Friday, January 19, 2018

There seems to be something different here.

I'm going to be experimenting with different store templates for a while 

Going to try to make the store's layout easier to read. It is already set up to be usable with mobile devices, but I want to see if I can improve it.

Welcome Page layout
can be improved.


How in the world did I come to be 60 years old?

For the last three to four weeks I've been thinking about my own mortality. Wondering about how to provide for my family when I eventually bite it. It has not been a particularly encouraging period.

I should have prepared better

There is debt, the fact that I'm on a fixed income, the lack of life insurance, etc. I've been hoping to use the store to bring in some extra income so I could work on the debt and save some money for them.  However; I haven't been getting any traction with the store.

Let's query the target audience

So, I decided to ask for feedback on a Facebook group that was appropriate to the content.  I felt a little leery doing this because I didn't want it to seem like an ad. I phrased it the best that I could, and then sat back and waited for the page admins to delete the post and send me a nastygram about SPAMming the group.

That was simultaneously better than expected and problematic

On the positive side, the admins didn't delete my post. I also didn't get a lot of members claiming that I was spamming. In addition, I did get a number of members that took the time to visit the store and give me feedback. It wasn't all bright and rosy though. While I did get a lot of feedback, mostly useful - there was some that I can not implement, at least not at the moment. What I did find, however; was that almost no one was going beyond the welcome page. None of the item or category pages were being visited. Many of the issues that were being experienced were only there on the welcome page. That was significant because people were losing interest and not getting to the meat of the site.

Desktop and monitor, check! Tablet, check! Phone, check!

I need to mess with various templates until I can find one that addresses various issues that were brought up.  Therefore, if you keep seeing the design of the store you'll know why. Unlike those people who didn't read this blog post and will just have to figure it out on their own. ☺

I am still looking for feedback everyone

If you have any thoughts on how I can improve the store to bring in more engagement, please let me know.  All comments, positive and negative, and all questions are welcome. Also if you happen to know anyone that might be interested in the items that are available, I'd appreciate if you shared the store with them.

http://witsendstore.com