Finally up and running! Now ready for feedback

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Permalink Reply by Kaprice Williamson on January 27, 2012 at 12:04pm

Sylvia,

Thanks sooo much.  Music is now gone!

Kaprice

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Permalink Reply by Clarify (Claranne ) on January 27, 2012 at 12:36pm

Kaprice-

It's great to have you here.  For the short time since you arrived, your shop is looking very good.  You've obviously been busy with the set up.  A few comments and suggestions:

Some of the elements in your banner are indistinguishable.  There is a sort of circular image in the middle, and to the right, if I really work at it, I can make out that it says "Custom Rhinestone Transfer Designs and Apparel."  You don't want to make customers struggle, make it easy for them to see such important elements. 

Your shop title line can, and should, be expanded.  This line not only informs shoppers of who you are, it also can tell them what you are.  Plus the first 70 characters (including spaces) are used by search engines to determine what your shop is all about.  You now show only your shop name.  It would be appropriate to append "Custom Rhinestone Transfer Designs and Apparel" or a similar descriptive phrase.

With your premium shop you will want to take advantage of the opportunity to customize shop colors in order to help to establish your brand and identity.  The default colors are rather nice, but you can do better.

Since your banner boldly announces the 15% off sale, consider not displaying the sale announcement in the welcome box.  Doing it that way would eliminate one paragraph from the welcome box, and move the thumbnails of products about 36 pixels up the page.  You want to get product immediately before the eyes of shoppers to grab their attention before they can bounce out of your shop.

Normally I prefer the larger thumbnails of the 3-across layout available to premium shops because most products just look better, and thus are more likely to pop visually and grab shoppers' attention, in the larger thumbnails.  With your products, however, the smaller 4-across that you have probably makes sense.  It gives 33% more items per line, increasing the number of items seen and reducing scrolling, and your products are simple enough visually that they are easily made out even in the smaller thumbnails.

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Keep in mind that all thumbnails on Zibbet are square.  When you use a rectangular image as your first photo important parts may be cropped out of the thumbnail.  Several of yours suffer from that.  Shoppers are unlikely to click on a thumbnail unless they know what is behind the thumbnail.  One of yours appears to the right.  To increase the chance that a shopper will realize you have the perfect item for her, try to show enough that she will realize that listing is for a t-shirt that says "Soon To Be Mrs. Your Name"

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The layout of sizing needs some work on the description pages. It will require some experimentation, but currently it is is virtually indecipherable as shown to the left.

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Consider rearranging your items to put the Custom Spangle Sequin Sexy Lips Tshirt or another of the ones with bright colors in the first line.  Doing so will increase the immediate visual grab of your product line, thus reducing the chance a shopper will bounce out.  You have about half a second to grab the interest of a shopper, or you risk losing her.

I like your Brides Bitches t-shirts.

Have fun selling.

http://www.zibbet.com/Clarify - || - http://www.zibbet.com/ManOverboard - || - http://www.zibbet.com/Critiques

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Permalink Reply by Kaprice Williamson on January 28, 2012 at 10:48am

Clarify,

I cannot seem to figure out how to reduce my rectangular image thumbnails to fit the entire image without cropping...how do other solve this problem?

Kaprice

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Permalink Reply by HannahsGems (Hannah) on January 28, 2012 at 5:04pm

I re-size. I also find taking a pic of the object from a distance then cropping the image a little helps to show a full image for the store front listing.

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Permalink Reply by Kaprice Williamson on January 28, 2012 at 11:09am

Clarify,

I revised one item listing to hopefully solve the sizing chart dysfunction in the item description:  Take a look at this and let me know if this gets it done.  Thanks!

http://www.zibbet.com/customrhinestonetshirts/artwork?artworkId=735071

Kaprice

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Permalink Reply by Clarify (Claranne ) on January 28, 2012 at 1:16pm

Kaprice -

Your revised sizing chart works.  It would help if you could make it fit on the item description page as well as in your profile, but with the limited width of the description column it can be difficult, and a reference to the location of your size chart on your policy page may be the best you can do.  But consider moving it to at or near the top of the policy page because sizing is so important to customer happiness, and a shopper may have trouble spotting it at the bottom.  I struggled to get my sizes to fit in the column, and just realized that some of mine need fixes.  But an example from my menswear shop shows how it might be possible: http://www.zibbet.com/ManOverboard/artwork?artworkId=735736

As for making rectangular images fit the square thumbnail, here is an example using the "Soon To Be Mrs. Your Name" image referenced above.  I have shown examples for the 2 sizes thumbnails available to premium shops.  As you can see, there is some loss of clarity of the rhinestone writing, especially with the smaller, 4-across size.

To turn your rectangular image into a square was easy.  I copied your image into my photo editor and reduced the width to 600 pixels.  I then created a new photo file 600 x 600 pixels, painted the background black, and copied the original rectangular image into the new one, then saved the new one.

You may need to balance the tradeoff between a person being able easily to see only a portion of the rhinestone text against her having to strain to see all the text.  But many of yours are only slightly out of square and with just a little work you should be able to get the entire text of those into a square without needing to reduce the size by much, and they should remain easily legible.

I like your revised banner.  It is much more legible.

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Permalink Reply by Kaprice Williamson on January 30, 2012 at 12:52pm

Clarify....Okay...I think I have all item images adjusted to the appropriate size.

Do I miss any other changes you recommended?

Kaprice

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Permalink Reply by MillicentRaven ( Dawn ) on January 27, 2012 at 2:09pm

Hi Kaprice and welcome to Zibbet! I think your shop looks good and I wish you much success!

Dawn

http://www.zibbet.com/BohemianGrove

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Permalink Reply by Sensual Scents (Michelle) on January 28, 2012 at 3:55pm

Looking great! Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by CreationsbyGena on January 28, 2012 at 7:47pm

I have to agree with Michelle! Wishing you much success! 

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