Hi all, I am developing this site and I'm having trouble generating traffic, and with the traffic I do generate turning it into sales. I have had many people on this site throw me their $0.02 and all I can say is THANK YOU SO MUCH GUYS! I've learned alot but I hope there's some more stuff you guys can point out. The website url is http://www.natursource.com They sell dried fruit and nut mixes. The target is English speaking Canadians only for now, so we're only advertising on google adwords and another 3rd party advertiser that places us on MSN.ca. I don't know much about SEO, and the site is mainly coded in PHP. Any advice or suggestions you guys may have are greatly appreciated! I've already put many of the suggestions into action and am pleased with how they turned out Thanks in advance! -Mitch
I love how it looks, the simple design and colors are great. However, I find it hard to believe that people actually buy nuts on the net. Maybe it isn't a problem converting traffic into sales, but it is just that people don't buy that kind of stuff, do you have any statistics about this?
Hmmm...I agree, site looks good but I'm not sure about the positioning of the product. I see someone buying nuts on line as a gift item or a special treat. Your pictures are nice but I think ultimately people are buying the packaging. I love macademia nuts and will spend a lot on them but they come in a cute package that you can put on your counter. There...my $.02 worth. Best of luck!
I don't have an ecommerce site, but I heard Froogle might be a good place to list. I don't know if they are US only though.... The site is quite nice and elegant and great from a usability stand point. There isn't lot of text though and maybe the search engines aren't picking up enough keywords. On the main page for example, the words dried fruits and nut mixes isn't anywhere except the nav bar. Maybe if you encorporated more keywords in your text you may have better luck. I would also add keywords in your page titles. It's a great phrase, but it does not contain any keywords. good luck
I haven't even done any SEO to this site, I've mainly been marketing it with adwords and we've been putting our website address on all bags that leave the facility. It's funny you'd think that we'd get a better return by letting people who already buy our products know that they can now buy them online. We put a little sticker on our large bags 900g, at the top, and it stands out it's white and usually the bags are dark green or maroon. over 30 000 bags with stickers and barely any return Anyways yea i've been avoiding SEO and trying to find some pro's to do it for me but it's really tough finding people... so I guess I have to tackle it by myself.
Clicking on the English link gets me nowhere. It doesn't work on XP SP2 with the latest Firefox. The result of this query is not a good sign. If you want to rank higher and get more traffic from SE's, you will need links. Search these forums for 'spiderable directories' or 'free directories' and submit to all of them.
that's weird that the english link doesn't get you anywhere. the link is a simple PHP command, do you have cookies blocked? that's probably the cuprit. I'll look into what you said about links tho
No, the PHPSESSID cookie gets set just fine. Strange... Checked it in IE but doesn't work either.. Click the link and I stay on thehomepage. URL does change.
Folks need an order now button under each photo, right now they need to click on the photo then are taken to an order page. Most new visitors spend 30 seconds or less on a new site, unless they are invited to click on something quickly they will leave. Keep going because it is a great product to sell online, plus it takes time to get indexed and to get reorders. Let us know how you are doing in this thread, keep the site and the thread alive
Anthony - thanks for the kind words about the product... from the previous responses I was getting a little discouraged... TOPS30: I would suggest going to this link www.natursource.com/home.php Personally, I just did a fresh fedora core linux installation today, and used FireFox 1.0 to load up the site and everything works perfectly... so the problem might be on your end? I'm going to start looking into linking sites to mine and such, and get into SEO
Yeah it works now, sorry I scared you! Earlier I was at the office where I just installed XP SP2 which I suspect might have caused it. The sessionid cookie was being baked just fine yet the link wouldn't take me anywhere. Here at home on SP1 it works as expected.
You do understand what I mentioned about elimination of a step and encouraging action when you show an item? You need to have a page with all the items in groups with a buy now button under each item pictured. For example, when I go to this page: http://www.natursource.com/products.php?id=3 It should be much larger with all the products shown with a photo and product description and a buy now button under each.
Prominent Back Buttons would be handy as well. Even with a clear bread crumb nav link in place, most people rely on back buttons to be sure they get back to where they were.
Hi Mitch, Well I will throw in my 2 cents (as a web designer/marketing consultant/and seo geek)... First...I would do away with the initial intro page that you have. Make this page your main index (http://www.natursource.com/index.php). As others have said you only have seconds to catch people's interest. There's really nothing on your current home page to catch the eye, appetite, excitement, etc. You can easily add a "English/French" to the top menu. Second...you have some really beautiful photos. I'd put up one from each category on your home page. That will REALLY give visitors something to "snack" on when they first get to the site. Draw them in and get them clicking on to see more of those great products. Third...provide content for your different markets. Gourmet gift sales are huge, as are corporate gifts, and even wholesale. I was very involved in the gift basket industry for a time and there's a lot of opportunity in bulks sales of themed gifts (bags, boxes, tins, etc). You might need to look at how you package your items to meet the needs of each of these markets, but it can really pay off in the end. Would you rather sell ten $30 items or land ten $1000 bulk orders? Sometimes it takes just as much work to do one or the other. Fourth...go through the Directories folder here in the DP forum for lists of free directories where you can submit your site. You'll want to optimize submissions using keywords in your link titles (anchor text). Do some keyword research first using the DP keyword suggestion tool. Break out of the box and come up with a list of all the potential related terms (gourmet gifts, gift baskets, gourmet food, snacks, nuts, granola, cereal, bulk food, etc). Fifth...If you want to increase your opportunity for sales outside Canada you might consider adding a section for "USA" (or any other country) with prices, sizes, and descriptions appropriately translated for that region. This could also be a good way to increase the page count of your site. And just so you know, I think the overall design is fine. I dig the simple fresh feel. Of course that's kind of my style.
Anthony - I don't know if I want to add something like that. The beauty of my site is the simplicity and cleanliness of the pages. It's all easy flowing and clear. I feel if I change the category view to have all those things it's gonna clutter it up alot more. I understand maybe putting a price with amount and add to cart maybe... I could see that working more than adding bigger pictures and descriptions. Tops30 - At the top with the breadcrumb nav, and if u look at the bottom it does say back to gourmet nuts. What could I do to better draw attention to that? http://www.natursource.com/viewproduct.php?id=45 For one I guess I could try bolding it... it's next to the add to cart button, to the left
angloman, we are making suggestions to help you, not demands first off The problem I see on your site at this time is this, you are not telling your customers what to do on your pages, you are making an assumption that they are going to click on your photo. How many will? Listen to what DreamShop is telling you and follow her post close because she is an old pro and just gave you a couple thousand dollars worth of advice for nothing. My idea is to make your page much larger, not to clutter it up, folks will scroll down the page if it is interesting, you have to make a call for action, don't assume a surfer is going to click on a photo for the hell of it and go to your shopping cart.
Dreamshop - Thx for your reply... you've got some great ideas that I need to look at. A big problem for me is that my web designer is busy for the next month and I can't really squeeze anything out of him. If I want to have something done I have to do it myself or wait for him. I kind of have an idea of how to get some products on to the page but I feel like my skills won't do it justice. What I want to do is fade out the right side picture, because i think it's a background of a frame, and ontop of the picture I could put a few featured items. We are marketing for bulk sales, we have a referral and discount system built in. The trick I guess is getting people to it... it's hard for me to know how to target who where so early in the game... and I'm all by myself on this... well i mean alot of peepz here have been really helpful but until this weekend i've been on my own... I've been looking for marketing companies to do this for me but I haven't had much success. I just started getting on the directories thing... again my problem with setting titles is that my site is coded in PHP and I would have to add stuff into the mysql db and into the headers file cos it's the same headers file... and I'm really not good with that stuff... I feel like it'd be a little above my head. Anyways I'm going to look into this some more and see what I can do...
Maybe you should move your work to DreamShop then If a designer told me a month I would drop him quickly, what will happen down the road, a year You will be out of business waiting on the guy
Thanks for the vote of support Anthony....unfortunately I'm booked solid for the next six weeks!!! LOL Mitch, If you have a good relationship with your designer then I wouldn't necessarily recommend switching just because his schedule is full right now. It's better for you to "sleep" on these ideas and develop a long term strategy as opposed to just reacting to our recommendations. Don't worry about trying to change it all right now. Take your time and create an outline of what your priorities are. You can book your designer now for a month down the road, then you'll have time to decide what you definitely want to do! If you really don't want to list all of your products with pricing and info on one page then don't....BUT do consider what we've pointed out in terms of directing your visitors to take action. Maybe that means adding a bit more text, highlighting just a couple items, or showing off some packaging options. When you do get a chance to talk to your designer be sure to look at the possibility of setting up different templates. Depending on the script your using you might be able to have a template for each category (and custom page title and meta-tags for each). You could at least add product keywords to the page title you're using now.
Well, should I tell your clients to fire you also I guess that is just the way it is, but as Weirfire was mentioning he has maintenance contracts, if I needed something changed (a stinking page?) and my designer told me 6 weeks I would think about getting a new firm for sure. Sounds like you need to hire another designer to your firm DS