Critique my site please

[Pack-Secure]

This is a new site design for us, please let me know what you all think.

pack-secure.com

[vangogh]

First thing I noticed is something a little weird. When I first loaded the page it was too wide to fit in my browser for a moment. Then the size got smaller and everything fit fine. I refreshed the page and the same thing happened. It ends up looking fine, but thought I'd mention it.

The first impression is the site is fine. I won't tell you it's the greatest site, but it's far from the worst. It looks like a perfectly decent site and isn't going to scare anyone away. It looks like your standard ecommerce site. It seems trustworthy enough. All good, if not remarkable things.

The next thing I notice is it's obvious what you do which is great. I'm not going to be confused wondering if I'm in the right place. You have the right company name and your tagline and the image of the boxes reinforces that. However, it would probably be good to answer the question why you as soon as possible. Why should I get my packing supplies from you instead of say the UPS store or FedEx. What's your selling point? I see the every day discounted prices? Is that the main message?

I think you have too many categories. There's a not so obvious principle that says the more options you give people, the less likely they'll make a choice. Too many options makes decision making harder. For example I need a box. I'm not sure though if it's a regular box or a bin box. Now I'm confused which link to click. Perhaps it's only for an instance, but it's never good to confuse your customer even for a moment. If I pick the wrong one I may browse, not find what I want, and leave. If there's just one category for boxes I don't have to think. I click boxes and now I'm deeper in the site. I see 29 main categories. Try to get the main categories down to about 10. Once people start clicking deeper you can offer more options. Once you know I'm looking for boxes offer me more box categories.

Speaking of categories. When I click into the box category, the images just seem to be there randomly. Here I looking to organize my stuff by putting it in a box and I'm presented a somewhat disorganized group of images of boxes. It sends a message that you might not be so organized, which gives me the perception you might not be able to handle my organization needs. Make all the images the same size and display them in a grid. Make everything align in columns and rows.

I like the background color and texture behind the main content. It reminds me of cardboard, which I assume is why it was chosen. It helps reinforce who you are and what your business is all about. Good choice.

There's an image of a shopping bag next to My Cart. Make both consistent. Either change the working to My Bag or My Shopping Bag, or use an image of a shopping cart. Little consistencies or inconsistencies may not seem like a lot, but they do matter.

Good job including the credit cards you accept and the GeoTrust and BBB logos. You might want to move one or all higher up on the page at the moment I'm deciding whether or not to checkout or even add something to my cart. That's the moment when I need to know the transaction will be secure. Good that the wording of the check button is Proceed to Pack Secure Checkout. I realize Secure is part of your name there, but having the word secure helps the customer feel they can trust you. The GeoTrust logo right below will likely increase that secure and trusting feeling.

I'm not sure Policies warrants an item in the global navigation. It ultimately leads to a single page. The link at the bottom of the page is probably enough. You can include a link on select pages like checkout where people will be more likely to want the information.

Tell me more about you on your About page. I see lots of information about the products you carry, but I already know that information. I clicked About because I want to know something a little more personal.

I'm not crazy about the fonts you're using for the headings. They don't suggest packing to me.

Overall it's a decent site. Like I said it's not going to scare anyone away. It comes across like most ecommerce sites I've seen. Without looking at your code, I assume the site is built on one of the usual shopping cart applications or services. That's good in the sense that things will work and it'll meet some standards I have about ecommerce sites. On the other hand it's nothing remarkable either. It doesn't necessarily distinguish the site in any way. I did a search in Google for "packing and shipping supplies" and Google returned over 13,000,000 results. Many of those sites are going to look very much like yours. So why you? What distinguishes you from the rest? That's an important question to answer and it's something you want your site to do as soon as possible and then reinforce that answer with everything you do.

Hope something in there helps.

[Pack-Secure]

Thanks very much for your detailed insight. I will have my team read your response also. As for the pictures being different sizes, we are currently working on that issue. I will also work on incorporating some of your other suggestions.

Mary

[vangogh]

Glad I could help Mary. Hopefully others will chime in soon with additional thoughts and opinions.

[Pack-Secure]

Additional thoughts and opinions are surely welcome.

[KristineS]

I got the same resizing problem that Vangogh mentioned. It was only for a minute and then it fit my browser fine, but it was odd.

The large picture on your home page looks very pixelated to me. At first I thought it might be an effect, but it looks more like the picture is poor quality. It was hard to read the words on the Fragile tape around the one box, and the picture just looked blurry. The pictures of the products were much clearer and sharper.

I agree with Vangogh again about the pictures being a uniform size when you click on a category link. It does look kind of scattered and disorganized otherwise. I also think some of those pictures could be better quality as well. Maybe it was just my browser, but some of them looked blurry.

Another thing I noticed was when I clicked on a picture of a particular product I was taken to another page with the same picture of the product and a buy button and then had to click again to get a description. It's likely I'm considering a product if I click the picture, but clicking probably means I want more information. Putting an intermediate step between the picture and the product description may cause some people to drop off. I'd eliminate the second picture with the buy button, or make that your main picture.

Overall, it's not a bad site. The main thing I noticed was the picture quality. Just for reference, I'm viewing this with a PC and Firefox 14.0.1.

[Pack-Secure]

Thanks much. We tried to eliminate the second step picture with a redirect, but when we did seomoz analyzing they pointed that out as a mistake. I guess our web host is not geared towards the ability to go straight to it. As stated before we are working on our pictures, but thanks for the reinforcement.

As for the main picture, I was trying to make it look sort of like a painting, but I see what you are talking about on the fragile label. Do you think that coloring over the fragile label would be a better approach?

[KristineS]

I'd just go with a straight up photograph. Your website is very clean. There's nothing arty or fancy about it. Trying to place an effect in the middle of that is just distracting. I think just a plan photo of the boxes would work much better.

[HireLogoDesign]

The font style seem out of place in the side bar module headers. and 18 seems so large for font size in the navigation. That is my personal preference though.

The image in the middle needs to be changed for quality. As stated before a simple photograph may help you with that. If you are to use more descriptive "business graphics" they need to be the same quality as if you were using a photograph alone.

I'm torn between yes or no with the page fold, but it is done well and not annoying when moving my mouse.

The main content area background is maybe too dark or too grainy. I'm not even really sure it is necessary. Plain white seems fine, but textures are sometimes hit or miss.

[Elabusiness]

I just go through the website and found whole website is good and navigational part of website is also fine with good colour scheme. But images need to be of better quality and products should be with more description to know more about the products.