Guest zodiac73 Posted January 12, 2008 Share Posted January 12, 2008 I am getting a small amount of traffic to one of my sites (the one in my sig) but few actual purchases. I must be doing something wrong, what mistakes do you think I am making and what are your opinions on mistakes that can be made that will have the effect of turning the visitor off or making them go elsewhere, not purchase from your site, when the product is there in front of them for the taking on your site? Simon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 14, 2008 Share Posted January 14, 2008 Well my first impression is that it could look and sound more professional. Your terms, welcome text and about us text all sound more like ebay than a pro store selling electronics. Especially for higher ticket items, you need to present a professional front. There is no mention on the homepage of what you actually sell - I would add a tag line under the logo to clarify your stores purpose. You seem to have good descriptions which is one thing a lot of first timers overlook, but I would suggest a re-write. If you aren't comfortable writing text, you might look into hiring someone to do it for you. A lot of colleges have advertising/marketing/copywrighting students looking to pick up some extra funds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zodiac73 Posted January 14, 2008 Share Posted January 14, 2008 Well my first impression is that it could look and sound more professional. Your terms, welcome text and about us text all sound more like ebay than a pro store selling electronics. Especially for higher ticket items, you need to present a professional front. There is no mention on the homepage of what you actually sell - I would add a tag line under the logo to clarify your stores purpose. You seem to have good descriptions which is one thing a lot of first timers overlook, but I would suggest a re-write. If you aren't comfortable writing text, you might look into hiring someone to do it for you. A lot of colleges have advertising/marketing/copywrighting students looking to pick up some extra funds. Hi Mysty, thanks for the comments. The site has been up for a while but time constraints have limited the development. We can supply thousands of products but as I have set it up for shipping by weight it takes a long time to weigh thousands of items! As far as the logo goes it is currently one i made using CoolText dot com but you are right about adding a tagline. I will have a go at this with my limited graphical skills this evening :-) The site docs (About Us, etc.) are a bit bare still, you are right about them and I need to get something more professional looking up there definitely. T's & C's especially as I think people are expecting to see lengthy legal sounding stuff when they look in there (do they read them? Doubt it) I think applying the SEO mod will be one of the next things on the list also; however at cubecartforums I have found loads of cool mods which will add functionality or professional image to the site however I read once that upgrading after modding can be tricky and stufing the whole thing up completely is a bit of a worry! We sell a lot on ebay and I guess that's why the wordings on the website sound ebay-style as I'm used to writing text for that. Any further replies and/or comments are always appreciated and can only help! Simon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 15, 2008 Share Posted January 15, 2008 The tagline should be text, not a graphic. Remember that search engines cannot index images - you need text with key words in it to rank well in search engines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zodiac73 Posted January 15, 2008 Share Posted January 15, 2008 The tagline should be text, not a graphic. Remember that search engines cannot index images - you need text with key words in it to rank well in search engines. Ahh I see what you mean now, I thought you meant incorporating the tagline into the graphic (which I was going to do next) but the plain text idea sounds a lot better. Will get on to that later :-) Thanks! Simon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vokf Posted January 15, 2008 Share Posted January 15, 2008 Hi Simon, I echo what Stevie's comments. The skin you're using is pretty ugly. For £0 (yes.. FREE)-£40+ you can get a professional skin which will really show off your store. Take a good look at competitors stores. I'd suggest printing them out and chatting over a coffee with a friend, its easier to mark up likes/dislikes. Lose the 3rd party links/adverts. Running adverts on your OWN products/deals is good, but why do you want people to leave your site? The terms and conditions are not really complete. -What is your refund policy (remember the distance selling act!) -How are items shipped? -How do I return faulty goods? -If you're a Ltd company, you should be listing your registrations number from companies house. If you are not Ltd (ie Sole Trader/Partnership etc) then you need to remove the Ltd from your site. Beef up the privacy policy. -Why is your site using cookies? -Do you pass my details on to 3rd parties for shipping purposes (drop shipping?) Reading back the above, I think my best advice is to check out your competitors, and work out the differences. Spending a night in a pub, or over a coffee to discuss what you'd need to compete will be time well spent. The wordy bits (T&C/Privacy) can be fairly generic, providing you agree to adhere to them. Not many people will actually read the full T&C, but its important you have something better than you currently use. On the positive side, you've got a good range of products, and you're just starting out on getting away from ebay :-) If you're successful at ebay, you'll know it takes time to get things running well. Going back to the presentation (because its one of the most important things!), you can modify one of the existing skins (just pick another one to Killer!), www.cubecartforums.org has lots of free and commercial skins, and most are very easy to install. Best wishes, Jason Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest zodiac73 Posted January 20, 2008 Share Posted January 20, 2008 Hi, little delay in repying as my PC went down. Okay, lots of feedback and constructive criticism there, all is being taken on board. I am new to this website building lark, so at the time of viewing there were probably bound to be plenty of mistakes on the site, but then I did state that in the original post! I have added certain info now eg our Limited Company registration number, and our VAT number too. I am looking very closely at the DSR etc to make sure that I am not falling foul of those and basically being sure of what I write before I write the wrong thing. This will be wrapped up fully in a day or two I expect, which will be a relief. As for the Killer skin - out of the 3 offered upon installation it's the one I found least ugly actually The other two just looked like every other PHP based free CMS in every way. I am going to check out the available skins as suggested - thanks for the pointer! "2) The logo looks like something made up from one of the logo websites where you just put in your name, click a button and download." - Rumbled!! The linkreferral box loads fine for me on several PC's so I don't know why it didn't for you. Basically I put it in so that the search engines see changes to the content even on days that I don't make any product or content changes manually. I have assumed that it's doing the trick as google spiders the site every day and new products show up in google within 24 hours - I thought that was not bad going for a little site like mine :-) Also, the text lower down I put purposely out of the way and basically has one purpose - keywords. I know they aren't going to count as much as H1's etc but I have seen results where a search for a term containing a keyword from down there and one from the main content brought the searcher in - we didn't have the exact product that they searched for but they may have found something else after having a browse around or seen something a friend has been saying they are looking for or want for their birthday - you never know! Do I need SSL on my hosting? I use mals-e and all card payments are handled on their server not mine, also same for Paypal. We do not store customers credit card numbers either electronically or on paper - I have edited the site docs a little to add in some info of this type. I know it's not perfect yet but at least it is stated there and can be read. Any further opinions, help or suggestions are much appreciated as always from anyone! :-D Simon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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