How long before sales..

[alougher]

We just got listed today in the major search engines (except google - still waiting). We're 3 on yahoo and 4 on altavista and msn. Just wondering how long it was before some of you started making sales. We've had a lot of clicks but no sales yet. Just curious..

[burt]

On our main site, we waited 13 minutes from going live to 1st sale, but this was not a brand new business...

 

On a customers site, he waited 2 days, and another customer is still waiting after more than 6 months (but his product is not great and overpriced!)

 

I think it rather depends upon your products and prices more than anything. We see a lot of people put our site into their favourites, leave for a day or two, then come back and purchase...people like to window shop.

 

HTH

[alougher]

We just made our first sale! woohoo!

[rossdev]

We see a lot of people put our site into their favourites

Now how do you track people placing your site in their favorites?

 

Brian..

[alougher]

uh...

[burt]

:) You look in your transfer log for "favicon.ico"

 

Easy as that.

 

grep -i 'favicon.ico' transfer-log > favicon.txt

[alougher]

Cool! didn't know that! I'll keep an eye out for it - thanks a lot!

[rossdev]

:)  You look in your transfer log for "favicon.ico"

 

Easy as that.

 

grep -i 'favicon.ico' transfer-log > favicon.txt

That's cool for IE users. Did you by chance include in your privacy statement that you are tracking bookmarks with a favicon?

 

Brian..

[wizardsandwars]

Hey burt,

 

In my raw files, I see alot of this "/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404".

 

Why do they al have a 404 on them?

[dreamscape]

We just got listed today in the major search engines (except google - still waiting). We're 3 on yahoo and 4 on altavista and msn. Just wondering how long it was before some of you started making sales. We've had a lot of clicks but no sales yet. Just curious..

 

what search engine submission did you use?? or did you submit them all by hand?

[alougher]

I used Overture. We're paying hefty $ for clicks though (.40c per click). We're just experimenting until we get indexed by other search engines.

 

We blew $30 this morning right away and only one sale so far. I guess this is trial and error until we get it right though...

[wizardsandwars]

Whew, that's pretty hich to pay for clicks.

 

I'm not sure what you sell, but you might want to try out some price comparison shops like BizRate, Dealtime or Nextag. You'll pay around $.25 a click, but they will be people you know are looking to buy.

[hobbzilla]

Hey burt,

 

In my raw files, I see alot of this "/favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404".

 

Why do they al have a 404 on them?

 

Have you looked to see if there is a file called "favicon.ico" in your root web directory? If not.. it is simple.. users add you to their favorites and IE tries to grab your favicon file for use in displaying your icon instead of the little file with the 'e' on it. If you don't have one.. it will be the default.. and will show up in your logs that they tried to download it.

[burt]

Did you by chance include in your privacy statement that you are tracking bookmarks with a favicon?

 

By chance, yes. :roll:

[wizardsandwars]

Hey, that's pretty cool.

 

I'm a firm believer that you learn something new everyday.

 

Can someone show me an example of you the "favicon.ico" file is supposed to look like?

 

Thanks!

[burt]

Go along to google, and add it into your favourites. Close browser. Reopen and open up the google page in your browser.

 

You should see a little coloured "G" next to the URL in your browser...thats a favicon. See www.favicon.com for more - I did have a favicon creation program a few years back when they were a big gimmick, but don't tend to bother with them now.

 

IIRC, I think our favicon is an image of an "eye"... we had another one that was an image of an ice cube for another of our brands...

[burt]

In fact:

 

http://www.google.co.uk/favicon.ico

http://www.yahoo.com/favicon.ico

http://www.oscommerce.com/favicon.ico

 

and so on... HTH

[Guest]

Actually, you can't really track bookmarks that way... Netscape 7, and Mozilla, display the favicon right away in the locations field and on the tab. You can expect Microsoft will follow suit in the next upgrade of IE. (innovation my eye!)

[wizardsandwars]

Burt,

 

Yeah, I understand what it is, I just figured I ask how to creat the file. Do I just put the path and name of the icon image? Does it have size and dimesion restrictions? Do I need to put something like this in the favicon.ico file:

 favicon="http

://www.my-site/images/favicon.jpg"?

[Guest]

Chris:

 

The favicon.ico file has to be an icon file, 16 x 16, up to 256 colours. Best bet is to create a 16x16 bmp, and convert it to ico.

 

It needs to be put in the docroot directory of your site, which is where the webserver will look for it. You may need to refresh your browser to see it updated.

 

HTH,

[wizardsandwars]

OK, I'm afraid I still may not understand.

 

I created an image, saved it as a bmp, then changed the name to favicon,ico. Then I ftp'd it to my document root.

 

I cleared any old bookmarks I might have. Then I bookmarked my site. Then I refreshed my browser, and I still don't see the icon.

 

Obvioulsy, I'm doing something wrong. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Guest]

Actually, the bmp needs to be converted, not just renamed. I use a program called MicroAngelo (http://www.impactsoft.com). There may be other utilities on the net.

 

Ciao,