Please review my site - main concern is conversion

laser · #1 (**permalink**) 10-09-2007, 05:29 PM

Hi all, new to this forum and would appreciate some feedback/help. I have run the The W3C Markup Validation Service validation and fixed what I could but some errors I don't know how or can't seem to fix. We are ranking pretty well for our keywords but the conversion is not what I would like. With real time info on search terms/engines used to reach us, it's not clear why users don't purchase when they are taken to a page that has exactly what they were looking for!

All comments appreciated.

Jeff
All Laser Service
HP & Lexmark Printer Maintenance kits, Repair Parts & Supplies

davebarnes · #2 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 12:38 AM

Validation has nothing to do with your ranking.
Validation has nothing to do with whether or not you sell something.

Focus on what is important.

pagetta · #3 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 05:44 AM

with regards to validation first off change your doctype to
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
although i am not an expert on doctypes so the best thing is prob to look into them and see which is best for your site.

then lines 13 14 & 15 get rid of the spaces and / at the end of your meta tags

every time you have <script> you should specify <script type="text/javascript"> (if its javascript of course)

take the margin/border etc out of your 'body' tag and use css for your styling this can also be used instead of JS for rollovers.

these should be a good start to validtaing but as has been said this won't help with rankings or conversions - but it is good practice, and a legal requirement in the uk. Even though a lot of people here think its unecessary to SEO, remember that your user is the important visitor, not the spider, and you want all users to be able to access your site.

As for conversions, I think your home page is too busy. My eye isn't directly drawn to anything specific to click on.
- make your lists maybe a little smaller, left aligned and a bit more spaced with bullets - easier for the eye to follow and scan the lines.
- have some 'featured products' from a couple of your best selling cetgories, or from ranges you are trying to promote at the minute
- i don't know your industry so if i'm wrong i apologise - BUT is it normal to not have prices, but a quote request for actual tangible items such as printer parts? if i was a visitor and flicked onto your site i'd want to know within as few clicks as possible 1.do you stock the parts I want, and 2. are they competitivley priced?
- if it is normal to quote for these items, then 'request a quote' should be a bigger graphic button.

I hope some of these ideas give you a starting point for increasing conversions, apologies for not having more time to look properly but hopefully having a think about what it is you do when you land on a site will help you think how to convert your visitors into sales leads.

HTH

laser · #4 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 01:18 PM

pagetta,

Thanks so much for your constructive reply. I will work on the css and try to fix up some of the other "errors"

As far as the prices, they are there, just a few clicks away because there are so many types of products you have to narrow it down a bit to get a price. I will look at making the page a bit less full, I guess I was trying to show all that's available on a single page. With so many items, we don't stock everything, but keep the common items in stock and most others only a day away!

Appreciate your comments very much.

Thanks
Jeff

sformby · #5 (**permalink**) 10-10-2007, 08:20 PM

I agree that most users would probably want to see prices quicker, without having so many clicks. The home page is very busy. It might be a good idea to rotate featured products in and out of a "featured" area.

Dubbya · #6 (**permalink**) 10-12-2007, 05:17 PM

As others have pointed out, there's simply too much going on in the home page. As a shopper, I find it hard to find anything because everything is right there staring at me in the face.

With two items in the cart, clicking the "Continue Shopping" text link at the top of the shopping cart yields the following error:

Code:

unable to open file '/home/alllaser/public_html/_private/DISPNAMEB' in printtag

You need more space between the text and column edges or reduce the amount of text on the page. The fact that adding more space will make the paragraphs too narrow tells you that there's too much text on the page.

I'd recommend that you better utilize the right navigation menu and move categories off the main page. With the space that becomes available, add some featured items or specials.

Love the fact that I don't have to create an account to be able to complete a purchase!! Nice.

Finish your search page so that it matches the rest of the site.

You need an extra line break atop the last paragraph in the "About Us" page.

Spacing seems to be a recurring issue among a bunch of your pages. For example, the "HP Parts" page needs some love around the page heading, between the first paragraph and the search box, between the search box and the "Request a free Quote" link, etc.

I realize this will push your images and other content "below the fold" but you could put the "online chat" and "perform maintenance" images into the column on the left.

(Check the site out in Firefox if you're not seeing all the same issues)

Overall, I find the text characters (kerning) too closely spaced. Bolding small text makes it difficult to read if the row of text under it is bold as well.

.02

laser · #7 (**permalink**) 10-12-2007, 05:39 PM

Thanks for the input, I will get to work on your suggestions. The more feedback I get the more I realize sometimes it hard to "see the forest for the trees". I had a novice user look for a particular item which was linked right on the front page and she had difficulty so something is wrong. Just to much "stuff" I guess. Really appreciate the time it takes to review sites, it's very helpful.

Jeff

netiskiv · #8 (**permalink**) 10-12-2007, 07:02 PM

Hi,

Your order process is straight forward. This is good for conversion.

My concern would be about the color set.

I think that the parts in grey on the left could be lighter, in order to make the page more dynamic and attractive.

The link media at the bottom of the page is broken on the contact us page.

The bootom links are not present (or not the same) on every page of your site.

Best wishes.

laser · #9 (**permalink**) 10-13-2007, 05:57 PM

Thanks Irene, I will look at the colors and the broken links. Do you know if the links at the bottom of the page can be done in css - I'm just starting to get into that and that would be a nice application if I could define it once and apply the style to each page.

Thanks again

Jeff

netiskiv · #10 (**permalink**) 10-15-2007, 08:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by laser

Thanks Irene, I will look at the colors and the broken links. Do you know if the links at the bottom of the page can be done in css - I'm just starting to get into that and that would be a nice application if I could define it once and apply the style to each page.

Thanks again

Jeff

Hello Jeff,

Yes you can create an external CSS and define styles once for all your site if you want.

If you need examples of CSS styles, tell me.

laser · #11 (**permalink**) 10-15-2007, 11:32 AM

Irene:

I do have a css file which I use in Dreamweaver MX but as far as I see it only defines font characteristics such as color, size, font, etc. Here are a couple of lines from the .css file:

.body2 { color:black;font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }

.tableHeadBlue { color:#336699;font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; ; font-weight: bold}

a:hover {
color: #FF0000;

I was curious if I could put a couple of lines of text with words separated by a character such as | and with links - like at the bottom of pages? Don't know quite how to do that yet.

Examples would be great.

Thanks,
Jeff

netiskiv · #12 (**permalink**) 10-16-2007, 06:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by laser

Irene:

I do have a css file which I use in Dreamweaver MX but as far as I see it only defines font characteristics such as color, size, font, etc. Here are a couple of lines from the .css file:

.body2 { color:black;font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }

.tableHeadBlue { color:#336699;font-size:13px; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; ; font-weight: bold}

a:hover {
color: #FF0000;

I was curious if I could put a couple of lines of text with words separated by a character such as | and with links - like at the bottom of pages? Don't know quite how to do that yet.

Examples would be great.

Thanks,
Jeff

Hi Jeff

You can use CSS for links with various attributes. You can set borders, paddings, background, background-imageHere are some examples, with deliberately strange colors for testing purpose:
a:link { color: blue; border: solid 1px yellow; padding: 0.1em } /*for the normal link*/
a:visited { color: #6666cc; border: solid 1px red;padding: 0.1em } /*for visitd link*/
a:hover { color: #ff0000; bakground-color: yellow; border: border: solid 1px blue;}

in a hover, you can add a direction, such as { direction: ltr 1pt }
(this means 1pt left to right). You could have for instance:

a:hover { display: block; width: 130px; height: 18px; background-image: url(/images/any-image.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: left top; direction: ltr; left: +1pt; right: auto; top: auto;} /*width and height shall be adapted to the image size.*/

Hope it helps.

laser · #13 (**permalink**) 10-17-2007, 10:34 AM

Thanks Irene

I'll see what I can do. Appreciate the help

Jeff

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