Traffic but no SALES

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to chat a bit about AdWords, traffic and sales. Basically I have been with AdWords for a couple of months now and I am getting 35,076 impressions, 376 clicks. My CTR is 1% (average) and my Cov. Rate is 111.97%. This all seems to be good (like I really have any idea!!) but I have only had one sale.

I guess my main question is, even if you are getting traffic to the site how do you actually get them to buy (or in my case) request something? As you can see, I have a unique product/site. I am one of only 3 registered autograph dealers in Australia for pete sake but that doesn't seem to make a difference.

Also I have noticed last week that my page rank went from 4 to nothing. What would have prompted this? Is it because there is an error on my page? I have looked for the error but have no idea what it is.

Any help / suggestions / magic wands would be great.

[Theadultwarehouse]

Hi,

Couple of things.

Depending how you have your conversion rate set up (Most have it set up for sales) i think there may be an error there.

Usually the conversion rate measures how many of the people who clicked from Google actually made it to your checkout and brought something. Once you go deeper into your stats, you can then find out which words bring people who want to buy, and who bring window shoppers.

In Adwords, you want to get rid of the 'window shopper' words and concentrate on ones who buy buy buy!

On my current adwords program I am acheiving a CTR of 8.4% - It's about quality keywords!

With your keywords, what are they, who do they attract?

If I type in sports memorabillia, i might be someone who just loves looking at well presented things and dream of when I have the money to buy that framed Michael Jordan, however if I used keywords like, buy sports memorabillia - Then you would assume that you have a qualified buyer and if your store has what that person is looking for, then you will have a sale.

The more specific your keywords are, the higher your CTR will be, the lower your averge CPC will be and the more sales you will get.

There are lots of tips and tricks to use, but that is a very basic run down on how to maximize your keywords. Hope that helps a little bit.

Steve
The Adult Warehouse
www.TheAdultWarehouse.com.au

[dferguson]

If your after detailed information on how to get the most out of an ADWORDS campaign please take a look at <a href="http://www.axandra.com/go.to/ontech">Axandra</a>. They have an ebook called "Successful Advertising with Google Adwords".

[Wall Of Fame]

Isn't $120 awfully expensive for an ebook! I am always very doubtful about ebooks like this. It just seems like such a swiz.

[christof]

Had a quick look at the site, I hope you don't mind a little constructive critique!

I think it's a little hard to read the black text on the red background. The white text looks fine - perhaps it would be easier to read if all your text was white? My philosophy is you only have a few seconds to 'snare' a visitor's interest when they splash into your site. Make it as easy for him/her to instantly understand what's in it for them and why they should stay.

Some of the examples of austographs in your cart section are brilliant (i.e. Mohammed Ali etc.) I think it's a 'must' to bring a couple of them out onto your home page. As a visitor I was much more interested to explore the site once I'd 'found' a few of your autographs.

It's interesting to visit:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=au&lang=en_GB

Type in 'autograph' and see what Australians were searching for in December.

The success of my site was pretty much entirely due to Ken Evoy and his book MYSS (Make Your Site Sell) it's a couple of years old but the content is still relevent. www.site-sell.com.au - I'm not too keen on all the other stuff he offers for sale though!

Good luck with it.

CT

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi CT,

I love the critique. It helps you see another perspective. It is funny you should mention that black / white text as I couldn't decide which one to go with. And as for images on the home page I haven't done that yet as it takes longer to upload. I know that I have clicked out of many sites because it just takes too darn long for it to load.

I started the site with no idea what I was doing. After many hours of building, I found that you can't just 'intergrate' frontpage with Ezi. So Mel at Practical Webs took exactly what I had and "made it fit". So I was pretty proud of how far I had come. What I continue to learn (and love) is that you can always make it better or change something in the slightest to make a big difference. So thank you for not being afraid to give me your honest opinion. Any one else out there feel free to do the same.

Maybe I will give it a test run and a) see how it looks and b) see if it makes a difference.

I will also check out those links you suggested.

Cheers
Susanne

[dferguson]

Their ebook could save you $120 (or better still make you $120) in the first month.. So I guess they figure its worth it..

Ive purchased it and read (most) of it, and its a good book. :-)
I'd reccommend it for those who are serious about advertising in Adwords - not those that are 'dabbling'.

[boinkit]

If I may add my own critique on the site - the dark red/burgundy background really puts me off. I find it hard to read the text, and because of that - and my general laziness - I normally wouldn't bother trying.

That said, I loved your products! The site is good, particularly the scrolling latest news box. Can't see why things aren't selling... I blame the colour red ;-)

Okay, I will be brave (and there are some typos, a couple of things to be finished off, and it needs a bit more love & attention) but could someone give me some constructive criticism on my site:

www.monkeynose.com

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi there,

Thanks for the constructive critisism. You are the second person now to say that the black on burgandy puts you off. I guess I really need to think about that. What are the typo's?? I spell checked every page. And yes definately more love. I am a full time Mum, with a husband away at sea, just moved ito a new house and trying to promote the business. It's a miracle it is online! Anyway, school starts today and I will fiddle around with the site.

As for your site. I did have a look at it just now. It's nice. I like the banner across the top. That loaded first and caught my eye. Everything else took a little while to load though. What I didn't like was that blue speckle banner with the web address in it. I felt that it was too bold, it kept distracting me. You do have lots of products, which is great. One thing I still haven't understood is - I assume that it is basically an online store of various gift ideas etc. Where does the name "monkeynose" actually fit in. Why is it called that? It just doesn't seem to relate. And your tabs across the top - when I clicked on them, I found the writting too small, it hurt my eyes, so I didn't bother reading it. Over all thought I like it. Where are you based though? It's a dot com but your prices are in pounds.

I look forward to your answers.

[dferguson]

Hi Everyone

I to looked at the Autographs.com.au website and thought I would share my comments/opinions....

Your site theme was created by Practical Webs but I feel as though it may have been done quite some time ago.

Time for a refresh....

I would concider an update to the theme to include:

a) H1 and H2 css commands - with preset colours/fonts/styles that look GOOD.
b) Preset css for bodytext (font, colour, style) - The black text on red background looks bad.
c) Custom brief and detailed product styles (the current blue backround colour of the products doesnt look the best IMHO. (the brief style should probably also stretch to width of the screen rather than only occupy a small amount of it)
d) The background colour of the GTS is a pale blue? This should match the website. We can change the font colours on the GTS checkout so that the text is readable however we will only do this to the colour you specify, so its best to get the theme designer to do all the above then we can make the GTS checkout colours match.
e) Get a GTS checkout logo made by Practicle Webs and email to me and I will add to the top of your checkout - will make it look much more professional.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
f) Basically a touch up of all site colours (maybe even kill the red for somthing else)
Choose more appriopriate colours for the ODD/EVEN rows in the view cart page. These can be set in the EDIT SHOPPING CART SETTINGS -> Colour/Fonts tab. (again, let the theme designer choose these and get him to tell you what they should be,get the actual colour values!)

[boinkit]

Hi Susanne,

Thank you for your thoughts on my site. I hadn't realised that the loading time was so long, I have ADSL and its fine for me, none the less I checked the image files and one of them was a ridiculous 40K in size. I have now optimised it and it should load much, much faster. Incredibly the image was snatched from someone else's site (with their full permission) and I just assumed it was already optimised for web use - just goes to show you.

The typo's I referred to are in my site. There are a couple of cracking ones at the moment. I also don't like the blue - but need to summon some more courage (and time) to change the templates to alter this.

We are based in the UK, hence the prices are in pounds - we do mention free UK delivery in an image on the home page, but i might add this to the logo file, particularly after you said it was unclear where we were based. Interesting also that the text in the 'tabs' was too small. I will change this, as I hadn't really given it much thought.

It is so useful to have someone else's opinion on your site. Thank you, and feel free to keep them coming!

As for the name, we chose it as we thought it was catchy, fun and memorable. We have both the .com and .co.uk domains, which is often hard to find. We also found that the 'knows' (instead of nose) was available for .com and .co.uk - so we have those too, just in case people get it wrong! The idea is to theme it some more, so that if you are looking for a gift... "Ask the Monkey, the Monkey Knows!"
- Clear as mud then? ;-)

If you want, feel free to mail me, rather than post on here, to natter about sites, and experiences in business - also if you have some other criticisms of my site...just don't upset the Monkey!

[partyflair]

Hi Wall of Fame,

I'm also another Mum, who has just got my business online using EziMerchant. I thought you might be interested in this story I put together.

“The Orders Just Keep Coming In” – A Mum and Her Home Based Business

I am finally open for business. It is just before Christmas 2005. People can actually go to my website and buy party supplies for their kid’s birthday parties. It has taken a long time, but the website looks great. I am sure people will love it. I know I love it. I think it looks fantastic.

But then my husband says, Yes, it does look good. The colours are great, the pictures are fantastic, but how do you know if your potential customers will like it. Is it going to provide them with the information they need. Will they be able to navigate their way around? How will you know? How will you get any feedback? But more importantly, how are people going to find your website. When people are searching in Google and type in party supplies, will they see your website? It normally takes about 2 – 3 months for the search engines to actually find a new website and apparently you need to have lots and lots of links from other websites to get your search engine ranking up high enough so you can get on the first page.

How do you arrange that? Does anyone look beyond the first page anyway?

So it’s probably going to be about 2 – 3 months before I see any statistics on how many hits and visits to my website, let alone my first order. After all this time, all this effort in building the website, taking photographs of everything, putting the photos on the website, finding good suppliers I can rely on, working out all the prices. You don’t think about all this at the time you decide to start a business. There is just so much work in setting up. When I had this idea 18 months ago, I thought it would be great. When the kids are at school I can just do a few hours work each day between 10.00 and 3.00. I can work when I want and the money I make should be able to give us a nice family holiday each year. It sounded like a great idea at the time. When I started I didn’t expect it to take 18 months just to set up. I had to learn about the Internet and creating a website. I had to learn how to use EziMerchant. I had to learn how to use Quick Books which is what we use to run the business accounts. There is so much to learn and do with the accounts. You enter the bills, pay the bills, and reconcile it all with the bank account. All this extra admin work. I just want to run my party supplies business and make kids happy.

Anyway, I am very happy with how it looks now and I am finally open for business.

My husband does a lot of business consulting and he knows about advertising on the Internet, so he set up some Ads to run on Google. These are the sponsored links down the right hand side of the Google page that you see whenever you do a Google search. Companies pay to advertise there and they only pay if a person clicks on their Ad. Often it is only a few cents per click but it can be a lot more depending on the product.

So on January 2nd, my husband sets up the Ads on Google. Firstly, we are just going to get people to contact us with their requests for party ideas. My husband says that the main purpose of most websites should be to capture a name and email address of a potential customer. Then you can start the sales process with them. So this is what we did. We set up a new web page that offered party ideas for kids parties and we directed the Google Ad to go to this special web page when anyone clicked on the Ad. On the new web page, the customer just had to enter their firstname, email address click a button if the party was for a boy or girl, type the child’s age and then type what interests the child had, eg. fairy, pirate, superheroes, etc.

The next day I received two enquiries from the Google Ad. That was pretty easy. You set up an Ad and people start finding you almost immediately. That’s pretty good.

The following day another two enquiries. Then the next day 7 more enquiries and one of them turned into my first Order. Unbelievable, my first order and it was quite a big one. These Ads work really well. I hope this continues. After 5 days, I had received 20 of these enquiries and made 2 sales. That’s fantastic. Answering the enquiries was quite time consuming. I had to send reply emails with all this information about ideas and activities for their party. There was no way I could answer 20 in 5 days. I had to ask my husband to turn off the Google Ads. They were working too well - I couldn’t keep up.

The following week, my husband said he would create some new Ads that would direct people straight to the online catalog and hopefully they would buy something. This would also give us some great information about the market for our products. It would tell me which products were the most popular.

These new Ads are just amazing. They have been running since January 9th, so just on a month now and I have made over 30 sales. I don’t have to respond to enquiries like before. The orders just come in. How good is that? I didn’t think there would be many people planning parties in January and early February. Imagine what it will be like later in the year once the kids have settled into school and having lots of parties.


I hope all that didn't bore you. You can probably relate to a lot of it. Anyway, send me an email to info@partyflair.com.au if you want more detailed information on how we made this work.

I wish you all the best with your business.

[Digital-Door-Locks]

Dear partyflair

ITs great to hear your story, I have the same dream, an online store with sales that make me work less or not work at all.

I have been working for more than 3-4 months now to get it all up and running, (still need to do changes and do more changes)

But yeah we all have to start somewhere..

[niko]

Your text on the front page "Can't find what you are looking for? Request an item NOW!" the "NOW" should be in a different colour so that it is clear to customers they can cick on it. You could even have the "Click Here" text to make it more obvious.

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi all,

Thanks for all of your ideas / support on my site. I have made some changes to it thanks to your suggestions. I am going for that solid, historic, antique, timeless look. (If that makes sense?) I have looked at other sites to get ideas (like the history channel site) and see how my 'competitors' are forming their sites. Comparitivley I think mine looks good - see the links below. I know that this is a hard business to crack in Austraila as so many people buy from the US and UK because they just don't trust the items in this country are authentic. I think it just a matter of getting the name out there and really letting people know that ALL of my items are 100% genuine.

Links - http://www.star-shots.com/
http://www.autographsplus.com/
http://www.dpriol.com/
http://www.wallsoffame.com/ (my counter part in the US)

Anyway, thanks and feel free to keep the suggestions coming.

[niko]

That "NOW" is screaming out for someone to click .......... click click click click :)...... er I think I've buggered it :(

[Wall Of Fame]

Ohhhh, so you were the one!!

If someone can't see that then I just don't know what else to do.

I have been running the Google Ad's now for just over 3 months. The second day of advertising I got my first offical online sale, that was the last. I still get plenty of requets from people that bring sales but nothing directly.
I can only assume at this stage, that I don't have in stock what people are after. To stock what everyone wanted all of the time, I would have to take out a second morgage on the home.
In saying that, of the 600+ people that view my site each month, you would think that one would want what I have? Maybe I should just go back to doing my mail order catalogues'????

[adrianlacy]

have you thought about /or can you, list products without holding the stock? Or is there such a limited supply you need to pre-purchase to guarentee supply? if there are products you can access anytime from distributors, etc - list them whether you have stock or not. List numerous different names available on your homepage to at least spark interest even if they are not in stock.
we list hundreds of products not in stock, that are rarely ordered, purely to let customers know we can supply them or that they are available. Maybe this is not applicable in your case.
Just a suggestion!

[Wall Of Fame]

I have thought about it, but your right in saying that I can't exactly advertise something I haven't got. For example - having a Stallone Rocky picture, someone orders it and then find there are none available that are the same. Autographs are really a unique one off. Even if it was the same picture he might have signed it slightly different. You'll be amazed what people notice.
I suppose I could put a small write up on the home page saying that I have not "displayed" all my stock and to request what you don't see but basically that is already my "Star Search".
A great suggestion, feel free to keep them coming.

[niko]

I have placed CSS (Complete Sleep Systems on my web site under invaluable links. If anyone wants us to do the same let me know. by email, sales@octapc.com.au

[niko]

I forgot to mention, that to help each other an image is not sufficient, as you need to add some keywords to that page and or a viewable description so that the bots can crawl and locate these keywords.

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi all,

I hope everyone is motoring on well. I thought I would just give you all a bit of an update. I decided to try ClixGalore. Everyone has been going on about it for so long I thought I had better try it for myself. It was a bit of a mine field to begin with, the guy ended up calling me and getting the jist of what I wanted and putting it all into place for me.

Anyway, since joining, my traffic has almost doubled and I am getting loads more requests and orders - and I have only been doing this for a month.

It has been around 7 months since doing Adwords, and I have found that unless you are willing to pump hundreds of dollars into it, then it is not worth the time or money. In the end, I was getting more 'clicks' from organic sources than Adwords.

In general, I have found it takes you at least 6months for your site to start to be well recognised on search engines. It helps enormously, to add yourself to business directories, add a link to your site any time you do anything on the web, also writting my own BLOG on autographs has helped heaps too. You would be suprised how many referals I get from that alone!

Power to us internet geeks (and the ones just learing). If I can get there anyone can.

[Wall Of Fame]

Hi,

I am wondering if it is good to be with lots of different affiliate programs or should you just stick to one or two? Can anyone recommend another program other than ClixgGalore?

Oh, I am also just starting with GetPrice, I am excited to see how that turns out.

Thanks David, I removed the google stuff in the "banner" area. I didn't even realise it was there.

How is everone else going out there? Any great successes or revelations?

[dferguson]

Hi

Your Javascript error is now gone - this is great!

[discountpumps]

Hi Wall of Fame
Sorry I dont have any ideas for you but I might have a sale for you...
I was wondering if you have any Charlie Sheen or Michael Douglas from Wall Street Movie...
I bought a few from ebay but they all appear very different and even though they are members of some autograph thing and promise to be genuine - I am not sure.

Cheers
MT