Please can you review the ecommerce gift website I own as it’s a bit of a baby and I want it to do better! I’m more or less happy with the site’s warm, friendly appearance and workability but it has stayed at PR3 for the last 18 months despite heaps of updates and major changes to the file paths to improve SEO but I definitely need to get better results and recognition from Google in particular - plus more custom! The site does apparently have code compliance issues showing errors to do with alt tags, height, etc but I’m told this is because it was defined using Dreamweaver. Would it be better to address these compliance errors remembering that it would be fairly time consuming and therefore expensive for me to do so? I’m reluctant to do this as my major New Zealand competitors also have compliance issues and it doesn't seem to penalise them!

Ironically, I added a useful page of important dates for customers to use for delivery purposes and also added a free downloadable art calendar but these pages now bring more unique visitors than do the gifts! Wanting to sell to the world, we opted for an US server - is it that, or maybe it’s something to do with the name ‘giftboxes’ which is seen by Americans as packaging rather than the similar ‘gift baskets’? I am at a loss to know and am now adding more links to the Links Page with the idea that after Christmas I will attempt to link more specialised gift sites, eg. jewellery sites to the jewellery page, etc.

this has taken a bit of courage but I would really value critical judgements and suggestions for improvement from members – any insight would be extremely helpful.
Many thanks! New Zealand gifts and unique gift, gift box, gift basket ideas

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Handcrafted Maori and New Zealand gifts in beautiful gift boxes

it seems that there is no link to go back to the homepage (atleast a clear link). The site looks good. However, it could be confusing to navigate. When I clicked on the Gift selection link; instead of seeing a gift selection there was more information for me to read. Information is good but it needs to be placed in the right place because the online reader can be very impatient. That's just an example. You always need to keep your client in mind when desiging your site from a usability aspect. Also, discuss the benefits over teh features; again the copy must be from the visitor and readers perspective and must address all their questions and concerns. I hope that helps

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Ayat Shukairy | Increase your site conversion rates | Visit our Blog

1. You can create 100% compliant code using Dreamweaver as your editor. I do. I also believe that DW is the only WYSIWYG editor worth using.

2. You answered your own question. No, it would not be worth spending time on compliance. No one knows if Google penalizes for non-compliance or not. Google's own pages are not compliant. Don't waste your time worrying this.

3. If you are going to sell to Americans you must have a site that reads like an American site. US terminology. US currency. Most Americans are so ignorant about the rest of the world that you must "be American".

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

Google does not check compliance. According to a survey Google did, analyzing and comparing over a billion individual pages to determine how webmasters used different tags, they have only checked compliance once, and that was as part of the survey - it has no effect on rankings. No other major SEs are known to consider compliance as a ranking factor either.

As far as your primary concern, is it your rankings that are low, or is your sole concern the pagerank that is displayed in your toolbar? If it is the toolbar pagerank, that value is irrelevant, and even Google has not updated the information in almost eight months.

One thing I noticed in your original post was that you mention updating or improving on your links page, in anticipation of (if I interpreted correctly) exchanging links with other gift type sites. Exchanging links can hinder you as reciprocal links are viewed as less important by Google than one way inbound links. To improve standings with Google I would work on developing more of these one way editorial links.

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The best way to learn anything, is to question everything.

Your navigation menu disappears on the following pages:

About Us: The Beautiful Box Company – a Christchurch New Zealand gift business
Contact Us: Contact details Giftboxes - Beautiful Box Company Ltd
Boxes: Gift box packaging for unique gift service
Questions: Questions answered for customers of giftboxes.co.nz
Checkout: The Beautiful Box Company Ltd
Delivery: Gift delivery information for New Zealand or International gifts
Guarantee: The Beautiful Box Company Ltd
Links: Links - The Beautiful Box Company Ltd

You'd do well to fix this so that people can get where they want to go without having to click on a particular link. Additionally, assume that any page can be a landing page. If that's the case and someone visits any of the pages listed above, it would be helpful to allow them to access the rest of the site no matter how they got there.

IMHO, there's too much scrolling required. You might consider using simple text links to quickly list your products in main category pages without all the text. The user can then click on a product that interests them to see more information.

You need a site/product search box. Maybe right at the top of the page in the orange space above the navigation menu.

Your sitemap is pretty much useless from an SEO point of view. Consider changing the link text to describe the products or categories you're linking to.

For example: spi 4 is a waste of space. Much better to say "Backcountry Pear Brandy"

Your page titles need a little more work too. Focus more on the keywords you've targeted and the content in the page versus the prominence of your shop name. Remember that the shorter and more "keywordcentric" your titles are, the more effective they'll be and higher they'll place in the SERPs.

People are more likely to search for "shopping FAQ" than "Questions answered for customers", so give the spiders something your customers will be looking for.

In the mini product descriptions, "Full description here" is another waste of precious link juice. If you've already printed out the name of the product, use that for the "full description" link. Alternatively, you can leave the "Full description" link at the bottom as well, but keep in mind that the spiders love keyword rich link text. Make it work for you.

In the cart, you need to make it easier for customers to continue shopping instead of requiring them to backtrack out of the cart and start over. Additionally, there's no "Quick Cart" that shows up when you've selected a few items. It should show the customer that there are items in the cart with the running subtotal. Change "Total" to "SubTotal" unless you've no intention of charging for shipping or taxes. (It's not a "Total" until the shipping charges and taxes have been applied.)

The currency conversion and shipping rate charts are a waste of space. Putting the charts where your navigation menu should be is confusing and distracting. They're too hard to read and clutter up the page. Your cart had better calculate those on the fly or you'll turn off your customers. You might want to consider linking to the shipping information in a separate page where you can go into more detail.

Ask yourself if you'd sit there and calculate currency conversions while you shop. I couldn't be bothered. You'd be better off to just ask them to select their preferred currency at the outset and have your cart do the conversion and shipping calculations for them.

Regarding the shipping costs, you might consider asking users to specify their country and compute that as well.

A little TLC and you'll be good to go.

.02

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Well, I'm totally blown away with the depth of all replies and I can't thank you all enough!

To Ashukairy I'd say very interesting and a great point about the Gift Selections as that page was an original one before the site developed and I haven't looked at it since. I see now that I can make better use of it! Thank you too for pointing out about the Home Page navigation link.

Dave, you've reassured me somewhat about the DW code and will discuss this with my webmaster. It has been worrying me a lot. In fact our gift products probably suit a European market rather than an American one, so do you think changing the server to possibly a UK one might make a difference? There are probably more ex-pats in Europe than the US. In all honesty, we probably use a US server due to lower cost!

Wige, Thank you! I suppose its the SERPS that concern me most and I thought they were closely linked to the rank. Gifts are such a competitive ecommerce field I've got to do better! And I wasn't aware I had a pagerank displayed in the toolbar! Like you say, I'm beginning to realise I've got to concentrate on editorial which I suppose is article submission, news, etc. but my old head is needing a holiday and perhaps there's an article to be done on "How to come up with something fresh and clever" when your brain is tired!

Dubba, you deserve a real big kiss. The navigation menu will be sorted this weekend and I appreciate what you say about too much scrolling and too much text. I thought text was 'King' and realise now I can do much better. Our site has grown this year and now a search box could be worthwhile. I don't know anything about the sitemap but will discuss that further. As for 'full description here' I changed that to a graphic button because those 3 words showed up more in keyword density for the page than 'gifts' but I can see now I can use it to my advantage instead. Your points about the cart, currency and shipping rate are very relevant. When you live in NZ you're well aware of currency differences because of our 'floating dollar' and know what the rough conversion is for the US dollar but I hadn't considered how someone from elsewhere would have no idea about the value of the NZ dollar!

There is still so much improvement to do to the site and I sincerely appreciate all your comments but if others still want to contribute to this post, their comments would be welcome. Thanks a bunch - kisses all round! Marilyn

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Handcrafted Maori and New Zealand gifts in beautiful gift boxes

Appreciating your work.

home page welcome image can be in text. what you think ?

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Awe, shucks....

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Printer ink & toner cartridges in Canada | Integrated Web Payroll, Online HRMS Tools with Employee Time & Attendance

1. Where your webserver is located has no bearing on anything. No one even knows where your server is unless they do some detective work. Select your webhosting provider based upon: service and performance (major) and then price (minor).

2. I do think you might consider buying some additional domain names. For example: NewZealandGifts.co.uk or something similar. Also a .com and then redirect to your website.

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Dave Barnes
+1.303.744.9024
http://www.marketingtactics.com
sitting in my basement with my iMac

I'm just indexing your site into our Kiwi based search engine and everything seems to be working well, our webspider isn't finding any problems with the sites code, in fact it is finding all the links between your sites pages with no worries.

All the best
Dave A

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www.linknz.co.nz

Thanks again to everyone for input - its very valued and we are certainly going to make some immediate changes. Mit, I used a graphic because I was of the understanding that the major keywords had to be the first and last words on a page. Originally it was in text but trials indicated the graphic suited our purposes better.
Dave I've checked and can get several excellent names ending with .com, .uk.com, .eu.com, .biz so we will definitely be going down that track as you suggested and may even make up a completely new but more modern and simplistic website with a different domain. However, am I best to choose the domain as you've described: 'newzealandgifts.etc' or 'new-zealand-gifts.'. Likewise, 'NZfoodanddrink' or 'NZ-food-and-drink'? We've recently changed our file paths from 'products' to 'gifts' and also used hyphens between words and within 4-6 weeks started to receive a lot more traffic. It's still nowhere like enough so lets hope the new domain names make an improvement.

Thank you everyone for your help.

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Handcrafted Maori and New Zealand gifts in beautiful gift boxes

One thing I noticed that the season gifts menu is at the top but right now it isn't valentines or Mothers Day. You might want to move those down the page and move up the other gift menus. Or even removing the Valentines Day until January. To me it seems like a waste of valuable real estate.

Good luck!

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賃貸 大阪 | Alaris

Thanks Jeff - that is one thing I certainly hadn't considered and you are most likely right. However, the gifts on the Valentines pages are also for lovers and romance and customers do still order from them throughout the year. The gifts on the Father's Day page where I've got beer and nut gifts that I haven't put elsewhere on the site are still ordered and quite popular so people do look on there when they're wanting a gift for a man. Ditto the others. I'm about to put a Christmas page up so will make sure it goes on the top of the list! Thanks for bringing that point to my attention though - much appreciated!

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Handcrafted Maori and New Zealand gifts in beautiful gift boxes

I should also have said that previous posters should note that the recommended return to Home Page button is now working so its going to be interesting to see if it holds customers on site for longer with easier navigation! Marilyn

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Handcrafted Maori and New Zealand gifts in beautiful gift boxes