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digitalsuccess
10-12-2009, 06:05 PM
Hi,

I am working on an online shop project and we can get traffic to our website but cannot get the conversions through. Anyone with any ideas or a way to get the conversion and orders up?

the website is
(http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/)

I am open to ideas,

Chris

Harold Mansfield
10-12-2009, 06:22 PM
It's difficult to make any helpful suggestions without seeing what you are working with....how you have things set up.
If traffic to the website is strong, and the niche laid out well, you should be able to make conversions.
It may just be a matter of making a few adjustments.

Without seeing either site, and assuming the website has traffic, I would have to assume that the problem lies with the e commerce site.

Welcome to the forum.

vangogh
10-12-2009, 08:44 PM
Yep. We're going to need to see the site in order to help. Also where is your traffic coming from? Do you know how it's finding you?

digitalsuccess
10-13-2009, 04:36 AM
Oh ye, here it is Stock boxes for packaging gift boxes and postal products (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/)

more specifically here is a page that people arrive on Cake Boxes ideal for cake, gateau and sweet boxes (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/product/cake_boxes/)

Spider
10-13-2009, 09:37 AM
Do your stats tell you where your visitors are coming from? My stats show far more enquiries from the US than from the UK. (I am in the US but only a minority of enquirers search for location.)

If your visitors are predominantly from the US, they will skip you and buy a similar product from a US source because of shipping costs and time.

Recalculate your conversion rate. Suppose you are getting 1,000 visitors, of which 700 are from the US and 200 from the UK (and 100 from rest of the world) and you have 20 sales.

1. 20 sales from 1,000 visitors (2%) may be poor.
2. 19 UK sales from 200 UK visitors (9.5%) may be good.

In such a case, trying to improve your convesion would be the wrong approach - better to focus on increasing your UK visitors.

Take care with numbers - they never lie, but you have to know what question you are actually asking of them!

billbenson
10-13-2009, 10:23 AM
It might be difficult to target the UK visitors if you are hosting in the US. The location of your server is tied into SERPS. There may be ways around this, I'm not sure. I do know webmasters tend to use hosting in the country of the target market

Paper Shredder Clay
10-13-2009, 10:35 AM
For me, I just took a quick look and there seems to be a lot of clicks to get to an item to buy. Can you simplify the selections to enable viewers to find what they want faster?

digitalsuccess
10-13-2009, 12:16 PM
thanks for the reply's so far, I will have a look at the locations, also, Paper shredder clay your suggestion about the amount of clicks is a point worth thinking about.

anymore

KristineS
10-13-2009, 12:46 PM
I've got to agree with Clay, way too many clicks for what is a relatively simple product. If I have to go five or six clicks in just to buy a box, I'm probably going to go elsewhere.

Also, have you considered creating a checkout process that doesn't require an e-mail address or log-in. Some people are turned off by that sort of thing and it may be hurting your conversions.

That's actually a good question, can you see where in the conversion process people are dropping off. Check your stats and see how far they get into making a purchase before they decide they're not interested.

vangogh
10-13-2009, 12:53 PM
It looks like it takes 3 clicks to get to any product. That doesn't seem to bad. 2 is better, but 3 is ok. That's pretty typical for a lot of shopping carts. You could make more common items or best seller items closer to the home page so it only takes 1 or 2 clicks. I don't know that 3 clicks is too many for most things. However the quicker people can get to the products the better.

On the home page in the main content area I might make the categories stand out more. You have the images, but maybe making words like Cardboard boxes a different color to pull attention to them.

You might want to read the article I linked to in this thread (http://www.small-business-forum.net/design-development/2054-common-mistakes-ecommerce-design.html). It's an article on 15 common mistakes ecommerce sites make.

Dan Furman
10-13-2009, 12:57 PM
A few things that I can see:

1) I've been saying this for awhile now, but sites like this generally turn me off. At a glance, I can tell that this is a module-based CMS type of website. Now that's not necessarily bad - I mean, my "danfurmanonline" site started life as a wordpress template, but I had Van rework it so you'd never really see that - so it looks and feels like a "real" website.

People will argue that point, but, for me, the bottom line is, sites like this look and feel cheap, stale, and generic. You can sell boxes on this site, you can sell DVD's, or you can sell commercial sanding supplies by just changing a scant few words and pics. To me, that's not a way to do it. If you want to sell boxes online, have a web designer make a site for selling boxes.

2) Expanding on that point - look at the top left of the page... one picture cuts into the other. Again, that says "homemade" and "crammed into a template" to me. How can they service me when they can't even get that right? The copy is pretty bad as well - I see things like: All our boxes are fully or made from....... what??? Are fully or made... what does that mean? And it's "all OF our boxes.."

I don't mean to nitpick, but this stuff really matters in the final live site.


3) The page asks me to buy before even telling me about the product.


4) Why are people landing on this page? What are they expecting? Is it to actually buy cake boxes? For example, I have plenty of people landing on my "writing testimonials" page from an organic search. However, I intend "writing" as a noun. The organic landers intend it as a verb, however. They want help in writing testimonials, not in testimonials about my writing. So I'm not converting that traffic.

I know I sound a little negative here - sorry about that. But this is really a pet peeve of mine. Sites are hastily thrown up with a CMS, with little thought given to the finer details or what they are saying, then people wonder why they aren't converting.

vangogh
10-13-2009, 01:03 PM
I think all your points are fair. In fact I think one of the biggest failings of ecommerce sites is they all look the same like you mentioned. After awhile it becomes "yawn" However I also know that if I really want your product it won't make a difference to me if the site looks like most others.

Agree about the copy. Definitely needs improvement and also looks typical in that there's the minimum there. Very little to actually convince me to buy anything.


3) The page asks me to buy before even telling me about the product.

I was thinking that too. I'd rather see some description before the button to add to cart.

Dan Furman
10-13-2009, 01:25 PM
It looks like it takes 3 clicks to get to any product. That doesn't seem to bad. 2 is better, but 3 is ok.

I agree - this site is fine in this respect.

You have to figure a click to the top level category, a click to perhaps a smaller sub category, then a click to the product. 3 is perfectly normal.

Harold Mansfield
10-13-2009, 01:55 PM
Oh ye, here it is Stock boxes for packaging gift boxes and postal products (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/)

more specifically here is a page that people arrive on Cake Boxes ideal for cake, gateau and sweet boxes (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/product/cake_boxes/)

If this is your home page Stock boxes for packaging gift boxes and postal products (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/), but people are landing on this page Cake Boxes ideal for cake, gateau and sweet boxes (http://www.boxesdirect2u.co.uk/product/cake_boxes/), that tells me that they are coming in from a link or banner that directs them to that page first. Where is that link ? And..

Why not have them come in on the home page that shows an overview of the entire service, instead of a single product page ?

I also have to agree that there needs to be a few design changes. What stood out the most is that it takes too much to get to prices and dimensions once you choose a product..there is an extra click in there...that kind goes along with, I don't think that the best use of space has been achieved, and the navigation is not clean....

For instance, When I clicked on "gift and retail boxes", it then took me to a page of choices...I then clicked on "wine boxes" and instead of going to a buy page of sizes and prices, it took me to another page that did nothing except say "single wine boxes", and then I had to click to get to the product. Too much navigation. I think you need to get to the buy page as soon as possible...they have already determined the need when they landed on the site...get them to the register.

I also noticed that the position of the page changes as you look around the site. On the home page the header is about 10px from the top of the browser window, but on inside pages, the header is about 70px down from the top of the browser window.

Little things like that work against your credibility to potential buyers and make you look more like a mom and pop who built their own website, than a reliable company.

Ecommerce sites don't have any room for errors. They have to be clean, tight and 100% professional or people will go with the larger company with the better presentation.

What you do, and how good your service is does not shine through when people first come to an ecommerce site...they will get into that later if you hold their attention. But first the design needs to instill a sense of comfort to even get them to stick around and even think about putting down a CC.

digitalsuccess
10-14-2009, 06:36 AM
Ok, I am taking this onboard, some good comments, and people certanly have things to say!

This might answer why we are not seeing the conversions. I think there are a couple of themes, the amount of clicks, the text and the detail, ie the little things.

Are there any good examples of the buy page from this kind of product?

Thanks all who have taken the time to comment!

vangogh
10-14-2009, 12:16 PM
I don't know any specific sites off the top of my head. I'd search on your main product categories and simply look through the results and grab a few URLs of the sites and pages that stand out or impress you in some way.

Think about why you grabbed those pages and see if you can incorporate some of what you liked into your site.

KristineS
10-14-2009, 05:24 PM
Check out the article on eye tracking data (http://www.small-business-forum.net/internet-marketing/2082-eye-tracking-data.html) that I just posted on another thread. I think you could find lots of helpful tips there.