New Site - Need Review ~

**naughtnotions** · May 11, 2012 13:26

Hello sitepoint!

Firstly, let me say that I have looked at a few other sites needing review on this site, and I feel like a serious novice, newbie, loser. lol lol

I sell funny t shirts with catchy slogans. I started my site this month, and thus far I am getting clicks (via Google Adwords), but my bounce rate is pretty high. I am not sure what I am doing wrong....

I would appreciate any constructive criticism regarding the site, layout, and products.

Like I said, I am new to this, and would appreciate help in any area I can get it in.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Tiff

www.naughtnotions.com

**navyfalcon** · May 11, 2012 20:23

Your title and description:

<title>Naugh-T Notions - Home</title>

note: why do you have home listed in the title ?? Home would be for a real estate site
Google allows 66 characters (including spaces) in the title. Get rid of home and add some descriptive keywords, your best from your keyword list.

<meta name='description' content='Home Page' />

Google allows 150 characters in your description. Use the best from your keyword list. The description is the 2nd most important meta tag.

<meta name='keywords' content='naughty notions, funny t shirts, mens clothing, women's clothing, children's clothing, plus size clothing, free tshirts, funky tshirts, novelty tshirts, hilarious tshirts, humorous tshirts,
offensive tshirts, novelty gifts for women, novelty gifts for men' />

The keyword list is for you to remember the keywords you SEO for
Google ignores the keyword list
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The reason people get a high bounce rate is their keywords are not reflecting their website content enough. You will always have a bounce rate, just try to reduce it some with better keywords and key phrases (keywords and key phrases are the words people use to find your site
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hope this helps
falcon

**naughtnotions** · May 12, 2012 02:21

Thanks falcon! I will fix both of those things.

Thanks for the help!!

**behati** · May 12, 2012 06:12

The first thing I thought when I looked at your site was: "Sooooo 90s!" - now I'm a 90s child so normally that's the best praise you can get, but in Webdesign it's not often appreciated

My point is that the site doesn't look like it's up to date, which might put some customers off, I'm not sure. Another thing is that the site is divided among different "providers", e.g. when you click shopnow you are redirected to another site, the blog takes you to a clean wordpress installation etc.

Any chance of integrating those pages a bit more? Right now the site feels like a bit of a "wrapper" for the shop-page, and one might wonder why you didn't just redirect to the shop right away. You need to get your shop integrated fully into your site (most e-shop providers have different ways of doing this) so that it all feels like one experience, in my opinion that is.

**naughtnotions** · May 12, 2012 06:30

Thanks for checking out the site, behati! I really appreciate your feedback, and I think you might be right...I'm just not sure what to do about it.

I am not good at coding myself, so many times, I will use a template. That is the case with this site. I am a new start (business), so right now, I do use cafe press for my ordering, etc. I really don't know how to make the shop now page look more like my home site unfortunately. Do you have any suggestions for someone like me that doesn't have the coding skills? Again, I appreciate your honest review!!

**behati** · May 12, 2012 06:43

Well I can see that you have a wordpress installation running for your blog, have you considered using Wordpress to power your entire site? Wordpress has become more than a blog and is now used to power some of the biggest sites on the web. I would recommend using it partly because it's easy to use, but mostly because of the huge amount of community plugins available. So if you're not that good at coding, you can find a lot of plugins that are easy to install and work out-of-the-box.

For example, searching the wordpress plugin directory for "cart" returns loads of results: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=cart

You can install these plugins directly from the backend of your wordpress website.

Of course, there are loads of other ways of getting a site/webshop up and running than using WordPress but I think it's a really good place to start - and I'm pretty sure it's not the most popular CMS by far for nothing

Another great (and free!) option is Magento, which is focused on being a webshop rather than anything else: http://www.magentocommerce.com/

**naughtnotions** · May 12, 2012 07:02

THANKS!!! actally, behati, i didn't know that much about wordpress. it was recommended by my host provider...lol i will check out both!

i also made a call to cafepress to see if they could assist in making the transition from my site to theirs a little more seamless.

i'm not sure that it's possible, so i am still looking for other printing companies in the meantime.

thank you again!!

**J in Calgary** · May 12, 2012 16:36

Hi,

Here are a few random ideas to address, in no particular order . . .

Here's a link with directions showing you exactly how to move your existing website and turn it into a WordPress site: http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress

FAQ means frequently asked questions, so you don't need apostrophe+s on the tab next to FAQ
On the FAQ page, you address some useful things that help me know who you are and what you do, but putting several words in all caps and using so many exclamation points robs you of some of the credibility. I like the enthusiasm, but I think it works better if you do it with vocabulary, rather than punctuation.

Your about page is really customer-focused and friendly and approachable (all good things), but still a bit light on content. If I were going to order from you, I'd like to know where you are based. If you are a family-based business, a fun photo of the family wearing your matching shirts and pointing to your business sign would be great.

The Shop Now tab should be the most prominent at the top, but it isn't. Some of your promotional ideas are fun and interesting, but your main call to action is to get people to buy things, so that should be the most important thing on the page. The most important change I would make--I mean, this second--is to make a link back to your main site from the shopping categories page (I couldn't find any way to get back other than using the back button). I think that's a huge issue for your bounce rate--it looks like we've left the site. Until you switch over, could you add links in the same order to the tops of your shopping pages to keep the navigation as consistent as possible?
I also couldn't find a link to your shopping page from the blog page, so that would be another important link.

Good luck!