Boosting website views/sales

Sid_Wolf

Looking for some advice/ideas on how to drive traffic to my site and improve sales next year

Currently running fb competition to win a voucher to use on website

I've already set up a sale to start in Jan

Already launched 2 new ranges ready for new year

Am active on dog forums and use those to promote as well as interact with the forum in general (I use my own account rather than a seperate on for the business as I believe it creates trust)

I'm considering putting a few products on ebay, but plan to do this after my baby is born and we're settled into a routine, so mid - late next year

Whenever sales are dropping I tend to do a 10% off or free shipping weekend, but i'd like to get more permenant traffic if that makes sense?

I tried twitter and didnt get on with it, much prefer facebook & forums, cant really think of any other places to advertise?

My website should be in my profile if anyone would like to take a look and advise on any changes?

steve1980

When I scrolled through the homepage, the main thing that caught my eye was

"Please note we are now closed for Christmas, orders can be placed however nothing will be shipped until 02/01/13."

Are you seriously not sending anything out until the new year?

Looking at your keywords you currently have "shop" & "prestashop". These are not going to help your rankings in Google.

Personally, the site doesn't do anything for me, there seems to be a mismatch of fonts and doesn't offer that pow you need when selling to the general public.

Sid_Wolf

steve1980 wrote: »

When I scrolled through the homepage, the main thing that caught my eye was

"Please note we are now closed for Christmas, orders can be placed however nothing will be shipped until 02/01/13."

Are you seriously not sending anything out until the new year?

Looking at your keywords you currently have "shop" & "prestashop". These are not going to help your rankings in Google.

Personally, the site doesn't do anything for me, there seems to be a mismatch of fonts and doesn't offer that pow you need when selling to the general public.

No, my local PO is in a small village shop, so the opening hours will be less until after the new year, besides everyone knows I do a new years sale anyway so they are waiting until then to order, all orders for 2012 have been done and sent, so its a non issue really anyway. Not to mention I have worked almost daily since last year, throughout a difficult 1st trimester and so think I deserve 10 days or so off!

How did you find out my keywords? Sorry if thats a silly question, I dont know much about SEO!

The fonts on the products are set I think, or at least I don't know how to change any of them other than those on the main and info pages The site was made for me and I do the basic upkeep, but I dont really know anything about the design aspect of it

Why does it not appeal to you? What would give it 'pow'?

paulwf

I agree with Steve...you want to grow to business so time to crank everything up a notch from "hobbyist" to proper business.

If no one is ordering now due to waiting for your sale then start your sale now. Most retailers started their sales on Christmas Eve once normal store hours ended or perhaps Christmas Day. It is now Boxing Day and all sales have started.

Shipping will be slower at this time of year but you should be able to get stuff posted on Thursday or Friday, there should be at least one despatch this week. Customers don't care about how hard we work or our personal circumstances (most retailers are lucky to get 2 days off not 10 days off). Understandably you need some down time during your pregnancy, can you get staff for a few hours just to get goods out the door?

The site design could do with some money spent on it to make it look professional. Things like "PLEASE NOTE: This is Sid's personal number, please call between 9am and 5pm to avoid disturbance." is not very professional and says hobbyist. Get a second phone for business, it'll cost you pennies a month.

Just in general you need to get in the mindset of a customer and think as they would then work out how you can act like the big retailers whilst providing a more personal service. I think getting someone else on board to help continue the business during your pregnancy and provide new skills and a different point of view would be great, just for a few hours a week to keep costs down of course.

Sparhawke

If you use Opera at least go to your page, right click just about any whitespace on it and look at the source, I do not know if the same is true for firefox and IE as I do not use them.

"Prestashop" and "shop" are not keywords and will never help you:

<meta name="keywords" content="shop, prestashop" />

This should be:

<meta name="keywords" content="dogs, dog collars, dog beds, dog leads, dog safety" /> (and so on and so forth)

You get it? no one in the world is searching for prestashop when they are looking for doggie stuff so it doesn't need to be there

Another tip is to look what people are looking for on this page that Google has set up, search EXACT terms only and place some of those keyphrases in too

---

However your store is powered isn't really important, most people do not expect people to be able to build their systems from the ground up but apart from the metatag issue (they are basically being recognised by Google, on your site and not you) I also noticed a glaringly obvious one:

You are in the UK, catering to a largely English crowd I suspect, so why is the currency US dollar and Euro by default? Unless you know what you are doing as soon as you get on the site and click on the currencies you do not even see the GBP sign. This is a bad thing and will be turning many people away, I would never expect to pay dollar or euro on an English website as I would have to pay conversion fees on top, I would simply go somewhere else

Get rid of the dollar and euro options totally and put pounds in by default on every page and also get rid of the American flag.

I expect this is seriously boosting your bounce rate, the proportion of people who take one look and simply close the page...come back in a couple of months after you change it and tell me what happens

Sid_Wolf

The default currency is GBP, i just checked on the site and also back office, I cant get rid of the euro/dollar options as I do have a fair amount of US/European customers, who have commented that this option is very handy for them as a lot of the smaller online shops dont have this, so they wont buy from them!

I've changed the flag to the Union Flag

The sales have started, but I'm happy to wait, Im not in huge competition with the big shops as I cater to those who want something different or stronger than what you can buy in the high street. My direct competitors are mostly waiting as well. The January thing isnt an issue as I said because everything has already been posted, no one is actually waiting for me to dispatch their goods.

Talking to my customer base, they LIKE the fact that I am completely open and give out my personal number, and that I post under my own username on the forums I go on, they see me as more trustworthy and know that they are always going to talk to me rather than somebody else. If this does become an issue (I rarely get calls, mostly email) then I will get a 2nd number, but at the moment it works in my favour

I will look into the keywords thing, I'll ask my techy guy how to change it :rotfl:

Buffett

Hi Sid!

Aside from the basic SEO changes to your site mentioned by Sparhawke, you need to build up your site's reputation which can be done by adding a blog (which you'll need to update frequently) and with your social networking activity.

Social competitions are very good too, I see people getting 100's of followers by running competitions on places like Tombolas - I'd run competitions regularly.

Google likes 'social signals' from Facebook, +1s, Twitter, etc. and loves sites that regularly change and have good content (hence a blog). It takes time but with patience you'll start seeing the benefits.

If you haven't already, add both Google Analytics & Webmaster tools to your site ... it will help you see where traffic comes from and how users behave on your site.

This last tip will take ages ... but you really need to write a UNIQUE description for each item you sell. The longer the better - although that can be tough!

simplydevine05

I'm sorry but I wouldn't buy from you. What happens if I don't like what I get when you don't refund? That's breaking the law. Read the Distance Selling Regulations and make sure you fully comply. If not, trading standards are cracking down on those who do not and it also means that by law I could change my mind after six months and you would HAVE to give a full refund including return postage costs. You guarantee all collars for three months-that's not very long. I would expect one to last much longer and if one broke four months down the line it is your obligation to refund and pay to get it back. You have no terms and conditions of sale at all. What if my item goes missing in the post? How long does dispatch take? Who do you use to ship items? You see where I'm going?
The descriptions do need to be longer, much much longer, and I agree about the phone number. You say you have spoken to your customer base but these are the people who have bought from you already. What do those think who are not already customers because that's your target-new customers. The ones who go on to website for five seconds and they are never seen again!
My own website is far from perfect, I built it myself and it is still work in progress, but customers do know where they stand when they are buying. I looked at other major websites and took note of what I liked/didn't like and tried to incorporate similar ideas. While my website remains unfinished I sell elsewhere although I have had a few sales through it.
A word of warning about Facebook. By all means run competitions etc but DO NOT run them on Facebook. "like this photo to enter" can very easily get you bannedand Facebook are very strict about their rules. I have seen many "Facebook deleted my page" posts within the small business community. It isn't worth it. Just set up a blog and run competitions through there and just advertise on Facebook. Make sure your give aways are actually generating sales though.
As an add on thought, have you tried advertising at dog shows and the like? You will need permission but just to go hand out leaflets can be a cheap way to generate interest.
Good luck!

terra_ferma

simplydevine05 wrote: »

I'm sorry but I wouldn't buy from you. What happens if I don't like what I get when you don't refund? That's breaking the law. Read the Distance Selling Regulations and make sure you fully comply. If not, trading standards are cracking down on those who do not and it also means that by law I could change my mind after six months and you would HAVE to give a full refund including return postage costs. You guarantee all collars for three months-that's not very long. I would expect one to last much longer and if one broke four months down the line it is your obligation to refund and pay to get it back. You have no terms and conditions of sale at all. What if my item goes missing in the post? How long does dispatch take? Who do you use to ship items? You see where I'm going?
The descriptions do need to be longer, much much longer, and I agree about the phone number. You say you have spoken to your customer base but these are the people who have bought from you already. What do those think who are not already customers because that's your target-new customers. The ones who go on to website for five seconds and they are never seen again!
My own website is far from perfect, I built it myself and it is still work in progress, but customers do know where they stand when they are buying. I looked at other major websites and took note of what I liked/didn't like and tried to incorporate similar ideas. While my website remains unfinished I sell elsewhere although I have had a few sales through it.
A word of warning about Facebook. By all means run competitions etc but DO NOT run them on Facebook. "like this photo to enter" can very easily get you bannedand Facebook are very strict about their rules. I have seen many "Facebook deleted my page" posts within the small business community. It isn't worth it. Just set up a blog and run competitions through there and just advertise on Facebook. Make sure your give aways are actually generating sales though.
As an add on thought, have you tried advertising at dog shows and the like? You will need permission but just to go hand out leaflets can be a cheap way to generate interest.
Good luck!

made to order items are excluded from DSRs

robrooo

Hi Sid,

I have some SEO/traffic suggestions for you. I managed to get my small business site into the top 3 results on Google using these techniques for several sets of general keywords in my field.

I analysed your site using a few tools and have the following suggestions:

1. Title - result: "Indi-Dog"
This is too short and does not contain the target keywords such as "collar", "shop", "made-to-measure" or whatever words you think you should be targeting. Set this to something like "Indy-Dog - Made to measure collar online shop" or whatever, up to 64 characters.

2. Meta Description - result: "Shop powered by PrestaShop"
This does not affect your ranking but will show in search results so consider making this more meaningful and targeted to your business.

At the moment, your search result will show as:

Indy-Dog
Shop powered by PrestaShop

You want it to show as something like this:

Indy-Dog - Made to measure collar online shop
wide range of dog collars, leads and walking gear for your faithful friend

(sorry for my crummy marketing speil - just to give you an idea!)

3. Main Heading: <empty>
This reffers to a title enclosed in <h1></h1> html tags. You have none on your first page. This tag is quite important in terms of search engine weighting. Try to think of a catchy title containing some relevant keywords. You could repeat your meta-description. I'm not sure how easy this is to implement under Prestashop.

4. First Paragraph - result: "Currency"
The first paragraph does not necessarily add weight in search engines, but is sometimes to used to determine the overall theme of the website. It might take some fiddling around with the design of your site to change this to something like a short "about us" paragraph, again maybe limited by Prestashop.


The rest of the site from a search engine perspective is not too bad
Your only outbound link though is to Prestashop, maybe you could add some to online dog groups, fora, and I note there is no link from your site to your facebook page, that I could find anyway. Its usual to put a small group of social icons that link to your social media pages on the first page.

I know you said you did not get on with twitter, but it can be good for traffic, better than fb if you use it correctly. You can also get your tweets to automatically post to your fb page, which saves you doing both. The trick is to find and follow people and businesses in the same field and also use the right hash-tags.

Have you considered pinterest? It was the fastest growing social media platform, and it definitely drives traffic since if you post an image from your website to pinterest it links back. You can also get your pinterest posts to show on your fb page. The trick here is to follow people with similar interests, re-pin their pins and hope they follow and re-pin back.

Google+ - I don't really understand this myself but I'm told its important - YMMV!

Start a blog. Blogs rank very well in search engines, but is is hard to think of new and original content and find the time to write the blog posts.

With social media you could also do some creative things, like encourage your customers to post images of their dogs wearing your products. After all the most sought after pictures on the internet are of cats, maybe dogs are in second place and one of your images could "go viral"

I noticed that not many other sites link to your site. Its worth searching for dog related sites that you could get a link from, but also you could submit your business to various business directories. They have fallen out of SEO fashion though, but they might catch some traffic. Consider sites like qype, yell, hot-frog, thomson local, freeindex, etc etc. Their basic listing is free but be prepared to be contacted by them to buy a premium listing - again not worth doing IMHO.

Another avenue you could explore is offering discounts to members of various dog groups or charities, in exchange of course for them listing your business. I guess the ultimate would be to find some way of collaborating with an organisation such as Battersea Dogs home (a free collar to anyone rehoming!? Might even make the news!) or any of the other dog rehoming organisations...just a few mad ideas!

best of luck,
Rob

gb12345

As it stands at the moment your website is actually illegal.

1. As simplydevine05 says, you have no Terms and Conditions, Delivery or Returns Policies.
2. You also so have no privacy policy
3. You don't appear to be following the EU Cookie rules.

All of the above are legal requirements and can result in hefty fines.