Can I get some Feedback on my site?

[dial_c]

Hi,

I have a gourmet coffee site that has been up and running for about a year. During that time I focused soley on writing a lot of information about gourmet coffees.

Recently, I found a supplier of some truly excellent gourmet coffees so I decided to add a coffee of the month club to the site. The site''s orginal design was very simple and straight forward but not quite fitting of a coffee shop so I decided to redesign it.

I just completed redesigning the site entirely and would love to get some feedback from some true gourmet coffee lovers. The site''s URL is http://www.gourmetcoffeeshop.net/ and I would especially interested in hearing your opinions on the coffee clubs. The URL for it is http://www.gourmetcoffeeshop.net/coffee-of-the-month.htm.

All feedback, opinions and suggestions are welcome. Thank you to anyone who checks the site out.

Kind Regards,
Steven E

 

[CCafe]

Some of the menus look cluttered. Page doesn't appear to be optimized for Firefox users.

 

[dial_c]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I had tested most of the site in FF but obivously I missed the index page. That's fixed now. Thanks

You said that the menus sometimes look cluttered. Did you mean the menus across the top or the menus on the left side (on most pages)? I've been playing around with both

Also, can I ask you about the coffe club pages? What was your impression? Did it have all the information you need? Would you buy coffee from this site? If not, why?

Sorry for all the questions but it's not easy to get good honst feedback from people you know.

Thanks a lot for the response and for checking out my website. I really appreciate some honest feedback.

Regards,
Steven E

 

[CCafe]

Ok, first there is just too much information being posted. I can't tell you the stats on how long people stick around after they visit your site, but if they fill overwhelmed by content they could leave. Your front page looks nice, even though I had to push myself to read that copy of War and Peace you listed on the front.

When you click on Coffee Clubs, Drinks & Recipes, Information you list the the topics of the side bar right below them. To me that seems confusing. The purpose of your side bar is to list those topics, why redisplay them?

Next the side bar has too much content, take your Drinks & Recipes for example. It looks like a jumble of white on brown letters. Its very hard to read. Why don't you list 3 or 4 and then create a page called More Recipes. Try to tone down the rest of your menu's.

One thing that really pulls my chain is if I have to scroll down to see the entire side bar. The Information section seems to have that problem. Again way too much content, trim it down be more to the point.

The Coffee Clubs front page looks outstanding, then when you click on any of them all you see is "Overview, How it works, About the coffee, Delivery and Billing, Join Today."

Find a way to break it up. Maybe a single page for all that, or maybe a mouse over, how about some buttons or links to that information. Again it seems like I'm just being pounded with a ton of information. All I really wanted to do was buy the darn product. It looks tacky when you click on the light weight then go to the next product and all that changed on the page was the header displaying the product name.

Another thing that kind of irks me off, little blue hyper links. They were great in the 90's but they really make your page look like hell. I won't even stick around to read a page if there are a ton of blue hyper links in a paragraph or two. I find them too distracting.

To me, your blue hyper links are like going out and buying a Porsche, only to install hub caps on it.

The only thing I hate worse than that are people who advertise catch words.

Lastly, the link for Maine Lobsters?????????

 

[dial_c]

Wow, thanks for the detailed reply.

I see what you mean about the menus and I just trimmed down the two pages with the longest list of links. That helped some. Part of the problem is the length of the text links on the left side but I'm not too keen on changing that because of SEO purposes. Just removing those long lists of links may well have a negative effect on my site's traffic from the search engines. It basically makes most of the website's content three clicks away from the home page instead of two. Still, I think are right about being it being too many on those pages.

Concerning the coffee club pages...

I tend to agree with you that it is a lot of information all at once. The header images are probably too big too which doesn't really help the issue. I'm thinking that perhaps a box with tabs on it might be nice, with the sign up link displayed outside the box (probably above it). It could start on overview, and each of the other headers could be their own tab. Then you aren't overwelmed with info right away, just the "highlights", while the rest of the information is still available without having to surf to a different page.

The individual club pages do look very similar. Really, the only things that change are the price, amount of coffee and title/headers. It might be nicer to somehow incorporate them all into one page but I'm not really seeing a nice way to do that without everything getting too cluttered (again).

Blue links...

To me, blue links are the only way to go. I hate it when sites have links in the text that are not easily identifiable. I've read more than one study about hyperlinks and they all seem to come to the conclusion that "default" links are the best way to go. I do agree that there is a lot on the front page. I'm just a bit loathe to take them away, again for SEO purposes.

"The only thing I hate worse than that are people who advertise catch words."

I'm not sure what you mean. :?

Finally...

The links to the lobster site are a contract I have left over from when the site was pruely for information. I'm not sure if I will renew that contract or not at this point. It has a couple of months left. If I can make a few sales before then, it will probably go.

Thanks a bunch for taking the time to check out my site and to write such a nice detailed response about your thoughts on it!!

It's refreshing to see how others view my site and everyone's opinions are very much welcomed.

Kind Regards,
Steven E

 

[CCafe]

By catch words I was refering to this,

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/amd ... _64_fx-70/

There all over the place and they are annoying.

 

[dial_c]

Yeah, those are very annoying.

I'm working on that idea with tabs now but it will likely take a while to complete. I would like to get your opinion about it when it's done.

In the mean time, do you mind if I ask if you are part of a coffee club? If so, which one? If not, where do you buy your coffee from?

 

[CCafe]

I work for a service company specializing in espresso and coffee equipment repair and maintenance. It happens to be located in the basement of a coffee house/roaster who happens to be our roaster of choice. So when I want coffee I simply walk upstairs.

 

[CCafe]

As for the changes on the side bar, they look a lot better. Now there is a reason to have the topics posted on the top bar.

 

[topher]

how did you come up with your coffee selector? Some of the suggestions seemed a bit off....

 

[dial_c]

Were any of your selections completely wrong? It could be that I have enetered something wrong into the database that drives it.

The coffee selector is a simpler version of a tool I created for another one of my websites. The other one work much better than the coffee selector because it has much more data behind it, driving it.

The coffee selector could definately use some more work but in general I think it's a good start for people who are clueless about which gourmet coffees are likely to suit them. I need to add a disclaimer about how it makes selections using generalizations about particular types of coffee. So, that no one feels misled by it.

Hopefully, I will find the time to do an advanced version of the coffee selector in the near future.

 

[dial_c]

Can I ask you guys what you think of this design

http://www.gourmetcoffeeshop.net/lm-new.htm :-D

versus the old design

http://www.gourmetcoffeeshop.net/lw.htm

Do you think the "Join Now" button should be above the tabs?

Thanks.

 

[CCafe]

I do like the new better.

 

[dial_c]

I don't know. I'm a little bit torn between the two designs.

Anyone else care to chime in with their opinion?

 

[Java Surfer]

New site looks good

I think you have done a good job tweaking your website and have taken the advice from CCafe and incorporated it nicely. I might suggest, unless I missed it, a \"surprise me\" option for your coffee club members. Also, I like the selector, but you are assuming that people know what they like. They may know what they like , but not know why exactly. So, if you could ask \"Do you like a such and such taste of a coffee like the Verona at Starbucks?\" or the such and such body of the coffee at Dunkin? Maybe this is doable, maybe not. Just seems to reach a wider, maybe not so conniseur audience. Good Luck.