Hello all. I started a new business about a month ago, and am not getting the sales numbers that I have expected. I'm not expecting to be rich by now, but I have had 700-800 visits to my landing page and only one order. Please check it out when you get a chance and let me know what works and what doesn't... You can find my landing page HERE - Thanks!
I have looked at your site and have to wonder where are the 700-800 people coming from? You're dealing with a rather small geographic area as far as sales go, but your page does not seem to be targeting these areas. I would add a meta description to your pages and leave it up to Google to display something. I did not like your page layout to be honest. Off the main page I clicked Outback Steak House. The top of the page seems okay but when you list a location address is this the only location that this card is good for? Also when reading the description I see "The Company�s" who is ?1/2s? Your 'add to favorites', 'print this page' and 'tell a friend' buttons need to go. I never did understand why webmasters feel their page is so special that they need to have an add to favorites button on their page. If I want to add your page I do know how to do it. The print this page button...for the life of me I cannot see why anyone would want to do this. The tell a friend button is just too big. All three of these buttons take away from your page and they draw the eyes to them due to their size and color, leaving the gift card link bare and nowhere does it say why the link is there. Once you click that link, one then gets to a page that is not needed as well. The big red 'add to cart' button it just too big and again I see those 3 silver buttons. On the first page, after one clicks the Outback Steak House link I would remove the 3 silver buttons and add an add to cart button to this page, doing away the last page. I would also make the big red 'add to cart' button smaller so it is not so in your face. If you want to have a 'tell a friend' button, this is fine, but it should be much smaller and also include social bookmark icons inline with the 'tell a friend' to help with links and let people bookmark your site this way. If you click on a city on the side search bar, one reaches a page that lists different categories. The page is okay, but the amount of links vs the amount of content just seems to be link heavy. I would add a paragraph telling your visitors how to use that page. This may sound brainless, but some visitors are brainless and the last thing you want to do is make a visitor think. You also want to give search engines something to look at and feed on. The same goes for the next page that one reaches after clicking a category link. These pages contain no content for search engines what-so-ever. Again I would add a paragraph or two that provides a geographic location of the store and helps keyword your site for local searches. Last thought. I see the name of your page "Central Valley" and also see you list cities, but the World Wide Web is just that...worldwide. I do not think there is only one Central Valley or only one Fresno. Nowhere on your page did I see the word California. This is one reason why I am wondering where your visitors are actually coming from as I do not believe they are targeted visitors in your area.
Your template does not look professional, you should get a different template asap. For seo purposes you should make the title of your page shorter because it's way too long.
How many of those 700-800 hits are from Central Valley? I would suggest re-doing the logo as well, since it seems to have suffered "artifacting" from jpeg compression. The quality of the header image is not very good.
FYI - about 80% of the hits are from the Central Valley. We are getting gift card orders from all over the country - we have sold about 220 cards to date. Ironically, none of the gift card purchases have come from the Central Valley, but we don't care where the orders come from since we will ship all over the U.S. We just need to convert some or most of the local businesses that have been to the landing page but haven't ordered. So...any suggestions specifically for the landing page?
Change the header, it looks bad. Also, change the color scheme of the left side menu, the size, or the font. Something about it looks off (like a parked domain menu). Finally, that image with the logos looks very typical. I'd go with some stock art for like $3 http://www.123rf.com/photo_3749072.html Put the Fresno Bee image toward to the top. Get a testimonial and put that at the top as well. Take out "Learn how you can " and just start with Drastically. Disclosure: I'm not an expert at landing pages but these tips should help you get on the way. You're 90% of the way there if you are getting good traffic. One consideration could be that people searching for Central Valley Gift Cards are looking for specific stores whereas all of your sales are national to stores. Maybe you can split up the traffic and profit off both types. Good luck
Thanks for the input JLamb - I take those into consideration. Your point about the logo is ironic, since I had someone create it from scratch. Figures...