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Q: Jeffrey writes: “The question I need an answer to is why hasn't my website, The Lord's Store made one sell after receiving over 7000 visitors? I realize paying for traffic doesn't really work now, but I have had at least several hundred good Christian visitors which clicked on my banner from Christian websites…
Yet, not one of those Christians purchased one thing from my Christian superstore selling thousands of Christian products. I have only made 4 sales so far. Three of them were from myself, so I really only have made one sale.
I have spent close to a thousand dollars between putting my banner on other Christian websites, of course worthless traffic sites promising targeted visitors. (They don't tell you that none of them will speak English.)
I have also tried Google Adwords and a Google pay per click campaign, but Google is sending me less visitors than anyone. (Perhaps 112 visitors total) Now I have raised the click bid to 50 cents a click at Google, but still nothing.
My total cost so far is close to $1500 between advertising, getting traffic and the cost to set up my site. All that expense for only one sale from 7,000 visitors in one month. The bottom line question is: What's wrong with my site?” – Jeffrey
P.S. I'm about ready to close my website, which I'm sorry I started in the first place, because my wife and I live on a very small fixed income and it'll take us several years just to pay off what the website has cost us so far. $1500.00 for just one sale that made me only about $17.00.”
A: First, thank you for your email Jeff and I will do my best to help you out. After an investment like that I’d hate to see you throw all your hard work down the drain.
After reading your email and taking a look at your site, I’ve got a few suggestions that may help. Let’s start with the traffic side of the equation first.
First, you’ve already realized that buying traffic isn’t always the best answer. But, even more importantly is where you are sending that traffic, be it bought, through search engines, Google Adwords, or PPC campaigns.
One of the most important things to remember when selling anything, especially online, is that your customers like to be directed or held by the hand. You have to give them calls to action telling them what step to take next.
If you’re sending your traffic to the main page of your site, your visitors may not know where to go next, especially with the large amount of items and directions to choose from on your homepage. Try setting up targeted ad campaigns for specific products and you’ll likely see better results.
Even though you may not have the sales records to help you determine what your hot items are, don’t give up. There are still other ways to determine which items people are interested in. One of those ways is to check you stats to see what people are searching for and where they are going on your site. Use those stats as a starting point when setting up your campaigns.
Now, onto your site itself and some of the things I noticed when visiting.
1. The main page is very busy and can easily turn people away. Try breaking things up a bit and maybe not including everything you offer on the main page individually.
2. The categories on top are very helpful, but the black may be a bit hard on the eyes. Maybe try toning this down a bit to be more visitor friendly.
3. A nice professionally designed logo might help to create some brand recognition. The one you have there is decent, but the rotating text also distracts visitors. If you can create a logo with your site/business name and a short but catchy and memorable tagline, it might draw people in a bit more.
4. I really think the images at the bottom of the page are overkill and really not necessary. Again it can confuse your visitor and turn them off from wanting to learn more about what you have to offer. I think having 1 or 2 product graphics under the categories like you have above is perfect to let your visitor see what they will find in each category when they click. Once you get to the individual category pages you can then put a small graphic and description for each product you offer.
5. The flower background is a great color contrast with the black, but it is distracting and probably takes your visitors focus off your products, which is not the goal you should be looking for. You want your visitors to focus to be on your products
Just a few suggestions for you, Jeff. I know it may not be the miracle you’re looking for, but step-by-step improvements can make a world of difference. I recommend getting really targeted with any ad or promotion campaigns and simplifying things for your visitors.
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Correcting My Website
Written by Guest on 2007-10-04 07:30:59
To Alice,
I want to Thank You for your feed back and advice for my website. I took it to heart and spent all day working on my website to tone it down some.
I took out some of the distractions, and put attractions where I want visitors to foucus. So check it out now, and see if it's improving.
Feel free to be objective! I want to see my website through the eyes of others. Because it's what my visitors think that really counts.
Thank You Again For Your Feedback! Sincerely! Jeff The Lords Store www.thelordsstore.us | Another Suggestion
Written by Guest on 2007-10-04 11:06:19
Hi Jeff,
I think you've done a great job implementing some of Alice's suggestions. I did not see the original, but from the screen shots Alice provided, you are on the right track.
One suggestion I have is that your site is not Firefox friendly. With more and more people switching over to Firefox from Internet Explorer, it might help to fix that. In Firefox, everything from the red lettering that says "Customer Service Number For Orders & Checking Order Status 1-877-205-6402" down is shifted to the right. Which on screen cuts off the right half of all the content there. Then you have to scroll to see any of that. A lot of people unfortunately won't bother. They'll just go somewhere else.
Hope that helps!
Blessings, Shannon
http://www.singlewahm.com | Written by Guest on 2007-10-04 14:06:37
To Shannon,
I just downloaded firefox explorer software to my computer. Then I went to The Lords Store through Firefox, and I saw what you saw. (Everything displays way to the right side of page when viewing through firefox, yet it looks great through Internet explorer.
I did a quick internet search in an attempt to become familiar with firefox coding, but I ended up completely confused, so I really don't know how to fix the problem.
So here's what I did. I sent an email to my webhost tech support, with hopes they can help me with this. They might even fix it themselves. I'll just have to wait and see.
I Thank You for bringing this to my attention. I really wasn't familar with Firefox until today. I never used it before.
My webhost support is excellent! I'm sure they'll know how to fix it, but I sure don't. Jeff | Crazyegg
Written by Guest on 2007-10-04 14:43:04
Hi Jeff,
Besides Alice's advice, you might want to install the heatmap feature that http://crazyegg.com has to view which are the "hot" portions of your ecommerce store to understand what the prospects are looking at and clicking. They have a free version that you can try out.
Might be able to assist in tweaking the layout of your store for optimal navigation.
All the best,
Alvin Huang
http://www.AlvinHuang.com | Written by Guest on 2007-10-10 23:05:54
O.K. This is Jeff again! My website still isn't receiving any sells. I only made one sell in September and one in October so far, and both together only added up to $20.00 commissions. Yet my website has cost me close to $2,000.00 between setting it up and advertising.
I had two other traffic websites who claim they sent me 20,000 visitors a piece. (That's 40,000 total between them) Yet you all can see my counter only shows 10,000 total visitors since I first set it up, and google analytics agrees with my counter. (Some of those 10,000 clicks were from myself!)
Yet Google themselves sent me about 800 vistitors in September, yet only one sell, that sell was a result of a Christian forum I was posting on the night of the sell.
Now yahoo has sent me 227 visitors in October so far, and I had yahoo experts set up my campaign, so they advertise single products on my site, so they have a few hundred campaigns going all in one.
So 227 targeted visitors from yahoo so far, yet only one sell in October, and I suspect that sell came from Sweetie Marketing resources here, after my email question was posted here. (So zero sells through Google & Yahoo)
So my bottom line conclusions are: Nothing works! Not Google! Not Yahoo! Not any of those other so called phony traffic websites, who don't even send the traffic they claim to send, and the ones they do send don't speak English.
Yahoo is advertising various products from my website, and sending visitors to various pages, yet nobody buys anything on my site, and products on my site sell cheaper than some other places.
I know this, because I sell christian products on my site, and I'm a christian who has looked at christian products for over 30 years, so I know what other christian stores charge for things.
So I give up! People aren't buying products on the internet! They're going to walmart, or some well known place like ebay, Targret, KMart, etc.
I will hang in until the end of October to be fair with yahoo, but I'll be shutting down my website after that.(Wothless and costly adventure!)
I just tried adding google adsense to my website, to see if that would help bring in some income, but I had to remove their banner advertisement from my two websites.
Why? Because they started advertising X Rated sex sites on my christian websites, so I removed it immediately!
I then tried choosing the products I would advertise through Google adsense, so I chose about 10 of their products, which would be included in a rotating banner on my site,then google adsense provided the banner code for it to be placed on both of my sites.
But I had to remove them too, because they just didn't work right. They didn't rotate at all. They just stayed stuck on one product, and wouldn't display the other nine products.
So neither of their banners worked out. Their first rotating banner that advertised products randomly rotated fine, but advertised X rated sex sites, so I had to remove it from my christian sites.
Their second rotating banner, where I personally chose the products advertised didn't work at all.
So Google adsense just didn't work out for me either, but I do have their search window on both my sites, which has added up to zero commissions on my sites so far.
My very bottom Line assestment: Internet money opportunities is just a pipe-dream for fools, who are follish enough to give their money to wealthy Con Artists on the internet, who sell them fraudulent ideas and tons of misinformation.
The only people making money on the internet are those who are selling the false information.
What about yahoo and google. Well Google will pay 5 cents per click or more, if anyone clicks on their banners on my site, and that's if I can ever get a working banner from them.
Yet! Google will charge me 50 cents to send those visitors to my site, so some will click on those banners, so I can get get 5 cents from Google.
So let's summarize that up. Google charges me 50 cents to send the visitor to me, then only pays me 5 cents to send the visitor back to them.
Well! I think I'll pass on that deal, and I think I'll get a paper route, and give up this internet pipe-dream.
I'm sure I'll earn more money delivering papers, so it will be more profitable and surely less expensive to adventure into.
I also don't have any choice now! I have to pay off that $2,000.00 credit card expense some way.
That's $2,000.00 of debt I wouldn't have, if only I wouldn't have tried doing business on the internet.
I did all I could do to get a sell. Brought at least a few thousand christians to a website selling discounted christian products, but only two sells adding up to $20.00.
Ya! I'm getting a paper route! Google & Yahoo can have the internet! I'm about $2,000.00 disappointed and sick of it. Sick to my stomach for being so stupid!
| Written by Guest on 2007-10-11 18:58:50
Jeff - if you are buying traffic from those companies, you can remove those from your visitor total. That is garbage traffic.
You need targeted traffic and targeted offers. If you are buying ads from Google, are you bidding on keyword phrases specific to your offer (i.e. buying keywords related to a specific product and sending them directly to that product page)? I would never send traffic to a random page hoping for a click.
Also, realize that in the first visit, people aren't likely to buy, but if you have a way to communicate with them after they leave (i.e. an email address through a mailing list) - you increase the chances of them buying. I don't see that option on your site anywhere.
Jeff, you sound angry and I bet a good dose of positive energy would do wonders for your focus and get you on the right path to success.
Have you ever picked up a copy of Ken Evoy's Make Your Site Sell?? It is free an perhaps it will fill some of the gaps in the efforts you've been making.
http://myss.sitesell.com/
Alice Seba | I'm so sorry
Written by Guest on 2007-10-16 10:55:25
I took a look around your website, and I think it looks great. I'm sorry that you haven't had the luck that you had hoped you would. At the moment I don't have the extra funds to make a purchase, or else I would have gotten a few things.
Don't give up. I think you need to take Alice's advice about reading Ken Envoy's ebook.
It would be a shame to lose a great website. |
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