Why No Conversions?

[camerasngifts]

Hi my name is Pam
My question is My site has been up and running for 5 months. It is well advertised by this I
mean PPC over 2000 banner ad's,500 orgainic one way links, super pages.com, on my car, in my local news paper, e-mails/with coupon,share a sale,and nice offers. All this and yet this site is still not converting into sales. Even over Christmas. I get quailty targeted traffic. I'm hacker safe. I get five star reveiws. However 1 sale and my mother does not count. Can anyone see or explain a reason as to why? Your help would be greatly be appreciated.
Cameras,Gift,Hidden spy cameras,Digital Cameras,Camera Pam

[jboeckman]

The first thing I did when I came to your site was click on Digital Cameras copied the title of the first item number PVGS19 and pasted it in Google. I found Amazon on the first page Amazon.com: Used and New: Panasonic PV-GS19 MiniDV Camcorder w/24x Optical Zoom

As you can see on your site the price is 287.95 and the same camera is $223 and it is new. One of the hardest things online is being competitive with large companies like the Amazons. I also think the site could use a face lift to give it a more professional look.

[camerasngifts]

Thanks for your sugestion on pricing some I can lower some I do not have as much leway.
as for the face lift I not sure what you mean Please help
Pam

[jboeckman]

My first impression of the site is the same I get when I go to either a low quality link building site or a spam site.

My Homepage Thoughts:

1. The name of the site/company should be at the top of the page.
2. The main thing that sticks out in my mind is the FREE Money giveaway. Once I click on it I am taken to another site.
3. The "cameras-n-gifts.com Welcome to SAFE ONLINE SHOPPING Customers give us 5 Star Ratings" font is extremely large and doesn't tell me what to do. It is good to establish yourself as a trusted resource but I think that is going to the extreme.
4. Tell me what you have not how good you are
   1. This text "We offer a large variety of Camera, Gifts,and Digital Cameras,As well as a specialty selection of Hidden spy cameras,Web Cameras,and Camcorders,Security Cameras,Our other categories include Toys, Camera Acessories, Gifts, Home Theater TV's" where do I go to find that stuff? Make those link if you are going to put that on your site.
5. What's up with the diamond earrings? I thought I was on a camera site.
6. As a matter of fact where are the cameras?
7. The stuff on the left hand side is there for link building purposes but it makes your site look even more spammy. Try getting rid of that, making a links or resources page and placing those links on that page in the main body content. Move your customer testimonies to the left hand side and only show 1 testimony at a time and maybe use some javascript to rotate through the other testimonies.
8. The white background that becomes yellow half way down the page is distracting also.

Products Page:

1. I like all the information you have but try breaking the description into paragraphs.
2. Add the Add to Cart button at the bottom of the page also, this way after someone has read about the product they can purchase it.
3. I'm not a huge fan of the color pallet but that is just me.
4. At the top of the page I'm not 100% sold on having all of this information "You may pay for your cameras,or Gifts with all major credit cards. We also accept Pay Pal,you do not need Pay Pal account for this method. THANK YOU cameras-n-gifts.com". You would probably be better off designing a nice header that will carry your brand throughout the site, assuming you build a brand.
5. Testimonies same as the front page.
6. Offer more than one view of a product or a larger view.
7. More information on a product like this High School musical 2 Digital camera would be nice. Does it have a preview screen what does the back look like? What settings are available.

These are just my initial observations. They are just my suggestions without viewing your site stats it is hard to determine where people are entering/exiting your site.

On your PPC campaigns are you sending people to the homepage or the specific product page of what they are searching for?

[Dubbya]

Ultimately, your's is a design/usability issue.

You'd be doing yourself a favor if you picked up Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think vol. 2".
Advanced Common Sense Home

It's a bargain at twice the price and a book every ecommerce store owner should read. Get it, read it, then move on to fixing your site.

If you want to fix this quickly, hire a professional web designer. Preferably one with Yahoo! Stores design experience. If you've blown the budget on all the back end services and/or you feel you want to tackle a redesign yourself, start by checking out your competitors.

If you want an inexpensive fix, find a site template and implement that. It'll be better than what you currently have available.

In the meanwhile, I'll provide a few items you might want to work on.

Shotgun site evaluation (in no particular order):

For one thing, you're running an ecommerce site and this is your home page.

IF AT ALL POSSIBLE, PROVIDE FEW, IF ANY, EXTERNAL LINKS FROM YOUR HOME PAGE.

Clean up your left column. Get rid of anything and everything that does not need to be there, anything unrelated to your site or that might serve as a distraction by simply adding clutter.

You'd be much better off to create a "Links" or "Resources" page and put the external links there. In addition, you're giving away most of your page rank.

You've provided scads of opportunities for your prospective clients to leave the site when you should be focused on how to funnel them through your shopping process.

The site is very plain, bland in fact. The overall design is lacking because you've relied too heavily on text, which might help get traffic to the site initially, but does nothing to keep users interested.

The page area that's "above the fold" contains little, if any information that's beneficial to a casual shopper browsing at a screen resolution of 1024x768. When a user hits your home page, they see little more that "GIANT SCREAMING TEXT".

Post your telephone number (toll-free if possible) and your business address at the top of the page. Build your corporate image and lose the "business in the basement" image you're currently projecting.

Your page needs breadcrumb navigation.

You are here: Home / Category / Subcategory / Product page

In addition, if they decide to tough it out and actually click on a category, you've got too many products listed per page. You really need to add some pagination. Break the products up according to brand or features and allow the user to page through about ten products at a time.

Get rid of the repetitive "Customer Testimonials". If you feel you must have them, restrict them to just one or two per page, using just a title with a "Read More..." link and allow your users can access them on a separate page.

.02

[camerasngifts]

WOW Thank You I'm Glad to finally have someone tell me the truth. My PPC is to digital camera page. Thanks I will try your sugestions a.s.a.p. Pam

[camerasngifts]

Thanks for your valuable sugestions I will try them
thanks again Pam

[crankydave]

Great suggestions already! Heed them well!

A question though. You "sell stuff" right?

Why can't I buy anything from your homepage?

Dave

[jboeckman]

No problem Pam. Let us know how it goes.

[camerasngifts]

Thanks so much for every thing I changed most of the things you guys sugested but i do not have controll over all the things.


However I want to tell you that I got a sale yesterday for $4,055.95 see how great you guys are thanks again

Any more sugestions??
Pam

[jboeckman]

That's awesome! Glad we could help The changes look much better.

P.S. You may look into related products, people who bought this also purchased this item or here are some accessories you will need for this item. Amazon does a really good job of up selling and cross-referencing Amazon.com: Panasonic PV-GS19 MiniDV Camcorder w/24x Optical Zoom: Electronics

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by jboeckman

My first impression of the site is the same I get when I go to either a low quality link building site or a spam site.

My Homepage Thoughts:

1. The name of the site/company should be at the top of the page.
2. The main thing that sticks out in my mind is the FREE Money giveaway. Once I click on it I am taken to another site.
3. The "cameras-n-gifts.com Welcome to SAFE ONLINE SHOPPING Customers give us 5 Star Ratings" font is extremely large and doesn't tell me what to do. It is good to establish yourself as a trusted resource but I think that is going to the extreme.
4. Tell me what you have not how good you are
   1. This text "We offer a large variety of Camera, Gifts,and Digital Cameras,As well as a specialty selection of Hidden spy cameras,Web Cameras,and Camcorders,Security Cameras,Our other categories include Toys, Camera Acessories, Gifts, Home Theater TV's" where do I go to find that stuff? Make those link if you are going to put that on your site.
5. What's up with the diamond earrings? I thought I was on a camera site.
6. As a matter of fact where are the cameras?
7. The stuff on the left hand side is there for link building purposes but it makes your site look even more spammy. Try getting rid of that, making a links or resources page and placing those links on that page in the main body content. Move your customer testimonies to the left hand side and only show 1 testimony at a time and maybe use some javascript to rotate through the other testimonies.
8. The white background that becomes yellow half way down the page is distracting also.

Products Page:

1. I like all the information you have but try breaking the description into paragraphs.
2. Add the Add to Cart button at the bottom of the page also, this way after someone has read about the product they can purchase it.
3. I'm not a huge fan of the color pallet but that is just me.
4. At the top of the page I'm not 100% sold on having all of this information "You may pay for your cameras,or Gifts with all major credit cards. We also accept Pay Pal,you do not need Pay Pal account for this method. THANK YOU cameras-n-gifts.com". You would probably be better off designing a nice header that will carry your brand throughout the site, assuming you build a brand.
5. Testimonies same as the front page.
6. Offer more than one view of a product or a larger view.
7. More information on a product like this High School musical 2 Digital camera would be nice. Does it have a preview screen what does the back look like? What settings are available.

These are just my initial observations. They are just my suggestions without viewing your site stats it is hard to determine where people are entering/exiting your site.

On your PPC campaigns are you sending people to the homepage or the specific product page of what they are searching for?

Wow! That's a lot of time and consideration to give someone ... rep points added. Glad to have you on board at WPW.

You, too, Dubbya ...

[Dubbya]

Originally Posted by camerasngifts

I want to tell you that I got a sale yesterday for $4,055.95 see how great you guys are thanks again

I suggest you send us commission cheques immediately!

Just a thought... just throwing it out there, but if orders of this size are quite out of the ordinary, I'd take steps to ensure you have not been scammed and do it BEFORE you ship anything. You'll lose your shirt if you're not careful.

I've been getting a ton of fraudulent purchase attempts over the last two weeks. Mostly large purchases of $2000.00-$4000.00. Nothing adds up and the details are always a little sketchy. Calling the card's issuing bank usually proves me right.

If you're not sure this feels right, it's probably not.

• Personally call the contact phone number your customer gave you in your checkout page. (Don't rely on email)
• Contact the issuing bank to ensure that the card information has not been stolen.
• Check with the issuing bank to ensure that the billing address and contact information you received matches that of the credit card.
• The banks can issue chargebacks for up to six months on some cards. Make sure everything is legit!
• If the customer offers to use their shipper to pick up the package, there's something fishy going on.
• If the shipping address is overseas, to the Ivory Coast or some other bizarre location, ask some questions.
• Use Google Maps to check out the address. (If you're seeing an empty lot, in an industrial area, I'd see that as a red flag.)
• Do a reverse phone lookup on the phone number to see if it matches the location in the contact information. (A person who supposedly lives in Washington should not have a phone number that resolves to an address in Pennsylvania)

.02

[jboeckman]

Thanks MJTaylor I've been in the business for a while but I am just now trying to get more involved in the SEO community.

[crankydave]

This is a really "warm and fuzzy" thread and I think it's wonderful!

Please Pam, be very careful. I'm truly am not trying to be a "wet blanket" and I know you are very excited about your sale but please be very careful. Unfortuantely, there are very many folks out there looking to take advantage of newer ecommerce sites.

Dave

[camerasngifts]

Thanks every one for the advise

I called the contact person and the credit card company and it is for real. Thanks again sorry no commision checks yet I'm still in the red. At least now I know its not my shopping cart set up wrong.

I did change the colors and the font sizes. plus added text content. If I have over done the text please let me know. any other sugestion are greatfully accepted.

Pam

[Dubbya]

Originally Posted by camerasngifts

I called the contact person and the credit card company and it is for real.

Congrats! I really hope this works out for you.

While these things seem legit, it may simply be that the actual card holder is not aware that their information has been compromised. Everything will check out until the card holder gets their monthly statement. If there's a problem, they'll call the bank and they'll pull their cash back so fast it'll make your head spin.

Merchant Account providers place the onus on the merchant to make certain that the payment is legitimate.

This is important: If the value of the transaction is greater than your estimated average transaction amount, or if you're processing more monthly transactions than you are rated for by your merchant account provider and you do get scammed, they can cancel your merchant account, freeze your accounts and hold you responsible to repay the cash.

Your merchant account provider may also decide to hang on to the money until the chargeback period has passed in order to protect themselves. This is dangerous as well because you can't access the funds that will help keep your business running.

A word to the wise: Don't spend the money until you're past the cutoff date for chargebacks through your Merchant account provider. This can take a few weeks to as long as six months!!! Even if this purchase is legit, make certain that you've looked into your merchant account provider's policies so you know where you stand.

Please don't assume that because the front end bank staff don't see any problems and the transaction gets processed that everything is hunky-dory. Make sure you've covered your @ssets.