[BurnTees]

hi everyone,
i was hoping that i could get some feedback. when you look at my shop, is there anything that stands out that could use improvement? I don't plan on leaving cafepress just yet but i was hoping that some feedback could help increase my sales.

thanks for your help.

Mathew
BurnTees.com

 

[BurnTees]

anyone have any feedback? please?

 

[Rodney]

Let's give it a bit more than 5 hours

Do you have any numbers of your current conversion ratio? Your site looks good overall (easy to navigate, loads pretty fast, etc).

Increasing your sales could come down to just good ol' fashioned advertising and marketing.

I see what you mean now about the ranking buttons. You do have a lot of them. I usually see one or 2, maybe 3. But 9 does seem a bit excessive. I'm not sure if that is hurting your sales at all though. If you think it is negatively effecting your pageload times or conversions, you may want to trim them down to the ones that actually send you decent traffic.

Not sure if it's a temporary cafepress problem or an HTML problem on your side, but your header doesn't seem to be showing up correctly in firefox (see attachement)

 

[BurnTees]

Let's give it a bit more than 5 hours

Do you have any numbers of your current conversion ratio? Your site looks good overall (easy to navigate, loads pretty fast, etc).

Increasing your sales could come down to just good ol' fashioned advertising and marketing.

I see what you mean now about the ranking buttons. You do have a lot of them. I usually see one or 2, maybe 3. But 9 does seem a bit excessive. I'm not sure if that is hurting your sales at all though. If you think it is negatively effecting your pageload times or conversions, you may want to trim them down to the ones that actually send you decent traffic.

Not sure if it's a temporary cafepress problem or an HTML problem on your side, but your header doesn't seem to be showing up correctly in firefox (see attachement)

comon...5 hours is plenty!

thanks for the response. i recently added a lot of the buttons on the left and i'm going to give them each a chance...get rid of them if they don't bring me traffic.

in regards to the header...that's pretty much how it's supposed to look. do you think it needs to be changed in some way?

 

[Rodney]

in regards to the header...that's pretty much how it's supposed to look. do you think it needs to be changed in some way?

I guess it seemed a bit weird to have the page background showing through in the header where your logo goes. There's a big block and it makes your logo harder to read and takes the focus off the t-shirts (my mind is telling me that there's something special about that header space).

I think it would look cleaner with a black background similar to the cafepress/order by phone area right next to it. Your logo on a black background up there would make the header area less busy so people can focus on the cool designs below.

Just my opinion though. I'm interested to see what others have to suggest.

 

[identityburn]

I don't really think it's your site, I think you have a more quantity vs. quality philosophy with your shop. There are some really solid designs that stand out. But then a ton of text only shirts which you can find virtually anywhere on the internet.

My partner and I have trashed finished designs after we looked at them again later on, it's hard to do that sometimes, but unless we both feel really strongly about a design we don't use it. I believe if you have only really good designs on your site it's better than tons of ok designs and a few really good ones. The really good ones may get lost in the mix.

I know this is all a matter of opinion, and if text shirts are the market you are going for please disregard this.

 

[TeaseNeed]

I agree with IDENTITY BURN in a way.
You're site seems great, I like the background and the vintage effects, etc.
T-shirt competition is so great you do really need to stand out with what IDENTITY BURN is saying.
It's like everyone needs a microniche; i.e. funny cowboy shirts, fnny new yorker shirts, spanish language funny shirts, celtic design ts's...


If it helps; our site which is homemade at Yahoo Store gets 180 unique users per day, we get about 10-15 people who hit the order button per day, and 5-8 real orders from that per day. We want to take it to the next level and will look into professional website and traffic marketing (SEO).

That makes me wonder what others are seeing as their ratios for visitors : orders....

 

[BurnTees]

i can definitely see that point of view. since we use cafepress there's no need to limit what designs we sell because we're not paying for the inventory. part of me agrees with you, but we always end up selling designs that i never think will sell so by only showing what i think are our best designs, i might be taking away future sales. (if that makes sense).

however, as an outside point of view...are there other people who agree with this sentiment?

 

[Rodney]

but we always end up selling designs that i never think will sell so by only showing what i think are our best designs, i might be taking away future sales. (if that makes sense).

I think with CafePress, it helps because you can give customers a sense of variety. I've had that happen as well (with cafepress). Designs that I don't think are the "greatest" start selling all of a sudden.

My idea of "top quality" design is not always the same as my customer's, so I don't know if you have to limit yourself or only go for the cream of the crop every time with cafepess.

I don't know if there is a pyschological thing with being able to compare designs with others and decide which one is for you.

 

[Solmu]

As a customer I prefer it when a store focuses on just their best designs - if there's too much to sift through, half the time I don't bother (I can't stand more than five to ten seconds on sites like t-shirtking and tshirts.com for example). On the other hand those sites make a lot of money, so the fact is there must be some customers who like one approach and some the other.

A simple layout (like t-shirt hell) goes a long way, which you do seem to have. One of the things that really annoys me about t-shirt hell is if I go back to see what's new, it's often really hard to tell what has been added since my last visit, so that's a pitfall stores should aim to avoid for the sake of repeat cusomers.

 

[Ken Styles]

First and foremost I would get my own domain name.

cafepress/yoursitename..
just doesn't do it for me

 

[Solmu]

First and foremost I would get my own domain name.

He does have his own domain name (burntees.com), it just redirects to CP.

You're right though that framing the site through that, using that URL more, etc. is a good next step.

 

[dub3325]

He does have his own domain name ken. The domain name is just forwarded to his cafepress url.

As for the site:

I agree with Rodney in that your Logo should be more prominent It's your identity, and you want people to know that its your site when they enter it. You do have a unique theme though, and I love your designs.

I also like sites with the best designs available. I generally like to stick with the idea that: If I wouldnt wear the tee, then I wont sell or promote it.

EDIT: Bah Solmu you beat me

 

[BurnTees]

He does have his own domain name (burntees.com), it just redirects to CP.

You're right though that framing the site through that, using that URL more, etc. is a good next step.

that's correct...we do advertise as BurnTees.com and that just redirects to CP. is there a reason i should use the burntees.com url more?

 

[dub3325]

Using your domain name more can boost your seo ratings. The more you link your domain, the more search engines will pick it up. Thats just a guess though, but I'm assuming its true.

 

[Solmu]

that's correct...we do advertise as BurnTees.com and that just redirects to CP. is there a reason i should use the burntees.com url more?

As others have said it might help with SEO - as it is some people will link to burntees.com, and some will link to your cafepress store directly (because that's what they have bookmarked). If you only have one url they can point to, in theory that would mean more links to your site.

It also helps the whole unified brand image thing - if people glance at the URL when on the site they see your company name, not someone else's.

I don't think it's that important or anything, but if you're talking little things you can do that may help a little bit, and don't cost money...

 

[dub3325]

Heres a tip:

Mask your cafepress url. You can probably find it somewhere in the domain forwarding options. This way....when you click on "burntees.com" the address bar wont say www.cafepress.com/burntees. It's pretty much a consistency thing to the viewer and like solmu said, you dont want someone to bookmark the cafepress store. What happens if you want to leave cafepress someday? Then all of your bookmarked customers will go to a dead shop.

 

[Rodney]

Mask your cafepress url. You can probably find it somewhere in the domain forwarding options. This way....when you click on "burntees.com" the address bar wont say www.cafepress.com/burntees. It's pretty much a consistency thing to the viewer and like solmu said, you dont want someone to bookmark the cafepress store. What happens if you want to leave cafepress someday?

I don't think that would be a good idea.

I know that masking uses frames, which have caused lots of problems with CP shops when they try to mask the domain. In IE (default install), when you use a frame on a third party site, it doesn't allow cookies to be saved (which won't allow customers to add any products to their cart).

 

[Rodney]

that's correct...we do advertise as BurnTees.com and that just redirects to CP

If you are doing print or radio ads, you definitely want to use the shorter, easier to remember name (burntees). If you are doing a link based ad (adwords, banner ads, etc), you will want to link as deep into your cafepress store as possible.

 

[BurnTees]

If you are doing print or radio ads, you definitely want to use the shorter, easier to remember name (burntees). If you are doing a link based ad (adwords, banner ads, etc), you will want to link as deep into your cafepress store as possible.

yes, i always use BurnTees.com.