I'm stumped...please help.

gwoodstrom · #1 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 02:58 PM

Please take a look at my client's site: TBI Gun Dog Training Equipment & Supplies He is one of the top-ten dealers in his niche and does well with his mail catalog and his dealers. Now he would like to make his website equally as successful but it's giving us a hard time. The site was set up a year ago using Yahoo Stores but customized html and Yahoo html tags. I have 2 questions that I've been scratching my head over for months now and I'm hoping you can help. I'll add that this is my first e-commerce site, so any advice is very welcome!

My first question is that although we're getting around 3,000 page loads a week, we're selling very little. Our prices are the same as our competitors so it's not that. Does anyone have any suggestions what it could be?

My second question is that his 2 major money-makers are Tri-Tronics (or Tritronics) collars and Sportdog collars but although we show up well on Google searches for almost every other product we're absolutely nowhere on these 2 brands. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I can do about it?

Many thanks in advance for any help.

**wige** · #2 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 05:50 PM

As far as the page loads, where are you getting this number, and what is it based on? There are a lot of different statistics that can be used to gauge a site's traffic, but the most important one is the number of unique visitors. Page views can be divided by this number to give you an idea of how long your visitors are staying on the site, but doesn't give as much insight into how much traffic you are driving to the site.

Also important is the source of the number. If you are using the raw log entries to come to this number, you may be seeing traffic from search engines and other automated processes, that an analytics program would filter out.

mjancosek · #3 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 05:56 PM

The site is alright... But the question is would you trust it if you were visiting for the first time? When I went I tested the cart and it looked different and broke. So I would naturally back out of there not thinking it is safe. A good tool to use is Analytics. You can create a funnel and see where clients are coming in and leaving. If they leave before they enter in information on your cart. Then I would think that a trust issue might be your problem. You might think about getting a fully functional shopping cart... Might be a little money but your clients might trust it a little more and give you their personnal information.

mysticalmaze · #4 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:07 PM

I agree with getting a fully functional shopping cart.

When I chose a product and added it to my cart it redirected to: Yahoo!

Maybe thats why?

Regards,

Robert Palmer

iany · #5 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:08 PM

Whilst echoing what wige said, there is much that still needs o be done to the site. It takes too long to load and I have a fast Broadband connection. The html has loads of errors.
[Invalid] Markup Validation of http://www.tbicatalog.com/ - W3C Markup Validator
Try putting the JavaScript off page - don't just rely on Dreamweaver to put stuff where it wants.

Not all of your header tags comply with the doctype and I guess these have been the custom versions that you have added.

The site only has a P/R of 3/10 which suggests that you need to pay more attention to the inbound links.Although you have some 309 pages indexed the titles all start with TBI. Search for "Gun Dog training equipment" does not give a top 10 entry which one would certainly expect.

On the design front the shop is none too exciting. It needs a bit of vavavoom to separate it from the opposition. For example, Dog Training Supplies & Equipment is on first page - none too exciting but is doing very well according to the stats. You could learn from how their page titles are set out.

I am surprised that there is as much fundamentally to sort when you advertise yourself as an SEO provider.

doughdo · #6 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:15 PM

yes, i agree. the site looks somewhat cheesy and unprofessional. i do not know if i would feel safe purchasing something from it.

do you know how much your online competitors are selling compared to you?

gwoodstrom · #7 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:29 PM

I'm using StatCounter for my statistics and it tells me I got 900 unique visitors last week. Checking through I can see from the time they spent and the paths they took that most of those were legit visitors.

gwoodstrom · #8 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:33 PM

My client signed up with Yahoo Small Business and that's what he uses for process his orders and control his inventory. Consequently we're using Yahoo's cart. I'm upset that it broke because it's been pretty safe for us so far. And I would love to use Analytics but so far I haven't found a way to get into Yahoo's cart to insert the code!

gwoodstrom · #9 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 06:37 PM

iany:
Thanks for your help. Actually Gun Dog Suppy is one of our competitors and they also use Yahoo Small Business so I've been tempted to follow their lead.

bobh41 · #10 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 10:18 PM

Your discussion would suggest that your primary focus is on SEO tuning. In my opinion the site needs to be examined in terms of the user experience. It looks very much like you simply coded one of the company's very dense advertising flyers. The site takes little advantage of the possibilities offered by linking, and grouping. You have way too much material on the home page - why? I suggest you offer the viewer more discretion in his searching options. Frankly it's just a little off-putting. Your SEO issues should follow, not precede, excellent design.

gwoodstrom · #11 (**permalink**) 08-21-2007, 11:34 PM

Bobh41:
Thank you! This makes a lot of sense to me. The client and I have had many discussions about "the user experience" and you've just validated my opinion. I would like to rebuild the entire site and the comments I've been getting here make me even more sure that's what should happen.

ronparrs · #12 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 12:28 AM

My limited understanding of quantity of visitors to actual "buyers" is that it can take up to or around 100 visitors to have 1 sale. The longer the site is up, the more sales you will eventually get. Over the years we've found that to be a pretty good benchmark.

You may also see what you can do to get the homepage loading faster as IANY noted above. If you can't see almost everythning within 15 seconds or so, visitors are GONE.

You may also want to consider a toll free telephone number at some point. Use a service that can "filter" the calls so that they're bona fide buyers rather than anyone who can call toll free & either complain or otherwise waste your time.

gwoodstrom · #13 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 12:35 AM

ronparrs:
Thanks for you input and I agree with both you and iany, the home page loads too slowly and there's way too much information on it. I also like the idea of a toll free phone number...now let's see if I can talk my client into that!

MarcGrobman · #14 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 02:36 AM

If you are losing people, as suggested here, because the shopping cart has the Yahoo web address, you should fix that! Yahoo hosted shopping carts can use their own domain name. It just needs to be coded differently.

And, yea, too much stuff is going on in the design. You may also consider using no follow on some of your links so that your page rank is focusing on certain pages.

gwoodstrom · #15 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 11:18 AM

marcgrobman:
Thanks for the suggestions. Do you know how I can use our own domain name for the cart?

gwoodstrom · #16 (**permalink**) 08-22-2007, 07:47 PM

marcgrobman:
It's OK, I've solved it thank you.