www.dragonsplus.com
www.onlinesfinest.com

I tried to make my sites easy to navigate and fun to view with all images "clickable". Did my best on keywords, title and meta tags. I am at a loss as to why no traffic. The sites have been up for a year or more.
My friends say I am in a "TARPIT" and I should give it up. It was not easy to put these sites together,however I am self taught (but maybe not well enough) I do not want to give up yet. Would links help? Thanks for any advice given.
Pat H

<edited to comply with Rule #1 - ghstdrgns>

OK first off. You're trying and that's the most important thing. I might sound a bit blunt so I apologise in advance.

You should really post one site at a time for review but I'll do each one individually ;)

Dragonsplus.com

Too much going on, and it's black, which is difficult to do well. Once into the shop you haven't made it consistant. The design of the site is a bit dated and doesn't inspire consumer confidence. It's a shame because you have some excellent products on there.

Onlinesfinest.com

Once again, there's too much going on and you haven't maintained a consistant theme.

Both

I would get rid of the splash pages and revamp boths sites. Keeping a theme throughout both and making the menus prominent but not too big. Surf around to get ideas, research other sites that have the same products and see how they're doing it.

Don't give up, it takes time to learn design and everyone has to start somewhere ;)

__________________
Street Racers UK - Car Modifying Online
Tickle Site UK - A FUN place to be!!

I agree with N30.

You need to have a common them throughout the sites. that way, potential buyer know they're still at your site and can be put off when pages change colour or style too much.

Also, you need to home in on the products more, have plain(ish) backgrounds for the text in order to draw more attention to the products. And bear in mind that quality of photo is essential. as a ropy photo looks like a ropy item to the potential buyer.

Thank you very much for your quick replies, and since both posted replies basically are saying the same thing, I am going to follow your advice and "REVAMP". The original thought (mine) was that if I changed colors on each page that it help to distinguish each page from the next, so the products would stand out more, but you are right...it even confuses me now that I revisit my work. All of the advice given was constructive and timely and I appreciate and will get busy revamping. Thanks Again
Pat H

DragonsPlus.com

Animated GIFs - bad. Get rid of them.

Branding - you have no discernable logo other than the text 'Dragons Plus'. This pertains to a previous comment stating that you need to instill confidence in your visitors by presenting a consistent theme. Get a logo and place it in the top left of every page.

Constrast - You have very poor contrast. A black background is asking for trouble, but if you do use one, you must use white text. There are also places where you use yellow text on a white background - very hard to read.

Entering the site - I didn't even realize how to enter your store when I first arrived. The flashing 'Enter' graphic was annoying so I ignored it. My advice - skip this page altogether and take visitors immediately in. Why make them click an extra time?

Search engine spam - Get rid of your list of words on the splash page. It means nothing to visitors and is just fodder for the search engines. I think you should get rid of this 'splash' page (as I mentioned above), but you need a descriptive introductory paragraph or two. Write this in plain English and be sure to include your keywords. Tell your visitors what your site is all about and what you sell.

Categories - you have none. Organize your products into categories. It's how people think.

META tags - your keywords are not very good. Steer clear of generic terms like 'dragons', 'swords', 'daggers', etc. These are not the type of searches you're after. You should be using terms like 'dragon collectibles', 'fantasy collectibles' and stuff like that.

The Fundamental Problem

Your design looks very unprofessional. You give off the impression of a 1-person home business, working out of your basement, selling overstock on a poorly designed 'hobby' website. Whether this is the case or not is irrelevant - you must instill confidence in your visitors and one way to do this is with a professional design. Looking for inspiration? Start by looking at Amazon.com if you like. Most online consumers are familiar with this little site. Amazon has spent millions solving just the sort of problems you're experiencing, so leverage their expertise on your site.

Also, if you're concerned as to your share of online visitors for this sort of product, you must first ask yourself how many there are in total. For example, if there are a million people a day searching for what you sell, then you can earn a nice living capturing only a percent of two of these searches. But, if there are only a hundred a month, then you'll need to get all of them in order to stay in business.

Anyway, that's the 40,000 foot overview of what I believe to be some of your major problems.

RECOMMENDATION:

Hire a web design company to rebuild your site for you. You may not want to spend the money up front, but do you want your business to succeed or not? It's up to you.

Good luck!

__________________
Robin Eldred
Web Design & Internet Marketing by Apis Design
Websites that work

Pat,

First off, I wasn't sure whether your question was about Search Engine Submission and Optimization, or about the design of your site. You may want to clarify that. Or maybe you should just break it down into two areas.

Re: Search Engine Optimization - I would say that some good research is called for. Research SEO articles on this site, reseach the stipulations on each and every Search Engine you list to, look at competitor sites who rank well and see what they are doing differently. Then make changes accordingly* After those changes have been indexed by the Search Engines see how your ranking has been affected. *Repeat these steps as necessary*. This may take a few or even several months. Search Engine Marketing is the next logical step.

SEO Tip: Make sure there is continuity between your META TAG Title, Kewords, Descriptions -and- your text. Your tags may be great but if the same words aren't used in your text...

Re: Site Design - Okay, first of all, I'd like to start by saying you have some amazing looking products. I think that these would really sell themselves if they are a. seen by the appropriate audience (see SEO above) and b. are correctly featured. Having said that I am going to get a little more direct:

- Lose the animated flames (this is a dated style and pulls focus from your product)
- Ditto with your orange and red background colors. These are much more noticeable than your product. Even a plain white background would be better. Then, at least, your eye would be drawn to the products.
- Describe your product with more pertinent info. What is it made of? How is it crafted? What makes it unique & valuable (all stated as succinctly as possible). Currently the descriptions are a bit fluffy and self evident.
- The enlargement photos, too could have a description, and could have a more finished format. Remember, this is your product and that better it looks the better you'll do.
- You may wish to offer an online payment alternative to paypal. Paypal has gotten some bad press in the last year (I don't really have a judgement on this one way or another) and some people may not have confidence using this product.

Design Suggestion: Take a look at competitor or similar sites, and see what you like about their look that you might somehow incorporate into your site.

Skipping to the finish, I did like your use of a banner ad for ordering info. Clever. Also I think you have some good info throughout the site and a fairly intuitive navigation scheme. And you have a cool looking product! These are all good things. I would just try to look at what you've done so far as a good start and go from there.

-Adam
azb1999@hotmail.com

Hello,

I am very interested in dragons, and I just started working on a new site with the domain name fantasy-art.net (not online).

I suggest to link with fantasy sites, the net is full of them as fantasy is very loved.

This is the best advice I can think at this time.

Hope it can help you.

__________________
Text Links Exchange: MyLinkExchange.com
SEO Made Easy FREE ebook - Download it here
AdWords SUPER Tips

I assume those are SMC products?

Simply place some of your products on the front page and offer a package deal for multiple purchases.

Anyway, Try to join some banner and traffic exchanges, as many as you can. They are free and could get you a few sales and thats all you need. DO NOT SPEND THAT MONEY ON COFFIE! Buy a small ad spot on Findwhat or something like that but dont go overboard with your bids. Keed them low and tweak your listings a bit till you start to see ROI.

Also be sure to trade links with related sites to yours.

The rest is history.

Love the Ultima Online Dragon ;).

Holy fuckin Dragons Batman !!!!!!!!!

thats not what I said, I said HOLY F-U-C-K-I-N DRAGONS BATMAN !!!!!!!!!!

Agreed and you could also buy a template for about $30-$60.

As per what diceman said:

You could buy a template for $30-$60


This is true, but by doing so you would be missing out on the true expertise that a good web design company brings to the table. Design is only a small component. You're in the business of selling products online here, so not only do you need a good design, but you need to ensure that you are capturing and selling to the right people.

But a template may be the place to the start if you're on a dental-floss budget.

__________________
Robin Eldred
Web Design & Internet Marketing by Apis Design
Websites that work

I agree with lots of the comments above and certainly think your site needs a revamp. One simple suggestion for an e-commerce site is to use a white background, images sit better as a lot of them have white backgrounds and even if you make them transparent they tend to have a 'halo' of the original background color.

But aside from design and search engine optimisation issues there is one sure fire way to get traffic to a site like yours, forgive me if you have heard this already. The answer is EBAY, set up an ebay store and occasionally pay the premium to place an auction on the front page, it may mean you loose money on one dragon but the orders will make up for it. Always link back to your site from your auctions (I think ebay still allow one link per page) but you may well find that the orders from your ebaystore quickly outrank your site orders. Take a look at one of my webstores selling pinball parts at http://www.rawdistribution.co.uk/pages/silverballs.html

Tools for bloggers and other amazon affiliates http://www.blogfuel.com

__________________
Dave

UK Affiliate Marketing Schemes | Tools for Amazon Affiliates

Interesting web site.

The main page took a long time to download, too many animations perhaps. I found it very difficult to find my way around in that there doesn't appear to be any indication of which graphic takes you where. I found there was too many distractions on the Home page. The flashing text was a bit annoying although I liked the walking Dragon (perhaps a smaller version of this would be better?)

The shopping pages: A bit bright at times. The yellow text on the white background was difficult to read. I think for these type of pages you need to keep it simple i.e. no animations (takes too long to download), try using a plain white background with black text.

Perhaps see yourself as the potential customer. Would you return to this site, would you find it easy to navigate etc.

Hope this helps.

__________________
S E N S A T I O N - Art, Mosaics, Digital Creations etc

I agree with the other reviews. Too busy. The idea is there though. Clean it up, make it consistent, and nail down your theme and I believe you will start seeing the results.

Well i must agree with the yellow wording on white it is very hard to see, this should be one of the first things you should change. It is a very busy site with animations etc and i agree about loosing the click to enter page, it would be better to go straight to your home page.
I checked your site using Alexa (To find out more about this check my site ( www.wolf-motorworks.com ) on the links to us page) this showed that you have very little visits and that you are not linked. You can use Alexa to help you with this, i did and even though my site has only been going for about two weeks i am begining to show up in search engines.
You have some very good products and i am sure that with all the advise that you have been given things will improve.
Good Luck
Wolf1

Feel free to totally disregard anything I say. I am very much an amater in these affairs! As this is a commercial site I would agree for the need for a consistent theme throughout. White is always safest and shouts "this is a commercial site!" - which is reassuring to casual browsers.

Get rid of all of those animated gifs - including the logo. As has been said before this shouts "hobby homepage!" Perhaps your store name against a background generated by one of those 3d landscape programs would look more sophisticated?

The pages loaded quickly for me (I am using broadband) which is great considering the number of images you use. Well done. Check how fast they load on a 56K line.

For me there is way too much scrolling to be done. I agree with those who say lose the splash page but you should have a good opening page which lists categories and one or two featured products. This would help potential customers see the range of items you have on offer straight away. Sections on Incense burners, replica swords, glass dragons, fantasy scenes, single dragons, large dragons - come to mind.

Perhaps you could then begin each section with small clickable thumbnails so that all the products in a section were visible without the need to scroll.

I would think carefully about the advice given about using a commercial website design outfit. You need to look long and hard before you find one that isn't simply a hobbiest themselves! Basically everyone on the web is still learning! Consider whether you enjoy designing your own sites and maybe whether you might like to offer this eventually as a service to others. If that is the case then stick with it! If you are really much more interested in your store then hire a pro!

Pat,

I too am a "newbie", but have had some excellent results because of the good folks on this forum, of my research, of my passion for the subject of my site, and of the resource that I used to first build my store (www.AviationArtHangar.com). If you want an inexpensive way to build a somewhat customizable website, check out www.Yahoo-Store-Builder.com. It was an excellent step-by-step "how to" for me.

I agree with howardrourke too... You may want to look into a merchant account so that you can accept Visa and Mastercard directly (not just through PayPal.)

Blessings,

Ross

I'm a newbie web designer and I am by no means an expert web designer, but I have discovered the hard way thru trial and error that what these experts are saying is true.

Your yellow text is too light, too hard to read on a white background. Search engines like text colors to be in high contrast to the background color, ie if you have a dark background (and by this I do not mean the color of your "table," it is the color of the basic background of your page)your text should be white or light; if you have a light or white background color your text should be darker. Look at the values and make sure they are contrasting or oppposites. Then your table colors should be adjusted accordingly so the viewer can also read your text.

Also, watch the spamming of keywords. Make sure your words are actually used in the content of your page.

Animated gif are terribly annoying no matter what speed your connection is. Make these scarce, and very special to content, otherwise don't use.

Visually, red seems to be a difficult color for people to look at for long periods of time. Altho it is a striking and passionate color, it is hard on the eyes. That goes for red text and backgrounds equally. If you must use red, use a toned down redish color, not so garrish.

Make your item descriptions more about the item first, then place the item in the context of a story if you want to. Talk about size, materials, ownership, price, then story.

Many people do not like to scroll, but sometimes it is difficult to keep a page short!

And last but not least, Google is fickle. Submit your site to as many individual search engines as possible, and then sit back and be patient with Google. Don't depend on Google to do it all for you - it could take months! And research reciprocal links. It's a continuing process.