for my expertise and understanding I might have more insight about the design of their site, but sometimes my clients have better ideas and in the end it is their site and they should get what they want.