Site up for a Month, still no sales...

[Mr.Spireite]

OK I am pretty new to all things OSCommerce but I would have thought that I would be getting at least a few sales by now.

 

I sell a fair bit through ebay but that has dropped off recently so I decided to set up a store online with oscommerce as it seemed a good idead. However it is about 50% populated and I am getting a few hits through google. However, no sales as of yet.

 

Is there anything glaringly obvious I am doing wrong..

 

www.team-shots.co.uk

 

Any help of advice would be apreciated.

[♥toyicebear]

Well if you are talking just "unqualified" visitors via Google to your site, then you can expect a conversion of of between 0.1% to 0.3%. If the visitors are more targeted towards your product niche, then it can get higher.

 

Ie. For 1000 Unique visitors you can expect between 1 to 3 sales. (This again can be dependent on many different factors, website design, navigation, speed, your products pricing vs., competitors ++++++)

[♥geoffreywalton]

Hi

 

The site is very slow to load especially the images. Try to reduce these.

 

I'd remove the osc logo at the bottom of the page and increase the image size so you can see what you are buying.

 

Everything seems to have a description ending "football picture" you could probably drop this.

 

HTH

 

G

[Mr.Spireite]

How do you remove the osc logo ?

[multimixer]

The osC logo, is a banner, you will find it under admin>tools>banner manager

 

In general I would say there is no wonder that you make no sales, the way your website look like.

 

You need to put some more effort in it. Your logo is not readable, you sell images that are so small that nobody can see them, but so large in filesize that the page needs ages to load.

 

The whole page look exactly as the demo store... people may think it is not even a live store, I mean, visitors are kind of spoiled in terms of webdesign.

 

This would not be an issue if you would target a specific group of people using some blogs or a community etc, but if you expect google visitors to buy, then you need to do something about

[Mr.Spireite]

Sorted the banner, thanks for that.

 

As for effort, well I am brand new to all this and if it looks like a demo then not sure how to sort it.

 

Graphics speeds, not seeing a problem here at all, everything loads up quickly and once clicked on a nice large image loads up instantly....

 

As for the logo, again, have no idea how to make a better one tbh, my skills are limited.

 

Any help would be apreciated......

[usernamenone]

Why would someone need to buy from you! You have such large images and you have left them at a resolution of 100 which is high enough that anyone can print them out and frame them for the mantle. You don't need an image of more than 500 to 600 px wide and the resolution for the web should never be over 72. At 72 it is quite viewable but really awful to print out.

 

1 Also I have high speed Internet and if I have to wait for your images to unroll down the page I am gone.

2 Under Premier League you have set your small images so they are all the same width........ this distorts them as they are not the same width but are forced to be....... Very non professional looking. either re size them or change the setting to 0 for width and set the height or visa versa

3 you have not finished you conditions of use........ Ah........... looks like this Put here your Conditions of Use information. Spend some time on your contact us page.... and add some contact info...... Buyers like to know who you are and where you are. Can they get a hold of you if they need to. Privacy notice needs something besides You can be assured that none of your details will be passed on to any third parties.

Shipping and Returns needs something besides All shipping is a flat rate £0.99 worldwide. If you are unhappy with the product after receiving then please contact me and return for a full refund, no quibble guarnatee How do they contact me and return for full refund........ Let then know!!!

[♥14steve14]

Your website does look pretty standard, but that should not stop you selling things. What you need to do is to personallise your store. Look at your competitors sites and see what they have done. Dont copy their site, but add things that you think may help your site.

 

I see that you are a UK based business. For help with your privacy policy got to http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?itemId=1076142085&type=RESOURCES

Once on that page you can also find terms and conditions, and much more to fill your information pages. Alter the example text to meet your needs.

 

To make your site look different, you can design your own style or use the contribution found at http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/7757

 

Search through the contributions limiting the search to 2.3.1 and you will find many usefull add ons that may be benificial to what you need.

 

You could also try using html code to make your descriptions on your product pages look better. All you really need is things like <p></p> whick puts text in a paragrapg, <br></br> which starts a new line. More can be found by searching using google. The image you use look like scans taken from a magazine, you can see the staple marks, yet in the description you say they are originals and not scans. If that is the case use the actual image as the image on the page.

 

As you are selling images, make the product info image larger, and centre it on the page, and add the text and options below it.

 

What you then need to do is to personalise the site. Go through the languages pages and alter the text. This will make your site different from other oscommerce sites. Move all the boxes to the lefthand column so the page is wider. You could then make the left column wider so that the catagory box links do not go over two lines. Its things like this that will make your site that little bit different.

[Mr.Spireite]

Must get around to sorting this.

 

The main thing that is causing me a problem is the size of the pics which are taking up the bandwidth. What size should they be maximum to save on it and is there software that can automate the adjustments before I alter them withing OSCommerce ?

[Guest]

@@mr.Spireite,

 

You can adjust the image dimensions and resolution with any graphics editor, including Paint that comes with windows. I do however suggest either adding a theme or purchasing a template for your website, appearance is very important to potential customers.(unless you are selling gold bars for $5 each, then they won't care what your website looks like....lol)

 

 

 

Chris

[Mr.Spireite]

Thanks for the feedback I used Fotosizer to adjust all the pics and it has reduced the bandwith by a heck of a lot and solved the problem., just took a long time to manually adjust them all.

 

As for the apearance, not quite sure how to do all this, advice needed...for a simpleton like me....

[♥14steve14]

Instead of messing with all your images you could have added a thumbnail add on. Saying that you still can. Search the add ons section.

 

There are planty of posts on altering the look of oscommerce all you have to do is to search for them. if you are having trouble with the onsite search use google.

 

As you are UK based, and i would imaging most of your potential customers would come from the UK why not UK your site. There is now an addon for this. Again search the addons for UK.

 

Add a bit of html editing to your product descriptions. They will look better if you do.

 

How about adding a metatag addon that may improve things.