Please Critique my online shop

[thegascupboard]

As this is my first post here, I can't post the url (just google my username).

We're a real-world shop in Wiltshire and opened in April '07 and took our first steps online in April '08 and have been developing the website almost daily to attract more orders but for some reason little impact on conversions has been made.

I've made sure the buying process is as easy as it can be, navigating to products easy, and with 7000 product lines - many of which are in stock, you can see the time we put into this. The site is also fully integrated with our instore EPOS so we have up-to-the-second stock on the website.

I've tried discounting items, free delivery but these don't have any impact it seems. It's frustrating because I know the site is more appealing than a lot of our competitors and we get around 100 - 150 unique visits a day just browsing but not buying...

So, any pointers? What can we change? What are we doing wrong or am I expecting too much from the site?

Thanks a lot for reading and look forward to comments.

[sysops]

You say they aren't buying, what do your figures actually look like, say over a month? How many visits, abandoned baskets, incomplete orders, and actual orders?

[thegascupboard]

In terms of conversions, we had about 0.5% from 2700 unique visitors last month.

Not sure about abandoned baskets. I did recently remove the customer account setup (standard oscommerce function) for a more customer-friendly straight to checkout - before this there were just over 200 customers since we started (avg. 25 account setups per month), some of these may have abandoned their carts or just setup an account.

[Gavin-Design-Right]

Well its all down to Pr.

Advertise like hell lol , Add some offers to the offers section on here. Give the site a fresh design , A custom businss logo ?.

[sysops]

In terms of conversions, we had about 0.5% from 2700 unique visitors last month.

Not sure about abandoned baskets. I did recently remove the customer account setup (standard oscommerce function) for a more customer-friendly straight to checkout - before this there were just over 200 customers since we started (avg. 25 account setups per month), some of these may have abandoned their carts or just setup an account.

Hmm, that is low. Your site isn't too bad, I would have expected around the 1% level. But there are a few problems.

- Add to basket button is not obvious enough

- I want to see a basket page with all my stuff on it and how much delivery I'm going to pay before I enter any details.

- The whole checkout process is very OSC, and isn't very user friendly.

- There isn't enough info about when I might get my order.

Things that put me of specifically, but won't affect most of your customers:

- Your payment page asks for CC number, CVV and expiry date. No mention of issue number or start date - what happens if it's a debit card? The only possible conclusion is that you are collecting this data and processing the payment manually. That (to me, and almost certainly to your merchant account provider) is totally unacceptable.

[sysops]

Well its all down to Pr.

How is conversion rate down to PR? (and do you mean PageRank, Public Relations, or Press Release?)

[thegascupboard]

Thanks for the advice, sometimes you can get too close to things to not see the obvious.

Ref some of your points, free delivery is stated at the top of every page and the basket is top right on every page. It does say on every product page that we despatch the order with 48 hours (unless its out of stock and this wont be shown). I have modified the cart process quite heavily - yes it may be a bit osc, but a customer surely doesn't care about that so long as it's quick and easy to use?

[sysops]

Ref some of your points, free delivery is stated at the top of every page and the basket is top right on every page.


I know, I saw those.

Delivery - still needs more info (how long will it take, what will under £30 cost).

Basket - I also saw your mini basket, but I didn't realise the text was a link to the basket page. Others will make the same mistake.


It does say on every product page that we despatch the order with 48 hours (unless its out of stock and this wont be shown). I have modified the cart process quite heavily - yes it may be a bit osc, but a customer surely doesn't care about that so long as it's quick and easy to use?

You can disagree with me all you like, but you can't disagree with your conversion rate!

[thegascupboard]

Okay, that's fair enough. I've made a few changes and will take a look at the payment process again.

[cookieonline]

Hi, that's not a bad effort to be fair. Some links are broken though http://www.gascupboard.co.uk/scalextric-track-c-23_36.html and http://www.gascupboard.co.uk/mclaren-mercedes-mp422-2008-hamilton-p-3895.html

Your SEO strategy could do with a look, and you can improve this a lot yourself straight away. Your home page (look at the page source) mentions hobbies and models very little really. Use "Model & Hobby Search" instead of "Product Search", and "New! Models and Hobby forums" etc etc... Also using pictures that say for example "The Gas Cupboard models and hobbies" is all nice but Google won't see that, put it in text instead.

I'd also say the url thegascupboard is great as it's personal to you, but perhaps buy a second one and use that as the primary domain, something with the words models and hobbies in the title...

I reckon also even some simple animated gifs where you have the images like http://www.gascupboard.co.uk/images/banners/feature-tb03.jpg rotate round to show different views, perhaps http://www.gascupboard.co.uk/images/store_logo.gif also animated - just to give your page some movement.

There's just a few points very quickly, but again not a bad effort at all.

Good luck!

[ServersandSpares]

Hi,

I had a look at your site, and to be honest, it can't be ease of use that stops people from buying. Its very fast, easy to navigate and customer friendly. I'm afraid I don't know much about products you sell, but I'm assuming and I may be wrong, that from the prices on some of the items they are quite specialized, in the fact that they are collectibles, ratherthan just toys to play with.

Do you have the facility to be able to add to your site, the ability to chat to your browsers in real time to gain an insight into why they don't actually purchase despite browsing? I use providesupport.com, which gives me the option to chat live, or even to invite a browsing customer into a chat window. (There online customer service is second to none, and it isn't expensive either)

My only criticism of your site, which is only my personal preference, is that it is a bit dark, and I think it would benefit from being a little bit more lively. However, that is only my personal taste.

My website has been up and running for just a year now, and it was slow going at first, we get a lot of hits, but I also get a lot of telephone sales after talking to our customers, rather than them buying online in the first instance, but that probably has a lot to do with the industry we are in as well.

Another point is that you don't have your terms and conditions displayed that I can see, so a customer who might want to know your return policies perhaps won't phone to find them out, but will just jump site elsewhere? And what are your delivery options? Next day? two day etc?

I can appreciate the amount of work you must have put into your site to make it run as it does, so fingers crossed you get to convert those customers! Hope this is of some use to you :-)

Julie

[thegascupboard]

Yes, online chat is something I've considered. Do you find many people use it?

Thanks for the advice ref. terms, returns, delivery. Its those little details I think i have missed making obvious enough - they are on there but not easy to see.

[cookieonline]

Online chat - if set up in the right way (for definate a green light to say someone is waiting at the other end) will overall increas the conversion rate slightly. But then you don't have many products, do you get many questions by email?

[IS-James]

I notice that some of your products don't have pictures or descriptions. Most people won't buy if there isn't a picture of the item, and certainly a lack of description will put them off even if it seems obvious what the product is.

[Bruce_Andrews]

I think you run the risk of being seen as non specialist?

Can you create a landing page for each headline topic?
As an armchair railway modeller, I'd want to know about your experience as a railway model supplier - do you support the local group/club?
(just found the "Workshops" page - make it a big link on the "Railway" front page)
I'd guess the same for Wargamers and Scalextric enthusiasts.

If you can write text for each main topic, you:
1 - provide confidence and interest to visitors
2 - provide more text that will help with SEO

As an idea - what about some videos of stuff in action?
if you go to exhibitions, add some live footage.
then write some text to describe the video - it all helps with SEO

Have links to appropriate groups - perhaps a links page for each main heading - then you can start to get links back from the clubs and societies (you can explore the benefits, or otherwise, of this in many other threads on here).

[Chris Ashdown]

My findings

Good selection of products and site layout ok

Images very poor quality, they are what sells the goods, need to be larger and clearer

Descrioptions should as far as possible be with the images not on a pop up (The more clicks you give someone the more chance they will move to another site), the description is the most important part of online selling, make them as full as you can, this would also help SEO.

Payment should these days be via a psp on a secure site, most people will see you are collecting the card details and assume the worst and move on. confidence is what enables people to purchase

Agree the checkout and cart is to high up and out of the line of sight drop it about a inch and make it larger if possible

[Jonesy]

Yes, online chat is something I've considered. Do you find many people use it?


Yes - it's easy to set up and this one's free: Liveleader (http://www.liveleader.com/en/).

We have it on every product page and it gets used fairly regularly. But your products are more complicated and expensive so I would guess your customers may have a lot more questions to ask before committing to buy.