Nobody ordering from my web site :( Please take a look!

ZC version 155d, Responsive Classic template

I have had my web site for ca. 5 years.

For the first 4 months of this year I had the most orders/income ever compared to the same period in previous years.
Problem is after May 9 nobody ordered anything :(
I have tested my web site with lap top, tablet and mobile phone and it looks OK to me; I have a terrible feeling that I changed something that stopped the orders but what?
Not only are people not ordering but also not creating new customer profiles and not adding stuff to the shopping cart.

My prices were middle of the road but now I reduced a lot of prices so I am one of the lowest price suppliers in this country (Switzerland); certainly lower than the main discounters.

Adwords working OK, average CTR over last 30 days is 5.30%.
Tried various web speed tests from Europe servers and first page load time is ca. 2 seconds plus/minus.

I really would appreciate if someone has time to take a look and comment, link is here (English language), most of my business is in German language but English pages should be identical!

If you try ordering I will of course delete your order.

Thanks in advance

Heartfelt thanks to the many people who took the time to look at my website.
Nobody commented so either my site is OK or such cr#p that nobody wants to embarrass me :)

If there are any German speakers here I would appreciate them looking at the German side of my site here.

Please do also continue checking the English side here; I am still not getting any orders so would really appreciate any help/advice.

Forgot to say the site passes the Google Mobile friendly test OK.

It's really impossible to answer your question. I suspect that's why you got no responses. Did you make a change to the website around the time traffic dropped off. How was the traffic coming to your website before it dropped off? Was it all from adwords? Was it all organic traffic coming from search results, social media, other websites? Has the amount of traffic to your site dropped off in a significant way from one or more of those sources? If the traffic from search engines has dropped off, did you drop off the first couple pages? Who's your competition? Did they launch a new site that looks more professional or has significantly lower prices? Better shipping options? Did your conversions from adwords drop off? Did you make a change to your adwords campaign? If you were converting well before and haven't made any changes then it's more of a head scratcher. That's just the tip of the iceberg though. You really need to analyze your traffic and conversions over time to try and isolate what's changed and then attempt to isolate the cause.

Thank you for your comments.
My question was not well defined :(
I really meant to ask is there anything obvious in my web site that blocks users from ordering; I mean from the technical aspect - is it working.

Traffic is much the same, both the volume and the mixture of adwords and organic searches; i used to get orders from both.

I have been scratching my head to think of anything I have changed!

Did your site always require a sort of "request to buy" but have to pay separately option? Is there no way to purchase directly from your site? Has there never been a way?

I would think that if someone else is offering a way to pay now and be promised to receive their item that they may go that way instead of working sort of back and forth...

As for comment on the german version, the only thing that "confused" me but I also don't shop on many german sites is that the "add-to-cart" button looked like I was going to be paying right then instead of just adding the product to the cart with payment "to follow".

Hi

Thank you for your comments.

Not sure what you mean by "sort of "request to buy" but have to pay separately option"

So far as I know my buy process is standard zen cart (unless I inadvertently changed something)?

I mean you click on the "add to cart button" in a Product view then you get automatically transferred to the shopping cart.
There you have the choice between Paypal Express without registering on the site or of going through the full Checkout process or of doing more shopping.

Is there a better way to do this?

My wife had the same comment about the add to cart button, I will change this to a simple add-to-cart! :)

Thanks again

marton_1:

Thank you for your comments.
My question was not well defined :(
I really meant to ask is there anything obvious in my web site that blocks users from ordering; I mean from the technical aspect - is it working.

Traffic is much the same, both the volume and the mixture of adwords and organic searches; i used to get orders from both.

I have been scratching my head to think of anything I have changed!

Does your site work? It seems to. Would I order from it? No, but if you haven't changed anything then that may not be the answer.

You say you've used the responsive template but your changes to the template seem to have lost the responsive elements. Your site bounces between english and I think Swiss. Many pages have no navigation and force you to go back to an earlier page to continue to shop. You would be well served by finding and using a responsive template. If you are going to do multi language then make sure that all content on the page is in the correct language. Have consistent headers, footers, and navigation on all pages so customers don't need to think about what you want them to do. Make it clearer in the header who you are and how to contact you.

As I say, if nothing has changed with the look and feel then this may not be the answer to your problems.

marton_1:

Hi

Thank you for your comments.

Not sure what you mean by "sort of "request to buy" but have to pay separately option"

So far as I know my buy process is standard zen cart (unless I inadvertently changed something)?

I mean you click on the "add to cart button" in a Product view then you get automatically transferred to the shopping cart.
There you have the choice between Paypal Express without registering on the site or of going through the full Checkout process or of doing more shopping.

Is there a better way to do this?

My wife had the same comment about the add to cart button, I will change this to a simple add-to-cart! :)

Thanks again
In the current format. If I did not choose to use paypal up front (on shopping cart or at next screen), then I was not provided paypal again later on the payment screen. There was one option made available with the statement basically that payment had to be made in full within 10 days but at the points where that was provided, there was no other information. I didn't complete the purchase, to see what would happen next, but getting to that made me question the "process", what was truly going to happen, in a way it made me question how much more was to be expected to be provided.

Oh, forgot to mention also, is the complete date of birth really needed for your line of sales?

As to the button, if you want to display on your site that you accept paypal, there are other ways to incorporate that into the overall display (whether mobile or desktop and I navigated by mobile). I would agree with badarac that on mobile the display was not how current/recent mobile related templates present the information. Personally though on a smart phone, I prefer to have to move the screen around a little to find things rather than everything being squished together, hidden or having to slide up and down a lot to find something simple that got "shifted" to fit the resolution.

Part of the "jumping around" may be due to some errors that need fixing. One is a double <body> listing. That alone can give browsers fits.
Agreed about the template. Did you use the clone a template mod to create responsive_simmar? I'm seeing strangely named css files.

Along with checking the HTML coding at https://validator.w3.org/ to find and correct mistakes, I noticed the "zenid" query is always being used. It should only appear the first time a link is used on your site.

Admin -> Configuration -> Sessions
Cookie Domain
Force Cookie Use

• make sure they both say True

I put an order through using the check/money order (although it has been reworded). No issue at all with regards to functionality on a laptop using the latest Firefox. So that part can be taken off the list (a laptop/desktop using Firefox). I also placed an order without issue on my android phone. So I do not think it is a functionality problem.

You have made 0 template or layout changes to the site since the beginning of the year? When you say that you were getting the most orders ever, how many a day were you averaging? Not to be nosy, but there is a big difference between a dropoff of 30 to 40 orders a day to 0 and 2 or 3 orders to 0.

Personally, I found the site hard on the eyes with the intense green background and that would put me off shopping there unless you have unique products that I cannot find anywhere else. Plus, frankly, the template layout needs a lot of work to make it (and your company) look more professional. Especially the header and the buttons.

I noticed a number of layout issues both in laptop and way more in mobile view. The mobile view really needs to be addressed since so many people use their phones to shop. There are quite a few things on my android galaxy note 3 in portrait view, the search bar gets partially overlayed by the button which is also out of alignment, the whole page is not centered in the screen, the delete box is off in the cart, the quantity box is off in the product page, there are a number of other things as well. The buttons are blurry and look like they have maybe been enlarged or something?

I noticed on the checkout success, my account and product pages, I can't get to the main site so I am stuck clicking back a bunch. There is no category menu, header or footer sections to help me move around from there which may easily confuse people.

Redesigning the header, color scheme, buttons and fixing the layout issues will go a long way toward making the site look nicer for your customers. I have always used neutral and white colors for the background and color scheme so the product images really pop off the page and grab the attention, we want to showcase the products and induce the customer to part with their hard-earned cash with us and not someone else.

I agree with lankeeyankee (post #12) in all facets.

Navigation is not the easiest, the colour scheme is hard on the eyes etc.

I think, using the ever so popular Westminster New template (which has been upgraded to work with ZC 1.5.5x) would do the trick. Add to that Image Handler with zoom on hover configured would make it almost perfect.

Are you actually getting reasonable numbers of visitors? Or have they dropped off as well?

Many thanks for all your comments, I do appreciate the time and effort from everybody.
Working on your own web site is a bit like a monk illuminating a psalter in a solitary cell; one gets cut off from the world.

In one way I am happy the technical functionality is OK but on the other hand it would have been an easy fix if there were a problem :)

I am working through all your comments on my PC test site so it will be a while before you see any change sin the real world.

Working on the colour scheme, always an issue for me as I am partly colour blind (Daltonism).
Many years ago when my wife was away I renovated the kitchen as a surprise and it was some time before she told me the floor tiles, counter tops and cupboard doors were different colours; not even shades of the same colour.
At least with a web site the colours have numbers that one can utilise.

Thanks again, I will post and update soon.

Another issue to fix is the not clear pictures and logos.
Site with blur pictures could be seen as an un proffessional site and will send away potential customers.
Example: the picture of the dog in the category of "In sets, Dog Leash Collar"
and the "Startseite" graphics button and even the Swiss/English flags of the language.
There are more, so you need to check this issue carefully.

marton_1:

Many thanks for all your comments, I do appreciate the time and effort from everybody.
Working on your own web site is a bit like a monk illuminating a psalter in a solitary cell; one gets cut off from the world.

In one way I am happy the technical functionality is OK but on the other hand it would have been an easy fix if there were a problem :)

I am working through all your comments on my PC test site so it will be a while before you see any change sin the real world.

Working on the colour scheme, always an issue for me as I am partly colour blind (Daltonism).
Many years ago when my wife was away I renovated the kitchen as a surprise and it was some time before she told me the floor tiles, counter tops and cupboard doors were different colours; not even shades of the same colour.
At least with a web site the colours have numbers that one can utilise.

Thanks again, I will post and update soon.
Yes, not asking for or getting an independent look certainly can feel that way. While most those commenting deal with such general aspects of a site on a routine basis, it would help you with your particular product line to also find/ask those familiar with the specific product. I personally say need more pug (mopse) pics. :P but felt that the choice of "models" was well made. It may be of some benefit to identify also suggested size(s) for breeds and or other dimensional information.

Regarding the color situation, it did remind me of how colors at least in Germany were a bit "out there", but that was before knowing that there was likely an alternate reason behind it.

Another thing to consider might be anything happening say locally or within reasonable shipping locations (part of my testing if you happened to look into the account created was to try different destinations to see the affects).

As part of that testing shipping prices varied dramatically. For example a product costing 25 (harness of some type), costed 100 to ship to the US and while I forget what it was to send to say Germany, it was significantly less and even less than that for Switzerland. Yes, it is reasonable for the cost to go down as the destination becomes closer, but part of the "analysis" of items might be "longevity" of the items purchased and/or offered and to include new versus returning customers and related purchase history.

Hopefully as possible additional input is provided the cause of the reduced sales can be determined and/or reverses itself. :)

Hi,
I don't know if you have found the reason why you don't have any sales but have you tried to observe and analyze the visitors flow in Google Analytics? I saw you have GA code installed on your website so you should have an access to this info. You can observe there where your visitors are leaving the website and on which step of the checkout process. This may give you a hint.

Good luck! :thumbsup:

thanks :smile:

english language links do not work.

your header translate links only bring you back to the index page. and then you lose the english as you click on any link, as the url does not include the en selector.

best.

Me, I'm convinced that it's the templates that sells, for me Zencart is the best cms that exists on the market, simple, fast, best Seo, easy, safe etc. moreover there is a team that give your all to help us. But!!!! the templates are not professional, we can have the best cms in history but it is the template that pleases the client above all else. Unfortunately, there are no templates up to zencart. Just imagine, zencart have templates like woocommerce, shopfy, magento prestashop etc. yes, the sales would take off.