Hey there, @MitchHubbard!
I completely get your frustration. You’ve put a ton of effort into making this store look good, but it’s not the conversion gold mine you were hoping for.
Let’s see what we can do, starting with the first impression. When I first landed on your site, it was nicely laid out and well-managed. It shows the effort you’ve put in.
Moving onto the homepage:
- Announcement bar: Simplify the message. There’s a lot of text going on! Something like “40% of all winter styles until Jan. 30! Use code WELLSALE40 at checkout” is easier to see. Be sure to link it to your winter product collection. Also, it’s now past the date of your sale.
- Hero image: I like that you have a static image, but I would make it more obvious as to what you’re selling. If I’m new to your site and don’t know what you sell, I wouldn’t know what you mean. I would be more direct here. Instead of “Spread Love, not Hate,” I would use something like, “Spoil your Valentine.”
- General text issue: Watch your capitalization for your sentences. Especially for your supporting text, use a sentence case (capitalizing only the first letter of the sentence and proper nouns) rather than every noun. It’ll be easier to read.
- Newsletter pop-up: It’s missing any sort of value, like a promotion or free shipping. A visitor isn’t sure if they want to buy from you, and they won’t be sure why they should know about new arrivals. I would have this delay to show only when someone engages with your products.
- Conflicting features: I like that you didn’t jump right into the product line, but your highlighted collections conflict with each other. It can’t be polo weather (especially in shorts) AND sweater weather.
- Layout: After the above feature, your site loses me. Especially knowing you’re having issues with generating sales, I would use visitor behavior to drive your next action. First use a scroll heatmap to see how far people are scrolling on the page. Where do they stop? What information do they miss? Switch to a click heatmap to see where people actually click. My guess is that they aren’t engaging with these featured products or ordering the featured t-shirt. Instead, why not highlight those collections instead?
- Idea: Because you are driving a Valentine’s Day vibe, why not a Valentine’s gift collection For Him and For Her?
- Consideration: I like that you feature your brick and mortar location, but does it need to take so much space on the homepage? If no one engages with it, you may want to consider removing it. Since you have that information in the Contact information below, you could move it for those who are going to order rather than visit. You could add a “Find Us” link in your footer instead.
Footer
- Newsletter: I would remove it from showing as big as it is on all pages or making it collapsible. It’s distracting and could be pushing people away.
- Terms of Service: Link your email address.
- Refund Policy: This may be a HUGE turn off for your visitors. You need to shift your policy from in-store to online. Very few people are going to buy without the ability to return for a refund. Additionally, you require it to be returned within 7 days of purchase. If someone doesn’t get it for 7 days due to shipping delays, the refund policy is now expired. This is the sort of thing that I would seriously reconsider and re-strategize.
- Contact: Link your email address. I would highly recommend getting an email address tied to your domain (i.e., hello@shopwellmannered.com) instead of the Gmail address. It’ll boost that professionalism.
- Mission: Is it nice to have? Yes. Is it going to impact someone’s purchase? No. I would replace this with your social links, About Us page, or an FAQ page. Something that’s more helpful.
- Missing: I’m missing your shipping details, privacy policy, and a contact page with a simple form (Name, Email Address, Message).
Main navigation:
- In general, I like the simplicity of the layout. You have it laid out very well.
- Watch session recordings to see how people are moving around. If you run any ads, whether social media or Google PPC, you can filter by source or UTM parameters for a better understanding of those campaigns.
- My biggest concern here is the drop-down itself. The layout isn’t one I’m fond of. It doesn’t continue the vibe you have going on and makes it look clunky.
- Use a click heatmap to see where people are clicking. You may find that some of these collections can be combined. Also, be sure to include a Shop All collection for each main collection (i.e., Men, Women, etc.).
- Change Doterra to Essential Oils. That will mean more than Doterra. If someone knows nothing about Doterra, they won’t click into it to find out more.
Collection Page:
- Make sure the announcement bar shows on ALL pages. Right now it shows only on your homepage. That means people will typically forget about the deal and move on without buying.
- My biggest thing is to add a filter for color, cost, availability, sleeve length, etc. Think about what your visitors need to make a buying decision.
- For your images, keep them consistent. For your Men T-Shirts collection page, some shirts are on a white background and others are on models. Try to keep them consistent. Some of the dimensions are different as well.
Product Page:
- Move to a more traditional layout. The huge image on the top of the page forces them to scroll down. Use a scroll heatmap to see how many people actually do. If you move the purchasing information up to the right of the image and minimize the product image This would let visitors who are interested in buying without having to scroll.
- Reiterate shipping here and link to your shipping policy. I’m looking at the Live Oak Tiki Hut Short Sleeve T-shirt, and it’s $23.00. It’s a pretty pricey shirt, but I may be more swayed to buy it if the shipping is free or cheap versus surprised with a $10 shipping charge at checkout. The more you can lay out information like that, the more your visitors can make that decision to buy.
- Description: You have to include a description!! This is where I am most disappointed. There’s no information here other than a nine-word description of the shirt. Tell me more! Sell it! Wouldn’t we all rather socially distance ourselves at some tiki hut bar on the beach? Really sell it.
- Don’t the sizing chart and details about care. Sizing charts can make a huge difference.
- BOPIS: This may be a huge driver for you. If locals can buy online and pickup in store (BOPIS), you may really find a perfect solution here if that’s what drives away visitors.
- Reviews: Where are the reviews? People love to leave reviews and to read them. You can encourage reviews in your store, and you can encourage them here as well.
Communication:
- Poll: Run a poll asking visitors what stopped them from checking out. Have it launch when they have been on a product page for more than 2 minutes without adding a product to the cart. You can also trigger it based on campaign. So if you have a Facebook campaign, you could show it to Facebook visitors only to get better insight into what THEY want.
- Chat: Don’t forget about chat! You may very well have chat that isn’t showing because you aren’t online. If you don’t, use it. You have to have a way for visitors to contact you. While you have your email address (requires them to leave your site) and phone number (typically only preferred by older visitors), you aren’t reaching everyone. Chat gives you the ability to reach someone while they are still on your site.
You’ve really put in a lot of work here, and it shows. Visitor behavior is going to help you find out what’s stopping people from checking out and help you generate those sales you need. Lucky Orange has heatmaps, session recordings and more with a free trial (no credit card needed) and plans that start at US $10/month.
I hope this helps! Good luck, Mitch!
Cheers - Danny
Hey Mitch @MitchHubbard,
First off, you are doing a lot of things right. You have your sales channels set up on your social media accounts, you have a TikTok account which I personally think is the fastest way to grow online right now and you have an active social presence on other platforms as well.
The benefit that you have with your brick and mortar store is that it is local and a lot of people are either passionate about supporting local or they prefer to shop offline and so you have a flow of customers. When you get online, you leave that "local" niche and are now competing with all of the online stores that sell similar items. Clothing and accessories are a very saturated niche which is why it's hard to rank in search or make sales. A person can complete IF they give people a reason to purchase from them vs. the other guys. You have this benefit where you are local already so for you, maybe it's about targeting local customers and offering free delivery when they order online through your website. Another reason why people may want to choose you is because you have the product in hand and can offer faster shipping. Think on what it is that sets you apart and then make that known in your marketing.
Next, moving onto your website. That main banner you have, I would swap out for something else. It's not really selling anything specific, it doesn't show a photo of anything you sell, there are no links to the specific items you mention. That area is prime real estate for selling so you want to make sure you have a great photo of your best selling products, a line or two of text telling what problem it solves or why your customer needs this and then a call to action that leads to the product.
As I move down the page, one of your photos has the models head cut off. You can fix this by resizing the image to the recommended size, that way you are in charge of where the image is cropped.
The jewelry - unless they are best sellers, I would swap them out. I would also make sure the image sizes are the same across the board.
The dropdown menu I would adjust, the full width mega menu is a little difficult to navigate.
There are a lot of other things I would tweak/change, if it's in the budget we do offer store customization services, you can contact us at ecomgeeksco@gmail.com if you are interested.
My last recommendation is to spend some time creating product descriptions and working on your SEO. Having good SEO will help you rank in search when a person is trying to find the type of products you sell in Google.
We hope our response was helpful, if it was, let us know by giving us a thumbs up and/or marking it as a solution!
Best of luck!
