I thought your site was visually stunning. Totally different from the norm - which means that it should stick in people's mind. I loved the simple to understand navigation via the bar at the bottom, and also the quirky idea of hiding links to other pages in the illustration too. This, together with the bright picture gave it a childlike quality, which is exactly right for your product/market.

Too often, the temptation is to overdo animation. Some websites can be a little like those dreadful PowerPoint presentations - you know the ones where it seems the presenter has just learnt how to add sound or graphics, and thinks that the more he/she includes, the more impressed we'll be. I felt you'd got your animation about right - simple and visually appealing, but not distracting. I would add though that I'm browsing the site using broadband; you may want to check how quickly your pages load with a normal dial up. I only mention this because some of the shop pages did seem to take a long time to load, even on broadband – but more about that in a moment.

I liked the info page. However, I'm very internet literate - I seem to spend most of my life on the internet, and I wonder if it will be obvious to everyone that the questions are links to the answers? A simple explanatory note might be beneficial.

Now, to my areas of concern - where I'm probably going to echo comments made by others. I was a little disappointed with the limited range available, and also found it difficult to identify on occasions whether I was looking at a photograph or an illustration of the goods on offer. This is perhaps where the childlike qualities of the site come a little undone. Thinking about what others have said about the images not being visually appealing enough to make visitors want to buy – I wonder if the problem here is a lack of bodies? It might be that including pictures of your clothes actually being worn by cute babies would lead to a better connection with the customer. Always remember, with the internet customers are already missing out on the ability to touch and feel (and even smell) the product. You only have one of the senses to appeal to (unless you include sound in your website – interesting idea – perhaps you could include the sound of happy children?) Anyway, the point is you need to make your product as visually appealing and ‘three dimensional’ as possible. The pictures of the clothes are very flat.

My other major concern with the shop was the load times for certain pages. I compared the load times to our own website (www.trainerslibrary.com) and there was a significant difference. What made the problem worse, (perhaps) is that when I clicked on some of the links, I couldn’t even see signs that the page was loading (i.e., the waving flag in the top right hand corner of Internet Browser). This led me to wonder if the site had ‘crashed’. Be aware, we internet shoppers are very impatient – if the page doesn’t load ‘just like that’ we’ll probably click the ‘back’ button and head straight back to Google.
One final thought – why are you encouraging visitors to leave your site by having a links page? It could be that you have a reciprocal arrangement with the sites you are promoting, or some other commercial interest in these other sites, in which case fine (probably). If not though, remember, you’ve worked hard to get someone to visit your site – you want to keep them here as long as possible and not encourage them to pop off elsewhere!

Hope this helps.

Rod Webb
Glasstap Limited
www.glasstap.com
www.trainerslibrary.com