My site's been up since last November. I'm currently going through and doing a reevaluation of pretty much everything. As part of that I'm seeking info from anyone and everyone who might have something constructive to say. The site is linked in my sig. Through the first six months of life the site was stuck at about 1500 uniques a month no matter what I did. Then, this past June it hit 3,000. In July 5,000, and in August I finally reached my first goal and hit 10,000 uniques. September is so far looking to at least match that, if not surpass it. So far it's all "natural" as I haven't spent a penny on adwords or anything like that, though I am getting ready to roll out an adwords campaign very soon. The problem I'm having is that while traffic is going up, sales are not. I've responded to feedback from potential customers about what would make them more likely to buy, but that doesn't seem to have helped. So the questions now is, what do I do next? Any observations from the DP community are most appreciated.
First, let me tell you i like the site. IMHO, you're not getting sales because there's lack of trust. If I were a customer, I would first ask myself, can I rely on this site to securely process my order and send it to my house? Look at hxxp://myweddingfavors.com.. ( BTW, that's not my site, it's Brad Callen's site - a well-known SEOer) and scroll 3/4 and see why you should buy from them. I think those uplift the buying barrier. - Change xx to tt
Sell yourself... put some interesting hype on the homepage...at the top... like NEXT DAY DELIVERY(or whatever you offer) ... or 20% cheaper than the highstreet... otherwise why would anyone use your services? make them want to. good luck
-The images under this 'Trying to break the glass ceiling?' are useless.- IMO It's nice to have a statement like that but It shouldn't take up the whole screen. -Here's another page with a bunch of wasted space. You should tighten thes product pages up so that everything (especially the add to cart button) is displayed without scrolling down. -The font used for the buttons is a little difficult to read. -'Reviews', 'Tell a Friend', & 'This product was added on...' are all not necessary. -'Continue Shopping' brings me back to the item detail page. I think it would be better if you brought the user back to the category page. -When I mouseover the links in your top navbar (and other places on the page), they 'disappear'! -Why do you need to know my date of birth? -I went to checkout (create an account) and I got this error: Fine! But there isn't a pulldown menu. I also got this error: Now I'm stuck...GOODBYE, NO SALE FOR YOU!! -You have two bubbles at the top that say, "Free Shipping" "30 Days Money Back". Why aren't the links to details about those programs? Or is everything shipped free? -In the shopping cart, if I change a qty or delete an item, I have to press 'update cart'. But i only know that because I'm familiar w/ osc and zen cart. You should tell people about this. Here's what I have on my osc site: That's it for now.
Yikes! Performance problems, I've never had performance problems before! As to the technical difficulties Rob indicated I'll have to look into those immediately. I should probably test stuff like that more often if things like this are going to crop up. My testing in the past didn't reveal any problems, and I haven't had any complaints, even since instituting the toll free phone number. I wonder how many sales that's cost me? CRAP! In any case, there are some pretty good suggestions here. I'll be working to implement some of this stuff and fix the problems noted today. Can't do them all, but every bit helps!
I tend to agree, but the ladies seem to like it, and they are the target market! Agreed, but that's going to take a bit of recoding, hence, some time. I hadn't really thought of that, but I think you're right. They're now gone. Agreed again, but this is another one that's going to take a bit more coding than I have time for today. Actually, that was just poor font color selection on my part, I changed it. "Happy Birthday! Here's a free $10 gift certificate you can use toward the purchase of anything on the site!" -Marketing is what it is. There is now! It looks like I overwrote something during the last version update, my bad! I can't recreate that problem, where did the "[]" brackets come from? Yes, everything is shipped free. Good call, I just added something similar. Thanks for all that, I feel like I actually made some progress here today. I'm still puzzled about that DOB problem though. I don't understand where the brackets came from.
Yeah, but they don't serve any real pourpose. It looks nice, but it's probably not selling anything. And that IS what you're trying to do, right? Look at what other women's clothiers are doing coach victoria's secret nordstom and wherever else broads like to shop. Take your time. You don't want to make any mistakes. Doesn't look fixed from where I am. It's a turnoff...especially for women! My original test had values in the login fields as well as the registration fields. Trust me, other people will do that as well. Then why is there an 'Estimate shipping' link in the cart? And you should promote that more heavily. Maybe add that info to the shopping cart or to the item detail pages. One more thing- Your newsletter sign up option on the registration page is confusing. That's not going to make sense to most people. Should be-
Yes, but I'm trying to appeal to a group of people that expect to see stuff like that, or at least something different from everything else. I've gotten too much positive feedback from it to change it now. You're either looking at a cached page, or a bad laptop monitor, it's changed, and a lot. You'd think so, but they're the ones that gave me the idea. Besides, age group demographics are pretty important to me. Having the age range of my customers available is a handy thing. That's interesting. That shouldn't matter given the way to forms there are constructed. I'll have to take another look at that. Good call, it's gone. It's right there on every single page, what more can I do?