Good Traffic - Few Conversions

Hi All,
I'm having a bit of trouble converting sales.
My past experience has been dealing with affiliates, banner clicks etc.. and I never sold products before.
But now I have a ton of products to deal with and not quite sure what I'm doing wrong.
At first no one was sticking around so I redesigned the site.
I've made some great headway in getting traffic. About 350 hits per day and with the redesign the average site visit is 6 minutes.
I see many people add items to their shopping cart but when they get to checkout they die off.
At first I thought it was because of paypal but they're never getting past creating an account. I'm even having a drawing for a new Nintendo Wii for everyone that signs up. But that hasn't seemed to help.
Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong?
The site link is in my footer.
Thanks in advance,
Ken

I would like some advise on my store and some great feedback, as I feel I have great products, I'm showing about 1300 - 2800 page hits per day according to the Zen Cart admin, but the hits are not producing sales. So I'm trying to find out where I am going wrong. I have recently signed up with a company called www.propay.com which excepts visa, mastercard, american express & discover card, which I saw some sells rapidly. Compared to just having paypal, which people used to email me and ask if I took any other payments besides paypal, because they didn't feel safe with paypal. I notice all my buyers that have purchased has used CC. I know I need to add SSL to my site ASAP which is in works right now as I type.

I have a ebay site which I run my products through to sale, since my sales on my website are not where I want them to be, and my merchandise sales really quickly through ebay. But I want the same results in my online store as ebay can be very expensive with 300+ products on auction.

I have a 9-5 day job which is 40 hours a week, but I spend at lease 60+ hours working with my site, after getting off of work and I go straight to my site to work on it wheather it is fixing a module that is showing errors, marketing, coding, planning, adding new stock, learning about new modules through zencart or just interacting with my customers. But I need to work on conversion from hits to sales. Would lovvvvvvve some great feedbacks.

To check out my site just click the link in my signature!

divaboutiques:

I would like some advise on my store and some great feedback, as I feel I have great products, I'm showing about 1300 - 2800 page hits per day according to the Zen Cart admin, but the hits are not producing sales. So I'm trying to find out where I am going wrong. I have recently signed up with a company called www.propay.com which excepts visa, mastercard, american express & discover card, which I saw some sells rapidly. Compared to just having paypal, which people used to email me and ask if I took any other payments besides paypal, because they didn't feel safe with paypal. I notice all my buyers that have purchased has used CC. I know I need to add SSL to my site ASAP which is in works right now as I type.

I have a ebay site which I run my products through to sale, since my sales on my website are not where I want them to be, and my merchandise sales really quickly through ebay. But I want the same results in my online store as ebay can be very expensive with 300+ products on auction.

I have a 9-5 day job which is 40 hours a week, but I spend at lease 60+ hours working with my site, after getting off of work and I go straight to my site to work on it wheather it is fixing a module that is showing errors, marketing, coding, planning, adding new stock, learning about new modules through zencart or just interacting with my customers. But I need to work on conversion from hits to sales. Would lovvvvvvve some great feedbacks.

To check out my site just click the link in my signature!

Your site looks great! I would think about adding some of the words here: http://www.zencartoptimization.com/2008/02/10/200-words-that-make-money/ and check the link for the 14 words that lose money and make sure that they are no where on your site. When I began to implement the pointers on this site, I saw my sales increase quite a bit. You might also want to start taking cc's if you don't already...

Your site looks great! I would think about adding some of the words here: http://www.zencartoptimization.com/2...at-make-money/ and check the link for the 14 words that lose money and make sure that they are no where on your site. When I began to implement the pointers on this site, I saw my sales increase quite a bit. You might also want to start taking cc's if you don't already...

Thank you Doodlebuckets for the feedback:D, and thank you for the site to check out. I sent a request to have the 20 ways sent to me so I will also check that out and see what happens. I just added the recover cart module, and all I have to say is why I didn't download this mod, I found 32 carts with items from customers who had not completed there checkout $1909.08 uncomplete orders:(, now I have to see why they can't complete, or why they didn't complete there purchase, because that amount of oders outstanding is a problem.

I collect visa, mastercard, amex, & discover card right now, paypal & money order & cashier checks, so I do see a difference with CC's purcahses.

Having a website is alway a learning experience, and you will learn something everyday that you didn't know before

Wow!
It's been almost a year now and I still feel like a complete noob in the retail sales field. And I learn every day.

I do say that my site has come a long way but I still have a list of to-dos that is nearly endless.

I'm on my 3rd site design, well the second was a Christmas design but I am trying to incorporate everything I have learned in the past year into it.

I believe I have the home page and the products pages where I want them. Now for all the rest.

One thing I did do was modify the system so I could have Specials pages for each category and sub category along with their own Meta Tags. This has done fairly well though I need to concentrate on the design soon. And other such things as add better navigation, filtering, etc.
http://www.homecomputergames.com/index.php?main_page=specials&cPath=4

I have probably concentrated the most on my products pages as that is where people usually arrive when coming to my site as opposed to arriving at the home page.
On my products pages I've tried to incorporate what I have learned about eye tracking, block locations etc..
This is an example:
http://www.homecomputergames.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1523

My conversions seem to have improved since I moved the add to cart button right below the price. I also tried to put the most relevant information above the fold. I also just added additional mouse over images. They haven't been up long enough for me to see the effects of this as yet.
Since I have about 150,000 products, setting individual meta tags seemed an overwhelming task. So I modified the system to look for the type of product and adjust for better SEO.

One issue I did find was that products were often being listed as duplicate content by Google if the url to a product contained the category "cPath" id.
I tried to hunt down every place this type of URL was generated and modify it to not use the cPath. I also adjusted the meta tags generator to look for this type of URL and adjust the Title and Description tags so they where not duplicated.

An example of what I am talking about is:

http://www.homecomputergames.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=70920

http://www.homecomputergames.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4_127&products_id=70920

Both are the same product but Google used to treat this as duplicate content. But you will see that the Titles now differ from each other. As do the description meta tags.
This modification has helped me eliminate duplicate content. Duplicate content on a site being a no no via Google.

My climb on the Google ladder seems to have slowed a bit but a lot of that is from my concentrating on layout and design lately thus neglecting some of the SEM functions that need performed.
But I have done fairly well on the other search engines in most all searches but the very elite keywords.
Example might be searching "rpg computer games" on Yahoo that gives me first page results above the fold and with a Double listing at that. So zen cart can compete with the high end, expensive shopping carts when it comes to SEO.

I do have one note about speed, Alexa has my pages rated as 70% faster than most sites on the web. Just an FYI for those who have complained about zen cart being slow. Fine tuning MYSQL has probably been the most beneficial on this issue.

I guess my undertaking for the day will be to add better Specials navigation as this is a highly utilized section. The links at the top of the page all point to the individual Specials section though this is more for the search engines than people navigation. Most will likely click the Specials button at the top right. There is a Specials Sub Category navigatin on each sub category page though it is a bit obscure.
As you can see the main Specials page is a bit plain with no initial navigation(as of this writing):
http://www.homecomputergames.com/index.php?main_page=specials

Sometimes the tasks seem so overwhelming that I just sit there and stare. But I'm getting them narrowed down. About the time I complete them I'm sure it will be time to start all over again.
Copy writing is something I am baddly needing to do for all of the categories and sub cats. But it makes me want to take a nap just thinking about it all. :wacko:

Christmas did fairly well for me though it could have been better. But I'll be ready for next year if the economy doesn't collapse.

It gets a bit rough at times trying to keep up good customer service, development and all of the rest, but not one charge back as of yet (knocks on wood). And only 7 returns and 52 cancelations in total. And most of the cancelations were from me trying to avoid fraud attempts. Not too bad I guess.
I have only been taken once by fraud and that was for $52. Not another has gotten by me since then. Though they do try every damn day. God I hate thieves. :censored:

How did all of the rest of you do during the holidays?

Anyone want to write free content for my site? :hug:
Jokes, I'll get to it soon enough if I can stay awake.

Ken

Lately I have noticed a lot of window shopping going on. A lot due to economics I imagine.

In an attempt to deal with the current economic status I have just added third party "Used Items" for sale at my store.
I have modified the appearance of it several times in the attempt to not make customers think that I only have Used Items.

I also created a probably overdone Terms for buying these used items. Thoughts on this are appreciated.

This system was not an easy modification since each Used product has it's own shipping cost and is pulled from a data feed.
But I believe I have finally gotten all of the bugs worked out and have sold 12 used items in the past day.

I did make the system force a customer to accept the "Used Items Terms" before they can buy a used product.

I do have a couple of questions on selling used items:

1: Would a customer have bought the item new if no used item was for sale?

2: Will a person doing price comparison shopping be motivated to buy a used item when they see the item listed "Like New" yet can save 30% or more?

I guess I am thinking that many sales of only a small profit can add up.

Does anyone else here sell used items?
Are there any unforeseen issues that should be considered?

Thanks,
Ken

kendur

Just one comment about the nav of your site I found myself trying to click. Your list of Wii xbox etc. in the background image 'mainback-4cb.gif' and took one or two clicks to realize that they where not links.

And I can see you are on the side of more information is better.

Skip

skipwater:

kendur

Just one comment about the nav of your site I found myself trying to click. Your list of Wii xbox etc. in the background image 'mainback-4cb.gif' and took one or two clicks to realize that they where not links.

And I can see you are on the side of more information is better.

Skip

Hello,
You're the second person to mention that they tried to click the images so I will image map them.

I have gotten a lot of questions on products in the past and tried to answer most of the questions.

Do you think there is too much info?

Thanks,
Ken

I have gotten a lot of questions on products in the past and tried to answer most of the questions.
Here is the thing if you do get a lot of questions. This is good because this puts you one on one with your customer. It's that person to person thing that we do not get from web pages. But of course it can take up all your time.
Do you think there is too much info?
Yes way to much text for me. I would supply a link to a page containing all of that text.

kendur:

I see many people add items to their shopping cart but when they get to checkout they die off.

How do you "see" people add to their carts? Is it a module? I'd love to see that

Tools >> Whos Online

The green dot is for an active cart.

~Melanie

NOTE: you only see the cart information if you store sessions to the database ... :smile:

Tapper:

How do you "see" people add to their carts? Is it a module? I'd love to see that

There is a mod SuperTracker That gives you that information. I am running it on a 1.38a site with no problem's.

Hi Ken,

GrokDotCom is a marketing blog that focuses on how to improve conversion rates. You might poke around there and see if that gives you any insight.

Here's the link: http://www.grokdotcom.com/

Hi Tapper,
As mentioned, if you store sessions to the DB you can see what the person has in their cart.
I modified the who's online to show me the referring website.
This allows me to see the keywords that were searched in order to find my site.
It has been invaluable. I do not know if there is such a mod available but I would recommend it.
A link like this shows below the link that the person is on:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enCY208CY210&q=handball+dvds

I can then click that link and view how my ad is being presented and the location all in real time.

skipwater,
I took your advice and lessened the text a bit by using hidden, dropdown divs. Click a button show the text type thing.
I like it much better and it makes the page look less cluttered. Though I'm not happy with the buttons locations yet.

Thanks FormArmor!
Most people find me via the product and go directly to that product's page from a search. My conversions are about normal for the industry. But normal sucks.
I'll poke around a bit on that site. I must say have read so much on conversions, text block locations, eye movement patterns, psychology of buyers and so on that I think I could write a book.
The one book that hasn't been written is one that deals with people's mindset in the midst of today's economic events. It's all new so everyone is learning.

The plain fact is many people are scared with so many people getting put out of work every day. So they are holding onto their money.

My one hope is with all of the big dogs dieing off and going bankrupt that this will open up the market some and return the market to the small business.
I have been getting a rush of wholesalers contacting me lately with some good deals. I guess everyone is struggling.

The Used Product feature I added seems to be doing ok. Not as well as I thought, but it hasn't been up long. I think I am going to need to rate the sellers and allow others to do so.

Hey All,
A quick plug for the Zen Cart Team:
These guys have done a fantastic job and continue to do so. At the top of this page is a donation button. If you haven't donated please help them out and give a little. You can do a one time donation or a monthly subscription. I have mine set up to deduct a small amount from my PayPal account each month. I never even notice it missing. The amount isn't much but when added together it can help keep this team busy with this project instead of having to go out and labor in order to feed their families.

Thanks All!

Ken

Is it just me or did your header background img move to the left?

I looked at it with ie and fox and it is aligned left.

The never ending battle of cross browser development :frusty:

It looks the same to me as it has and I use Firefox and IE.
What resolution do you have set?

Ken -

skipwater is correct - if I view it on the widescreen (1680wide) the header is pinned to the left while the rest of the page stays centered.

What resolution do you have set?
1440 x 900 left aligned

And yes tested 1024 x 768 looks good :smile:

All better now I think.
Thanks!

Ah ... that is better :)