What's with all the poorly designed air related websites?

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Broken_WV_Guy

Broken_WV_Guy

Member
Dec 11, 2019
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West Virginia, United States
I hope I'm not breaking any forum rules with this post. If so then please just delete this post and accept my full apology.

I'm recently disabled and blessed to be able to earn a living from home. I've done UX development on Wordpress websites for a very long time and personally own hundreds of websites that generate enough passive income to feed my family.

I shudder when I visit a lot of air gun related sites, even those for major manufactures, because I fully understand how much a poorly designed website will affect conversion rates(how often visitors become customers). Traffic is hard to come by and if you are getting a lot of visitors, but not selling a lot of product, it's 100% due to the impression and useability from the design of your website.

I mostly work in the insurance industry where converting visitors into customers is critical for success. While I specialize in UX and can simply glance at a website and know if it is losing money or not, most website developers would be able to build you a Wordpress website using an existing theme that would greatly increase your bottom line. If you only knew how much revenue was being lost you would have updated your site ages ago.

Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. I know most website owners don't have the time or money to spend on learning all the finer points like I do, but you would generate so many more sales by simply jumping on Google and finding a local developer to work with. I highly recommend using Wordpress for too many reasons to list here as well as an offsite payment processor like paypal for liability reasons.

Feel free to PM me if you have any specific questions as I never mind giving some free advice.
 
Any system can be hacked but with the right setup, it can be quickly fixed. The only time I've ever had a WP site hacked was from using shared hosting. That was just once over many years and thousands of websites. Dedicated cloud servers have solved that problem for me tho. If all you see is the bad all day long then I understand how you could have a negative view.

From my experience, static content sites are far more likely to get hacked by simple brute force attacks. These are the types of attacks that anyone in a 3rd world country with a laptop can do. WP is a bit more complicated to hack and when one vulnerability is detected on someone else's WP site, there is always a quick update to secure the millions of other WP sites. Also, small business owners simply can't afford to pay the endless developer fees for a static type of site.

UX goes beyond "looking pretty". It's endless A vs B testing until you see what works the best. If your site would do 3-10x the business using WP vs HTML, it just doesn't make any sense not to anymore. Sales will always help a business more than about anything else.
 
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WCAG 2.1 AA all the way baby ;-) I'll second everything said above. 

FWIW, I recently looked into using a fairly popular UX research platform and figured I would have a rough idea of the cost. Wow, I was way off. Doing proper UX / UI testing is not cheap! Anyone building a site that does not take accessibility in mind is totally rolling the dice regarding legal action as well. It it really no different than making buildings and physical structures accessible. It is WAY easier to build accessibility into the blueprint than to retrofit an existing structure!


 
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LOL, I would never claim to know more than a security guy on security. You just haven't seen the numbers I have. The cost of doing what you think is the best solution is magnitudes more expensive than what I use every day. Cloud computing has changed how fast you can recover from a one in a million event.

Remember, I'm talking about small to medium cap businesses not mega corporations. There's just no need for people to have such a terrible website. Just trying to help them figure it out. Isn't that what we are all trying to do?
 
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The first step is a strong foundation,without it things above it can collapse.It is worth the effort and money to have someone that is verified and experienced to build your business website...

My goodness you are so right,too many "small" shops or air gun related business have piss poor websites.....I think many are going by "word of the mouth" because they really do Not want too much business because they can not handled.it...and that is a reason for the poor website....like a hobby turned to small business.....of course you are talking about a larger entity...


 
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Its all of the cookie cutter websites available that I believe causes most of the problem, those that do not know any better think that WYSWYG means once they plug in the information the ecommerce site does the rest for them. 

That and time. I have a business partner who thinks it shouldn't take more than a day to set up a website 😡 I cannot get it through his thick skull its not like Microsoft word and that what people see on the front end is only a quarter or less of the whole package 

That being said Budget is a big one also, There is very little markup on Sporting goods in general, even less in Air Rifles, I will not mention names but Many of the Distributors also own their own Retail Store that directly competes with the other stores and is always cutting prices and violating their own Map Pricing. Time is money and when profit margins are so low there is not any left over to spend on a website 
 
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Go shopping for a scope and you will see piss poor websites first hand. What a mess. Lack of info/ hard to find info is rampant. 

Discovery is one of the worst!! Looks like a kid ‘tried’ to fill in the blanks with a ‘build your own’ website program

Not that I could do any better, but Dayum!!!
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I just when through this exact statement. 🤦🏻‍♂️
Yes there are a lot of poorly laid out web sites. 
 
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As an open source community developer (too!) who actually codes and contributes to GNU/GPL I always find it funny the various definitions of "developer". I'm talking about reading RFCs, lol. Someone who can FTP/SFTP/SCP a file to an HTTPd, gunzip/untar it, chmod -R 777 ./, and run a PHP install script is considered a developer.

Someone who can plug in content, context, and image data into a CMS is considered a web developer.

I'm not trying to be insulting, or insult anyone here on this thread, just opining how definitions are skewed between various sects in the overall IT field.

I would prefer companies I do business with not run off the shelf CMSes like WordPress. :)
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If everyone had six figure budgets for a website we wouldn't be having this conversation. I'm just trying to help people realize they are missing out on a lot of sales and that there are better options out there. 99.99% of people shopping online wouldn't even know how to identify a WP site let alone have the vast experience and knowledge that you obviously do.
 
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We recently had a security vendor (I work in cloud hosting) demo their credentials mgmt tool for us. I checked their website, saw it was on WP engine, and noped right out of there.
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Again, I understand you guys want the most secure option every time. That's not the point of this post. If the people with these poorly designed websites could afford the best, do you think they would have what they do? I guarantee you that the websites I'm talking about are far more likely to get hacked than a standard WP site with a free security plugin.

I'm simply saying they are losing money because of their website and they would be able to increase their bottom line with a better design that may not even cost any more money. Do you think that these websites have any form of security or recovery plan? For very little to no money difference they could have something that actually generates way more sales. Sales are critical for the success of every business, even the company you work for.

If someone can't afford to spend more than $500 for a website why would they be able to spend $100,000+ to implement what you're talking about? Then have to pay large ongoing fees to maintain the site. WP is very user friendly and most people can easily learn to add content without any additional developer fees.

No website is immune to being hacked and you're picking nits simply because you've previously seen security flaws in WP, that I'm sure don't even exist anymore.

Are you guys actively managing sites for people? I'm not trying to step on your toes or make you look bad. If that's the case then just send me a PM and I'll delete my post. I was just trying to help.
 
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I've removed my posts, in hindsight they are more negative and less educational/helpful/funny/fellowship rib-jabbing than I initially intended them to be. I felt my responses violate the spirit of this forum and I apologize for the comments made. None of them were made with an intent to insult any member of this forum. Broken_WV_Guy I apologize for my comments regarding WordPress causing a perception or implying that you were doing something sub-par or promoting a poor choice for a UI/UX platform. Again, I am sorry, and thank you.
 
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"I'm just trying to help people realize they are missing out on a lot of sales and that there are better options out there."



Everyone likes a nice website - but how do you support the claim of lost sales?

If I'm shopping for something, I'll buy something - somebody gets the sale regardless of website quality.

For airguns, your choice on something new is very limited (typically one vendor) and commodity items are bought based on price/sales -- neither need a spiffy website.



Can it be easier - yes. Will better sites result in more sales, doubtful as the market is only so big.......
 
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