Website review

Hello all,

A few months back we had the bed linen thread and a few people kindly offered to have a look and critique my website when it goes live. Well, it's taken a while but it's finally live! I would really appreciate some feedback, if of course this is allowed @Simon Hampel ? Please delete if not.

So what works, what need improvement, does it load quickly? Target market is busy professionals, 25-45, gender neutral aesthetic. Does the website reflect this? Anything else I might have not considered?
www.thegoodsheet.com.au

Thank you

 

Main issue is the slow-loading. Get some tips from @Simon Hampel on hosting.

 

Same - Firefox 49 on Windows 7. Took a good 30 seconds to load after clicking the link in the post. Not the kind of product I'm interested in so can't comment on content, etc.

 

Same - Firefox on Windows 7 - slow. Starter sheet set page - on the Starter sheet where you click to view sets one word has dropped down.
I did not understand what Starter set was? does this come in single, double, queen, king? Am I missing reading something?

 

Slow loading etc. all that aside....what is your marketing strategy? How are you going to get thousands of people to look at this site to generate an income from it consistently?

 

I'm your target customer and I really like it. Feels like Muji - very minimalist with good quality.
I'm not expert in this but when I purchase bed linen I tend to use thread count as a proxy to quality, your products says Egyptian cotton which is top notch but it would be good to show the TC if it is high (say 1000 or above.)

 

Thank you for the feedback. Ok, slow is not good - I got in touch with my web guy to see what we can do about that.

Marketing currently is through Facebook and Instagram ads. I'm developing relationships with some influencers on Instagram to promote my product on their accounts. I have plans to get in touch with and be featured on various media outlets, including influential bloggers. I have started my own blog on the site as well. Video (youtube) is a definite a little later down the track. I've been told I should use Google Adwords/Adsense, which I am yet to do.
A lot of my marketing will have to revolve around social media and admittedly this is something I'm new to so I am seeking help as this is probably a weak point. Happy to listen if you have any pointers!

Thanks, that's great to hear - but may I mention that thread count is not a measure of quality? You already know what to look for - it's the quality of the fibre that matters. High thread counts as a proxy to quality is an unfortunate result of effective marketing by manufacturers who use misleading thread counts.

Ok, a quick run down: the finer the thread, the more you can fit into a square inch, this maxes out at around 400tc. Above this number you should be suspicious as unless you're paying $1000+ for sheets, it can actually indicate poor quality. When inferior, shorter fibres are spun into yarn, it is weak and has to be plied together with other weak yarns into a thread of equivalent strength as one made of long-staple fibre. This means it's thicker and coarser but has a high thread count because guess what - the manufacturers count each ply within the thread as a separate thread. So a "1000" thread count sheet is in reality closer to 300, but will feel heavy and blanket like. True 1000 thread count exists but is very fine and supple (and costs a fortune).
Oops, that wasn't such a quick run down... but I hope it made sense

 

Thank you for that, I couldn't see where the word has dropped down...?
Starter and Standard, ok I thought people might not be certain as to the difference. I do have it on the home page but perhaps it's not clear enough? Starter sets don't have a top sheet, Standard sets do. Aside from that it's just whether it's a sheet set or a bed set (which has a quilt cover).
They all come in sizes from S to K. Looks like I need to work on this to make it clearer, thanks.

 

There is basically 3 ways to shift product online.

1: Be cheap and work with the like of eBay and word of mouth.

2: Be more expensive and buy traffic with ppc.

3: Have something really unique and work like hell to make it go viral with Facebook, bloggers etc.

I reckon linen is too generic to generate traction with category 3. Unless this is some special linen made from unicorn fur or something? You really need to aim to be in category 2. I would imagine ppc for this stuff would be expensive and thus there would be little profit in it. Online is really a numbers game when you co,e down to it. Assess your figures based on a conversion rate of 1-2% and work out what it is going to cost to get that amount of traffic.

Sites selling stuff like linen and fashion are a dime a dozen but they don't tend to last long in Australia. You need to Aim for a bigger spend and be more niche here.

 

Thanks! Well you learn something new everyday! I think this is a common misconception that high TC=good quality, why don't you put the run down on the website, I found it very educational and makes your product more appealing.

 

Vultures....it is on the Sets page. See copy below

The St is on one line and the balance above

• arter Bed Set It is on the Sets page

I think you need to state somewhere obvious on that page that the Sets come in all sizes and differential in costs S = $xxx D = $xxx
Everyone expects to pay different costs for the larger sizes
Hope this helps.... Chris

 

Extremely slow to load, almost gave up.. not good. You need to fix this before you throw money on marketing.

When on the desktop, I will have a quick look into why for you.

 

@Chrispy that's weird but I don't see that when I click on it? Any chance you can screenshot what you see? Is this on desktop using Firefox/Windows 7? I will have to let my web guy take a look at that.

As far as sizes, I have listed all the products by colour and the price says "from" to indicate the range. If you click on it there's a dropdown box with all the different sizes available. I'm not sure if I can do much to change this at this point as it was a fair bit of work just to get it to display like this. I appreciate the feedback though and will keep this in mind.

@Biz thanks for that, I was never going down the ebay route and you are correct in that linen is pretty generic, so that leaves #2. PPC is expensive at around $1.50 per click so you are correct, no profit in that as I'd need a fair bit of traffic. Looks like I have to get creative with my advertising!

 

Thank you @gman65 much appreciated.

 

That is a factor but I am suggesting ways to generate traffic rather than benefits. if you can't find a consistent, reliable way to generate traffic in an ecommerce business it will die on the vine. How did you find those sites you buy from regularly? It all starts with that.

 

Here is what I see on a quick look:

* There is an massive number of stylesheets/javascript assets being loaded on the one page - some 40+ I think I can see there. Many are duplicates by plugins calling much the same thing in their own way. Once your browser gets beyond a certain amount of things loading at once, further loads becoming "blocking" until the others have loaded, delaying the user from seeing the final page. I think this more than anything is contributing to having to wait seconds for the page to load.

* A combination of wordpress, the woocommerce plugin, the "salient" theme, google tag manager and a few other things used have unfortunately combined to give you very much a "plugin soup". Some rationalisation of this needs to be undertaken.

* The homepage itself is some 4mb in total which is unfortunately a bit high for a fast page load on most connections. 1.5mb of CSS, 1.1mb of javascript, and 1mb of images.

* Much of the images could be optimised a bit further, helping speed up page load.

* In general the html is overly complex - there is an excessive amount of css classes, divs, and wrappers all in the one page. This needs to be tidied up significantly.

* There is a fair amount of inline javascript+css, which also adds to the page load time.

When you are on a mobile device (which can often be over 50% traffic and growing) these items are important to address. While mobile data is getting faster, it is not always the case in a lower coverage area and if it takes too long for the site to load, people will (sadly) move onto the next thing before waiting.

I would strongly look at engaging another independent party to look into and optimise the performance of the site properly. You can speak to those that built it originally and get them to try and fix it, but they obviously didn't care/know too much about this sort of thing or they would have done things a bit differently. You don't want to lose customers just due to this and what otherwise may be a successful business.

For what it is worth, I think the layout and presentation of the site is fine, it is just some of the "behind the scenes" stuff that needs some work on.

 

@gman65 thank you for that in depth look, I really appreciate the feedback. My web person knows the site ended up being quite complicated, there were a lot of work arounds to get it looking how I want to so I'll definitely go back to him with this feedback and see what he can do. Much of it I think was issues which came about as a result of a change, and then fixing the issue created another issue... and so on. End result is quite complicated, but I didn't know it would be the reason for the slow speed. I'll post back once I've spoken to him.

Thanks again.

 

I've optimised the images on the front page and I'm changing from shared hosting to virtual private server. Hope that resolves some of the issues. The remainder which you mentioned @gman65 will take a little longer but working on those too. Cheers!

 

Vultures .... this is a photo of the page showing the dropped down letters.

Chris