please rate my website

[mopinko]

i get a fair number of visitors, about 1000/month. could be better.
but i only get a few orders out of that 1000. any guesses why?

[Misunderestimator]

1. Not sure... the artwork is good, however...

it does take a while to go from page to page. I'd suggest you have a link to see all the buttons under each category as thumbnails, since each link appears to lead to only one button, and the user must navigate through all of them to see them one by one.

[mopinko]

3. we did look at this idea

but it was pretty hard to see them in thumbnails. we do have an index, with just the text.

[Misunderestimator]

6. Even if it's hard to see them....

Even if you use full size pics, or half size ones... It is better than just links. I buy buttons because of the look of them, and not only because of the text. There might be a button on your site that cries "ME" but I won't ever see it, because I don't have the time to click all the links. :)

[tsakshaug]

2. One suggestion

When I started to look at your catagories of buttons, I did not see the next button to see more in that section. Could you have all of the buttons from each section on one page then a click to enlarge and order?

[sophie996]

4. paypal

using paypal is an immediate turnoff for me. i've used them on ebay and half.com and had nothing but problems. they lose my account info, can't update/change credit card, etc.

[Misunderestimator]

5. I agree on the paypal thing....

I don't bother buying anything if the only method to pay is paypal.

[cheezus]

7. design is nice, but it loads too slow

with some hosts you pay by total transferred, and with some you pay for a limited amount of upstream.

That percentage sounds about right to me... especially if it's people clicking around not specifically shopping for buttons. I'd suggest running some auctions with snappy titles on ebay for sets of buttons at a discounted price. In the ads put big links back to your store - people shopping for buttons will be more likely to buy than orther visitors. You might want to try buying some adwords on google - I don't think they're that expensive.

Good luck!

[mopinko]

8. google adwords

turned me down.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1668523

[mkultra]

9. looks good but

It seems to load pretty slow, if youve already scaled your pic quality down as far as you like than you should consider your providers speed. If things are gonna be that slow, you should at leats find some way to hint at the button look through thubnails.


Otherwise pretty decent concepts. What commerce engine are you using?

[mopinko]

10. commerce engine?

[mkultra]

11. the shopping cart stuff

did you write it or use a package?

[mopinko]

12. paypal

that's why we used paypal, so that we could just hook into their cart.
i kinda wanted to do the site myself. i have never done that kind of stuff before, but i'm sure i could have figured it out. but i was not feeling well at the time, and was not up to the challenge. but i sure wish i had more control, and the ability to tweak stuff.
my web guys did do a good job. but the budget was not that big. so i had to do things the most efficient way possible.

[Deja Q]

13. People want things for free.

And yet we're a capitalist nation where everything's for sale...

It's quite the conundrum within the paradigm, isn't it?

Of course, in a poor economy, fewer people have the ability to buy.

Great artwork too!

[mopinko]

14. yup

i actually do give a lot of them away. donate them to peace groups, etc. and give away a lot of these-


little freebies that i include free in every order. i gotta get that on the site. i give them away at marches, too.
there is something odd about being a "peace profiteer". i wish i could afford to just do it as a public service. i really do loose a lot of money.
such is the lot of most artists. people cannot imagine a world without artistic expression, but most of us would starve without day jobs or supportive spouses. and most of the people who need it the most can afford it the least. but i guess the world is comfortable knowing that most of us will continue to do it as long as we pick up the occasional crumb. but somehow, there is always money for bombs. f'ed up world we live in.