What Should I Do to Make My Site More Attractive to Potential Buyers?

Forum Members,

Thanks for reading this. I have an online fitness equipment store and I started my site 3 years ago. I still haven't built up enough steam to do enough business to earn a living from the website, but I feel like the potential is there. At the same time, the site has been around for 3 years and if the potential is not realized soon, my optimism will certainly fade. Please check out the site, comb through it, if you can, check out its layout and tell me what graphics on the site you do not like. For example, do you like the color scheme? How about the individual product pages? This is the site. http://www.kingsofcardio.com/

Ty

 

The site is not bad at all. I don't know how much I care for the black background tho. Also I would add a Facebook share button on each of the product pages. People will be able to share with friends and family which will bring you more traffic. Hope this was of some help, just my 2 cents.

 

thanks for the feedback Scott, appreciate it

 

There are many factors that produce a successful business online and one that you could leave off full time. Seeing that you have had this site for 3 years, I assume you've had your fare share of ups and downs. Do you have people working for you? Are you ranking on google for the products that you sell?

After looking at each individual product page I've noticed that people have to call in to place an order. Are you thinking of using Paypal some time in the near future? From my experiences most people are too lazy to make the call.

 

Hi leosurf,

I have had some swings (ups and downs) and I have people that work with me, not for me. For example, I have friends in the business, with their own stores and my 800# goes to their phones, because I am too busy working a day job, that I can't work full time on the site. At the beginning I used AdWords on Google and spent up to 200$ a day and now my website hits are 100% organic - I have not used Google ads in a while. Today, I got 48 unique visitors. Although I have a PR3, I barely get any traffic.

Regarding the fact that you must call to buy, that is actually a sales tactic that several leading online fitness equipment stores use and although you may be right in your opinion, I would rather not discuss the merits of that sales tactic at this point. I would like to stick to the graphics of the site and what color coordination would be better, or whether the font should be bigger, things like that. I would also appreciate any input on how to better optimize the site for Google.

Thanks for your input.

-Kings of Cardio

 

The site is not bad. I personally do not like the black background because for some reason it makes me feel closterphobic. I was wondering, why are all of the "Your Price" tags scored out?

 

First is the layout. Look the site from client view and see if it were you whether you would buy from it

 

Hi I would suggest you learn seo and ppc. I would also advise you to have a squeeze page set up so you can build a relationship with your list. This might help people to buy your fitness equipment in later date after trusting you. You should also set up an affiliate programs so affiliates will help you promote your products. Overall your website is lovely . I think your website Have a good potential once you bring in traffic.

 

Hey Nav123,

I used PPC for a while and spent up to 300$ per day at times. It is just so costly. For example, if I go 3-4 days without a sale and I am spending 200$ a day on ad-words, it makes it so I do not have a positive ROI from ad-words. Also, fitness related keywords are super expensive, so the top PPC spots are difficult to penetrate w/out a lot of money to throw at Google PPC. I want to vamp up my SEO but all of the SEO companies I speak with seem so crooked. At the present time, I do rank on the 1st page of Google for some of my products, like the "Precor EFX 556" or "Precor AMT 100i".

-Kings of Cardio

 

Yeah I know you should have thought it while choosing this niche. Anyway it's ok try list building and build traffic maybe finding niche related forum to have signature and build backlinks from websites blog posts etc. I highly recommend is you set up an affiliate program like what I mention ed earlier.

 

the site is not bad but a bit too dark for my taste. soften the design.

 

You've got most the right elements, but in the wrong order.

The area above the horizontal menu is considered a "dead zone", meaning that most people ignore it.

The story rotator widget does more harm than good. A short bullet list highlighting those benefits would work better and take less of that prime real estate.

The vertical menu is kind of awkward, meaning it should have better visibility. Move the "Subscribe" widget in the empty space to the right and integrate the search function into the horizontal menu.

The design as a whole looks amateurish. Invest in some decent design.

I could probably go on for hours... heck... even days if I'd have access to the Analytics data.

Good luck with your business.

Regards,
George

 

Hey Kings of Cardio,

Sorry for the aside comment earlier, but I felt that I needed to share. Any way, the site layout for me looks cramped out and the colors used don't build that want to buy mood for me, maybe it’s because of how the template is coded, but i think you could do a lot better with the design. The side colors should be a bit lighter as it distracts the viewer’s attention on the products.

here's my 2cents on the table:

For the $300 per day on advertisements (adwords), I think you’re throwing a lot of money in the air. There are better ways you could go about doing this which in my opinion will be more lucrative in the long run. Instead of going for the obvious why not make a turn and target other avenues within the fitness niche. You could create ebooks and then hit your readers with a special offer(your products) or be in the third person narrator tone and presell the products. Why i say this is because I too was in the same soup but different pot (market) and I lost loads of money because I was going about advertising on adwords the wrong way and also my keywords played a major factor to my utter failure.

Try to go for the least competitive keywords but ones which have buyer intent, go for long tail search’s.

If that's the only keywords your ranking for, that explains why there isn't much sales. Try and diversify your marketing strategies.


To your success,

P.S (the above comment may seem hush, but you'll be thanking me if you do make the necessary changes mentioned earlier in this post)

 

site looks pretty legit, nice

 

Geegel and Leosurf,

Thanks a ton for your time and input. I sincerely appreciate it.

I will most likely change the black background since it seems that most of you do not like it.

Leosurf - I do rank on the 1st page for some other products, but you are right and I need to focus more on my SEO.

-Kings of Cardio

 

Hi, what works for me is building a list. But as for the website layout, your newsletter subscribe box should be on the right and should be bigger and maybe offer something for free. I suggest a pop up also to get subscribers to your newsletter
(this would increase subscriber by an average of 35%). consider a footer pop up too. (Big conversions)
I currently use multiple hit points on my website and I have lots of subscribers to my newsletter as a result. My website offers free mp.3
Your site layout looks good. I like the flash banner and the color scheme is good also. You just need to implement changes to keep visitors on you site when they get there and most importantly FOLLOW UP with the them with your newsletter.

 

Hi Chris Wilson,

Thanks for the feedback, appreciate it a ton. Regarding the newsletter, it would be tough for me to come up with unique, relevant, new content for my newsletter on a regular basis. At the end of the day, I am in the fitness equipment business and there is only so much that can be blogged about. I feel like it would just be too spammy. With that said, my fitness equipment store has super lengthy product details for its treadmills, ellipticals and so on, and for some reason I am still not in the top 5 listings on the 1st page of Google for the majority of my products. For example, take the Life Fitness 95Ti Treadmill, if you compare my website's info for that treadmill versus others, my product description is much more comprehensive than my competitions and I should be on the 1st page of Google, in my opinion. Please comment.

Thanks,

Kings of Cardio

 

would a BBB icon help? Would it make the site more official? I am a BBB member.

I need to get this pony on track ASAP (need to make the site profitable right away) - need to eat. Made a few sales last week and need to build upon them by increasing my traffic.

Traffic

 

I agree about the black background. Taking into consideartion psychological factor, black color is not the answer. To create a positive attitude of the users to your website it's better to think over the color set you use on your website as well as about its influence on the users' perception.

 

http://www.fitnessblowout.com/
http://www.oneshotfitness.com/

Those are my 2 main competitors, I guess it's just something with fitness sites that draws the black background lol, I'll change it.