Mature site relaunch, but sales falling rapidly...

[kanjigirl]

We have a retail jewelry site that's been up since 1998, and consistently well-ranked for sterling silver charms in the major search engines for most of the last 4-5 years...

We've redesigned the site several times. The latest version launched about two weeks ago - and although our pagerank and the majority of page names have stayed the same, sales have fallen from about 15-20 per day to less than 5 per day, and conversions through PPC are down to about none. Every other relaunch, nothing like this has happened, sales have been steady or increased. Here's the new site:

http://www.silverfantasy.com

We have redirects for the product pages, because before they were static and now are in a dynamic MySQL database. All other pages,including the homepage, have the same names and content as the old site.

Our high rankings in Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. are still intact. And the purchase process is exactly the same, we use Mal's eCommerce and Authorize.net, the only difference is now we're using OptionCart too for the database. I made a number of test purchases and the process was exactly the same as on the old site.

The page looks a lot different (it was black and now is white, and much cleaner), but our logo-name is the same, the menu structure is the same and we have information on the front that yes, this is the
same Silver Fantasy, just with a new look. You can kind of see the old site here, minus graphics:

http://web.archive.org/web/200504010...erfantasy.com/

The main problem with it was the everything was static - changing prices, etc. took a long time.
We've also added about 30-40 more keywords to our Adwords and YahooSearch Marketing campaigns in the last two days.

I don't understand why sales have fallen off so dramatically - this is the time of year when they start to pick up for the holidays.

Can anyone make any suggestions? I really don't know what to do here... Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!

Debbie
www.parallaxwebdesign.com

[bathgems]

On the old site it looks like the home page gave a lot more information and contained the unique selling proposition whereas the new site all that information is off on second tier links.

With sites being as cheap as they are, shouldn't you test a new look on a new site with a separate PPC account before doing a total makeover of a successful site?

Steve

[bathgems]

Also, the old site was more goth and the new site is more virgin (white flowers, etc) Maybe the black goth look attracted a different "silver client" and the new site looks more fine jewelry oriented.

[kanjigirl]

That's a good point about the lack of info on the new home page, I will try to address that.

As for the goth/virgin thing - most clients are 34-60 year old females. I'm thinking goth may not be quite accurate in this case...

[J-Spider]

If the product is the same and the conversions have dropped after a redesign it's gotta be one of two things...

The goods do not look as appealing or people are not being able to complete the purchase transaction.

Check cross browser compatibility. That might be an issue during the check out process.

[corporateface]

What about the traffic? Has the traffic decreased or have the sales decreased or both?

[jglogau]

Hi:

I couldn't figure out what to do on the new home page. Even without the graphics the old page seemed to me to immediately tell me where to go. The problem with the new home page is that the nav bar is too skinny and my eyes went right past it to the middle of the page, there nothing to do there.

Why don't you try to put up the old home page and see what happens.

[nashville]

This might be a silly question, but does the cart work? Does the SSL links still work?

I was stupid a while back (well I still am) and my SSL did not work and no one told me about it.

[Peter (IMC)]

Can anyone make any suggestions? I really don't know what to do here... Any suggestions greatly appreciated!!

Implement the old design in the new system. That shouldn't be too difficult to do. Do this first, no matter what you do. The design is there for your visitors and conversion rates, not for you to like it... (though that has some importance too,. :) )

Also, did the old design go with a black background? That may be part of the reason. How is jewelry presented in a jewelry store? Almost always on a black background. Perhaps it´s just that fact that makes the difference.

The reason I ask about the background is that here: http://web.archive.org/web/200503310...bracelets.html everything is black.

[Irishjim]

Well then, Debbie, you rank #5 with Google for the folling search term:

Sterling silver charms

Well done. I wouldn't change much but the following I'd advise:

The search term "charms for charm braclets" of your Meta Keywords tag doesn't seem to be mentioned in the body text of your web page. You should either remove this search term from your Meta Keywords tag, or add the search term to the body text of your web page.

Ditto for these phrases:

"cuff bracelets"

"charm bracelets in silver"
"silver cuffs"
"silver chains"
"silver necklaces"
"silver pendants"
"swarovski crystal charms"
"sterling silver charm bracelet"
"925 silver jewelry"

What may be happening is the old dynamic pages curse. Even Matt Cutts admits their spiders don't go too far out on a url if it has too many symbols, etc. on it.

Static pages always do better.

You might rethink the redesign a bit and put in anchor pages for valuable keywords. I don't know how many portal pages you had before but I'd suspect most of them were. You've closed a lot of doors expecting your visitors to come in the front one and some might not know about it.

Good luck.