Eat With Your Eyes

There's a site redesign in the works, in part because I think the site is too cold, and more practically because it turns out that blue is an appetite suppressant. I didn't design the site, and it's better than most of our competitors, but when I think about sales, I see a lot that should be done.

There's a lot of dead real estate on top of the home page, including those animated pictures beneath the logo. Did you know that clicking on them will take you to category pages? Does that make you any more likely to click on them? I didn't think so.

I'm thinking of hiring Designbus to handle the redesign. I've worked with them before and they're very good. I don't plan to throw Flash all over the site, but I do wonder if there is an effective way to use it.

I can't sell taste online or have that fresh bread smell waft out of your monitor like it would if you walked into a neighborhood bakery. Those are important motivating factors in food sales. I'm glad we've got reviews for our products, but I'd like to see a lot more.

That puts a big sales burden on our product images. We all eat with our eyes, but in the online world it can be hard to tell what it is we're looking at.

I think the biggest thing missing is scale. Most regular bakery customers can't tell whether a cake is 8 inches or 10 inches, they just know that one is bigger than the other. If I told you that our English Muffins are huge, you'd probably think of the double-size Thomases in your grocer's baked goods aisle, even though I want you to think hamburger bun.

If anyone's got any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. I'm leaning toward putting something in the pictures that would show some sense of scale.

That--and Mother's Day--will keep me busy this weekend. Don't forget to send Mom a card.