any suggestions on my garden furniture site?

[Benjib]

Hi guys,

same old I know but for now I'm financially restricted to shopify and a boring bog standard theme. Obviously using this method I'm not expecting miracles and as soon as is possible, I'll be getting a site done by a pro. But for now this is what I have, it's www.sandwellrattanfurniture.co.uk.

I started this 4 weeks ago to be mainly based on eBay and so far things are going absolutely fantastic on the bay. This then led me to trial targeted facebook ad's over this weekend to try and get some sales for a product I had an offer, my budget was £20 and I got 327 unique visitors with my target audience UK female aged between 41 and 62 (facebook audience builder), but I only had 1 sale. I had 11 add to cart and 2 abandoned carts due to card payment declined (abandonment emails sent).

I've written similar threads before so I know I sound like a broken record, and again I know I'm using a crappy shopify theme with more mobile glitches I've ever seen and I also know that maybe my offer price wasn't attractive enough. I plan to add reviews, when they finally come in from eBay and sort out the homepage layout, so can you guys see anything missing throughout the site as it is? what would you change to try and increase conversion?

Thanks Ben

 

[Steve Alphabet]

Going to keep it failrly top-level/best practice – because when you say 'what would you change to try and increase conversion?' nobody can say for sure without first looking at your data.

Having said that...

- free shipping/returns policy should go at the top – especially for a big purchase like what you offer...don't make people have to scroll to see it

- 'the Midlands number one online garden furniture retailer' – number one according to who? Back it up otherwise you'll set off a few brown stuff detectors

- put Visa logos near the the top – they show you're legit/can be trusted

- 'Buy now' as a CTA is risky – test it against something less committal

- nice big professional pics – although you've got lots over 100kb which will slow down loading... get into the habit of running your pics though http://optimizilla.com to compress them without losing quality

- if you got 327 visits you're doing something right. Try to capture visitors' email addresses in return for something (eg discount off first order) so even if they don't buy first time around you can tempt them back via email

Other things you can do to boost conversions when you don't have lots of £ to invest:

Install Hotjar (www.hotjar.com) and see how people interact with your site and you might find out what's putting people off. If not, you can always ask them – use Hotjar to ask a question like 'is there anything holding you back from buying this product?

Check your Google Analytics – are your bounces are coming from people using a particular device, or on a particular page..obviously you need decent traffic to be sure (around 1,000 unique visits) but you should be able to uncover some clues.

 

[Benjib]

Thanks Steve much appreciated, I'll implement those changes, I'm waiting on a designer to complete a set of icons which will be under the header banner and detailing free shipping/secure payments/returns etc

 

[minttwist]

Hi, wouldn't bin the Facebook advertising too quickly. Remember that customers need to move through a 'buying cycle' and are unlikely to buy immediately off the back of a social media ad, especially if the offer is not a commodity item (your's isn't). I would rather consider the click-thru's as an investment in growing your 'sales leads' that are 'potential' clients, sitting at the top of your sales funnel.

If you monitor your website visitors with Google Analytics and other tools you will find that many of them become returning users in the days, weeks and months ahead and once they return you will be able to 'convert' some of them into more new customers who purchase from you.

There are a number of ways you can (digitally) improve the conversion rate and one of the easiest is to identify returning users and then share a specific message, piece of content or offer via a targeted message bubble. IP

 

[fisicx]

Are you dropshipping or do you have a warehouse full of stock?

Either way the imagery and descriptions are letting you down. It's not enough to just display the products, you need to sell them to me.

This means great images in a real setting (not the stock images you have), close ups, pictures of people having a BBQ, enjoying a sunset etc, and really passionate descriptions. Tell me why X is the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[Benjib]

dropshipping fisicx, its really annoying, none of these companies supply proper descriptions or images, i've even stopped selling one brand because their images were shocking!

 

[fisicx]

At the very least you could write some great descriptions.

But if you are just dropshipping, I'd stick with ebay/amazon rather than spend a lot of time trying to promote the website. It's OK but it's nothing special. If I were Googling for rattan furniture I wouldn't get past the first few results. And whilst I might see your advert on FB I'd probably still look on eBay to see if I can get it cheaper and faster.

 

[Benjib]

I'm working on the descriptions as we speak, I agree 100% with sticking with ebay/amazon, i will only push the site one I spend 4k on one which will be a fair few months away, I just wanted something professional to backup the branding etc

 

[Benjib]

I'm working on the descriptions as we speak, I agree 100% with sticking with ebay/amazon, i will only push the site one I spend 4k on one which will be a fair few months away, I just wanted something professional to backup the branding etc

 

[Benjib]

any further sugestions folks? I've added a free (small I know) trustpilot widget to the top of the homepage, descriptions are also being written, is there anything major missing? would you buy from my store?

 

[fisicx]

i will only push the site one I spend 4k on one which will be a fair few months away

You don't need to spend anywhere near that for a simple dropshipping site. You could build a really nice wordpress site with a $70 theme that would work much better than shopify.

 

[Elliottc26]

You don't need to spend anywhere near that for a simple dropshipping site. You could build a really nice wordpress site with a $70 theme that would work much better than shopify.

Agree here...

Spending £3k to £4k on a WordPress site is high-end for the platform. This is the realm of bespoke development, theme design and functionality - SEO is extra.

$70 theme and a bit of tweaking, some imagery, some copy and content written, and on-page SEO (including technical) will start you on your way.

 

[Pat Walsh]

Some quick feedback:

• In general, the site looks a bit generic to me and none of the products I've seen listed has a manufacturer name or brand name. By looking at the site, I can see the company name is Sandwell - but do they make the furniture or just sell it? (as a customer, I would want to know)
• The blog needs a bit of work (no posts as of yet!)
• There are some problems with the site when I use it on my iPhone 7 - e.g. when the homepage loads, there's lots of clutter at the top of the page, which gets in the way and also when I press the hamburger menu / Menu option, the website stops working and freezes

 

[fisicx]

Blame the shopify theme and its configuration. There are some good shopify themes but most of them are poorly responsive.

 

[Benjib]

Thanks pat, yep this shopify theme is a load of sh**, another mistake of mine after reading all the glowing feedback, is the world really full of so much idiots?