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  #1 (permalink)  
Old 10-05-2007, 06:37 AM
LAM LAM is offline
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Default Whats wrong with my site?

Okay here is my site. Lots of traffic, little sales:Dog Accessories, Dog Boutiques, Pet Boutiques

All suggestions are appreciated

Lisa
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  #2 (permalink)  
Old 10-05-2007, 11:08 AM
Linda Buquet's Avatar
Linda Buquet Linda Buquet is offline
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Thanks for sharing it Lisa. It really helps us help you better.

Just took a REALLY quick peek. My 1st impressions.


LOVE the site, LOVE the logo.
Great job!!! 5 thumbs up.

Now aren't you glad you posted it?

It also helps to see you are linking to a variety of merchants. That helps eliminate one of the questions in my mind, which was "does she just have one or 2 merchants that arent converting or tracking well/"

After just a quick look, the one thing I can suggest, but am not sure it's doable is to change the product link structure. I assume you are using datafeeds??? If so it may not be too hard.

NOW bear in mind if you really feel you have plenty of traffic and only need help with conversions - this will mainly help you get more traffic - it may not help conversions and COULD hurt conversions. BUT it could also help conversions. However in general increased traffic means more sales.

Let me make up an example to explain my thought process.
People who search for more specific terms tend to be further in the buy cycle.
Plus specific terms are easier to rank for than general terms.

So someone looking for "Rhinestone Dog Collar" (4,512 searches a month) may know exactly what they want and be ready to buy one. You could also get ranked more easily for this term. Someone just searching for dog accessories or even dog collars may be more lookie-loos and those terms are harder to rank for.

So using the example "Rhinestone Dog Collar" - you may not show up in the top 30 at all now. To get to the product I"m looking at, if someone just got to your homepage with one of your main search terms like "dog accessories", they would need to navigate to >> dog collars >> couture collars -
then the product I picked as an example is down about on the eight row.
So I may not even see it.

The more important thing is having all those collars on one page, none of the keywords will get ranked that highly.

The most important thing is since you link directly to merchant, with only a product title buried on the page, you miss out on all the juicy content and spider food in the description that may pull ready to buy prospects in your door.

If you linked to the description on your own site then you would have a page optimized for "Rhinestone Dog Collars" with all this spiderfood.

"Gorgeous "Diamond Quality" European Rhinestones mounted on a Beautiful Rich Roccoco Ribbon. Backed with Nylon for strength and durability. Silver accents and d-ring. Isn't this a beautiful collar for the price? Love the rhinestones galore."

There are only 1,430 competing pages for allintitle: "Rhinestone Dog Collar".
There are 97,400 competing for for allintitle: "dog collars". So you'd have much better chance getting up in the top in front of buyers looking for exactly that product.

Multiply that strategy times the hundreds of products you have on your site. If each product linked to description on your site, you have hundreds of targeted sales pages filled with spiderfood to attract more targeted buyers and you take them directly to the page that fgives then what they want instead of a cateory page filled with other products.


The downside is you are putting extra click in the mix, for people that don't come from search engines direct to a product page, put just search on your category pages, however I think the upsides COULD outweigh that. Not positive and only a suggestion and something to consider.

Depending on the script you are using and if you are using datafeeds it may not take too much work to make the change. If you arent using a feed or this would be too much work, then just do some keyword research to and pick a few in-demand products that don't have high competition and just do a few individual pages to test conversions on those products.
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  #3 (permalink)  
Old 10-05-2007, 12:07 PM
LAM LAM is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: indiana
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Thank you Linda for the compliment. I have worked hard on the site. So you are saying that I may want to add product descriptions to each product so the pages will rank better? Also, I am hearing that my key words are vague and that I am not targeting a specific market(people interested in rhinestone collars-specific;dog accessories, vague) Is this correct? This makes sense.
No, this program does not have a data feed. I might be able to cut and paste, so I will work on this. Thanks again for your feedback!

Lisa
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Old 10-05-2007, 01:09 PM
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Linda Buquet Linda Buquet is offline
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Nope not quite:

"So you are saying that I may want to add product descriptions to each product so the pages will rank better? Also, I am hearing that my key words are vague and that I am not targeting a specific market(people interested in rhinestone collars-specific;dog accessories, vague) Is this correct?"

No what I'm saying is now if you pick that product off the big category page and click on it it goes to the merchant. It should go to a page on your site.

If it went to a page on YOUR site, a separate product page that only had that product then "Rhinestone Dog Collar" would be in your title tag (the most important part for SEO) it could be in your head tag and content. So the entire page is about "Rhinestone Dog Collars" and those keywords would stand out, rank higher and pull people looking for that product.

If all you do is add product descriptions on all the products on that category page, each description will be too watered down because it's just one little part of the content on that page and the title tag of the page is still generic. You can't do a title tag that covers all the keywords contained in that category page filled with tons of products. You need to have a page for each product, or if doing it all manually, just some key pages with key products that may be high converting that you could get good ranking for.
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Old 10-05-2007, 01:15 PM
LAM LAM is offline
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Okay, I understand what you are saying. I need to set the products up so when they click on the category, it will go to a description page in my site. UGH so much work!!!! BUT if it makes a difference driving traffic, I need to consider it. Also, any other suggestions? I am thinking I should make the the smaller pictures on the left hand side in the homepage go to internal directory, like a carrier linked to the carrier page so they won't leave the site so quickly.
All suggestions are appreciated. Thanks,
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Old 10-05-2007, 02:13 PM
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Linda Buquet Linda Buquet is offline
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UGH so much work!!!!

Like I said if you are doing it manually I would simply research and find maybe the 5 hottest products (lots of searches, lower competition on Google for allintitle) and then just a page for each of those products to test it and see.

The other thing you could do, since you have to do it manually anyway is this.
If you find a really nice popular phrase and you have several different products for that phrase, then build out a product page that features all of them.

So for example, after you research if you find "Rhinestone Dog Collar" is hot (I just picked it out of the blue, so not saying it's hot.) If you have 4 Rhinestone Dog Collars, then put them all, with descriptions on that one page. Now if someone is looking for that product and land on your page, they see 4 related products and there's a greater chance one of them will strike their fancy.
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  #7 (permalink)  
Old 10-05-2007, 02:28 PM
route609 route609 is offline
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Default Analytics

Hi Lisa

What form of analytics are you currently using?

If google, look at your site overlay and time spent on site. This may help you discover a reason for why you are not converting.

I would recommend signing up (free sign up) to a site called robotreplay.com

This site records every visit to your site. You can then watch the recording and it shows an oversized mouse pointer so you can watch the visitor in action on your site. This will give you a pretty clear explanation on where they click, where they dont and when they leave.

Good luck.
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Experienced web designer with 2 years experience working for one of the worlds top affiliate companies.
Now with a web design agency where I have been for 1 and a half years.
I have a strong passion for web design and believe there is not a single web site that cannot be improved.

www.paul-wallas.co.uk
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Old 10-05-2007, 03:28 PM
LAM LAM is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2007
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Thank you Paul, I will sign up right now. I have google analytics on my site but frankly, I wasn't sure what I stats I should be reviewing. I will take a better look. Does anything else pop out at you? I have people joining contests right and left but again no sales
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Old 10-06-2007, 01:09 AM
route609 route609 is offline
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Default Possible reason

Hi

Nothing has popped out as such, i have not spent vasts amount of time looking at your site but from what i have seen you have the basics that should provide you with conversions e.g easy to follow navigation, good layout of products in content area.

Whats your click through ratio? If you are getting alot of click through's a month to their product site then it could be down to their site having a poor conversion ratio. This will be unfortunate as no matter how good your site is, if there's is not a good conversion site you wont make much money.

In terms of google, look at the following :

1. Average time on site - You want this to be more than 40seconds. if you find your average visitor time on site is 10seconds or less it could be a result of how long your site takes to load. ideally your site should take no longer than 15seconds. You can check this here SiteReportCard: Web Site Optimization and Promotion Tools

2. Site overlay - this shows where the vistors are clicking on your site, what gets the most clicks and what doesnt.

3. Entry pages - This shows the page that the vistor landed on. For instance some of your vistiors may be landing straight on a product page and not the index page

4. Exit pages - this shows where they are leaving. You can then try and assume why they are leaving on these pages and not others?

If you find that your conversion ratio is not great and the majority of your traffic is leaving on your site i will review your site some more and provide you with some suggestions on what i think may be the cause.

Good luck
__________________
Experienced web designer with 2 years experience working for one of the worlds top affiliate companies.
Now with a web design agency where I have been for 1 and a half years.
I have a strong passion for web design and believe there is not a single web site that cannot be improved.

www.paul-wallas.co.uk
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  #10 (permalink)  
Old 10-06-2007, 05:45 AM
LAM LAM is offline
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Location: indiana
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Default

Thanks again for your information!
I used google analytics and found it took 90 seconds to download my site!!!!
Also, the average time on the site was 03:25
My Bounce rate is 31.85% Bounce Rate (is this as bad as it sounds?)

Wow, I really never took the time to analyze my stats on Google analytics, it is soo depressing.
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