Looking for Store Feedback

[KPhillips]

Hello everyone!
I've had my store up for almost a year now. Conversions are very low. We are using AdWords to start getting customers in the door. I've done every bit of SEO I could access & I've made my site responsive & tested it on many platforms. The problem is, I'm doing every bit of this myself & no one around me has the experience to give me the criticisms I need to find problems. I ran a test & see I have the potential for a PR3 site, but my Domain Authority is low because of the short life span of our domain name.

So, my question is, can someone with some SEO & Design experience look at my site & tell me what I might be missing, or if I'm good & just need to focus on marketing now. Thank you in advance.

[Toobusy]

One thing I'm noticing on checkout, one page, is that is says enter zip code to calculate shipping, but there's no where to enter the zip code. I know personally if I have to fill out all my information including credit card information without knowing what the shipping costs are going to be on the order, I move along. Sometimes those shipping prices are the sticker shock and calculate higher than the items I'm ordering. Step 2 on your one page checkout. Maybe it's only me, but I kind of like to have an idea of the shipping costs before I take the time to fille in my name, address, credit card information, etc. to abandon buggy LOL

[KPhillips]

Thank you so much for not being "Toobusy" to take a look at my site. (I couldn't resist). I feel good that the issue you found is all the way on the checkout page, meaning you probably didn't find too much wrong with the pages that came before. As far as the ZipCode portion goes, I think that is a new thing with the new V2 Checkout. The shipping is calculated when you put the zipcode in the Billing Information. There was a "Calculate Shipping" option on the Shopping Cart page, but I removed it cause our shipping is the same no matter where you are. However, after hearing your feelings on it, (I look at you as a customer now) I see how it can be annoying to wait until you enter your information before seeing the shipping cost. So, thank you for that. I'm thinking I will turn the "Calculate Shipping" option back on. Very much appreciated TB!

[Toobusy]

Yep I'm using V2 also and it's doing the same thing yours is, in fact I think we use the same template. Great, didn't know that was going on and that would explain all the abandoned carts I've started seeing this week. I would calculate shipping previously if you put a zip code in. Now I'm going to have to take the time and go mucky muck around and see if I need to revert back from the V2 checkout so people can get a shipping calculation without having to fill out all the information to find out how much shipping will be. Now I really am "toobusy" to work on this, but I have to LOL

UPDATE: On checkout on my site at least, if you go to the view cart link at the top, and it takes you from the checkout page to the cart, you see the shipping calculation, but when you add to cart it by passes the view cart screen where you can calculate shipping. That's not good, seems like a back arsewards flow to me because who's going to think to review the cart to get a shipping calculation :-(

Another Update: Seems my checkout settings have changed, don't know how I know I'm "too busy" to change anything on the site, but in the checkout settings if you choose view cart as the add to cart action you can actually calculate your shipping prior to filling out all the info. DUH. I always had the view cart as my option there but suddenly it's change. Again. Support says it's my support staff that changes these things, but I AM my support staff and I haven't changed a thing. Who knows. But mine is fixed to allow for shipping calculation now so maybe I won't have so many abandoned carts like I have in the past week or so.

[KPhillips]

Yeah, I'm going to have to add my "Calculate Shipping" option back to my View Cart page I see. Here's a question, do you require EMail address to complete an order? I've noticed customers usually abandon at checkout. I'm thinking it's either my required email or the shipping calculation issue. My boss wants the Email required so I removed the first checkbox under the Email & change the text to say, "Email is required for Order Confirmation" Then I changed the "Create Account" header to "Checkout as Guest or Login" Hopefully that will help. Especially when I fix the "Calculate Shipping" issue. I'll update progress. Thanks again TB.

[Toobusy]

Personally I don't require an email to check out. People are so bombarded with spam anymore that I noticed and got feedback from quite a few customers that they simply don't care to input an email address because of the possibility of spam, their email being sold, etc. When I did require an email I had more phone orders than my single person (me) operation could handle. If they order on the phone, they don't have to give their email address, etc. But my customer base is quite unique, my products customized to meet their muscle car's needs, and most just call to talk to you about what they're looking for, lead times, customizations to the component, etc., rather than purchase through the store. Mostly the store, for me anyway, serves as an "online catalog" with examples of my restored components and workmanship. Guess that's why I'm "Toobusy" LOL

[Marty]

Hi,

Regarding SEO - Your incoming anchor text ratio looks good. You will need WAY more quality links to rank for good office supply keywords. You may want to add more words to your Homepage Title. Your homepage keyword density is in a good sweet spot, BUT you will want to be careful about anchor text to your site. Your homepage density for "office supplies" is on the high side, but if you diversify your incoming links and link to inner pages you should be fine.

Regarding Design - I'm using a 23" monitor. Things look a little spread out. I like things a little closer together so I can take in more information at one time (personal preference). I'm not sure if I like the category menu it looks a little random and spread out. I don't know if that would have any impact on conversions? The responsive view looks fine.

Regarding Conversions - Adwords SUCKS BAD! I sell coffee and coffee related items. I've experimented with Adwords using my static html site and my new 3dcart site. I believe many clicks are fraudulent. I've created detailed, exact keyword landing pages, with huge discounts. I created targeted Adwords campaigns using search only for EXACT keywords only (have also tried PHRASE, etc.) Conversions are usually at or below 1%. That is HORRIBLE for an optimized, targeted campaign. By contrast I'll convert at around 3 - 5% for organic search traffic, and that is not nearly as targeted. Perhaps I have a bunch of click happy competitors clicking on my ads, I don't know. What I do know is I'm not going to blow through $100,000 on Adwords/year for testing.

Another note about Adwords - even for the extremely targeted campaigns I will see well over 1/2 of Adwords clicks as 0 seconds on site through GA. My organic traffic has a WAY lower rate of 0 second visits. Trying to contact Adwords about these issues is useless. I recommend you try the Bing/Yahoo network and come up with a ton of keywords. They provide much less traffic than Google, but the quality seems better.

[celebra1]

Conversion can be tricky and involves more than using AdWords. The following is personal opinion, in hopes it helps:

Your color scheme is wrong. I know you chose red/black to match your logo. How about converting its background to white or transparent and dropping your site into a better template set?

Your home page description is weak. Use keywords, not rewards points messaging. You are selling products, not rewards.

Add keyword-rich text to your home page.

AdWords - have you been adding to your "negative keyword" list? It's not just about "traffic"; it's about "qualified" traffic. Think of all the other uses for your keywords, and all the words you don't want people to use to find you, like "sale", "coupon", "free" Some of your product keywords have other meanings, like "binder".Make sure negative keywords are in to eliminate those searches. I have gotten very good at keeping my AdWords budget low and my organic traffic at 65% +/- You need to study your site stats constantly to tweak that.

You are in a competitive field up against some major players. What is your product niche? What can you/do you do better than them? Unique products? Price? Service? Something else? Use keywords that cover your "niche" in your home page text.

Fill in ALL of your category and subcategory meta titles, meta description, page title, etc. Write opening text for each of those areas too. This is more important than adding terms to AdWords! Rewrite the descriptions you have to be more descriptive of the products/product.lines.

Hope this helps.

[KPhillips]

Thank you all so much for your input & advice. I'm happy to see that criticisms on the design are not aplenty & will be easy to implement suggestions I received. As far as Adwords, boy do I understand the frustrations there. I'm not so disappointed in the lack of conversions yet, cause we are just getting into it & learning everyday we monitor. But monitoring in itself is so frustrating cause it's almost impossible to notice & trend or pattern to duplicate, cause stats change drastically daily. However, I do have some negative keywords, but I've also add many more long tail keywords lately, meaning I need to re-review adding negatives based off those.

I appreciate the input very much & will reread over each message frequently to assure I am moving in the right direction. Thanks again

[toolsavvy]

One thing I don't care for both as a shopper and a vendor is the cluttered category listing. I like the newer, modern templates but they are a problem when you have a lot of categories. This is why I opted for the traditional 2 or 3 column design with the category listing down the side of the page rather than horizontally across the top.