Note to Suppliers please work on your websites

[Smoking joe]

Not sure if this Is the place for it but.. There are too many bad looking suppliers websites out here.
Which is a shame because of the great service and products they offer. I'm not here to bash anyone
but a lot of site look like a 8 year old drawing and some sites are weird to navigate or text is illegible.

I for one when I come across a website like this I leave faster then I got there, the only reason I have shopped at some e cig website was because of what I read about them on the ECF. If not I would have
been worry about placing an order on such poorly made sites.

Hope you guys don't get offened and well see where I'm coming from.

All the best.
-Joe

 

[WillieB69]

I agree. Some of the sites are just horrid. Get a template or hire somebody to lay your site out for you! You don't need a lot of fancy flash stuff either. Just a clean, usable website.

 

[FreakyStylie]

I'll throw in my two cents about this also. I've designed a lot of web pages for my own stuff, and I can verify that the look of the site actually determined the amount of traffic. Sure, somebody might find my site from a search, but if the site wasn't attractive, I would only get about 10% of the traffic going from my homepage to a content page.

A smoker looking for "electronic cigarettes" may get a hundred results, click on a couple and think "Oh, these are sold by non-professionals wanting to make a few dollars." They will go back to the results and pick somebody else, or be dissuaded from trying vaping.

Take Blu and Green Smoke as two examples of poorer quality, higher cost e cig options. Their sites are both very different, but they are, also, both very clean and professional looking. Thousands of people get their first e cig experience from these types of places, and are willing to pay $150 for a kit that won't perform well, and $50 for 5ml worth of juice in their pre-filled carts. Sure, they've got tons of advertisement dollars pumping traffic their way, but people stay because the sites look professional and "safe". Even the best of companies can have poor site designs. Look at Yale's School of Art. Yale University School of Art: Home It's laughable at the least, I mean, this is Yale!

I hate the thought of people missing out on the opportunity to have an excellent vaping experience due to design. Of the suppliers I have tried, there is definitely no lack of quality in their products. I think it just shows that they are focusing on giving us quality, and the lowest prices are achieved by having low overhead. The cost to pay a web designer will increase the overhead.

There are two things we can do to help more people visit the great suppliers that we know and love. First, google their website whenever you visit them. I know we all have them bookmarked, but searching for them will help boost their page rank and move them into a more visible slot. And second, put their links on your blogs and other web locations. The more links to a site also helps boost them to a better visibility.

 

[Automaton]

FreakyStylie - Wow, that's the worst site I've seen since the 90's! Take heart e-cig vendors, none of you are quite THAT bad.

But as per the OP, yeah, I agree. Thing is, most of the best suppliers are small operations, and thus have terrible websites (not as bad as that Yale site, though!). But they really need to get on this stuff. The most common thing I see in the Services for Suppliers forum is graphic designers, who must be screaming to themselves visiting these sites. Surely they can foot a few extra bucks to make their website look at least decent.

As others said, it doesn't have to be fancy. Just nice, clean, and uniform.

It's just that in most other industries, the best-looking website means the most trustworthy company. In the e-cig world, it's the reverse. And they can't expect people, especially new people, to know that.

Every website I've ordered from has been fantastic. I've never had a bad experience, because all the vendors I use, I picked because of recommendations on ECF. But they all have bad websites. If I hadn't known about ECF, I wouldn't have trusted them enough to place an order. I might have gone with something like Green Smoke instead.

 

[Smoking joe]

That one of my points about it but also Is reading the text and finding what you are looking for. I order for some sites and most were good with products and juice but there are lots of places were you can run a website for very cheap like $100 a yr and have
shop carts large images and presets layout were you just have to swap info and photos.

I don't now much on website building but I have one up that uses flash works great and its free if you pay a fee you get all you need to run a business. And it don't have to be flash works as html as well.

Don't have time to do it or don't know. find a 19yr old student pay him something or whatever and have it done In a week or weekend. Really not hard anymore.

 

[Smoking joe]

OMG, LOL that link to yale can't be right man!

 

[spirits3250]

The problem I have with some of the websites, being a old codger, is the dark colored printing on black background. If it's too hard to distinguish the writing, I go elsewhere.

 

[lasttango]

No busting on Yalies

 

[markfm]

Dark on black can also be invisible on a smartphone, chasing away sales.

 

[FreakyStylie]

The problem I have with some of the websites, being a old codger, is the dark colored printing on black background. If it's too hard to distinguish the writing, I go elsewhere.

I have a hard time with light text on black backgrounds too. There have been studies as to what print scheme is the best, and the results come down to how our eyes store the information. Basically, light colors stay in our eyes longer than dark colors. (If you've ever looked at those "stare at this for 30 seconds, then look at a blank wall" pictures, it's because the image remains etched in our eyes.) Higher priced, quality books usually have an off-white page with dark text. This gives great contrast, but keeps it soft enough that the words flow while we read.

Dark sites look neat, but I can't read them for too long, my eyes just geek out.

After reading MistressNomad's post, I realized that I didn't give proper credit in my first post. Will edit it in.

 

[champions]

The low quality sites don't bother me as much as the typo's. That costs no money to fix, just a quick proof read. It's free.

And as far as the quality of a site goes, it only takes a few hours to learn something basic like HTML and maybe a little bit longer to be able to do something in PHP. Some of the newer stuff may be a bit harder, but really a weekend is all you need. They have books designed to teach this in 24 hours. And they work.

 

[pkj]

Thank you for trying to bring this to the attention of our suppliers. I agree 100% that many of the websites are just horrible. Dark background is the worst for me to deal with. One of my favorite suppliers has a website that is horrible for me to read. Black / red / gray.

On another note. I looked at the Yale page. There is hope for this page. I saw the following posted on the home page:

TODAY Sunday, 11/14/10, 6:00 pm
Tobias Frere-Jones, Faculty in Graphic Design will offer a lecture.
School of Art, 1156 Chapel Street, Graphic Design Atrium.
All are welcome to attend.

Now, if we can just get the designer of this website over to that lecture by Tobias, everything should be just fine.

Paula

PS - What IS that bubbling thing on that page?

 

[AngusATAT]

While good info, this is not a review, and therefore does not belong in this forum.

Thread closed