Increasing conversions on my web store

MrJoe · Feb 29, 2008

Hi Everyone,

I've just finished working on my e-commerce store (madforstuff.com) and am wondering weather you guys/girls could take a look over it to see what could be improved, specifically for better conversions.

I received a few orders within the first few days of it going live, which was a buzz as i made it send me a text message every time i received an order; but haven't had any orders since!

I look forward to receiving your feedback!

MH1 · Feb 29, 2008

Some spelling mistakes, but very nice site, did you build it yourself or is it template driven??

Biggest problem I can see, where are YOUR contact details, address, landline, mobile????

ANYTHING???

sysops · Feb 29, 2008

MrJoe said:
Hi Everyone,

I've just finished working on my e-commerce store (madforstuff.com) and am wondering weather you guys/girls could take a look over it to see what could be improved, specifically for better conversions.

I received a few orders within the first few days of it going live, which was a buzz as i made it send me a text message every time i received an order; but haven't had any orders since!

I look forward to receiving your feedback!

I think a bit more information is required to make a fuller assessment of the situation.

How much traffic are you getting, and what is your current conversion rate? More importantly (for your type of site), what was your conversion rate in Nov/Dec? Where does most of your traffic come from?

Alternative4u · Feb 29, 2008

Yes I too have just looked at the joke shop on the net, and as you say I would not buy from anywhere that did'nt like to give out a phone number, e mail adrs etc either.
If you get a free minute maybe you would be kind enough to take a look at my new shop at Alternative4u.co.uk I would be more than pleased to get your pos & neg views.
Yours
David

sysops · Feb 29, 2008

Alternative4u said:
If you get a free minute maybe you would be kind enough to take a look at my new shop at Alternative4u.co.uk I would be more than pleased to get your pos & neg views.

Dancing Jesus!

Videoguy · Mar 1, 2008

Biggest problem I can see, where are YOUR contact details, address, landline, mobile????

I agree. Not having a contact phone number or mailing address would certainly put me off. If you're working from home, and don't want to put your home address and phone number on a web page (understandable) there are lots of places that offer "virtual offices" with a mailing address and 0845 phone number at a very reasonable cost.

Do you carry all this stock yourself, or are you a drop shipper? Just curious.

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

Sorry for the late reply! I've been quite busy over the past few days.

To answer a few questions; i designed and programmed the website myself. My full-time job is a web designer/web programmer so i spend most my time designing other people e-commerce/cms sites, so i decided i'd give it a shot myself!

sysops said:
I think a bit more information is required to make a fuller assessment of the situation.

How much traffic are you getting, and what is your current conversion rate? More importantly (for your type of site), what was your conversion rate in Nov/Dec? Where does most of your traffic come from?

Traffic wise, most my traffic is coming from my old madforstuff site (it was a gadget review site); i've put a 301 redirect from the previous site to the new e-commerce site, so alot of the traffic i'm getting isn't especially targeted to the kind of gadgets im selling as alot of the products on the site, weren't on my original one.

The website has only been live for 2 weeks now (i've had 4 orders), and i'm getting on average about 10 - 80 hits a day (this is up and down at the moment as Google is still dropping of certain irrelevant pages from my old sites ranking to the new one).

The stats im getting are as follow:
Visits: 1,588
Avg time on site: 00:05:46
Bounce Rate: 52.64%
Conversion Rate: 0.25%

Using a peice of software i programmed, im able to track all my visitors across my website, see exactly where they came from, what pages they looks at, how long they were on each page, what they added to cart etc and i've had a fair few people add things to the cart, but go no further.

Thank you for your help guys!

sysops · Mar 4, 2008

MrJoe said:
The stats im getting are as follow:
Visits: 1,588
Avg time on site: 00:05:46
Bounce Rate: 52.64%
Conversion Rate: 0.25%

I think given what you've said about the 301 redirection, and the fact that the old site was a gadget review site, your figures at this stage will be meaningless, and best ignored.

Collect a few months worth of real data - that is, data obtained once the new site has been indexed, and the traffic you are getting is for the products you have, rather than the articles you used to have, then analyse that data. Don't try to work with the data you have now.

HTH

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

sysops said:
I think given what you've said about the 301 redirection, and the fact that the old site was a gadget review site, your figures at this stage will be meaningless, and best ignored.

Collect a few months worth of real data - that is, data obtained once the new site has been indexed, and the traffic you are getting is for the products you have, rather than the articles you used to have, then analyse that data. Don't try to work with the data you have now.

HTH

Alright, cheers for that. I thought that might be the case, but it's good to get another persons opinion on it; one whom has more experience in the matter!

SillyJokes · Mar 4, 2008

Looks OK, although I don't think I'd trust a 'Guarentee' that isn't even spelt right. (guarantee)

I do wonder if the world needs another Firebox or Boysstuff, wouldn't you be better seeking out a nice little niche to fill?

It did make me wonder about the value of all those promises of security when you don't even have a proper contact page which you should have by law to trade online.

I'm not your target audience, being 40 (cough) and female. The humping dog just makes me want to click away, the changing main banner is annoying because just as you decide to click it, it changes. I can never really find a reason to buy any of this kind of stuff.

You'll probably enjoy some success with the site if you can just get that traffic up but it's gonna cost you in such a competitive market where every other 20 something webdesigner with time on his hands is trying to start a new gadget shop.

Which is why you'd be better going for a niche (e.g. designer wellies for garden gnomes) - less competition and enough business to keep you going.

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

SillyJokes said:
It did make me wonder about the value of all those promises of security when you don't even have a proper contact page which you should have by law to trade online.

I did not realise this was the case? I'm currently waiting my confirmation of a P.O Box address i applied for; so as soon as i have the details i'll make sure i get that put up asap!

One question I do have, which you could most probably advise me on; is if the website isn't your full time job, where does the phone number lead too?

The reason I tried this market was my previous site was an affiliate website and made me a pretty good little profit as i was able to get a lot of traffic for a lot of the product titles; sometimes over the people I was promoting; so my next step was to supply those products directly instead of forwarding them to the seller.

If it doesn't work out, then at least i can say I've tried. I know im not going to make my million, but at the least I'll learn along the way.

sysops · Mar 4, 2008

MrJoe said:
I did not realise this was the case? I'm currently waiting my confirmation of a P.O Box address i applied for; so as soon as i have the details i'll make sure i get that put up asap!

What do you think a PO Box address says to your potential customers?

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

sysops said:
What do you think a PO Box address says to your potential customers?

I'd read a lot of places saying that due to the fact you can quite easily find out the addresses real location; it is far more acceptable to have a P.O box address in the UK than it is to have one in the US? Is this not the case?

sysops · Mar 4, 2008

MrJoe said:
I'd read a lot of places saying that due to the fact you can quite easily find out the addresses real location; it is far more acceptable to have a P.O box address in the UK than it is to have one in the US? Is this not the case?

IMO it is not at all acceptable, and I personally never buy from sites with a PO Box address (or no address at all).

A PO Box says to me "this isn't a real company, it's some guy trading from his bedroom".

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

sysops said:
IMO it is not at all acceptable, and I personally never buy from sites with a PO Box address (or no address at all).

A PO Box says to me "this isn't a real company, it's some guy trading from his bedroom".

So do you suggest I put my home address on the website?

SillyJokes · Mar 4, 2008

You won't want to put your home address on the site.

A PO Box or a rented office address are your only alternatives. we started out with a PO Box and you've got to start somewhere.

You could easily make money from this site -it looks pretty good, but you've got to clean up those spelling mistakes and get some contact details. You should also read the distance selling act and make sure you know what you are doing.

As for phone calls, again, we didn't used to accept them, but it's a requirement now.

It's maybe a bit harder these days to run an online business than when we started in 1999 but that's how it should be. People need to know they are giving their money to someone who is going to be able to supply the goods and if they don't they want ot know they can get hold of you.

Unfortunately customer service with online stores can be hideous and this is why some decent contact details will make all the difference to your business.

sysops · Mar 4, 2008

MrJoe said:
So do you suggest I put my home address on the website?

No, definitely not. You won't like my opinion, but here it is fwiw (bearing in mind I work in online retail).

The days of being able to start a small retail operation from your bedroom and grow it into a mega-monster are long gone *. You are competing against hundreds of thousands of people trying to do exactly that on ebay. At the end of the day, you'll be lucky to make minimum wage.

I'd say that to do the kind of retail you want to do, you need to get yourself a suitable storage unit. Not a huge one, a few hundred sq ft to start will be fine. This will allow you to get sufficient stock in to have a shot at building a viable business. That's the address you use on your website.

While we're at it - you have gone for a very aggressive pricing strategy. This is a fairly common approach for new sites, but you will soon find that you're actually losing money on the majority of your sales. You can't compete on price, not at this stage - I'd recommend pricing closer to rrp, and focusing on building a usp.

* There are some exceptions, with very niche or new sectors. This is not one of them.

AdvantageMedia · Mar 4, 2008

I would agree with most of the posters here....if we took our number off the header I think we would lose 75% of our purchasers.....the customers like to know you do definitely exist. Try it and see.

Kind Regards

Darren

SillyJokes · Mar 4, 2008

Got sent this today - 10 ways to improve conversions.

http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/365009/ten-ways-to-improve-your-conversion-rates.html

it lists several of the things mentioned here today

MrJoe · Mar 4, 2008

sysops said:
No, definitely not. You won't like my opinion, but here it is fwiw (bearing in mind I work in online retail).

The days of being able to start a small retail operation from your bedroom and grow it into a mega-monster are long gone *. You are competing against hundreds of thousands of people trying to do exactly that on ebay. At the end of the day, you'll be lucky to make minimum wage.

I'd say that to do the kind of retail you want to do, you need to get yourself a suitable storage unit. Not a huge on, a few hundred sq ft to start will be fine. This will allow you to get sufficient stock in to have a shot at building a viable business. That's the address you use on your website.

While we're at it - you have gone for a very aggressive pricing strategy. This is a fairly common approach for new sites, but you will soon find that you're actually losing money on the majority of your sales. You can't compete on price, not at this stage - I'd recommend pricing closer to rrp, and focusing on building a usp.

* There are some exceptions, with very niche or new sectors. This is not one of them.

Regardless, your opinion is valuable as you've been doing this longer than me

One plan i had was finding which categories sell more than others; and start focusing more on that specific niche (be it toy guns, kitchen gadgets etc)

Also, my search engine optimisation skills aren't too bad either; and as i said before; i was able to get my previous website ranking higher for product names than some of the larger names which I was promoting; so I'm confident I will be able to drive enough traffic to the website for relevant terms.

I realise it is quite a competitive niche, and as I said earlier; having made the website myself; I've not spent a huge amount of money on setting it up; and anything that doesn't sell i could quite easily e-bay if it doesn't work out. But none the less, it will be a valuable lesson and learning curve for the future.

SillyJokes said:
You won't want to put your home address on the site.

A PO Box or a rented office address are your only alternatives. we started out with a PO Box and you've got to start somewhere.

You could easily make money from this site -it looks pretty good, but you've got to clean up those spelling mistakes and get some contact details. You should also read the distance selling act and make sure you know what you are doing.

As for phone calls, again, we didn't used to accept them, but it's a requirement now.

It's maybe a bit harder these days to run an online business than when we started in 1999 but that's how it should be. People need to know they are giving their money to someone who is going to be able to supply the goods and if they don't they want ot know they can get hold of you.

Unfortunately customer service with online stores can be hideous and this is why some decent contact details will make all the difference to your business.

It's a tough one isn't it; I would love to have a phone number i could answer at all times. The orders I've made so far I've been very proactive in making sure they were happy.

*edit: Thank you for the link! I'll take a look through it now whilst im only lunch!

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