Site Check

I was hoping you guys could check my companies site and tell me what you
think of the layout. I know you have been incredibly ruthless with people in
the past and I am hoping you can give me that kind of honest opinion when
you look at my site. The site is located at http://www.southernisland.com
Please let me know what you think...

Thanks,
Joseph

"SI Entertainment" <info@southernisland.com (removethis)> wrote in message
news:bmjs7k01rlg@enews4.newsguy.com...
>
> I was hoping you guys could check my companies site and tell me what you
> think of the layout. I know you have been incredibly ruthless with people
in
> the past and I am hoping you can give me that kind of honest opinion when
> you look at my site. The site is located at http://www.southernisland.com
> Please let me know what you think...

First impression: I don't see anything original about it. It looks like a
typical template shopping site.

I was redirected from www. to shop. and search engines don't like that.

I would replace the top image rollovers with text/CSS based rollovers. The
fewer images the faster loading. You might consider also adding the META
tag:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="IMAGETOOLBAR" CONTENT="false">
That stops IE from popping up the toolbar when the mouse moves over some
larger images. I find it distracting.

I'm guessing cookies are required to shop? You should detect that earlier
and display a notice on the main page if cookies are disabled.

Your site doesn't say anything about who is southernisland. Are you also
fans? Collectors? Get something personal on there about your expertise on
the merchandise.

A sample at least of your newsletter would be in order if you're asking
people to sign up.

Unless they're giving you a discount for the links, I would lose the
GeoTrust and Authorize.Net links and put them on the FAQ page or privacy
page only.

The "Secure Purchase Guarantee" looks gimmicky. Anyone who ever used a
credit card knows they don't pay for fraudulent charges. You're not really
giving them anything they don't get from their CC company.

If you could, I would recommend your left navigation be more narrow. Right
now it looks to be about 200px wide. It could probably be ~120px. That would
leave either more room in the content part of the page or you could make the
total width less to fit more browsers.

Your HTML code needs a serious going over. I found a </body> tag in the
middle of your page. You have a table with a width of 768 and inside that
table you're trying to put another table with a width of 770.
You have BODY HTML code before your HEAD tag. You have two BODY tags. A bit
of a mess. I'm guessing there's a database or something involved and that
may be generating multiple head and body tags.

--
McWebber
No email replies read
If someone tells you to forward an email to all your friends
please forget that I'm your friend.

"SI Entertainment" <info@southernisland.com (removethis)> wrote in message
news:bmjs7k01rlg@enews4.newsguy.com...
>
> I was hoping you guys could check my companies site and tell me what you
> think of the layout. I know you have been incredibly ruthless with people
in
> the past and I am hoping you can give me that kind of honest opinion when
> you look at my site. The site is located at http://www.southernisland.com


Joseph,

When I opened up your page, I thought you were in the price matching
business. Then I saw the figurines and thought, "Gee, if this guy is into
generic price matching, he should diversify the items on the first page."
Then I realized you're into..... price matching for figurines?

I think you are making a big mistake by going for the lowest prices.
Somebody will always beat you if you compete on price. You should compete on
selection or quality, or better yet, your expertise.

Do you have a newsletter? I imagine you're quite an expert on these things.

Who is your customer? Collectors? Kids? Both? Your page looks like its
geared towards collectors, and that's great, but, is that where you get all
your business? You might want to put a kids section on your site, (e.g.
"Kids Click Here.") Children and teens have a lot of buying power on the
Internet. (So "they" say.) Hey, you might turn some of these kids into
future collectors.

What are you trying to accomplish with your home page? (Duh, sales, no?) I
mean, do you get a lot of hits but not enough buyers? Do you want to cater
to kids or collectors? Have you considered reaching out to retailers (other
than through your affiliate program, because that's not really a program for
retailers).

> Please let me know what you think...

I think its great that you've started off with an open ended question. Do
you have any specific questions?

Do you do any marketing offline at all?

I have a very good friend who is a doll collector. She goes to all of the
shows, etc. In fact, the Smithsonian Institute has borrowed dolls from her
in the past for special displays. People call her from all over the country
to ask her questions. She is considered one of the leading doll experts in
the country. I think the reason she does so well is because she enjoys her
doll collection, is always striving to keep up with the industry, and more
than anything else she enjoys helping others to become better, more
knowledgeable collectors.

Oh, one more tip. Contact your major suppliers and have them go through your
page. They want you to succeed. Maybe they'll set up something special for
you, or give you some artwork and copy, or refer customers to you. Ask them
to send you their press releases so that you can include them in your
newsletter, etc.

I like the concept, and from my brief glance, it looks like you've done a
lot of the right kinds of things.

Mike

P.S. Do you have a small parts gage?

Thanks for the feedback. I will work on the improvements you mentioned. I
have one more question directly about marketing (See my post Toy Marketing)