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MOH

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It's very slow. I had tried it in 3 different browsers, and was starting to post a reply here to say the layout was broken in Firefox, Opera and IE8.
I happened to check back in one of them and found the page had finished loading.
I'm don't think it's just the large images, it looks like there's some javascript running at the end which tweaks the layout which is slowing everthing down.
Nothing seems to be compressed or cached, which means it's going to take as long each time.
I ran it through Pagetest - where web sites go to get FAST! and that took 8.5 seconds to complete, and I'm not sure that processes all the javascript - it took a fair bit longer on my machine.


Aside from the speed problem, I liked the look of it, though the 'My Account' and 'Checkout' links are a bit hard to see.
 

MOH

New Member
Bah, apologies, you can ignore a lot of that - I was having some kind of network issues myself, it's not nearly as slow as I thought earlier.

Had another look - I found it a bit confusing that there's a 'My account' link and a 'Login' button both leading to the same popup box, but no option to register. I presume you register when you complete a purchase, but that's not entirely obvious.
Some of the pictures under 'Designer wedding suits' looked a bit stretched - that might just be my eyes, it's late!

The left navigation bar under 'Designer wedding suits' and 'Suit hire' - I didn't like the heading 'Navigation'. I'd usually expect navigation to be the main site navigation as in your top nav bar and constant, that's more sub-navigation for the particular page you're on. Maybe something like 'Related Items'?

In the dropdown boxes for United Kingdom on the checkout page, I don't see options for Northern Ireland?

I only noticed the privacy policy link on the checkout page. I know it's the only place you're actually collecting information, but might be no harm to include it with the other links in the footer.

Apart from that, I really like the site, lot of helpful content apart from the suits.
 

DecKen

New Member
Good job on the site - I think it looks really well, I didn't go through the checkout system. Just had a glance at a few pages and thought it was quite good

Well done

Are you using a CMS system for the site?
 

tommurphy

New Member
Decken-Yes we are using wordpress as a cms.It is fantastic as i can just come along and put in pics,galleries ,new captions etc.Our e commerce system is open cart.
Wannabgeek-thanks for the feedback.i will be checking out some of your suggestions
I have to say im a little dissapointed with the conversion rates so far.i have only made a few sales fro about 60 hits a day for the last few months.I need to get the traffic up and i need it to go higher up the organic listings for words like mens suits,wedding suits,cheap suits,tailored suits.Ive spent a lot of time putting in content based on some of these words but we are still not featuring highly.I suspect its because we have so few sites linking to us.Anyone any ideas on how to get sites linking to us.Ive tried to get our blog listed on irish blogs.ie and technorati but cannot seem to manage it
 

goodybags88

New Member
Hi tommurphy,

The website is reasonably well designed but let down by page loading speed (which will now affect how well you rank in Google SERPs)

Noticed that you have not included individualised meta tags/descriptions for each page. You'll probably need an all-in-one wordpress plugin to do this. It won't help with Google Rank but is considered by Bing/Yahoo and will improve your website's presentation within the SERPs

Other then that I would concentrate on writing/distributing really great content on your blog pages - make sure that your content is interesting, accessible and includes a relevant call-to-action

Hope this helps, I'm currently asking for advice re. a new online politics forum if you fancy tracking down the relevant thread.
 

tommurphy

New Member
Thanks goodybags for that-ill look into the page loading.It is probably slowed a little because we have a lot of images.On the homepage we have big graphics.Do u think it is slow enough to stop people progressing further into the site.The metatags are something i must sort out-its on the to do lisi.By the way i had a quick look on the politics forum-i love the colour and the interactive voting.I will get onto the original discussion.Thanks again
 

Firefly Web

New Member
Yeah the 'above the fold' area of the homepage has a decent design and serves its purpose. Personally I'm not a fan of the content item headers and widget headers though, it might look better if you stook to the two column layout for the full site, e.g. I think the online shop page and toms blog pages look a good bit better than the Suit hire page, I think the three column layout with the current design makes it look a bit cramped on that page.
 

Satanta

New Member
It is probably slowed a little because we have a lot of images.
You're pretty limited on what you can do with the images, without causing a significant drop in the quality which would/could be counter productive. So I'd personally try and avoid going down that route.

Looking at the page load (via firebug) it looks like it's the heavy js/text that's slowing it more than the images. If your host allows, enabling compression (e.g. google "gzip compression") on the domain should help to reduce the file sizes and speed up the load times significantly. Also worth looking at enabling caching, making the site a lot faster for returning visitors (even if you do frequently change the images, a simple file renaming for a new image will remove any caching issues there).

The metatags are something i must sort out-its on the to do lisi.
Defiantly worth investing a little time there once you have it, it'll make a big difference to the conversion/click rates when you are ranking for terms.

You've got analytics on the site (collecting non personal identifiable information [non PII]) and a contact form/log in (collecting PII) so you're legally obliged to have a privacy statement outlining what information is collected, why it's collected and how it will be used. Check out Home - Data Protection Commissioner - Ireland to see the full details.

The current description for the home page reads as a keyword list. The description is (normally, if the description is poor the SE's can supersede it with content from the page) used as the 'snippet' which appears on a SERP (with the page title appearing as the hyperlink above this). You want your description to be your 'sales pitch' to attract a searcher to click on your link. It will improve your click rates if you use a coherent block of text that gives a summary of what you do and how you'll help the searcher. (Basically, review your existing description meta tags when you're including the missing ones)

(Take care for typo's too, "formalwear" is currently one of the homepage meta keywords)

The header tags (on the homepage at least) jump from h1 to h3. It makes more sense (for the SE's at least) if they follow the logical hierarchical order. The mark up of the headers can easily be adapted to retain the existing appearance of the site.


Once the speed issues are sorted out (harsh calling them issues, but if you can speed it up it will help), the site looks great and provides a lot of excellent information. I'm sure it'll do great, especially once the off page SEO gets the SERP's driving more traffic.

Hope some of the comments help.

Paul.
 

tommurphy

New Member
Paul
I guess i will have to change the metatags.I do not seem to be able to do that through wordpress however.I can edit everything else but it is not allowing me edit homepage tile or metatags
 

mneylon

Administrator
Staff member
You can get a number of plugins that do this "all in one seo" is one that springs to mind

On a sidenote - stop trying to circumvent the signature rules.
 

tommurphy

New Member
Sorry about that.I havent used this forum for a while and i thought it was ok to leave signatures.I didnt read rules thorughly.Brilliant and informative forum and if its ok ill start posting regularly again
 

DerekMoy

New Member
Hi Tom, you were kind enough to review my site, so I thought I'd return the favour. I'm not technically minded, but I thought the site was presentable, in tune with the theme and with a very easy selection structure. The product selection page is nicely laid out with clear indication of pricing. Also assume you went for Realex to take advantage of Laser payment. Notice however you don't update your blog that often, always good to write well written and optimise articles as they will help your SEO efforts. Video of "How to Tie a Cravat" is always a nice touch as it shows the consumer your all about just trying to sell, sell, sell (even thought we all are).

Nice following on Facebook also... how did you get some many followers? I'm doing a diploma in Digital Marketing currently so I can tell you know what your about with the Social Media.

Congrats, how has business been since launch?

D
 

tommurphy

New Member
Thanks derek for the positive review of my site.Business in general in our store has been very good and we are definitely getting customers into the shop because they had a look at the site and were impressed.However the catual volume of online sales has been dissapointing and the conversion rate is low-i need to figure out why this is so and would appreciate any feedback
We are getting nice business from facebook and it is really helping to spread our name.The biggest success for signing up new fans has been our competitions and free give aways
 
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