Some Advice and opinions please.

[Grimmyfrombar]

Hello all,

 

I was just wondering if I could get your thoughts on a few things.

 

I have been a member here for a few months now, I have to say thanks to everyone who has given advice to me in the past. This forum has been invaluable.

 

Our site has been up and running now about 5 months. At first things were slow and I need to learn so much that i kind of neglected the marketing side of things....

 

But now all is done, and I think it looks good.

 

For the past 2 months or so we have been averaging about 1 sale aday for about 200 visits.. Here is the problem..

1/200 sales ratio is very good I gather (isnt it 1/1000 normally?). So I'm confident our line of products are good and very resonably priced.. We have been using adwords lately and seen about a 250% increase in sales... But our unique visitors is really bad to be honest 200 aday is terrible..

 

So I belive with more traffic we can be very succesful. Ofcourse we dont want just any traffic, targeted.

 

I have installed the header tags and all products and a few others to help with our ranking.

 

Is there something I'm missing?

 

I would be very gratefully for any opinions. Store link is located in my profile.

I posted it in the "My Store" section a few months ago. Thats why I'm posting here this time.

I'm happy with the actually store its marketing and sales I want advice on.

 

Thanks for your time,

 

Lee.

 

PS: I know we dont use SSL, So I know that it will bother some people..Its something that will be fixed in the next few weeks.

 

One more question, Is it really nessesary to have SSL when using paypal as the main means of payment?

[Tom O Connor]

Hello all,

 

I was just wondering if I could get your thoughts on a few things.

 

I have been a member here for a few months now, I have to say thanks to everyone who has given advice to me in the past. This forum has been invaluable.

 

Our site has been up and running now about 5 months. At first things were slow and I need to learn so much that i kind of neglected the marketing side of things....

 

But now all is done, and I think it looks good.

 

For the past 2 months or so we have been averaging about 1 sale aday for about 200 visits.. Here is the problem..

1/200 sales ratio is very good I gather (isnt it 1/1000 normally?). So I'm confident our line of products are good and very resonably priced.. We have been using adwords lately and seen about a 250% increase in sales... But our unique visitors is really bad to be honest 200 aday is terrible..

 

So I belive with more traffic we can be very succesful. Ofcourse we dont want just any traffic, targeted.

 

I have installed the header tags and all products and a few others to help with our ranking.

 

Is there something I'm missing?

 

I would be very gratefully for any opinions. Store link is located in my profile.

I posted it in the "My Store" section a few months ago. Thats why I'm posting here this time.

I'm happy with the actually store its marketing and sales I want advice on.

 

Thanks for your time,

 

 

Lee.

 

PS: I know we dont use SSL, So I know that it will bother some people..Its something that will be fixed in the next few weeks.

 

One more question, Is it really nessesary to have SSL when using paypal as the main means of payment?

 

 

Well, I took at look at your site.

I am not impressed.. Very poor layout and im surprised you have any sales.. IMO you couldnt pay people to go to it.. IT STINKS!!!!

 

Sorry but that just my thoughts.

AND GET SSL FOR GODS SAKES!!!!!!!!!!!

[Grimmyfrombar]

Well thank you for your highly detailed remarks..

As I said the problem is not our sales ratio, but rather the amout of traffic..

I also said ssl will be up and running so. Please read my post properly. IDIOT!

 

Has anyone got any other opinions?

 

Thanks.

[running wolf]

Despite the fact that I don't like the stuff you sell I think your website is very interesting and most likely pleasing for your kind of customers.

I really like it.

But no, I don't have no clue on how to improve sales, I'm in the same boat, many visitors but almost no sales.

[Grimmyfrombar]

Despite the fact that I don't like the stuff you sell I think your website is very interesting and most likely pleasing for your kind of customers.

I really like it.

But no, I don't have no clue on how to improve sales, I'm in the same boat, many visitors but almost no sales.

 

Thank you for the comments.. I am pretty happy with the store in general.. My problem is not that I have no sales, its the low amount of traffic...

 

Thanks again.

[Jack_mcs]

The way to get more traffic is to place hihger in the search engine listings. To that end. the splash page is a wasted effort and will keep you from doing that. It needs to go. Also, you said you have Header Tags installed but it is not set up correctly. The page title is the same on all pages. So it is either not installed correctly or you overrode its basic operation. In either case, it will hurt your postion in the listings.

 

Jack

[Grimmyfrombar]

The way to get more traffic is to place hihger in the search engine listings. To that end. the splash page is a wasted effort and will keep you from doing that. It needs to go. Also, you said you have Header Tags installed but it is not set up correctly. The page title is the same on all pages. So it is either not installed correctly or you overrode its basic operation. In either case, it will hurt your postion in the listings.

 

Jack

Thank you jack for your imput.

I have serach the forum to find out about moving the into page, but cant find out how to do it.

But i did read that "with out the index there is no real tags" so now im not sure what to do.

 

Thanks again.

 

Lee.

[Jack_mcs]

I don't know what someone would mean by that. Each page of a site is treated as a sepearate site as far as the search engines are concerned. They do give more weight to the home page but the others can rank well if the home page is not set up correctly. I also don't understand "moving the into page." Are you referring to moving the shop to the root?

 

Jack

[Grimmyfrombar]

I don't know what someone would mean by that. Each page of a site is treated as a sepearate site as far as the search engines are concerned. They do give more weight to the home page but the others can rank well if the home page is not set up correctly. I also don't understand "moving the into page." Are you referring to moving the shop to the root?

 

Jack

 

Sorry that was suppose to be Intro page rather than into.. My mistake. Yes i was going to move the shop into the root.

Will look into the header tags also.. I had trouble installing them. But I thought they were ok. Hmm maybe I should install them again so.

 

 

Thanks again,

 

Lee.

[dm18k]

Sorry that was suppose to be Intro page rather than into.. My mistake. Yes i was going to move the shop into the root.

Will look into the header tags also.. I had trouble installing them. But I thought they were ok. Hmm maybe I should install them again so.

Thanks again,

 

Lee.

 

 

As a reminder, your traffic will drop even more when you change your root from /catalog to /

Based on what I see, it was created:2006-01-15

 

Over the passed 11 months all your traffic went to /catalog and when you change it to / all them links you had in the passed will go no where unless you forward each product to the new products. So you really can't just delete and reset up.. you will have to follow some steps in order to maintain what you currently have

 

First things first...

How to people enter your webpage...

Look at your stats page and look for Enter

about 80% of OSC pages people enter by: catalog/product_info.php

<---Sample Awstats--->

 

Most of my customers go right into the products then my index page.. and so on.. but my main .com is like 8th on the list... hell I even log into my admin section more then people visit my main.com

 

If pretty much all your visitors go right to your main.com then its more of word by mouth for your visitors..

and you can change your root and not lose all that much traffic but if there is a range of how people come to your webpage... then you need to forward everyone to the new page..

 

or

 

You can make a basic HTML page like I have and direct people into your Store and make all kinds of links and so on.. You can look on my profile and just goto the page and get a general idea on how I done it..

 

Another Idea would be...

 

Goto yourcompany.com/catalog goto File then Save as and remove some scripts, and a few tags here and there and just redirect images... but you wont have any dynamics like your specials, top 10 products so on so forth but you will have a simple gateway to the rest of your page... You can always replace some of the dynamics of the page with basic html or even java/dhtml..

 

There are many things you can do...

 

I hold a 3 to 5 google ranking, and about a 120,000 alexa rank, very well placement with almost all major search engines..., no problems with search engines coming in and out.. and have about 1,000,000 visitors monthly..

 

I hope this helps you out.

 

Dusty

[Jack_mcs]

Any time a change is made to url's, it will affect ranking. But a simple line in the .htaccess file will redirect the links properly and the rankings should recover within a few weeks to a month. One should never put off making improvements to a shop because they are afraid of what will happen with the search engines in the short-run.

 

Jack

[abra123cadabra]

As Dusty mentioned before, try to figure out where visitors enter your shop and where they come from. Check how fast they leave the shop and how many page views you get from the different visitors.

 

For CPC referrals, your landing page must be relevant to the customer (they shouldn't land on the intro page if they were looking for a special keyword). For all the organic search referrals, it's important to give them all the necessary information as they don't enter via the intro page.

 

I guess for your target customers the site theme is what they expect to see but they might as well have the same problems with viewing your site as I have. The contrast of the font to the background is very low and the font size doesn't make it better to read what's on your pages.

 

You might want to give another thought to the size of your product images. The thumbnails are very fuzzy, making them pretty useless and on the product pages they are just too small. Whatever kind of stuff you sell, I can't physically examine them so you have to give me something to base my purchase decision on: good images. Don't make me click on them to see them bigger. I personally think the more clicks it takes to get all info I need, the less likely I'll buy.

 

The SSL, you know it. Even if you take payments via paypal, you still need to protect the data of your customers. At the same time it encrypts your connection to your admin panel. Just get it and use it. Visitors like the additional security feeling and that's what counts.

 

I hope that helps,

 

abra

[mpiscopo]

You should install the Ultimate SEO contribution. This will change your URL's to something search engines can rank you on (product names in the URL's).

 

Also, focus on getting more inbound links. You can search on directories, many are free or charge a nominal fee. You can also get reciprocal links. Both of these will help, but be sure to get them from sites relative to your market.

[Grimmyfrombar]

Any time a change is made to url's, it will affect ranking. But a simple line in the .htaccess file will redirect the links properly and the rankings should recover within a few weeks to a month. One should never put off making improvements to a shop because they are afraid of what will happen with the search engines in the short-run.

 

Jack

 

 

Well I have done some more work. And thank you all for your imput. I have installed the ultimate seos and the header tags seem to be working fine now... sales are on the up..

 

What kind of code do i insert in the .htaccess fiel? And how is the best way to move everything to the root? Bascially how do i start to remove the intro page?

 

 

Thanks again for everyones advice.

 

 

Lee.

[jonquil]

I find your site pretty interesting :) The one bit of advice I have for you is "spell check." :-" I am so turned off when I see misspellings on a site that I surf away. Also, check out your 100 gift voucher. Bit of a link problem :(

 

jon

[Grimmyfrombar]

I find your site pretty interesting :) The one bit of advice I have for you is "spell check." :-" I am so turned off when I see misspellings on a site that I surf away. Also, check out your 100 gift voucher. Bit of a link problem :(

 

jon

 

Yeah i noticed the €100 voucher link looks a bit funny. I will look into it thanks. Really need to know hows the best way to remove the intro page and move my site to the root at the moment?

 

Thanks,

 

Lee.

[walkman]

How are you getting your stats on visitors per day? Are you sure it's accurate and not counting spiders, etc.?

 

With your website orientation, I'm not sure that you should expect millions of hits per day. How many people are really out there looking on-line to purchase heavy metal items these days?

 

Who are your biggest competitors? Any idea how much traffic they're getting?

 

I think you should definitely look at closing more of the traffic you're getting. I definitely don't think you should consider 1/200 good enough and stop focusing on it.

 

Also, I would never buy from a site that didn't have SSL - my CC information would be completely unprotected. You may also be violating your CC processing agreement by not having it.

[Jack_mcs]

Well I have done some more work. And thank you all for your imput. I have installed the ultimate seos and the header tags seem to be working fine now... sales are on the up..

 

What kind of code do i insert in the .htaccess fiel? And how is the best way to move everything to the root? Bascially how do i start to remove the intro page?

Thanks again for everyones advice.

Lee.

The changes to the htaccess file are shown in the ultimate seo instructions. To move the shop to the root, copy everything that is in your shop directory (catalog,or whatever it is called) into the root directory. Then edit both configure files and elminate the reference to that directory.

 

Jack

[ntd]

Some things have been said but not why.

 

Search engines look for the text you have on your site to have key words in it that are being used to find your products. Look at your compitition and see what they are using. The splash page has no content and 1 link giving the search engines very little to start with. They will spider the site but giving it to them on the first page is always better.

 

Page titles and descriptions should be different for each page AND should relate to what is on that page. This is where the dynamic meta tags come in handy.

 

Links from other sites. Find other sites that have content of some related kind. Swords, make up, other goth stuff. Or other clothing and jewelry. The idea is if other site like you your site is worth positioning better.

 

Lastly time. Your efforts will take time to show up. The more compitition you have online the longer it will take. Or the better your online compitition is at doing what search engines like the longer it will take.

 

Good luck

[Victor Wise]

I recommend spending lots and lots of time doing keyword research. Find keywords that reflect needs or desires that relate to various product groups you sell. Then create custom landing pages for these keywords, showing people the products you sell and explaining below the title of the page how these products will benefit them. Make sure you know about how google evaluates landing pages and determines quality scores.

 

If you use ppc advertising and do this, you should increase your conversion rate, get more traffic, and lower your cpc (for adwords only).

 

Also, not to be insulting, but this is not the 90’s – get rid of the entrance page to your website.

[Grimmyfrombar]

I recommend spending lots and lots of time doing keyword research. Find keywords that reflect needs or desires that relate to various product groups you sell. Then create custom landing pages for these keywords, showing people the products you sell and explaining below the title of the page how these products will benefit them. Make sure you know about how google evaluates landing pages and determines quality scores.

 

If you use ppc advertising and do this, you should increase your conversion rate, get more traffic, and lower your cpc (for adwords only).

 

Also, not to be insulting, but this is not the 90’s – get rid of the entrance page to your website.

 

 

Thanks, need to do some work on my keywords and header tags. I'm not sure the header tags contribution is working so I have to look into that also.

 

The intro will be removed today(I hope). Just wonder, I have a pr4 on my catalog page and have all my products lisited, some very good, so i will be losing this? Also every link will be useless after I remove it, wonder how long it takes to get everything back to normal?

 

 

Thanks to everyone who helped with this topic!

[Victor Wise]

Thanks, need to do some work on my keywords and header tags. I'm not sure the header tags contribution is working so I have to look into that also.

 

The intro will be removed today(I hope). Just wonder, I have a pr4 on my catalog page and have all my products lisited, some very good, so i will be losing this? Also every link will be useless after I remove it, wonder how long it takes to get everything back to normal?

Thanks to everyone who helped with this topic!

 

I understand your concerns.

 

An important seo design element for google is to make sure that every page on your website can be accessed by no more than two clicks. Since your intro page probably stops your website from satisfying this design element, you are likely being penalized by google in some way or form. I am sure there are other SEO reasons to get rid of the intro page as well.

[jpweber]

Maybe adding a category for whips, restraints, and handcuffs would generate more traffic.

[Guest]

Get more exposure of your shop:

 

http://www.oscommercepixel.com

[jpweber]

Get more exposure of your shop:

 

http://www.oscommercepixel.com

 

This site is just a scam to make money. They're saying if you buy enough of their "pixels" to make your logo, that they'll link to your website, giving you an additional backlink.

 

First, it has a PR of 0, so it's a worthless backlink. Second, they links are hidden in javascript coding, so search engine spiders don't see them, so they don't index them or list them. So there really are no backlinks.