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MOEisME
05-06-2009, 12:33 AM
Hello everyone. Hope you all have your webmaster hats on, 'cause I need your help.
My business is doing fine, and my web design & navigation has improved a lot over the years, but my website has been stuck at the same number of unique visitors per day for almost 2 years now, despite the fact that the site has grown by about 10-20% over that time.
I have spent lots of time optimizing pages with meta tags, carefully selected keywords, and I have tried a few other things like AdWords. I no longer do any offline advertising due to the cost, and I turned off my AdWords campaigns after months of bills & no justifiable revenue.
My site is modernoutpost.com (http://www.modernoutpost.com) (hopefully this appears correctly in my profile too).
I have no advertising budget to speak of.
I do use a new service called KudosWorks.com to collect & share testimonials from customers. The nature of my business means repeat customers are not the norm, so I thought a service that tries to leverage happy customers to get referrals might be worth it. I like it a lot, but it does not impact the traffic count per se.
I look forward to hearing from anyone who has suggestions or knows of techniques that might work for me.
Thanks!

vangogh
05-06-2009, 01:01 AM
Moe are you getting search traffic then? It sounds like you've worked to optimize the site so can I assume much of your traffic is from search results? When you say the site has grown 10%-20% is that in the number of pages?

I think traffic and business comes down to identifying your market, figuring out where your market spends its time, and then maintaining a presence in those locations ideally offering helpful advice and information. I would think there are plenty of forums and blogs related to the outdoors and camping. Have you spent time on some of those forums and have you been active on blogs? That could put you in front of new audiences.

When you say AdWords didn't work, did you get traffic? I ask, because I suspect you may have less of a traffic problem and more of a site conversion problem. When looking at your site just now it's not immediately clear exactly what the site is about. I think the main focus of your site is:


Modern Outpost specializes in self-reliant power technology for people who live, work, & play in the great outdoors.

but that information doesn't stand out to me. It feels hidden in the center of the page.

I actually think some improvements to the site's design and probably copy could end up leading to more than more traffic. For example I see some products just to the left of center, the first being Solio. The name doesn't mean anything to me and the icon itself doesn't help me either. So while the product is listed there and may be exactly what I want I may not know to click to see more about it.

The way you have the Store Directory on the left is better since it's more organized around what I might be looking for, but the design keeps me focused on the center of the page, specifically your logo.

I really think it's the design of the site more than a lack of traffic that's the problem. A redesign could probably help the site convert more and then AdWords would end up giving you a positive ROI.

rezzy
05-06-2009, 12:08 PM
I gather, you are trying to increase unique vistors as a way of brining more traffic to the site. There are two ways, you could do this.

1: Sponsor, events in your community. The idea is to let people know about your business.
2: Clean up the site, so visotrs who come will know the direction that you want them to go.

Your logo keeps my attention big time, even when I want to look elsewhere, my eyes keep running back to it. It demands my attention. You site just needs some rearrangement and to get its priorites straightened out.

One other consideration is, why do you have google ads on your business site? My personal opinion is business sites, should not have ads for their competitors running along side their site.

vangogh
05-06-2009, 12:24 PM
Your logo keeps my attention big time, even when I want to look elsewhere, my eyes keep running back to it. It demands my attention.

That's what happened to me too. By being in the center and being so large it keep pulling my eyes back to it and keeps me from being able to understand the rest of the site. Simply redoing the layout would go a long way toward keeping people on the site and increasing sales.

stu gray
05-06-2009, 12:35 PM
I agree with @vangogh and @rezzy about some of the changes that could be made to the site - and that will take time, yet you are looking to increase traffic now...

Something that might be off the wall - or a little out there...I read about on Mashable.com recently, and thought it sounded very interesting.

Using social media to drive traffic to who you are and what you do. Social networking is building business, if you use it creatively. Here is the article from Mashable (http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/grow-social-network/)

I dont' know if you have someone in your company who likes all the 'new media' stuff, but if you do, you could create a character maybe.. Mr. Outpost or something...and they send out messages about the outdoor life...they connect to outdoor types in your area...and send people to your site...?

Maybe its out there, like I said, but it might get some extra traffic to your site.

OMPundit
05-06-2009, 01:43 PM
It sounds like you were asking for ways to grow the volume of visitors. Before I go into any suggestions I would point out that the previous advice sounds pretty solid to me and will help you create more conversions as you increase your traffic.

So here goes what I would do, these are free to low cost campaigns/programs I would try:

1. you stated you already have a customer base, so partner with another company related to your offerings but not a competitior, and reach a mutual marketing agreement. Maybe you both do an email blast to both customer lists with offerings for both stores, or you it could be as simple as you place something in your marketing about him, and he places something in his marketing about you. if this works, make other partners and repeat.

2. use social tools like facebook and tweeter to build your brand awareness. Create a fan page for your store, join communities related to your offerings, etc... most of your items seem to be "green" whish is hot right now, you should be all over the social thing.

3. create a directory for companies within your industry verticals, showcase yourself of course, and make sure that every site that signs up has to include a link to your site from their own. (by verticlas I mean related type companies that aren't direct competitors)

4. add a tell a friend button to your header, that way your traffic you currently have can tell their friends about you.

5. add a sign-up for specials, then offer those who give you their email special deals availabel to those who sign-up. Make sure to put that peeps who sign-up get these special deals to encourage sign-ups. Keeping in touch and offering value to your customers will keep them coming back more often.

6. run a contest!

7. dedicate a set amount of time every day/week/month to building your links, either through forums, directories, or other websites. Most important is to honor that time agreement, biggest mistake people make is putting things like that off thinking they will come back and do it later, but they never do.

8. make sure your listed with all of the local directories.

the list could go on forever, the important thing is to make a short list of things you want to try, and give them 100% commitment to see if they work for you, if they do then you keep them, if they don't you remove them from the list and add something else. If you want to continue growing you need to try and test, try and test, over and over.

KristineS
05-06-2009, 03:55 PM
Right now it's hard to tell what you want a visitor to do when they visit the site. Pictures of product would be very helpful. Right now there's a lot of text, but much of it is quite small and there's nothing that really says "Hey, we sell stuff" in a big way.

Adding some featured products or sale products on the front page, with pictures, might help. Expanding a little bit on what you do and why it's a good thing could be helpful too. Right now there's a lot of text on the front page, but very little of it is devoted to telling people who you are and why they want to buy from you.

vangogh
05-06-2009, 04:22 PM
Good advice Stu and Rick about social media and other ways of getting traffic. Social media is a great way to build relationships and network and drive traffic to your site. It's becoming very intermixed with SEO as well.

I'm still going to suggest working on the site itself first since I think that will lead to more business than more traffic will with the added benefit that once the site is converting better the extra traffic will also be converting better.

OMPundit
05-06-2009, 04:43 PM
I agree Van!!

Cleaning your site up for maximum conversion is very important. But some of the things, like building a social network to influence takes time, so it wouldn't hurt to start that while he tweaks his site.

Only 2 ways i know to make more money online, that's increase your traffic or increase your conversions! Best and most successful way is to do them both.

vangogh
05-06-2009, 04:52 PM
But some of the things, like building a social network to influence takes time, so it wouldn't hurt to start that while he tweaks his site.

Absolutely. Networking definitely takes time and you're better off starting now than later. And I agree you should both increase traffic and conversions. I tend to lean toward getting the conversion part working first (assuming you have to do one before the other), but yes you should be working on both always.

My advice here was more because I think Moe is seeing his problem as one of not enough traffic and I suspect working on the site and getting it to perform better will result in the quicker improvement in sales. I didn't want him to miss that aspect.

While both traffic and conversions are important I think a lot of people forget the conversions part and assume the answer is always more traffic. Much of the time it will be easier and quicker to improve the site itself than it will be to get more traffic. Another reason why I'd suggest putting more effort into the site first, but I absolutely agree both are important and you want to do both at the same time.

OMPundit
05-06-2009, 05:58 PM
You said it Van!

I pretty much look at the numbers for everything, and so I also assign numbers to most stuff. Conversions would be worth say 60% to me while traffic would only be 40%.

So why am I saying this, so my example below makes sense for for moe in context of this topic.

if 1000 visitors = 1% converson (10 sales) is your base

either 2000 visitors = 1 conversion (20 sales) with doubling traffic

or 1000 visitors = 2% conversion (20 sales) with doing only conversion improvements

now if you do the conversion first, that would also double your sales for every consecutive 100% traffic increase per 1% conversion point improvement.

In other words conversion is slightly more important because it impacts your overall traffic increases, and it is also the variable that you contain the most power and control over. You may not always be able to drive the amount of traffic that you want, but if you get your conversion rate to where you want it, it should stay steady independant of the amount of traffic served.

Guess this is my way of making sure you know I am agreeing with the others pushing for conversion first. It will pay off for you!

vangogh
05-06-2009, 06:10 PM
That's pretty much how I see it. I'll add in that it will depend to a degree on the site and where it's at.

If your site is converting at a 15% rate, but you only get 10 visitors a day I'd spend more time pulling in traffic. If your site is converting at a 0.5% rate and you're pulling in thousands of visitors daily I'd work on your conversions.

Both naturally improve your overall sales (or whatever you consider a conversion)

It's sometimes good to think of the cost and effort involved in increasing one of the other. It might take considerable work to go from 15% to 16% conversions, but not too much to go from 1% to 5%.

On the other hand it might be difficult to turn 1000 daily visitors into 2000, but not so much work to turn 50 into 100.

In the end most everything works together and you want to be improving everything all the time.