Changed my homepage to show only 5 products

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aab1

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Twice in the last week or so I heard about a test where they offered 6 jam flavors and then 24 flavors and they sold a lot more when people had just 6 choices.

Since my website used to show all products on the homepage I decided to change it so that the homepage shows only 5 featured products and added a "Show All" link for those that want the complete list, or they can use the filtering and search features on the left side to find products like before.

Do you think it's better this way?

I also updated it so that when a search finds no matches, instead of just saying "No matches found" and showing no products, it says "No matches found. You may be interested in these featured products:" and shows the top 5 featured products.

Thanks
 
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yes, i think it is much better this way. not as busy as before, and it's a good update with the search feature.
 
I've read that study too. It will be interesting to see the results of the change to your web site.

I have a comment, if you don't mind. I don't think your photos show your soap to it's best advantage. Have you tried natural lighting, and a tighter shot with less background? If you don't have space outside where you can shoot, maybe you have a window that gets a lot of sun, and you could set your soaps up in front of it? I don't necessarily mean direct sunlight, just good, indirect natural lighting. I think it would make a world of difference. As someone who shops on line a lot, pictures have a huge impact on my decision to buy or not. Since shoppers can't actually hold the product in their hand and examine it, when they buy on line, a really good close up is the next best thing.

I'm sure your soap is wonderful, but your pictures do nothing to convince me of that. With a few changes, your photos could have me clicking that "add to cart" button! Good luck!
 
My first thought was the same as E F G, I wouldn't put the small bars only on the front page. As a consumer that is familiar with salt bars 1.8 oz is somewhat of a disappointment, do you have any small bars grouped as a set? I would be more likely to purchase that, just to make the shipping worthwhile. I really like your selection of larger bars and they look great, I'm really loving the first one.
 
While I am no photo expert, I take my shots in natural light when possible, or just using a flash to fill in. I also use less of an angle, looking more level with the soap than down on to it - this means that I can use a smaller aperture (lower f number) result is that the area in front of and behind the soap is not in focus - while I am unlikely to use these exact shots for marketing, it gives you an idea of how the background can become less intrusive:

006-pumpkin-hp-1-lr.jpg
 
I hadn't had my coffee yet when I posted, sorry Efficacious Gentleman can't even get initials right early in the morning. Also aab1 hope you don't think my comment was too critical, I am a cheap shopper, and might be more likely to purchase a small sample of that size along with my regular bar purchase, but not a small size alone.
 
While I am no photo expert, I take my shots in natural light when possible, or just using a flash to fill in. I also use less of an angle, looking more level with the soap than down on to it - this means that I can use a smaller aperture (lower f number) result is that the area in front of and behind the soap is not in focus - while I am unlikely to use these exact shots for marketing, it gives you an idea of how the background can become less intrusive:

006-pumpkin-hp-1-lr.jpg

Now THAT'S what I mean! Nice job, EG. A picture really is worth a thousand words. You may have the best soap on the internet, but if the pics are only ho hum, they won't come across as being fabulous. There are zillions of sites out there selling soap, yours needs to stand out in order to compete. Great pics can help you do that.
 
I choose those products for now because I happen to be very low on stock compared to usual. The only flower soaps I have left have never sold (though the cedar soap in small bar was in my top 3 sellers until I ran out, more are curing in all 3 shapes) and the large bars are new and I haven't sold any yet. Another reason I put just small ones for now and that I make such small bars is that they cost infinitely less to ship because with Canada Post, anything 20mm or less in thickness ships for a fraction of the price, even if the weight is the same. This means I can ship 8 small bars (400g) for a fraction of the cost of shipping 1 large bar or flower soap, so it's been by very far my most popular shape since I introduced it by allowing customers to save a fortune on shipping while getting as many grams of soaps as with larger soaps that cost much more to ship.

I have several batches of soaps curing (olive oil, orange salt soap, cedar pumice salt soaps, all in the 3 shapes) and will be adding more variety and also probably one each of my large bar and flower in the featured products once I have photos of them.

Speaking of photos, I also have never been happy with my soap photos and I keep trying different backgrounds, camera settings, and even made a light box for the current photos on the website. It's strange because for "normal" photos (people, scenery, etc.) people always say I take really good photos, but for product photos I just can't get anything that looks good. I had tried natural lighting but the problem with that is that I always have to wait for a sunny day otherwise different photos have different lighting and I prefer to take photos when I'm ready to take photos, not when the weather is, which is why I made the light box. The reason the small soap photos show a lot of background is because it shows the difference in size between the 3 shapes I sell, at first I did zoom more into the small ones, but then they look as big as the big ones for which I need to zoom out and I thought that was misleading. Isn't it better to use the same zoom/distance for all shapes so that the difference in size can be seen in the photos?

Does anyone have tips for taking good photos using the light box I built? I will try taking them from a lower angle.

OliveOil: What would be the benefit of selling the small bars as a set rather than let the buyers make their own set by adding the different ones they want to the cart? I appreciate the comments on the photos and agree they are far from good. About buying a small one and a large one, that prevents the benefit I explained above that ordering only small ones allows the order to ship for a fraction of the cost, as soon as you add anything other than just small bars, the shipping can almost quadruple depending on the destination and weight.
 
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I'd like to see the photo's cropped, more straightforward, and less lighting.. if your not familiar maybe just use something free like paint to work with the brightness and such. :)
 
I'd like to see the photo's cropped, more straightforward, and less lighting.. if your not familiar maybe just use something free like paint to work with the brightness and such. :)

Like I explained in my reply I just posted, if I crop the photos (or simply zoom in more) on the small ones then they look as big as the large ones which I think is misleading because you can't tell the small and large ones apart from the photos if I zoom into the small ones which makes them look like the large ones. Should I still do it?
 
Is this fairly true to the real color? It was kind of a guess based on the original and the brightness likely leading to less hue and saturation.

I personally like to line my crops on the bottom and not perfectly center, but that's just me.

IMG_0549.jpg


IMG_0549a.jpg
 
I would and just put the weights so there is no misunderstanding. Are they that much of a difference in size?
Just keep all the photos pretty standard in cropping and you should be good. kwim?

Hand soap tiny ones you can maybe change up a bit if it's big difference.
 
I'm not sure that it's really obvious about the sizes of the bars in your pictures. People may think that the smaller bars are just photographed from farther away, making them look smaller. I think listing weights may be a better way to go.

You say you use a light box to take the pics. You know, I bought a light box years ago, and I was never able to get pics from it that I was satisfied with. Never. I think the light in yours looks flat. Just flat. I know how busy we get and sometimes it's just easier to take pics when we have time to do it, but if I were you, the next sunny day, I'd set up my soaps next to a window and try some close up shots to see how they compared. Really good pics can sell your soap.
 
When i take pictures, I have a mix of the two. I have a "light box" that uses indirect sunlight. Im not at home at the moment, but I'll post a picture as soon as I get back.

Basically what I did was take some old canvas boards (for painting) and taped them together, two for walls and one for the bottom. One wall is directly behind the item and the other is to the left because the window that i use is to the right. This way, the light coming through the window is reflected by the white backing of the canvas boards and illuminates the items.
 
When i take pictures, I have a mix of the two. I have a "light box" that uses indirect sunlight. Im not at home at the moment, but I'll post a picture as soon as I get back.

Basically what I did was take some old canvas boards (for painting) and taped them together, two for walls and one for the bottom. One wall is directly behind the item and the other is to the left because the window that i use is to the right. This way, the light coming through the window is reflected by the white backing of the canvas boards and illuminates the items.

If that's how you took your Etsy pics, it's working well for you, because those pics are very nice!
 
When i take pictures, I have a mix of the two. I have a "light box" that uses indirect sunlight. Im not at home at the moment, but I'll post a picture as soon as I get back.

Basically what I did was take some old canvas boards (for painting) and taped them together, two for walls and one for the bottom. One wall is directly behind the item and the other is to the left because the window that i use is to the right. This way, the light coming through the window is reflected by the white backing of the canvas boards and illuminates the items.

I also checked your Etsy photos and love the pure white background, is it "faked" with photoshop or does the background actually come out a pure white like that with no modifications to the photo? I'd love my background to be white like that.
 
I get a pretty pure white just by doing that , but then I use PicMonkey to enhance the picture colors and FotoFuze to make it really white. I'm actually thinking of leaving out the FotoFuze part because I think I actually prefer the depth the picture has without it.

The first picture is without FotoFuze for comparison and the second is my "light box."

And thank y'all for the compliments on my pictures! I take them all with my cell phone so I'm glad y'all like them.

20140612_102656(1).jpg


20140617_121556.jpg
 
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