Website Design? Boosting Sales?

[mobyme]

What made you think this site was susceptible to hacking?

I ask so that I can learn, and in doing so, make sure my sites are not vulnerable.

Relax, your site does not have the gaping vulnerability that the other one had.

I cannot go into any detail about this hack because although it's not a very sophisticated one it would open up lot's of other sites to attack.

I would like to see the cretins that do this, do time, not encourage them.

 

[Fresco_Creative]

Hi, we recently launched an online boutique for shabby chic gifts and unique jewellery. Before Christmas we were making a few sales but since it's totally flatlined. I believe we have a good looking site, nice (but small) product ranges and helpful pages.

Can anyone give us advice on why we're not converting customers? It's super low at 0.01% and majority of people that find us through search type for a specific product such as 'red book ends' which we do have in stock. Any tips for a business beginner? All help would be super appreciated and we're not sure what we're missing...

Our website is called Rapunzel's Retreat.

I think the website needs to be much much clearer as soon as I go into it and I also think it would be good to think about who you want to target. You also need to ask yourself where you can currently be found

Do you have google analytics in place? If so, monitor the levels of traffic and set yourselves some targets of keywords which you would like to come up high for

Really, I think its both design and marketing that needs to be addressed and considered here..

 

[Chilcott]

I think your website has been hacked! Just tried to look at it.

What you need is a good Internet marketing plan and then your notice the difference in sales

 

[j600com]

Relax, your site does not have the gaping vulnerability that the other one had.

I cannot go into any detail about this hack because although it's not a very sophisticated one it would open up lot's of other sites to attack.

I would like to see the cretins that do this, do time, not encourage them.

If its not sophisticated that would give me even greater concern. The site is still showing as hacked when you Google it, can't your web provider fix this? Obviously this is a serious/urgent issue that needs immediate attention.

Pointless even beginning to look at conversions when there is a far greater issue to resolve.

 

[mobyme]

If its not sophisticated that would give me even greater concern. The site is still showing as hacked when you Google it, can't your web provider fix this? Obviously this is a serious/urgent issue that needs immediate attention.

Pointless even beginning to look at conversions when there is a far greater issue to resolve.

The trouble is if you discuss what method was used to hack a site or server vulnerabilities on a public forum tomorrow there will be a million cretins trying their luck and affecting peoples livelihoods.

The simplest advice I can give to anybody using one of the popular CMS's is to update as soon as possible, only use plug ins that are verified and get rid of any you don't need; also change your password regularly and make sure the password uses a mixture characters and numbers.

If anybody thinks they have got a specific problem with their server security they are better off asking one of the guys who do hosting if they can PM them with the problem.

Do not whatever you do post about your problem on a public forum especially if you have anything in your profile or signature that can lead someone to your site.

 

[Vennweb]

I'm afraid I haven't had time to read all the posts but thought I would add my thoughts incase it helps.

Looking at the site it loads and navigates quite slowly and customers can find this off-putting.

There is code on the pages which is not needed - for example there is a bit of code for integration into Facebook, but the rest of the code is not there and there is no button.

The keyword list in the <metta> tag at the top of the page contains a lot of long phrases, one using an accented word with I expect no one is likely to put into a search engine. I would consider generating phrases of 3-4 words max.

There is very little text content on the main page for google to decide what your site is about - I would add some into text here a couple of paragraphs would help.

Hope this helps,

Paul Christian

 

[totalweb]

Personal opinion, but I think the site looks great. I take the point of Vennweb that the site loads a little slowly. But to be fair that only seems to be the images and given that these are good resolution professional shots - which they need to be, I wouldn't look to alter this.

I would perhaps consider putting a few contact details up in the header graphic (phone number at least). But you seem to be saying that the issue is with people backing out of orders. I couldn't see any reason for that. I wonder if visitors are using your site to gauge prices against a competitor? Certainly I don't feel there is anything "mechanically" wrong which could justify your experience. Perhaps a few more products? Are you coming across a little too small? Hard to say, but it's a thought.

Anyway forget the analytics, I'd start checking out the competition (inc. ebay). When I find something I like, I always source the prices off a number of sites and ultimately go with the cheapest (because I'm miserly like that). That doesn't mean you need to start a price war, a company can compete on quality and service as well as cost.

Now the above may or may not apply to you - it is of course a simple exercise to gauge your place in the market. But if it does, then the question is one of added value and how to very quickly get that across to your visitors.

I would certainly consider asking you paying customers for a little feedback. Cost/look/product range/choice etc. they're the best people to tell you what is happening.

 

[Deleted member 120672]

There are a lot of reasons your site doesn't convert.

#1 - The page load speed is too slow. Amazon did a study that found for every extra 0.1 seconds spent loading their pages, revenues decreased 1%. I think your site needs to be faster.

#2 - The checkout process is horrible (no offense) - Never get customers to register before they enter their details. Try to cut the checkout process down and ask for only the details you need. If you really, really, really want customers to register, then make them do it after they have filled in all of their details. You will still lose some people this way, but a lot more people will stay, because they have pyschologically committed to buying from you once they have entered their details. People hate to waste time and feel like they made a bad choice, so they are much more likely to comply with your instructions once you have got some form of committment.

#3 - It is hard to tell when you've successfully added something to your cart. There needs to be a little popup or something that confirms you added something to the cart. I know that you have something that appears above the main content of the page, but this does not stand out enough and I missed it the first time I click the order button, which lead to me clicking it again and then realising I had put too many in the cart.

#4 - No trust signals - There are no prominent "trust signals" on the page that instantly reassure me that the site is legit.

and many more....

Hopefully this helps,

I like to think I know what I'm talking about because I run a conversion rate optimisation and SEO business.

BTW: All of this is meant to be constructive criticism. Please don't take any of this personally. (always helps to say this from past experience)

Feel free to ask more questions,

Jack

I totally agree that the checkout process is ghastly. We've used an opencart template and have yet to customise the payment page (from speaking to my developer, it's a lot of hassle to do coding-wise).

There are some developments I'd like to add such as having an amazon payments option as well as paypal. Have you or anyone else on the forum had any success buy adding more than one external payment gateway? Any recommendations would be useful.

 

[Deleted member 120672]

Relax, your site does not have the gaping vulnerability that the other one had.

I cannot go into any detail about this hack because although it's not a very sophisticated one it would open up lot's of other sites to attack.

I would like to see the cretins that do this, do time, not encourage them.

Hi, As you can tell we've fixed the hacking problem we had on our website recently. I wonder if you could PM me with how our site had obvious vulnerability issues? We've strengthened all the areas that we possibly could but I'd be interested to know why you thought we were so easy to hack into compared to some others? A PM would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your help and comments.