Please provide feedback on testing site for muse

[sarahbellum]

This is my first post. So please be gentle ;)

I have my first muse idea and would like to test it's viability through a website I quickly put together.

My market is mostly women who would like to lose weight without dramatically changing their diet. There a lot of research around how changing portion size is critical, and the best way to eat smaller portions is to fool your mind into thinking you’re eating more by serving food on smaller plates. So basically I'd like to sell sensible portion dinner ware and glass ware.

The plate designs on the website are bogus (but not far from the general concept of what I'm looking for). I'm just trying to get the idea across before I go through too much work getting these designed/manufactured/and set up in a fulfillment center. I would continue to only sell these online, or possibly Infomercial.

I'd love your feedback on the test site.
http://www.9inchplates.com.

Also, I'm planning to run a Google Adwords campaign in the next couple of days. Is there any data on the best day to start this (i.e. Wednesday - Sunday instead of Monday - Friday)?

Thanks in advance!

[Caesar_X]

My logical mind says that this is ridiculous.

But since when do people use logic to base their purchasing on? :)

Seriously...the website itself looks really nice. I like the choice of colors and the way you softly break up with screen with color.

I think the second page looks better than the first page for two reasons. Here are some quick thoughts:

1. The second page has some nice examples of patterned plates. The first page only has one plain white plate that is pretty boring.

2. The plates, cups and such in the upper right corner of page don't read very well since they aren't very contrasty. Thus they end up looking like a mess of lines and don't guide the eye to anything useful.

3. On the first page, my eye was drawn immediately to the "9" with the circle around it. But it doesn't link to anywhere? Think about making that bigger. And at the least, have it link to a sell page somewhere.

4. What about a link on that plain white plate that says "pick your pattern" or something similar?

Nice job! Can't wait to see how the testing goes!

[Vince]

Is there any market research that shows you that people are already buying products like this for weight control? If there is, I think you have a winner!

The site looks good, loads fast and is easy to navigate.

As for PPC, weekends in the summer are the slowest time for Internet traffic. Everybody's at the beach, pigging out! :p

[sarahbellum]

Thanks Caesar_X and Vince for checking out the site and providing your comments.

I updated the home page to make it more interesting by pulling in the other plate designs. Also removed the white set in the corner and made the 9 link to the shopping page.

There is one other plate like this on the market that seems to be selling well. It is more medicinal (for people with diabetes) and very ugly IMO, so it is a slightly different market.

I'm hoping that when Oprah's doctor (Dr. OZ) tells people to eat on 9" plates, there are going to be a lot of followers. Luckily I read the 4HWW (only 4 times :)) so I don't have to hope and can actually test it through an Adwords campaign.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Thanks.

[froldt]

I've actually heard of the "use smaller plates to eat less" idea. I didn't realize there were so few places to get smaller sets, though.

I'm not a web page guy, but it looks good to me. My suggestion would be to change the "Shop" button on the first page to "Pick Your Pattern" (taken from Caesar_X's advice). If you lead them to the product first, have them connect with it as they make their decisions, then ask them to buy (or shop) I think you will have a greater conversion rate. If you ask them to shop, I think that some might not be willing to take the next step of looking further.

[webgal]

It's not at all ridiculous. All of the weight loss centers preach that you eat with a salad plate. But I have to say that a salad plate is TOO small. I think it's a great idea. If you could market through weight watchers or some group, that would be awesome. It would require persistence, but you could start with the local chapter with the idea that they'd be the only program with that special feature.

[Caesar_X]

Nice work. Already looking much better!

Two more comments:

1. I would default the quantity of the classic plate to '1' on the second page. I think that gives a little subliminal feeling that they are going to get something and nudges the user towards a buying decision. Plus it creates a decision tree in the mind of the user. "Oh, the Classic. Did I want that one or is the Sunburst nicer?" When the quantities are all zero, you don't get that internal thought process.

2. On the 'Sorry for the inconvenience...' page, I would recommend eliminating the second sentence ('We expect to...') and rewriting the third sentence to say: 'Please complete the form below and we will email you when these items are available.' If you give them a time frame than you make them wonder if they will want the product at that future date and they may decide not to give their email address. Better to get them when they are excited.

You need to get the word out about these plates. Blog articles, mini-interviews on dieting sites, newspapers pieces, etc. You will have crazy competition from others since this isn't a patentable product. But if you can position yourself as the "best source" and become an expert on them, you could make a lot of money!

[sarahbellum]

Excellent comments. Thanks everyone.

I'm at work so I can't update the site based upon the comments by froldt and Caesar_X, but will tonight. They will definitely tighten it up.

Great idea webgal, partnering with Weight Watchers or hiring a celebrity sponsor would help with the branding. I definitely have to get set up as THE source for smaller dinner ware. And I completely forgot about becoming an expert! That's something I could easily do in 6 weeks. Thanks for the tip Caesar_X.

Great! I'm getting more excited about this every day!

[Marcie]

Hey - have you seen this? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/157687320X/homescnewzealan?ref=nosim - you might want to contact the author and see if you can advertise on his website, if he has one.

[Caesar_X]

How is the testing of this website going? I think it's a cool idea and how you are still working on it.

[Susanna]

I didn't read everyone's comment, so forgive me if I'm repeating anything, but I opened this thread, saw that you needed feedback, and clicked on your link. I did not read your description of the site or concept or anything first. I knew in a split second - literally - what you were selling and why, plus I could see the value immediately.

I think you should definitely target health and wellness professionals to start. I would recommend finding a women's business networking group in your area - if you need a recommendation, PM me and I'll be happy to share mine - so you can build some solid supporters.

I could actually see this going into mega-stores at some point as the culture shifts away from excess....Good Luck!!

[tbone2345]

cool idea

A couple of things re the website really stand out to me from seo perspective

-fix the first page ASAP and make the text actual text not an image, you'll never get picked up in search engines with the current page, there's nothing to index! Anywhere else you're embedding text inside images, change that too

-change the page title meta tag, add 1 or 2 contextual sentences that contain the top few keywords people that would be looking for your product/site would be using to search (basically the same as what you'd do with googe adwords but in a sentence). So something like "Easily lose fat, tone up without changing your diet @ nineinchplates.com" or something similar

-change the page description meta tag similar to the page title but this time have a paragraph that describes what the site is about with your key search tmers

-get yourself setup with google webmaster tools if you havent already (www.google.com/webmasters)

-look into getting the site setup with quantcast analytics, www.quantcast.com - this is another analytics package like google analytics but instead of doing web page stats, it focuses on visitor demographics, could be very handy in helping you find/refine your target markets

-add an about us page, many people buying online want to know at least something about you to determine that they can trust you, an about us page solves this problem

/my 2 cents of advice!

[TinaD]

Great idea...and I like the clean quality of the website.

Looking forward to hearing how it is going!

[Caesar_X]

Is the pricing information on your page new? I didn't remember seeing it before.

You might want to change the wording there so it isn't so confusing. I looked at it and instantly thought "60 bucks for four plates? That's pretty pricey!" since it says "$59.95/Set of 4"

And then below that it says "Each Set includes..." and I was even more confused. "So now I'm getting 64 pieces for 60 bucks? I don't understand."

You could make this a lot clearly to someone (like me) who is scanning the page quickly by saying exactly how many pieces you are getting right next to the $59.95 price point. Then you can give a breakdown below that.

Or alternatively, you could tell the visitor all the great things they will be getting, and then give them the price after that.

Hope this helps,
Caesar_X