Manufacturer, Retailer, Survey and Consumer Feedback - sports drink website feedback

I have been developing a drink mix product for months now and just introduced it.

Please look at my new website (http://www.connellysportscience.com) and provide feedback such as: your initial peceptions about the product, the company and the website. What do you think about the two flavors? Do you have any suggestions?

I am asking (begging) for feedback, not a purchase!

Thank you,
Dale


PS: I am looking at my advertisement options. BF is looking the best! Their staff is VERY professional.

No help?

It's a nice clean site, no clutter, and easy to navigate. I like it, actually.

Hey - nice site, good luck with your product!

Here's some feedback. Some of this is pretty picky; I used to throw rocks at marketing copy for a living, so take it with a grain of salt...

- I never buy from new, small retailers on the web unless I can find a physical address for the business. If you're not willing to say who/where you are, I won't buy from you (if it's on your site, I didn't find it - I looked).

- The home page tells me how cheap your product is. I would rather see the product benefits first, not how inexpensive it is. (though I appreciate your efforts to cut prices). I think as a new company you should talk benefits first, cost second. Unless you whole marketing pitch is "same as the other guys, only cheaper."

- On the product page I find you are trying hard to say what your product *isn't*, not what it *is*. You lead with 3 sentences saying what it's not:

CLEANTM endurance drink is for people who do not like non-sense sports nutrition. If you like FD&C BLUE 1, unproven amino acids, and high levels of magnesium in your drink, look somewhere else. CLEANTM is based on widely accepted studies, not voodoo science from a marketing department.

Is there a way instead what it is? The purest? The simplest? The most basic? The most science-based?

- I don't understand why you have so much blank space at the top of the page - a big gray box and then a big brown box?

- Would love to see a more enticing picture of the product - I see picture of cyclists on the home page, kind of a blurry picture of a plastic bag of product on the product page. Get a good photog to give you some "beauty" shots of the drink as mixed, maybe in a water bottle, or a nice picture of the package.


- I am pretty sure that the name of the rotary engine is capitalized (it's a proper noun). How funny - Bikeforums won't let me type ****el.

- I find this kind of wording and abbreviations confusing, especially because these are metric weights but the home page talks about cost per gallon. Be consistent - are you in metric or Imperial? (by the way, how much is a 250 ml bottle - is that a normal water bottle? I shouldn't have to look it up).

You wrote:
"This is a pack of 4qty 500g pouches. 2000g produces 57qty 250ml bottles."

Instead write:

"This is a pack of four (4) 500 gram pouches, a total of 2 kilograms. Makes 57 250 milliliter bottles."



Just being picky...

Thanks everyone. This is exactly the feedback I am looking for.

I agree with Bengeboy's assessment. Some simple rephrasing could help a lot. For example, here's your blurb on CLEANTM:

CLEANTM endurance drink is for people who do not like non-sense sports nutrition. If you like FD&C BLUE 1, unproven amino acids, and high levels of magnesium in your drink, look somewhere else. CLEANTM is based on widely accepted studies, not voodoo science from a marketing department. Not only is it 100% functional, it surprisingly tastes good. CLEANTM has a taste that is smooth-sweet rather than candy-like due to its low fructose content. Add in the slightly salty taste of the electrolytes and you can imagine what it is like. Buy it for as low as $12.79 shipped.

How does this sound instead:

"CLEANTM is no nonsense sports nutrition. It's 100% functional (not the best word, but I'm parphrasing you here) and has a surprisingly good, smooth-sweet taste with just a slight hint of salt from the electrolytes. It's not candy-sweet like drinks that use fructose as the sweetener. There's also no FD&C Blue 1, unproven amino acids or other unnecessary additives."

See? It would be pretty easy to clean up the copy and make it sound more positive and enticing.

I also agree with "No Physical Address AND Phone Number, No Buy". There are too many scams out there to trust my money to some random internet-only shop.

Thanks Roadie Gal.

I will make some major changes within the next week. I see now that the writing is too negative. I need to improve on describing the positive attributes of the product. I think I have been a bit foolish in how I wrote things.

Thanks again for everyone's input.

There really is no excuse for poor web design or bad copy. As someone who looks at tons of websites all day, and reviews an average 60-100 products per month, I'm not afraid to throw my opinion around, especially if it means helping a company on their path to success.

First, either learn a bit more about web design, or find someone who can make you a more pleasant site. If your design knowledge is limited, don't just take someone's word when they say they can design a site for you. You don't need Flash or anything fancy, just a more inviting interface for prospective customers. When I see grey and brown, I don't think "sports nutritionals". Have a look at how your competitor's sites are laid out. They spent a lot on their design, so take advantage of that. No need to copy them, but it will give you an idea of what works.

If you're not 100% sure of your writing abilities, farm that out to someone else. You've gotten plenty of free advice here, and I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding someone with a flair for writing good copy. Again, you can probably find someone to do that for free, and it will pay big dividends.

Check out OS Commerce and Merchantinc for ways to make your storefront more professional, and easy to use. While Paypal is handy, just about anyone who has ever bought something on eBay is pretty wary of it at this point. A proper merchant account is not necessarily expensive, and it gives prospective clients a boost in condfidence when they hand over their credit card info.

Go read up on meta tags, SEO, and viral marketing. Bikeforums.net is a great way to reach a lot of people, but for a new company, consider how much of your product you'll need to sell each month just to cover the cost of your ad. Facebook and Youtube cost nothing, and with a little creativity, can generate some interest. And there are plenty of bloggers out there (not hacks like myself) that will gladly throw up a link and a few kind words in exchange for a sample or two.

Finally, don't forget to throw a link to your site into your sig. That's free, and invites conversation from interested cyclists.

Curious what happened to all this?
The site is non-functional now.

I actually liked the sports drink haha.

Not off to a good start there.