Request for Honest Opinions - www.mondberg.co.uk

[EdithK]

I've just come across this forum, so first of all hello to everybody here! I've launched my own e-retail business in September last year, focusing on kitchen and tableware from the Continent, for delivery within the UK. I stock all my products and as I'm originally from Austria, my product line is a bit Austria-orientated at the moment, though that's more to do with finding suppliers I know, rather than strategy.

I'm currently redesigning my website as I feel the current site is too bland. I tried to make it easy to use, but my personal impression is that the branding isn't very obvious. I'm also aware that the product range is quite small right now - my plan is to continue to grow throughout the year.

The site is www.mondberg.co.uk and I'd be grateful for honest opinions - what do you like, what do you hate?

My aim is to maximise conversion rates on the site, so my focus has to be on the customer experience and making it very easy for them to part with their hard-earned money.

PS: the site is being built by a small local web designer / web hoster but the design is a collabaration as in a previous life I used to work in web design and I'm just not your hands-off kind of lady. There are some limitations to the design of the shopping cart as I'm using OsCommerce which means I can't shorten the check-out process.

[peterjhale]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Your site is clean and crisp and inspires confidence

Couple of questions though.

1: You offer a 14 day money back guarantee - this might not be long enough - how about 28 or 30 days?

2: You title tag has "Christmas Decorations" in it...

3: You should plump for 2 or 3 key items you want to sell on the home page

So, have links to your various departments - but have products on the front (kind of like promotions)

Have a look at amazon

They are always selling one product from the home page then provide links to everywhere else with ease.

Think about getting an 0845 number - they're free to operate and may provide more confidence

Other than that - nice clean site - well done

[EdithK]

Peter - many thanks for your review! I'd totally forgotten about the Xmas reference in the header, so that will be cleaned up tonight.

I agree with Amazon - their design / selling technique is very good and that's something I will pursue with the new design.

I also researched many of the smaller UK catalogues and that's how I ended up with the 14 day money back / local number set up. Seems to be an average in the UK and I tried to play it safe. Both suggestions make sense though and tie in with my own thoughts over the last weeks. Gut feeling is that the money back period will probably be more important.

many thanks,
Edith

[cubidimagery]

Hi there, the site is clean and crisp though you need a brief paragraph saying who you are and what you do I think. Also just a minor point. I would change the colour of the main font to a lighter grey tone, this may help make the other text stand out on the left.

Your homepage is quite different in terms of layout of the rest of the site.

I would try to use some of the purples and pink colous on the home page as borders/boxes. Also you need a link back to your home page throughout the site.

Other than that looks good.

Daniel Bradshaw
Web Designer

Cubid Imagery

[yorganic]

Nice site, I like it.

But, from a search engine marketing point of view you might want to get rid of those session id codes that appear on some of the pages. notice how some pages have Page Rank in Google eg the saucepans page but other pages have no Page Rank. that'll be the session id's

[Eagle]

The logo's tagline needs a tweak - it's unbalanced!

[EdithK]

Many thanks to Phil, Daniel, eagle and yoganic for reviewing my site!

Just to say that the logo tagline is on its way out with the new design (one problem down, 999 to go ), and the left-hand navigation will also bite the dust - although I did this not because of search engines but to get better space for product promotion, so great if there's a neat SEO benefit!

As for links to homepage & "about us" page - we do have two home links on each page (logo, breadcrumb trail) but that obviously needs to be made more visible. "about us" exists under "customer service" ... it's there if people want to see it, but I didn't make a huge fuss about it.

As for session ids - the lady who built the site explained that all search engines are barred from creating session ids, so this shouldn't be an issue for Google et al ... and as this is the very limit of my techie knowledge, i'm bowing out gracefully at this stage.

okay - back to the html treadmill & many thanks for all for your input!

Edith

[SarahP]

Hi,

I think the site looks good - nice and clean and quite easy to use. I can't add any more useful comments than have already been pointed out.

Can't wait to see the rest of your range when you get more products. I am half Austrian myself, we go there whenever possible and always bring back lots of traditional Austrian things. You should perhaps look at selling some of the wrought iron items that are available.

I shall keep looking back to see how you're doing!

Regards,
Sarah.

[EdithK]

Many thanks for the comments you made!

I thought it's about time to give you an update what I'll be redoing - the new site is scheduled to relaunch in mid-March and is 95% ready behind the scenes. The areas I'm looking to address (in no particular order):

-> "Can't wait to see the rest of your range when you get more products"
product range - bit obvious, but if I don't get that right then the site doesn't have a chance, so busy sourcing & visiting fairs. Agree that there just ain't enough products on the site right now to keep customers interested.

"the site looks good - nice and clean"
quite a few of you commented that the site looks clean and tidy - and whilst this is great for good navigation (my background is information architecture for .com sites, so guilty as charged) we'll be introducing some colour & character to the site - larger product pics, a quirky font for buttons and more prominent header / logo.

"You offer a 14 day money back guarantee - this might not be long enough - how about 28 or 30 days?"
We will go for 28 days and also add a gift service (sending gifts with hand-written note) and gift vouchers.

Okay - back to my HTML / PHP pages and thanks for comments - please keep them coming - it's still all work on progress!

best wishes, Edith