My family runs a theatrical/costume store in lower Michigan and would like to get things running on the Internet. Their site is at lynchs.com. They say they are not getting as many orders as they use to before a site redesign. Not sure why. What can be done to bring in more traffic/business? Thanks.
join AdWords and target the ads for the regions where you want to sell it can gave great results in your situation
On top of PPC (which is pay per click, what the guy mentioned above me), you can do SEO (search engine optimization) to rank for the big keywords in your industry although it does take time and patience. PPC is immediate results.
Do you guys think an eBay Store would be a good fit for a business like this? Would it be a better way to go than trying to promote the site?
i always like to be independent from other sites/persons/etc so i would recommend setting the bussiness on your own site
Ebay is a very cut throat market place. You would do better promoting your own site. PPC would be the quickest way to promote your site. I'm sure you want to get a better online presence quickly to get some halloween costumes sold. Long term you could focus on organic SEO. You can learn what organic SEO is and how it works by reading the forum here. Where do you live in Michigan?
Thanks I will look into all of that. I actually don't live there anymore, but my family does (Dearborn). Just trying to help the business out. Thanks.
i,am seo expert and i give seo services also, i got some income on my websites , i like to be sucessfull webmaster.
Troozer, it would be a good idea if you start an affiliate program for this site. This way, other people will be promoting your site for free on their sites, and if they get you any lead/sale you only pay them then (a 5% or 10% commission, or maybe a fixed amount of $5 per sale/per costume). And with an affiliate policy of payment with a minimum $ 50 or $ 100 amount, you will gain a lot. You wouldn't have to pay the affiliates for almost a few months when the initial customer came through their site. They can be made to add banners on their sites or promote specific popular products/costumes only, or both. I seriously think an affiliate network will work perfect in your case. I'm surprised you didn't already have it on the site, considering its an eCommerce site. Also, have you tried promoting in some local magazine or newspaper about your store? Hope this works out for you.
Well, first things first. I think their front page needs a major rework. It doesn't really provide very much information and to be honest, the juggling clown, looks a bit unprofessional. Look at actually making the store seem more professional in appearance. This is especially important for online stores. You need to make people trust your site from the moment they land on it. A professional looking and well designed site goes a long way in achieving that.
I have told them about this before. I asked why they even had the enter page in the first place, and they said the person who did their site said they had to for search engine reasons. I don't what that is about, do you? Thanks for the replies.
I wouldn't bother with too much SEO--unless you are large enough to compete with the big guys, you would probably have to spend a lot to get your page into the top rankings. Instead, I agree that you should stick with niche advertising and PPC. Tom
I guess that person was a bit misguided. Entrance pages are actually bad for SEO (Search engines), not good.
I agree with the comments about getting rid of the entrance page. It should be pretty easy to do too. Just convert the featured products page to the home page by changing the formatting a bit at the top (making the "special message" into a welcome message instead).
No offence. From my personal point of view, entrance page should remove. Additional, a nice flash header may help. Sitemaps is a must - very important .
I completely agree with you guys about the entrance page. I don't have access to the site, so I can't make any changes. I have told them to change it before, but I will try again. Thanks for the replies.
If it isn't broke don't fix it. If I were you I would go back to the old design. Then start a new domain to experiment with.
Again, I have no say as to what happens to the site. They just asked me to find out some things to get people coming. I think the reason they redesigned the site was because they did not think they were getting enough traffic, but it backfired. They are not web savvy people, just trying to run their business. I will let them know what you guys listed. Thanks.
Like everybody else, I think the splash page is completely unnecessary. If I were shopping, I wouldn't want to make an extra click to enter the site. I have a couple of other comments though. The navigation bar at the top of the page has links to "Home", "Links", "Cart", etc. but NOT anything called "catalog." It seems like they are making it extra difficult to find the merchandise. Once you do enter the store, the product page has a coupon at the bottom that is only good if in the physical store. On a web site most of your customers are NOT going to be local. Locals might look at the address on the bottom of the splash page, close the window and go shopping, without ever seeing the coupon. Now, if I were doing it, I would have a front page that highlighted a couple of items targeted to the season - Halloween now, Santa suits at Christmas time, patriotic outfits for July, etc. Entice people into the store. I would also have something like a prominent link to "special offers for our local customers". Give the locals a reason to visit the site. They might not order anything, but they could tell their cousin in Florida that this is a great place to shop.