my website is getting no responses

[Deleted member 138839]

Hi

My website is getting poor responses and little traffic, can anyone make practical suggestions that don't cost the earth? Appreciate any good pointers. This was a DIY Jimdo pro package from the USA that came recommended.

stressman

 

[fisicx]

This was a DIY Jimdo pro package from the USA that came recommended.

Well you need to dump that pile of junk for starters.

Practical suggestions:
Built a site that meets peoples needs.
Provide services and products that people want.
Market the products or services in the places these people frequent.

To do all the above needs lots of research and lots of time. An e-commerce site can take two years to just break even.

There are no cheap and easy solutions. These day's it is harder and harder to built an effective website with out some capital investment.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

What are you doing at the moment?

 

[fisicx]

Apologies, my last post was a little terse.

These DIY site builders rarely deliver the sort of site that performs well. In order to make the building simple there are all sorts of limitations. It is there limitations that prevent you ranking well, getting visitors and converting.

If you want a site that makes money then investment is required. Even if not financial, then you will be spending months or even years fine tuning and promoting.

 

[Websitehandyman]

The secret to cheap traffic boils down to two things. First know your target, and I don't just mean their ages. I where they hangout, why the buy even what time the buy.

The second is a bit harder and relies on many things to even be part successful. That is search engine traffic. You'll need to do work on your site and the content but also you need to engage with other sites and other people.

You'll find some places below that might help if your traffic is the sort of traffic that suits and you are prepared to test them out.

 

[garyscottadamson]

Hey there!

I haven’t seen your website so I’m not exactly sure what to suggest - but DIY packages don’t really work. Even some professionally designed websites can fail if they just look good.

What you need to do is figure out what the main goals are for your website. For instance: Get users to sign up to the newsletter, get users to buy a product.

Everything you do on your site should be done with these goals in mind and ultimatley support them.

if you PM I’ll be happy to give you some pointers free of charge.

 

[Emily Quirk]

What type of business is it?
If your business is selling high price products/services then I recommend the book Big Ticket E-Commerce by Bob Regnerus.
It highlights where people go wrong with their online marketing strategies and how to get the most out of your online efforts. I hope this is helpful.
Also, here is a link to Bob Regnerus's website

http://www.bigticketecommerce.com/

 

[money24seven]

Really think you need to ditch the current site. Take whatever is relevant from it and then get a wordpress blog installed on your domain. Have at least 4 pages with the first page being static and your main points. Other pages can be benefits, testimonials, about us etc

 

[Litherland]

build the website using a different provider and see what happens. im not sure what service you are offering to the public but if you have a great idea then definitely go for it, just change the web site and experiment. good luck with it!

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

Hi Stressman,

Assuming this is for the UK then you'll definitely benefit from switching to a UK web host. You'll get better performance and proper support when you need it.

If you're on a budget then I'd recommend Wordpress.

Any decent host will provide a one click installer so you can get Wordpress up in seconds. Then simply choose a free theme you like, or buy a premium one from theme forest, and add your content.

This will be a whole lot better than what you have currently.

Wordpress is good for SEO out of the box, and then you can add an SEO plugin like Yoast to make it great.

Create some static pages describing what you provide, your services, about your company/site and so forth, and then add a blog (using Wordpress this is obviously very easy), regularly writing relevant and useful content, from which you can link to your product/service pages. Then you can link to those blog posts on various social media and relevant websites, in a genuine and non spammy way, and that can help drive traffic.

The beauty of Wordpress is that because it's so popular there's a wealth of help and information out there, including on this forum, and if you want to get a professional involved at a later date then you can.

I hope that helps

Good luck

Dan

 

[Websitehandyman]

Hi Stressman,

Assuming this is for the UK then you'll definitely benefit from switching to a UK web host. You'll get better performance and proper support when you need it.

I wouldn't use the term definitely for either of those, I'm sure you give great support as do others in the UK but sadly it's a UK problem that not going away. I get good support at a good price in the USA

As for performance ? I get an average 32ms from Germany and less then that from Holland. In the Uk 25ms is about right.

You have to very careful though and not just go on cost alone. So although I love to push UK hosting it's a question of value for money in the market.

 

[Dan_HiHosting]

For shared hosting, which I imagine Stressman is after, the UK is perfectly competitive on price. 5 or 10 years ago UK hosting would have been significantly more expensive than US hosting, but that simply isn't the case now.

If you bought normal shared hosting from Germany you wouldn't see those figures, and the latency from the US can be significant.

If you're on a budget and after a server or VPS, then I can see the cost argument, but for shared hosting and if you want support getting started with your first site, then I think you're much better off with a decent UK host that will give personal support.

 

[CAEDAN]

As regards for 'free' sites, they are very restrictive. You will need either your own, or to work your free one which means SEO/SEM.

I have a friend that does mine, and he is very, very good. One customer he had with a free site and 2 sales in 3 years - true! - has now used him for a few months. They went from invisable with 3 cloned sites they didn't know about taking their hits, to being position 18, with a site that looks as good as he could get a free site to look - not bad in 4 months! Lots of work inloved though!

I would advise to look at a good quality basic site, and good SEO/SEM, and it will come flying in! Make sure you get ones that know what they are doing though!

 

[WilliamsData]

The cheapest way to get visibility online is good content.

Give people a reason to visit your site, and a reason to come back, rather than just hawking your wares. If users love it, google will love it

 

[ORDERED WEB]

Hi

My website is getting poor responses and little traffic, can anyone make practical suggestions that don't cost the earth? Appreciate any good pointers. This was a DIY Jimdo pro package from the USA that came recommended.

stressman

Hi

I really don't understand why people are talking about hosting or wordpress. This is a straight design / market / marketing issue

The process is

- understand the customers need
- identify the customers
- get your proposition right for the customer demographic
- create a website that caters to that need
- promote the website properly, and especially to the customer demographic
- measure
- make adjustments
- go to the first step (its a ongoing process)


then there are 2 processes..

- create a group of promotion ideas
- promote
- measure
- refine
- go to first step

and the second..

- look at the wider picture
- expand where nessacary
- contract where required
- measure
- go to the first step

So considering you are asking the question, I suggest starting with the very basic question

"what does my customer need? what are my customers needs?"