3 weeks live and only 2 orders...why?!?!

[naditaliacongusto]

Hi Guys!

I know that it may sounds a bit early but...t's now more than 3 weeks that my website went live and I had only 2 orders (1 through ebay) and 1900 visits... :( :cry: ...can you tell me why? I'm kepeing on advertising everywhere, and tyring to do as much as I can but still no results...maybe prices are wrong or items... all suggestions welcome!!

www.italiacongusto.com

cheers!!!!

Nad

[Ozzy]

Are you trying to sell your products to the UK? If so make the prices in £ sterling.
Also, the website itself I'm afraid does not inspire confidence to part with cash as it doesn't look that professionally designed. Sorry if that offends but it true. The online market place is soooo competitive for any industry, so your website has to look better than the rest visually - so be prepared to spend money on a professional design.
Also, why don't you host the shopping cart on its own domain? rather than redirecting to some long URL, this again would add credability.

[SillyJokes]

Ditto what Richard said.

Also your images are doing something weird and not only that they take forever to download.

1900 visits is not a lot of visits either. You are going to need a lot more than that and traffic takes time and work to achieve. Hence so many businesses trying to sell you search engine optimisation (SEO)

But before you spend anymore money on advertising I would strongly advise you to get some professional help with the website because as it stands now it just isn't going to convert effectively for you.

Continue with Ebay to keep the money coming in while you do this.

[Rob Holmes]

Hi..

In my opinion...

Sorry but your site does not sell.

You say you've got ITALIAN DESIGNER ACCESSORIES

but you should be selling... "Look like you've just walked out from a no-holds-barred shopping trip in Rome with the handbag of your dreams!!"

You need to communicate on a 1 to 1 with the visitor, identify their needs, lead them through a sales process and close the sale carefully but quickly.

And you also need to stop the 'morphing' handbags - they are just too distracting.

Personally I'd add more pictures of glamourous late 20 year old girls wearing designer clothes, sitting out side coffee bars looking chic etc etc...

Hope this helps,

Rob

[10 Yetis]

howdy... i echo everyones thoughts really.

I would go as far as to say stop all advertising as soon as you can do so without incurring penalty.

Then, revamp your site to make it look a bit more professional and once you are ready, relaunch the ads.

In the mean time, keep selling via ebay so you can try to keep cashflow going.

Also, are your ads working hard enough for you? Please don't take this the wrong way as I am honestly a nice person BUT (you knew there would be a but didn't you)... if your ads are like your site people are just going to ignore them.

The good thing is that there are people on here who can and will help you. Just ask away. For instance, if you want to send over sample of your ads to me via email, feel free and I can try and help with some advice and tips.

Most of all... remain positive, you have a great business idea. I know loads of people who are bag mad and once your site is revamped I will have no problems telling them about you!

[VeryMark]

A lot of websites are great looking designs and don't sell much because they haven't been designed properly for search engine optimisation and they aren't promoted properly either - it's like painting a masterpiece and putting it in your attic. You can get reliable professional help from a friend of mine, Tony Burt of NetSecrets at www.netsecrets.co.uk.

[Webstuff]

Also, remove all the animated gif's, with the possible exception of those on the main page, and replace them with nice smooth jpg's. As well as this, avoid the distracting javascripts, such as the coloured text converter on the main page. Any thing that takes customers attention away from your great selection of products is a no-no.

[clickprofits]

only 2 orders (1 through ebay) and 1900 visits

In addition to implementing the good advice above you also need to track where these visitors are coming from - if they are reaching your site via Pay per click advertising, for example, you need to make sure that your ads and traffic is highly targetted and visitors arrive at the page which features the product advertised - not on the home page where they then have to search for the product themselves. See this thread on PPC and landing pages for some helpful tips:
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=2202&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

You may also want to try and get permission from people to add them to an in-house newsletter mailing list so that you can contact them in the future with news and special offers etc. That way you will get a chance to build up a database of potential customers - most of the 1900 visitors you mentioned above are probably not going to return and most people do not buy higher priced products from an online shop on their first visit.

[naditaliacongusto]

a big thank you to all guys!!! got the message and I'm going to "revamp" our website with a graphic designer....hope this will help too...once ready I'll give you a shout !!!!

:D Thanks again!!! I really needed honest feedback :wink:

Nad

[SillyJokes]

Noooooooo. Not a graphic designer- find a webdesigner who understands the importance of usability and search engine optimisation.

Chances are a Graphic designer will not have the best grasp of what works on the web.

The bottom line in providing a shop is the way it functions. You must make your website as easy to use as possible because you can't help them round - they have to find their own way. And you don't want anyone to get frustrated and leave because of poor web design.

Easy to use does not mean dull looking, but pretty looking does not mean your website will sell.

I may have got the wrong end of the stick here, and forgive me if I have, but a graphic designer is about looks, not usability. Hopefully yours will have a very sound knowledge of the latter.

[VeryMark]

Yes, yes, yes - graphic designers can produce beautiful websites that are completely useless!!!!!!

For example, a Flash intro page looks fantastic but can effectively hide your website from search engines.

Search engine optimisation (which means the website has to be internally constructed in the right way) is the essential skill, pay-per-click can be useful, you need Hitslink traffic analysis to measure what's happening and to see the results of any changes - and you need an expert who knows how to do all that!

[clickprofits]

As Sillyjokes and Crossguard have pointed out - usability and good seo are crucial - once you have these in place you can start working on increasing your conversions and the like. So yes, a web designer/webmaster who understands seo and usability for e-commerce sites is essential. I am sure there are plenty of people on this forum who fit the bill and could help you out (and you would be supporting a fellow forum member). If you want to gain an understanding of usability before approaching a web designer (so you know what you want and what questions to ask) then try one of the following sites:

http://www.sensible.com/index.html - Steve Krug's site, his book is very good too - the best I have read so far on usability (it's 5 years old, so a little dated but most of what he says is still relevant and a new 2005 edition will be published on June 30th).

http://www.useit.com/ - Jakob Nielsen's Website, he is often quoted as an expert on usability.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-web-design-mistakes-in-2004.html
The Biggest Web Design Mistakes - amusing and interesting article.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743220862/1567 - The Big Red Fez (How to make any web site better) by Seth Godin, an excellent little book on usability with an emphasis on marketing. It's mostly screenshots of real websites as examples, showing what to do and what not to do and why.

-

[microbe]

...t's now more than 3 weeks that my website went live and I had only 2 orders (1 through ebay) and 1900 visits...

You need to remove from the visits figure all visits which are not from potential buyers. This includes automated visits by search engine spiders, visits by you, visits by all your mates who you have told to go and admire your new site and visits by things like AOL proxies (1 person on AOL could be clocking 20 visits because of their weird system).

It is quite possible that by the time you have removed all these you will be down to a few hundred visits.

What percentage conversion rate are you expecting?
What percentage conversion rate are you aiming for?

You need to benchmark the site, so that you can evaluate the effect the (valuable) changes which have been suggested to you have on the conversion rate, you may find that some of the (IMHO very sound) suggested "improvements" to the site actually hurt your sales!

Once you know how many visitors you need to get to make a sale this will enable you to evaluate whether SEO or advertising is cost effective for you. There is no point having superb traffic delivered by a keyphrase (SEO or targetted ads) if none of the visitors brought by it ever buy from you and you need to know how much you can afford to spend.

(Edited to add)

By the way, your product is style - you need a site which matches that. It might be worth your while to get smeone like Eagle to do you some graphics or even just a logo - his work is awesome - and then get them implemented into html by an expert.

[c4l]

I can recommend Nick at Desty as a web designer.

Very good and very cheap.

http://www.desty.co.uk