Would welcome feedback on my website

hiw1986

New Member
Hi Folks,

I am brand new to this type of thing, however, would like to get involved in the forums.

I own a clothing company called Rheign and I have a website www.rheign.com. At present
i do not get much business via the website and would welcome any feedback on the site whether its to do with the overall look, functionality, e-commerce experience etc.

I created the site myself through wordpress and by no means profess to be any sort of web designer, I simply needed to create a site that could represent my company and allow me to have an online presence.

Anyway, like I say if anyone is able to visit the site I would welcome any feedback, it's always good to hear what people have to say.

Many thanks in advance for any help.

Hazel.
 
Hey, welcome to the forums!

So this first thing I noticed is that your site is quite slow to load; this will impact both your mobile customers and search optimisation; the ability to rank highly for any chosen keywords.

When I've loaded the site, the only type of brand specific content that I can see comes in the form of slider content (which isn't massively engaging) - the rest, including your logo - makes the overall design feel like a very quick, cheap template job with no discernible techniques utilised to encourage me to further explore the site or to make a purchase. I also note that the font used for your brand name in the slider content is different to the font used in your website header.

There is not nearly enough content on your home page, and the one call to action (which only just qualifies as one!) is very weak and feels awkwardly worded to me - ORDER ONLINE.

It feels like there are a lot of pages for not very much content, take the downloads page for example, or the blog page which also has this issue: http://i.imgur.com/evxdyXX.png. And on a side note, the photography could do with being a bit sharper with better colour depth, and the general state of graphic design could again be more engaging, take this for example: http://i.imgur.com/4dYEW8a.png - I don't know what has happened there but it doesn't look great. You should also look at integrating the content of all PDFs directly on to your website, there's no reason not to, restaurants don't even have a reason these days! It helps with your search optimisation too.

Going back to the lack of marketing techniques for your products, I am getting bored of seeing the exact same four products at the bottom of every single page, furthermore, the sign up form just underneath feels very awkwardly placed, and the key selling point, to receive more offers, is lost due to the low contrast of the text against the background

Regarding the actual clothes, in my opinion, £65 is a hell of a lot to pay for an item of clothing that also doubles as a billboard for your brand; it doesn't really say subtle classiness to me, in the same way that Bench doesn't either. Are there only four products on the site to purchase? What are your plans for introducing more products and ranges, as, at the moment your catalogue size doesn't feel like it requires its own e-commerce website!

Taking a quick look at your social media accounts, again what is with the strange photo? http://i.imgur.com/DtChdu5.png - the quality of the photo is low, their is a very strange hugely colourful blotch at the bottom (perfectly overlapping your logo, was this done on purpose??) and there seems to be a lot of discolouration to the face. This photo is better (http://i.imgur.com/1ZqCJlm.png) but currently, until you scroll down a bit more, it does feel like you are using this as a personal FB account. Your Twitter account seems fine but there is no header image at the top!

The fact that you are running your own business and that you're not a web developer or designer, I think you've done a good job so far - but if you're expecting real success through your business venture I would strongly recommend getting a professional on board!
 
Hi Hazel. First of all congratulations on achieving the first few steps and getting yourself online.

Sean gives some great indepth feedback so I won't go quite that far. What I would say is that the website certainly isn't offensive, the style is good for your sector, but there's no real brand on show, it's just a clean wordpress template as Sean states. You need to have some form of character on show, otherwise it just comes down to another website that blends into the crowd. I don't mean you should change the style, but your header 'Rheign - Active Apparel' for example doesn't seem to have had any design input.

Other than that, the cookies notification in the top right should definitely disappear once someone has selected their choice. Seems very strange to continually offer them to change their mind.

I'd also ask what goals do you want to achieve when a visitor first lands at your site?
Do you want to increase your email newsletter base? - Make that more prominent.
Do you want to get a first sale? - Maybe make a big shout about a 15% discount on first orders.
Do you want to build your claim as an authoritative voice in the industry? - Put a link to the latest blog posts on the homepage.

Ultimately my advice is to work with someone who knows what they're doing and can go through step by step, looking at your brand, your intentions for your website and then working those through onto your site. Realistically with little to no skills in web design/development, you'll probably struggle to create something that will do your business justice. If you did want to get some in-depth input then there's quite a few people on here, myself one, who would be happy to talk things through with a view to further work.

As Sean says, if you're charging £65 for an item of clothing I'd expect a very sleek, smooth website experience that tells me I'm paying my money to someone who cares about the details and is in control of their business. If your looking to make this go to the next level you'll either need to make some big tweaks to your current layout or if money isn't there then look at other Wordpress themes out there, a starting point is at ThemeForest.
 
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