[rkudeshi]

I'm not a woman, so take this with a grain of salt, but here's some feedback on the website:

1) Your images are too compressed. The artifacts make it look low quality, like I shouldn't trust the site. If you are selling upscale clothes, you should make sure your images reflect that. Maybe use PNG instead of JPG?

2) The logo on the top left is kind of small and doesn't really stand out (black on white). Perhaps use a different color? Also, the font you used makes it look like you made the logo yourself. I don't know if you did or not, but it doesn't match up with the upscale clothing you're selling. I know there are websites where you can make your own royalty-free logos (google "logo designer" or something), look into one of those maybe? And perhaps try to pick a more distinctive font, maybe something that isn't in a standard install of Word, so it stands out.

3) I have to scroll down all the way to the bottom of the page (had to press spacebar 4 times!) to see actual clothing you have for sale. Most people never go below the fold and would have no idea what your website sells (especially since the name doesn't immediately reflect Asian-inspired clothing). Your name doesn't have to be related to what you sell (just look at Amazon), but I need to be able to immediately figure out what stuff you do sell when I first hit your homepage, either via the logo or pictures of actual stuff for sale above the fold.

4) Related to the previous point, why are the category pictures so huge? I'm on a 13" Macbook Air and all but one of them are larger than the viewport (since you keep the header stuck at the top). I would suggest making them much, much smaller - one or two horizontal rows with 3-4 square category icons). Or cut them down to half the size they are now and move them below the Top Sellers + Featured rows.

5) Your titlebar text doesn't say anything about the site. Good place to put more information about exactly what kind of clothing you're selling (will also help with SEO). Even as simple as "Janjua Clothing - Indian designer clothing" or "Janjua Clothing | Indian clothing | Designer clothes | Affordable prices" or something like that.

6) Your site is very busy right now. If you've tried every marketing tool in the book and you still have no sales to date, perhaps it's time to consider a wholesale redesign. It looks like you're using some type of eCommerce plugin or CMS...do they have any other themes you could use? Perhaps something drastically simpler that maybe only focuses on 1-2 items in your inventory that you know sell well (based on other sites or locally in B&M stores or whatever)?

7) Take a look at other ecommerce and clothing websites and see what design stuff works for them. Rakuten, Blue Nile, Zappos, Dollar Shave Club, etc.

Again, I'm not a woman or a web designer or anything like that. Just a normal dude giving you honest feedback on my first impressions. Hope some of this helps.

EDIT: One more website I just stumbled across: http://www.buffalobottlecraft.com/#products - super simple, one high-quality picture at the top and then 8 products for sale, all shown on the homepage. This is along the lines of what I'm suggesting your website could look like. The most important thing is that this website looks trustworthy. I would feel comfortable buying something from this website. Your website doesn't do that for me yet (sorry, just being honest), so even if I were in your target market, I would hesitate before buying. A good design is invaluable in conveying trust.

[mandeepj]

I am not sure if saying just 'Thank you' would be sufficient to appreciate your response and the time you took to write such a great and meaningful content.

So now we are talking here is my response -

1. I compared each and every image after compression with actual image and compressed image. I used a compress ratio where it was hard to see the difference between those two image types. May be my eye sight got weak after all this work :-) . Now you all are saying, I am ready to revisit compression.

2. I designed the logo in ms paint :-( . I will replace it. I have an idea.

3. Sorry for your bad experience. My home page design inspiration came from http://www.bananarepublic.com/ and www.Guess.com . Could you please visit www.Indianroots.com and let me know if you find their homepage more messy than my site? Another reason behind my homepage design was - I want to tell the customer what all we have or what all they can find here on the site. Not defending myself. Just trying to make a decision.

4. The site was designed to be responsive but it is broken now. I got it fixed in test. I just need to apply the update in prod.

5. Great input here.

6. Yes, you are right. I am using nopCommerce 2.80. It is very slow out of box. I have spent countless hours making it as fast as I can but still there is lot of work to do which can make the website more faster. I got the page load time under 2 seconds. I need to test it until peak load times. I will try to simplify the design. I am a .net architect so I was able to use my experience to make the site fast, refactor and all the other good stuff that an engineer can think. It comes naturally you know. I think i have not spend that much time selling the site and that frustrates me. If I look back and see what all i been doing with site - it is mostly development stuff which is not good as I am supposed to work equally as a salesman. On the other side, I think people visit\buy only if the site is fast enough so I am kinda torn in the middle here. I am afraid if I started with another design then it may take my more time as an developer and more delay in staying longer in salesman mode.

7. Will do. I even reached out to retailer like zappos, amazon among others to see if they can host my collection but they never responded back

No worries. There is lot of great insight in your feedback.

I got my product detail page totally redesigned from what it was out of box - http://www.janjuaclothing.com/black-golden-anarkali-suit

What type of feel are you getting when you are visiting this page? Do you feel like buying or it is still scaring you? Please let me know.

Thanks.

[sandGorgon]

@mandeep - while the poster above you gave product tips with good intentions (and all his ideas are valid btw), I dont think that is the issue with your site. I'm fairly familiar with Indian women segments and buying behavior in general. I frankly think you are way, way overpriced - especially since the clothes you are selling falls under the couture segment in the US (in India, it is standard street dressing). The big, big difference between you and IndianRoots is the designers - IndianRoots is selling Neeta Lulla and Rajesh Pratap Singh, while yours are unknown designers. This would work in India where these dresses are street wear, but not in USA where these would be termed as "occasion wear".

Which brings me to your overall sales strategy and a segue into the topic of this HN post - you ought to be selling on various forums, ebay and amazon first. And I dont think you have tried effectively to sell on these platforms because you dont need to write to anyone - these are all effective self serve (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html). Again Zappos is a bad example of that claim because their niche is different (footwear).

Do NOT get into self-hosting and using magento, etc at this point. I would recommend to first sell on ebay, cut your teeth, get some experience. Then signup with Shopify (I'm sure someone here can hook you up with a discount code or something). Signup for a 200$ worth of free Adwords and test the waters for paid marketing. Post on Indian forums (especially expat Indian women - like www.indusladies.com/forums/). See if you get your products chewed out.

It's far too early in the game to be discussing load time of nopCommerce. And please, please spend 5$ on Fiverr.com to get your logo executed better (even if you want to stick with your current Armani-esque design)

[mandeepj]

I contacted few famous designers also. I thought that may help me in building customer base. They first wanted to know who are the other designers with whom I am working. I am not giving up this idea - I will pursue them again later on.

Amazon.in asked i must have models wearing my dresses. I think as lot of people are recommending this approach so I should have this going now.

I am not sure if people buy clothes from ebay. Zappos also have lot of clothing collection. I am not sure how much it contributes towards their total sales.

I tried shopify also as they will take care of scalability part also but the problem is it is not flexible. I can only do what their platforms allows.

I am starting on logo tonight. Thanks for forums link. I will check it out.

Best.

[KVFinn]

>I am not sure if people buy clothes from ebay.

They definitely do. I think selling on ebay is a good testing ground for you to experiment with different ways to present things.

[mandeepj]

Thank you. I will give it a shot

[KVFinn]

Just saw this.

One thing I have seen people do is sell items on ebay that they also sell from their store, but the ebay price is either fixed at somewhat lower than the store price, or is an auction so it will likely end up lower. The store is linked from the ebay item description. This makes the the ebay item seem like a special deal. It can also bring visitors to your store of course.