Participate in the Set-The-Mood.com critique

[dcomiskey]

This week, ECommerce-Guide.com begins its second site critique. We have choise www.set-the-mood.com (a lingerie site) as our critique candidate. Over the next several days, our panel will talk about what is right - and wrong - with the site in order to give the site's owner some direction on improving the site to enjoy better sales.

We would like our readers to participate, too! Post your thoughts on how set-the-mood.com can improve.

-Devin Comiskey
Managing Editor, ECommerce-Guide.com

[PersonalSW]

September 22nd, '05

Retail clothing is not a market which I understand in any depth, but this is still a fascinating critique. As was highlighted in one of the reviews, this is a market that thrives online due to the reluctance of many men to visit this kind a store in the high street.

A few aspects of the site stood out:-

1) At the risk of sounding harsh, it looks very amateurish. I can see all the Verisign logos etc., but I'm still not sure I'd give you my credit card details.

2) Looking at the competitor sites mentioned, it is clear that the potential product range is vast - perhaps set-the-mood would be better advised to focus their site on a specific type/segment of the market and focus their resources into this (perhaps enabling them to improve quality overall). The impact would be greater even if the market is smaller - and might translate into more sales. If there's one thing I have learned in online marketing, it's that there is no "mass market" - just a lot of niches that you need to address individually.

3) Someone once told me that you've finished editing your site copy when there's nothing left to take out. There is too much going on here and too many diversions. I think you need to take more control in your copy and direct me to the items that matter most - and have the most margin for you.

4) Finally - there's nothing worse than poor images (and no excuse these days). The ones on your home page are particularly poor. If you can't afford stock images, at least crop the ones you have so they reduce in proportion. Better still - as one reviewer pointed out - have fewer images and give them more space.

As I said, I hope these comments don't sound harsh. I know what it is to put everything into your site and I wish you well. The reviews have real depth and would cost a fortune if you paid a website company for them - so take it personally and benefit.

...and good luck!

Peter

[dufik]

Hi,

• Add ‘Gift Ideas’ at a strategic place towards the top (‘above the fold’ so users don’t need to scroll down even if they have small monitors and are using small screen resolutions)
• Images must be much much much better.
• The girls are sexy and that’s nice but do consider adding additional girls that are not super skinny. Communicate your message to additional target audiences as well.
• As far as SEO – this is my expertise and there is a lot to say. I’ll mention the very basics – (a) Do not use unnecessary keywords in your Title’s where by “unnecessary” I mean that it does not contribute directly to your branding, your SEO focus, the site's usability and the CTR (click through rate) of your SE listing. And (b) don’t not repeat words in Title as this can give you “bad points” in regards to rankings. For example: the current title of the homepage is: “Sexy Lingerie-Wicked Lingerie-Discount Sexy Lingerie”. One suggestion I can make is: “Sexy Lingerie on Sale” (I would add the brand name if it was known or had good keywords in it). This is only the basics and there are many things you need to do in regards to content and links...
• People tend to click on images so make them clickable (unlike your top image – the girl with the wings) and utilize that to get potential buyers closer to the sale. The most valuable space on your page is the upper left and your image there goes to: http://www.set-the-mood.com/images/l...sses/l8103.jpg. This is an extra click that does not move the potential buyer further forward in the sales process. So, that's a miss.
• Product pages are extremely important for your conversion rates and your ones are not so great.
• Use better spacing. Your links and copy are too close to the right or left borders of the page of table cell. This is something that can be quickly fixed.
• Some good things that you are using are the 1800 number and 30 day guarantee. Go ahead and put both on the top, in a clearer way, and a more aesthetic way (e.g., Flash, animated image or just nice image or better formatted text).
• The shopping cart and long payment form are quite bad and this is, undoubtedly, hurting your sales. You are using icommercegateway.com. I suggest that you consider moving to a Yahoo! store or another store of a major brand, due to functionality and especially – branding. By associating yourself with a good brand, you will build greater trust with visitors. Somee of these stores give you options to earn certain recognitions that you can show to build trust. See an example of: Yahoo Shopping Top Rated 'Best Source for Quality Pearls' at this online store for pearl jewelry: http://www.premiumpearl.com
• Re your offer – “free shipping over $100”, note that there are players who are up there on search engine rankings (thus get exposure in front of comparison shoppers) that offer free shipping over $60. Remember that search engine users tend to do comparison shopping so keep an eye out for your competitors’ offers.

There are many more points but I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m assuming you feel overwhelmed by all the (harsh?) remarks from everyone. Still…
Good luck!

Itai levitan
Professional Online Marketer
EasyNet Search Engine Marketing
http://www.ez-net.co.il (Israel)

[dcomiskey]

Itai,
Excellent point about the shopping cart. I'm glad you pointed that out. I suspect if we were able to have WebTrends help us out, shopping cart abandonment would pop out at us. I, too, think she needs to move to a much better host ASAP.
-Devin

[shelley_riddle@]

"There are many more points but I’ll leave it at that for now."
No-please continue.

[Elegant]

Just read the article from James Maguire about ‘brands’ and I have notice from researching other lingerie sites that some have brands listed and others don’t. It was mention that doing a Google search for lingerie, one of the top ten site was angelbodywear.com, which doesn’t list brands either. But yet they are in the top five.

Being brand new in the lingerie business, I own and operate elegantunderwear.com but most of my sales have come from catalogs. Catalogs from Leg Avenue and Dream Girl, yet none of the women who purchased didn’t even considered the brand name. They saw what they liked and ordered.

So the question begs; how important is it to list brands to the site? If you like the product, instructions on how to buy, size and what ever else, wouldn’t that be enough to buy it?

Or is listing the brands a way that could get your web site closer to the top in search engine? I didn’t think of that until just now which would be a very good reason to list brands on a web site.

[InfoSourcing]

Set the Mood.com really doesn't set my mood for online shopping on this site. It has some poor designs in terms of look and feel, they have some cool products which can sell by itself but unfortunately the site doesn't promote that here ...

1. Very poor website design - it is so simple and basic makes me think some students put together the html pages

2. Poor Images - What attracts virtual shoppers is your product being displayed to them via images (multimedia) and throughout the sites so bad images (sometimes you may have to stick with it coz of manufacturer providing such images)

3. Product Profile page - Can't imagine why there is no product profile page which showcases the products in-depth description, where they could also do cross selling and also provide some help to shoppers about sizes (small - what is small 32,34 etc?)

4. Checkout - I won't coz all of a sudden this site looks non-integrated as it starts of check out process on some other gateway in a non-secured mode

This site needs a second look before going live, also I'm not sure the thumb rule for picking this site for review as this misses the much needed basic work even to be analyzed and reviewed ....

[Elegant]

Although I don't disagree with your comments however the checkout process is secured but only when you start the checkout process. Adding products is not secured but when checking out is.

[dcomiskey]

Can anyone here figure out the plug-in error while using Firefox? I can usually figure these thigns out, but not this time. The site owner also says she isn't using any plug-ins, so I'm curious what's setting this off.

[vbeal]

Wow, this site critique has really brought out some good, sound Web design and e-commerce advice. I think the most commented on aspect, and one I agree with is that the Web site design just doesn't have the professional look that I would put faith in for shopping online (even if the right e-commerce buttons and security logos are there). I think the advice given on this subject is excellent and hopefully useful to the Web site owner.

Emphasis has also been placed on image quality which again is very important for an e-commerce Web site, since this is all you have to offer your customer before their purchase.

My comments on showing the brand - if you have products from a known and good brand, by all means show it! If not, for this site I do question how important it is -- those lingerie brands we're familiar with are already online, and you could make just as big of deal out of quality, uniqueness, and selection as you do a brand name.

Vangie

[jamest]

To answer everyone’s questions on the cause to the Firefox Plugin issue, there is a object tag within site’s HTML code, which appears to do some type of page tracking.

For example: In the "http://set-the-mood.com/About_Us.htm" web page, this object code appears:

<object type="text/x-scriptlet" width="1" height="1" data="http://www.onlinecount.com/trak.php?site=ss0118&page=About Us"></object>

When the object code is removed from the page, the Firefox plugin error disappears. Looks like the merchant needs to reconsider how they address their page tracking.

As to the shopping cart and the payment pages, the merchant should customize the look of these pages, so the entire checkout process uses the uniform look/feel of her web site. This would help reassure perspective customers, and help reduce the number of abandoned orders.

In addition, it did not appear that anyone touched on the use of affiliate/banner trading programs to help increase overall traffic to the site. A good affiliate/banner program could help drive additional customers to the site & increase the overall placement to the site (due to the increased number of sites linking to “set-the-mood.com”).

Possible partnerships with other sites could also help by cross selling related mood enhancing items (such adult novelties & sensual music) & services (such as home spa products). Since it's all about the mood, it makes sense to extend the site by offering those additional products/services which help enhance the mood further (in both the romance & relaxation departments).

Lastly, adding a section of small write-ups about how to set the mood, enhance an existing mood, rekindle the flame, etc... Within the write-ups, the merchant can suggest products from their own product base to further spur sales of her offered product lines.

[dcomiskey]

A quick word about affiliate programs. I'm sure there are plenty of small ones out there, but for programs like Linkshare and CJ, site owners need to cough up about $4,000 up front, which is just way too steep for most small businesses.

[mikey h]

I recently launched an online lingerie site in the UK www.SophieAndGrace.co.uk and after some initial problems with product images I am now very single minded in my purchasing. I buy based purely on the images provided by suppliers. As I expect my customers to buy from this medium i feel I should do the same. Hope this helps and good luck!
mike.
www.sophieandgrace.co.uk

[vbeal]

I know it's been awhile but I loaded the Set The Mood Web site today and could hardly believe the differences. The site looks great - it has a nice unique style to it, and the layout AND Web site navigation is definitely an improvement! If the webmistress is still reading the forums here - congrats!

[dcomiskey]

Yes, absolutely a nice change!