Blanketmall.com Sales & Traffic DEAD

[timmathews.com]

Sup peeps.
I need some help.
A baby I made a few years ago has come back into my life and I need to help her out.
Her name is http://www.blanketmall.com
:)
Sales and Traffic have stopped.
She gets about 300 uniques from what g's analytics say, but no conversion.
Any help on increasing sales conversions and traffic increasing would be very helpful.
Please, ask and I will tell.
Thanks!
Tim

[Peter (IMC)]

Well,.. a good start would be to optimize it. (the only thing I see now is some keyword stuffing.)

As to why the visitors that you do get don't convert,.. Can you tell where they come from? (who are the referal sites)

[timmathews.com]

Here is a link to the last webtrends report I ran on that site back in Oct.
http://www.blanketmall.com/logs/index.htm
I am working on getting webtrends live on the server again and that way, in conjunction with Google Analytics, I can see whats up.
Here is a link for the analytics csv file from G...
http://www.blanketmall.com/logs/Analytics_2001.csv

[timmathews.com]

I am not sure if anyone can see this, but let me know if you can/cannot and I will edit the post.
Here is the report link for GA...
https://www.google.com/analytics/home/report?rid=571043

[incrediblehelp]

So Tim is traffic and rankings not the problem? Is the lack of conversions when visitors get to your website the problem?

[timmathews.com]

I think so...
I think the site is getting substantial traffic, but it does not seem to produce any sales or leads.
They have had not had any orders in about 2 weeks..
Here is a break down of orders received in the last few months...
5/20/2006 \ 11:30:06 PM
5/15/2006 \ 1:00:35 PM
5/11/2006 \ 1:06:13 PM
5/10/2006 \ 11:41:58 PM
5/2/2006 \ 4:15:09 AM
4/23/2006 \ 9:12:29 PM
4/22/2006 \ 7:18:48 PM
4/20/2006 \ 11:13:03 AM
4/17/2006 \ 2:34:14 PM
4/15/2006 \ 12:59:19 PM
4/6/2006 \ 7:54:21 PM
3/29/2006 \ 8:21:57 PM
3/22/2006 \ 3:50:12 PM
3/21/2006 \ 9:55:12 AM
3/20/2006 \ 10:45:16 PM
3/18/2006 \ 7:10:43 PM
These are actual order dates and times when the customer completed the checkout process.
There is VERY LITTLE shopping cart abandonment, really, like 5 a month, and they are not included in this list.
This is a STAGGERING number, in comparison to the amount of completed orders though...

[timmathews.com]

In the first few months after I built this site, man... They would get 10+ orders on a DAILY basis! This isn't HUGE for a lot of people, but it was GREAT!

Again, Suggestions and Help are/is appreciated.
Thanks.

[incrediblehelp]

No orders in two weeks??? Something is definitely wrong. Have you done test orders without any issues?

Have they dropped off the map in the SE's? I was trying some of the keywords they received traffic on from the WebTrends report you linked to and I could not find them ranking any loner? Maybe another victim of Big Daddy and the long tail/de-indexing crush?

[timmathews.com]

incrediblehelp,
I AGREE! What in the heck is going on?
I have done NUMEROUS test orders and all is GREAT!
I see most of the kw do nothing anymore...
It seems like they are just dead.
If you do a google site search for blanketmall.com...
http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...lanketmall.com
G boasts 1,410 pages...

IF anyone wants to test the cart, you can use my test account email tim@tim.com pw 1234 and for the CC#, just select visa and use 4111111111111111
Again, all help is appreciated.

[bathgems]

First of all, traffic has dropped of a cliff for a lot of online sellers, including myself, since gas prices went up a month ago. THe Powerseller forum on eBay has people jumping out of windows (back into day jobs) on a daily basis.

My instinct says that you are not tapping into your revenue potential by limiting yourself to blankets. Hardly anyone needs more than one of your products since they are based on local pride. Some people simply dont want to make a single item purchase. This is why there are department stores.

There are, of course, category stores but then they try to create add-on services and products. Eye glass stores sell eye glass repair kits and cases. If you carried additional product lines, maybe an additional 2-3 per team, then you could get larger orders from the customers who do decide to purchase.

Plus you could consider having larger images. Add some team trivia to each listing to add to your SEO search net.

Steve

[timmathews.com]

Wow, the team trivia thing is sweet... Kinda viral it up a bit.
Nice one bathgems.
They are adding pillows, flags, mugs, purses, etc. to the product line, but the owner is discouraged as hell because sales are at an all time low (Since January man!).

How about the look and feel of the site/cart.
Anyone have any comments/suggestions on changing it up a bit? Make it "prettier", lol?

[bathgems]

Well I was going to comment on one aspect but I bit my tongue because itseemed like a lot of work.

When you click on the NCAA, for instance, you get a list of all the teams. I would rather see thumbnail images lined up in columns 4 or 5 across so the team could be visually chosen. You can maintain the names underneath the thuimbnail so they can be chosen by name as well.

That would be more visually appealing in my view.

Steve

[southplatte]

Well, first tell the owner that any business, not just online, goes through slow periods and needs to revitalize at times, diversify at other times and stay the course all the time for success. I recently had a client leave because they had not recieved any orders for about 2 months. Not to mention they did not update their site, add prodcut or actively promote it for over 4 months.

In using the site the long list of categories is painful to me...and probably me only. When you click on NCAA you get a list of all the states that is rather long, with 1-15 products per state showing in parenthesis. That's a long list....and I am running 1400x1050 on one screen and 1600x1200 on another and on the NCAA list it goes way down...imagine on a 1024x768 screen...is there a way to split the list in to two columns to make it easier to view all of them at once?

In the upper right hand corner, in the shopping cart area, it seems a phone number is in there, and yet on the header bar there is the 800 number listed...the 800 number is listed as 1800-805-0868 should the other one is 941.720.4697 - which number works...why two formats? This, to me is a small thing, but destroys credibility since they are less than an inch apart.

The site seems to put more focus on Affiliates rather than product....the affiliate link is different color, and the huge heading at the bottom of the page suggests a conflicting statement...it's at the bottom to appear no-intrusive, yet it is size 5 making it seem important.

On the products, for example the harley blanket, http://blanketmall.com/sports-cartoo...idproduct=1599
There is not an actual product photo to say, but stock photos that do not represent the product as it actually is. Other items have what appears to be an actual photo of a blanket, not just a picture of what's on the blanket.

Also, if this merchandise is officially licensed, that should be noted and that may help sales. I think sometimes shoppers see items and say, well, it doesn't say it is licensed, so it is probably lower quality....especially in the Sports and Harley Davidson arenas. Go to a mall and check out the stores....many times there are Harley items that are cheap and not officially licensed product....then you will have a store down the way that sells license product that is of much higher quality. People make that connection, even online.

This site is selling highly recognizable items, but are they unique items? Do the descriptions and product photos sell the item value to the customer? Who is the average customer, male, female buying for themselves or for a family member or friend? Is there any advertising going on targeted at sports sites, harley sites, agricultural sites?

Just my ramblings....

--edit--

Just looked again...all the Harley blankets are out of stock. I check the Rockies (being from Colorado and all) baseball blankets and only 2 out of 5 are in stock. If that is a common trend, that explains poor sales.

[timmathews.com]

I see the harly stuff is all out of stock.
The reason for the 2 phone numbers is canada ppl and international ppl cannot call the 800# listed. Both numbers work.
Not all products are in stock, some are drop shipped, hence the stock photos.
Most of thier stock is in stock, and they take pictures of it when the new stuff comes in.

Good call with the oficially licensed point...
I will make a point for them to edit all of thier products and add some officially licensed text to the products, along with some trivia or extra facts about that particular team or name...

Good points man, I really appreciate you taking the time to post here. Very valuable information to me.

[incrediblehelp]

Tim check out Bryan Eisenberg writings, lots of awesome stuff in there:

For your issues you want to go through these two articles for the blanket websites and check for all 20 points:

20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment, Part 1
20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment, Part 2

Oldies but goodies!

[timmathews.com]

Thanks Jaan,
I will be looking through those tonight, and cheking them out.
Also, southplatte, I will be toning the affiliate sign up link down at the bottom of the site... Good call, they just wanted people to see the opportunity to sign up.

[Paul B]

The https pages give a warning about secure and insecure itmes - that will be a killer for the fainthearted shopper.
It's usually caused by non-secure paths to images.

Also the site lacks a tag line at the top of the page saying what it's all about -like "Get your team on a blanket" or "Sleep with your team". I had to look at a few products to understand the concept.

[timmathews.com]

Paul,
Thanks for letting me know about the https error, I duplicated your issue and I am in process of finding out why now.
When I do NOT display non secure items, I get a java error. When I do display non secure, the page works correctly.
I am on it...