Hi Chris
I know it's a matter of personal taste, but those flashing images are ultra-irritating... They completely distract me from your more important stuff ie: the products.
Again.. personal taste, but a lot of research has shown that these sorts of gimmicks can be more harmful than beneficial.
There should be one objective and one objective only on an eComm site... get people to buy. If they want entertainment, they will go to disney.com .
We have a client with a partywares site (see my sig) and while we have limited control over what the client wants (design-wise), we have advised them to put PRODUCT data and images right into the face of customers. You'll therefore see that while the categ images are "amateurish", they do showcase the product sets.
The other BIG "No" on an eComm site, is to list outgoing links to other retailers.
It's extremely challenging to bring visitors to your site... then, as soon as they arrive, you're tempting them to leave?
Why?
What is the value in that?
If you make a couple of pennies on the referral, it's no compensation for the loss of sales.
Forrester (the guru on web research) has shown that 80% of people do not return to a site they navigate away from.
So, given that your Bounce Rate is likely to be between 30% and 40% anyway, and abandoned carts contribute to a further 15% to 20%, your retention stats are going to look pretty grim...
It's likely that out of 20 visitors to your site, only 2 or 3 will actually end up leaving through a paid checkout.
A 70% to 75% drop-out rate is far too high a risk, and can make the difference between your online venture being viable, or a waste of time.
Get rid of all the stuff that detracts from showcasing products. You should rather be looking at cross-sell and upsell techniques (afterall, your margin on a pack of balloons is not that huge, so you must look at every possible mechanism to increase the value in each basket).
Just some advice... it comes from assisting clients in your industry for the past 5 years.
