Help please

[mondo]

We've been opened about six months and started getting a few sales after a month or so. Our traffic has been slowly rising but now haven't had a sale in 2 months. Were only up to about 350-400 visitors a mo. but we have another site with similar product and based on traffic/order ratio there we should be getting a good 60+ carts 9-10 sales a month here. (I designed the other site too).

It's not the shipping or checkout, nobody is even putting anything in the cart. It must be look and feel, navigation or product presentation. Am planning a complete redo but could really use advise.

Any negatives on why you wouldn't shop or put something in the cart to at least check shipping is appreciated.

Thanks,

Mondo

**Update**http://www.stitchersstuff.com

[lml]

Mondo, how about a link so we can view?

[mondo]

Whoops!
http://www.stitchersstuff.com

[Chef_Joe]

Ok, a couple things.

Site looks okay. It is a bit wide though. (looks great on my notebook screen, bad on my large monitor screen)

I checked your keyword and title tags, and everything seems to be okay.

Are you submitting sitemaps and products to shopping networks?

Your category/product pages look a bit busy and confusing. You currently have the name, category, image, availability, base price, and add to cart. People just want to see the title, image, and price and then checkout. Maybe clean that up a bit. Here is a link to my site to see how I went about it:

http://www.letstalkchef.com/search.a...each&search=GO

Also, remove the Tax information from every product. Most likely your Illinois sales do not overpower every other state, so that information is not necessary until checkout time. (also, your tax rate of 8.25% is incorrect :))

Clean and simple makes people want to buy.

On the other hand, it has only been a few months for you. It took my site close to 2 years before it started generating significant traffic/sales- and it's still a work in progress.

Hope this helps a little. Best of luck!

[maksum]

Am planning a complete redo but could really use advise.

Since you're planning a complete re-do anyway, I think tips on starting a new design are more beneficial than picking at specifics of what you have currently.

I would:

• Go to templatemonster.com
• Search through some shopping cart templates (doesn't matter what platform they're designed for)
• Make a list of elements you like, perhaps find one or two that you are really attracted to and you think will work well for your store
• Design your store in photoshop with the above items in mind

I would also:

• Get a nice logo!

(exclamation mark not to diss what you have, but to emphasize the importance this has on how you're perceived by the public.)
Nice logo = legitimacy. Period.

Just a couple of quick thoughts.

Mike

[mondo]

Got a sale today, go figure.
Thanks chef_joe,
Guess on width your talking about the border. It's fairly new (hmm about two months...) were dumping that and going back to 100%
Yes on sitemaps and shopping,

Your category/product pages look a bit busy and confusing

Thanks!, I couldn't put a finger on why they "weren't right" think the first thing I'll do is drop the right column. We're already talking about trying to break out some of the options but we are going to have to have them on a lot of products. I'm big on clean and simple, can't believe all the distractions got by me on this one.
Got the price, avail, tax display posted from a pro on our other sites board as conversion friendly. When adding avail/tax a few years ago our conversions went up immediately. We have to charge a city tax too so 8.35% is correct.
It took our other site a good year to get going. This one actually started faster but then nothing and the order to visits isn't adding up.

maksum,
Don't want a redo just figured it was no lose. Good idea on the template site and will look. I'm pretty sure the basic layout, top/left nav will remain. Had more in mind of major tweaking than tossing it. Think I got carried away with all the borders and not sure on the colors.

My Photoshop doesn't have design tools. I don't use editors just css and html.


I'm not happy with the logo either. I have a recycle bin full and still not happy.

Thanks again, show off changes in a day or two. Going to templatemonster.com now.

[dmoore]

might be the biggest problem.
you have https issues https://stitchersstuff.3dcartstores....lamp_p_22.html
check all your image, flash, and js links to make sure clients dont get that question. also some of the images did not work on that link.

The way I got to this link is by going to your checkout and then surfing around the site again.

Doug

[Mark]

That's the issue one has when using a shared SSL certificate. Definately not recommended for ecommerce. I know for me personally, I never shop a site without their own SSL certificate.

[mondo]

Our other site has used shared for 5 yrs. and we have a close rate in the high 5% range. Though I would get one here if it was a problem on this site.
That being said:
I can't duplicate this in IE or FF except using that link.
If I go on the site normally then to checkout I get no errors and a clean lock on secure pages verified by equifax.
If I go back to surfing it goes back to http. No probs

Using the link I don't get a popup (maybe cause you closed it) but I get a bad lock and it says.verified not specified. If I surf around from that link I stay locked in https mode. ??? If I close that session then go back in or even just click on my site bookmark it's back to normal.

I do know why you got the error with you locked into https. The pics in a few of the product descriptions including that one are on our other server. Never occurred to me to double host them on the product pages.



can you describe how you got there? Thanks

[Mark]

yes, I see in that link that some images are hosted on another site. Host locallly and the issue should go away. Also, make sure you don't use the full URL to the images when hosted locally. We had a similar issue where we included the "http://www.storename.com" in our image links and that caused problems.

[mondo]

I don't use the full url on any global/secure pages. If they weren't already on our other site wouldn't have used it there either. It's not a problem to host the few product description pics here but I can't figure out how Doug got stuck in HTTPS mode after leaving check out pages. It's not supposed to do that and I can't duplicate it.

[Mark]

Once in the checkout section, your are in https mode. Since there is no "Continue Shopping" button, if you decide to continue shopping, you remain in https when clicking your "home" link in the header or footer takes you to the https shared home page in https. Not sure what other links remain in https mode, but, that's one that I found.
Hope this helps!

[mondo]

Thanks guys,
With the help I got it to do it. If you click a cat it doesn't but if you hit back or home it does. Just adding a continue button wont hunt since everyone surfs their way (like me). So much for priorities, made some small tweaks today but this is #1 now. Will fix tomorrow and look into a certificate.

[Little Monkey]

images

My recommendation is to spend some money/time in upgrading your images. Invest in a small light box and take pictures with no backgrounds (i.e. the wooden table?). To me it seems "cheap" if a site cannot be bothered to put in nice pictures. Perhaps your suppliers have stock images?

[mondo]

Actually, since many are drop ship items most of the photos are the MFG's stock photos. Only a few are ours of our products. A few because the stocks we're so bad and we brought them in. It's true though that some of the older pics we did do and the accessories need to be retaken with our lighting and backdrops that we actually have now. Appreciate the reminder, after they are on a site for years I guess you kind of forget about them. Only a few inexpensive items we sell fit in a light box. It wouldn't be worth storing the thing.

UPDATE: Dropped the purple textured border/changed the width on the 19th. Had 4 sales since, strange.
Fixed the security issue (only that product had it!)
Starting on the body now.