Advice needed to convert more sales.

[sysops]

How would I do the affiliate products as i have a checkout button on the site, would i need to have a different add to cart button for them?

There are many options for doing this. You're either going to have to learn a lot about affiliate marketing, or get someone to help.

 

Jellybaby you have a fundamental flaw with your site.

I assume most of your traffic is coming from the 2 terms you are No1 for.?

So the landing page should be full of childrens clothes.

As opposed to what people are presented with now which is not relevant to there serch terms.

Hence why your page views are so low,and your bounce rate so high.

A professional SEO would not have a lot of problems getting you ranked highly for "baby gifts" e.t.c. as your site already has a fair bit of grunt.

Earl

 

[jellybabys]

Couldn't i some how make the site into a PPC and add other people products on so it would be a baby product comparison site?

 

Couldn't i some how make the site into a PPC and add other people products on so it would be a baby product comparison site?

No expert on PPC I should talk to Steve Gibson or one of the PPC consultants.

We only deal directly with manufacturers,middlemen are the curse of the working class.

Earl

 

[sysops]

Couldn't i some how make the site into a PPC and add other people products on so it would be a baby product comparison site?

This is certainly one option, but it's not one which you can realistically pursue alongside running it as a retail site - it's one or the other.

As I stated early on in this thread, each visitor has a monetary value. You're getting a good number of visitors, and so your site has a certain value.

If you fully monetised your traffic in retail, you should be able to generate a turnover of around £1200 a day at your current traffic levels. This should be fairly easily achievable. This has more upside (bigger growth potential), but requires significant investment.

Alternatively you could abandon the idea of doing retail, and use your traffic to make you money via advertising. In this sector you should be able to achieve £300-£400 a day at your current traffic level, with a well optimised site. This doesn't have the upside of the first option (gorwing it will take a lot more work), but can be achieved on a much smaller budget.

What you need to do is figure out which path appeals more.

 

[crossdaz]

And what on earth are you doing running adsense on your site?? This says "I'm desperate for the extra few £ a day that the adsense makes me". When was the last time you walked into Mothercare and saw big banners advertising a different shop??

Amazon run adsense?

 

[ncl1968]

hi, if you need to find branded baby produducts at wholesale prices you can look at
cardiffcashandcarry.com it is a uk based wholesalers with a great range of products my mrs used them for a while to sell on ebay

 

[jellybabys]

Hi Earl,

Your right most off our clicks are for baby clothes, then baby shoes and baby clothing and the front page looks more like its for toys and gifts, so I have taken your advice and put all the clothing on it, im also going to move the text to the bottom of the page and move the images up with a flash banner above it showing what we have.

Thank you all again for your kind advice, its not easy all this marketing stuff

 

Hi Earl,

Your right most off our clicks are for baby clothes, then baby shoes and baby clothing and the front page looks more like its for toys and gifts, so I have taken your advice and put all the clothing on it, im also going to move the text to the bottom of the page and move the images up with a flash banner above it showing what we have.

Thank you all again for your kind advice, its not easy all this marketing stuff

why use a flash banner.?

and be carefull how you move the text,make sure the structure of the site is not altered .By that I mean the text is presented to the search engines in the best possible way.

Use a search engine simulator to check how the engines see your site.

Earl

 

[jellybabys]

Just thought flash banners look better, but I know spiders can not read flash so I will look for other ways.

I will make sure the structure is not changed if possible?

Thanks again...

 

Just thought flash banners look better, but I know spiders can not read flash so I will look for other ways.

I will make sure the structure is not changed if possible?

Thanks again...

people are not that interested in how your site looks.

They have come to see your products.

so give them as large and clear images as you can.

you're tiny images of the wendy houses do not do them justice.

they want a full page graphic to get the juices flowing.

Earl

 

[sysops]

people are not that interested in how your site looks.

They have come to see your products.

I guess you'd advise a high street shop to strip the interior to the bare minimum, and spend no money on carpet etc. After all, people are only there for the products, and aren't interested in what the shop looks like.

Sheesh...

 

I guess you'd advise a high street shop to strip the interior to the bare minimum, and spend no money on carpet etc. After all, people are only there for the products, and aren't interested in what the shop looks like.

Sheesh...

well you don't get many people pop in a shop and buy it, now do you.

They seem more likely to buy the stuff on the shelves.

Educational material for those in desperate need.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html

Earl

 

[sysops]

Educational material for those in desperate need.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/biggest-mistakes-in-web-design-1995-2015.html

LMAO!

Have you ever actually read the article? How do you think your own sites stack up, when you apply those principles to them? Be honest now...

 

Amazon run adsense?

Amazon also sell 80% third party seller goods these days rather than their own too, they lost their original principles a long time ago, doesn't mean it is recommended that anyone copy them though

Adsense for other shops, especially potential competitors, or just rubbish sites on your own retail site should be a big NO. I hate ad's I will surf away to somewhere less cluttered without them, and worse still your customers may surf off using the adsense straight away. You are supposed to be finding ways to keep them on your site not leave it!

Think of adsense as one giant tv advert break....and then consider everyone leaving your site to go make a cup of tea....

 

[jellybabys]

I totally agree that the AdSense was a stupid idea, but it was a lesson learnt.

I also disagree with that article, I think you should make a site look as good as it can, if I walked into mothercare and it looked run down and I would walk straight out and the same goes for a website, if it doesn't look appealing to the eye i click away.

As for my bounce rate and I'm no expert but I have done a bit of reading up on it, mine is very good 23.00 on the main page is not bad at all, that's where most of my click go to, the reason the whole site has a bounce rate of 51.00 and i know that is bad is because we have hundreds of advices page that are very popular and with most advice pages people read what they need to then leave, if you look at a news site the bounce rate is mostly rubbish 80.00+ because people bookmark that page or gets the info they need and don't need any more, but saying that my sales are still poor, but increasing the image sizes and showing our clothing range (best keyword via clicks) on the main page should help things, but I still have a lot to do, I really appreciate the help I have been given.

 

LMAO!

Have you ever actually read the article? How do you think your own sites stack up, when you apply those principles to them? Be honest now...

About 5 million ,but then it has been a bad year for most.

Earl

 

[First in Retail]

About 5 million ,but then it has been a bad year for most.

Earl

5m is that from the sites in your post, how on earth are you doing that ? they are pretty colourful to say the least

 

5m is that from the sites in your post, how on earth are you doing that ? they are pretty colourful to say the least

Oh we have a few other irons in the fire.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?sour...=GGLG,GGLG:2006-07,GGLG:en&q=volkswagen+parts

Earl

 

[SillyJokes]

JellyBabies.

I've got something for you that will improve conversions...

You do not show the shipping cost when someone adds something to the basket. This will be enough to put off a small proportion of customers. The reason is, they will add to basket to see the bottom line of how much it will cost them to buy booties from you as apposed to booties from someone else with a different shipping policy.

But when they add to your basket the shipping is not shown, in fact it dawns on them that they are going to have to register just to have the pleasure of seeing how much you are going to charge them to ship something that they were only a bit interested in. Annoying enough to leave the site and look elsewhere.

I really hate sites that make me register to shop, so much so that unless their goods are completely unique I will go elsewhere.

And for the rest of it, your home page has too much text at the top and not enough product images on the first fold. Your images are just a bit too small in my opinion.

A bespoke site will help you only if you get someone to build it who knows about ecommerce and these tend to be a bit pricy because they can be worth it.

No one here knows what level of income you need to cover your costs so I can understand it will be difficult for you to give up work to devote your full attention to the site, but the day we did this was the start of somethign big so I wish you luck.

 

very good point Sillyjokes I missed that.

Earl

 

[Gate2Shop]

Steve has a point don't re-design unless needed.

 

[steviemac]

I would have taken the £135,000 in a heartbeat!

 

[quikshop]

people are not that interested in how your site looks.

They have come to see your products.

so give them as large and clear images as you can.

you're tiny images of the wendy houses do not do them justice.

they want a full page graphic to get the juices flowing.

Earl

Sir Earl is not being as daft as he sounds, or something like that

I wrote an article a recently about online shoppers behaviour, the conclusion of which is if your product is in demand and central to your web page it will sell almost regardless of how the rest of the website looks.

Of course your website must be easy to navigate around so you can't disregard useability, but shop appearance is a firm 3rd on the list of importance.

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who try and place orders through our pre-designed shops for sale and other suspended shops which state at the top of every single page that the shop is either not trading or for sale.

These people just don't see the message, all they see is product and act on a desire to own it

 

[martin001]

Thank you both.

The google ads will go.

That was said last October.

hmmm, there still there,

 

[martin001]

This is certainly one option, but it's not one which you can realistically pursue alongside running it as a retail site - it's one or the other.

As I stated early on in this thread, each visitor has a monetary value. You're getting a good number of visitors, and so your site has a certain value.

If you fully monetised your traffic in retail, you should be able to generate a turnover of around £1200 a day at your current traffic levels. This should be fairly easily achievable. This has more upside (bigger growth potential), but requires significant investment.

Alternatively you could abandon the idea of doing retail, and use your traffic to make you money via advertising. In this sector you should be able to achieve £300-£400 a day at your current traffic level, with a well optimised site. This doesn't have the upside of the first option (gorwing it will take a lot more work), but can be achieved on a much smaller budget.

What you need to do is figure out which path appeals more.

I turned around my flowers business. (www.nextdayflowers.co.uk) - I'd love to do the same with this one.

 

[martin001]

mmm spam for breakfast, thanks

 

[cycloneuk]

That was said last October.

hmmm, there still there,

They would of been straight down if it was me.

You have had some good advice in this thread, be interesting to hear how you are doing now?

 

[jellybabys]

Hi

I agree most of the advice was good, and it also did not fall on deaf ears.

The google ads are still on the site for one reason, content, I have very little time at the moment to replace the google ads with images or text, as we are in the middle of building a new site and this will have no google ads, only on the advice pages.

I ended up going for magento as the shopping cart as it suited our needs, I have had a few problems with hosting the new site as they some how lost all my database twice after I finished building the site and loading the products, so I had to start all over again.

But we are 50% done, the basic design is near finished just some more text to be added and changed, we have had the payment module built for us, as magento did not support HSBC direct, and some other small programming bits done, and finally we need to add the products then we will go live, so about 8-10 more weeks.

If you are interested in seeing the new design you can see it here jellybabys.co.uk/magento as you will see its a little more grown up than jellybabys.co.uk, we are also having the logo redesigned.

Any comments or advice would be helpful as always.

Thanks again.

Dave

 

[Steve2507]

I like the new design (although I also liked the old design as well).


3 questions/comments/suggestions:

1. Will the big image on the homepage be clickable, if not why not? You could have the image broken down so users can click on different elements like toys, wall covering, girls clothes, boys clothes etc.
2. Will all the top 10 searches all be clickable and will they be generated live? If generated live be careful. We did this and found some very wierd searches becoming public (could be just a case of our industry).
3. I personally don't like the featured products bit, but I can see how others may like it. I would have another design for that area and test the two using G optimiser.

Overall though nice clean layout.

 

[martin001]

why do you want to replace the google ads with anything at all?

 

[martin001]

I dont want you to think I'm *****y - anything I say is meant with good intention, but with your new site design.

Its like you bought a huge plot of land to build a massively impressive house, but instead you have opted for a tiny bungalow with a front garden the size of a football pitch, using up 95% of the land you could have built on.

Sorry if that sounds a bit weird, but you've given all of your above-the-fold real estate to that one image. - In my opinion thats a bad idea,

I have dealt with many graphic designers and I will bet a pound to a penny that graphic designer with no ecommerce / retail experience designed that page?

I think you're too afraid to just SELL. - Like I said, I dont mean it offensively, but I do have experience ( a lot) in this field

 

[jellybabys]

Thanks Steve,

The large image with be clickable, not sure yet if thats the one we will be using, that why we have just left it for the moment.


All the top 10 searched link will be also clickable, should be ok as we have used them before without any problems.

I did like the feature products when I first saw it on another site selling computer products, but I agree it does not suit are site, so we will most likely replace it a static one or something diff all together, plus it is causing problems with the text on that page.

Again thanks

 

[Steve2507]

I did like the feature products when I first saw it on another site selling computer products, but I agree it does not suit are site, so we will most likely replace it a static one or something diff all together, plus it is causing problems with the text on that page.

What you could do is have a number of featured products images and use an advert rotator. If you goto our site http://www.snslingerie.co.uk/ you will see 2 graphics, reload and they should change.

 

[jellybabys]

I have dealt with many graphic designers and I will bet a pound to a penny that graphic designer with no ecommerce / retail experience designed that page?

Your right it was designed by me, all the images, css and so on was done by me, the template is the layout we liked, and the programming I had done was more admin side.

I totally agree that the front page will need to upsell much more but at the moment we are just learning to walk with magento before we can run, we are planning to have two main pages tested and work down to the checkout and so on.

My main goal at the moment is to list all 750 products, then add the to related products then all so add " we also recommend" so as you can see I have a lot off work in front of me but once all of that is done I we start to work on the main page content, logo and so on.

And please feel free to say what you like, Im not easy to offend.

Dave

PS

thank you for your email today martin, I will respond in person later.

 

[Nickdavis87]

hey jellybabys,

Just been looking at your new site, i like it alot more than the last one. Have you tested to see whether it makes a difference if you have all your hacker safe logos out of main view? I saw them alot on your current site and personally as a shopper i pay no attention, they just use up valuable space and in some ways distract.

 

[jellybabys]

I like that idea steve, nice looking site

Im not very good at designing stuff, I have a good eye and knows if it works as soon as I see it, but i just can not get it down on paper myself.

I will most likely see if I can find a designer to help with that stuff.

 

[jellybabys]

Hi Nick

We did see an increase of about 10-13% in sales once we had the hack safe logo and we also found we had better sales conversions when we had it in the header.

I know you said it makes no difference to you, and nor would it for me if I was buying online, but you would be amazed how many people feel safer when they see that logo.

 

[Steve2507]

I like that idea steve, nice looking site

Im not very good at designing stuff, I have a good eye and knows if it works as soon as I see it, but i just can not get it down on paper myself.

I will most likely see if I can find a designer to help with that stuff.

Thanks.

The ads are rotated using mySimpleads (http://www.clippersoft.net/) and is easy to set up and use. You could just use product images rather than fully fledged adverts.

I tend to agree with the other comments about the large central image, however I can see it working for you if you make it clickable and emhasise each rollover point. When you rolled over the particular image section you could have it change so that offer details are displayed. In much the same way as Iplayer works (www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer) where you roll over the image and text appears telling you about the show.

 

[Nickdavis87]

Interesting stats, maybe we should put them in our site

The only other things i would say is that on the product pages etc i think the use of "compare products" will be minimal on your site, the "my basket" and "join newsletter" could then be made thinner and you can make the page content more central on the screen.