Criticize my online store, I'm going broke

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johnmatrix

johnmatrix

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Jan 4, 2008
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Greetings droogies,

Firstly, my site is
basejewelleryqb1.png
(sorry about the pic link but I would rather this thread didnt rank when people seach for my site... especially with the boobs and all, PLEASE please refrain from linking to my site. Much much appreciated.)

I really need some help here, I have been doing AM for a while (currently making zilch), and have always had my online store to fall back on as a generally solid backup income. Whether its the economy or not, my sales have taken a big dip since the Christmas period, any advertising I do is resulting in a loss for me. I will explain what I have been doing more thoroughly...

My main advertising has been Facebook surprisingly, I was making a very nice profit I could spend $100 and end up doing around 10 sales on a good day, fabulous ROI. Now, being in Australia, the exchange rate has meant my facebook advertising costs have now jumped by over 50%. At the moment I can spend a hundred and make a couple sales.. barely breaking even. I have sweet ads with good ctr's and cheap CPC's targeting males of all ages in australia.

I have tried Adwords, and google actually called me up and offered to redo my whole campaign to be highly targeted and whatnot, I let them do it for me and I spent about $400 and made 1 sale. Tried the content network (which is what im good at with AM), same go... terrible ROI of course.

I have had just over 400 orders and customers love my products, I even have about 70 fans on my facebook page... The only thing I can see wrong with my products is I lack a big range of sizes, I only stock just around the average male size at the moment because I cant afford to order any more. The order process is simple, I am using Magento and can accept credit cards directly on my site.. its all nice, easy and streamlined.

Now, I would like a few criticisms of my site, I plan to make some sort of landing page and try sending clicks to that instead of just the home page. I am in need of some fresh ideas and new things I could try... especially in advertising. Of course the dream is to have my site on affiliate networks, but I dont think im ready for that yet. Thanks in advance!
 


You should add some emotion to your salescopy. Try appealing more to one gender; you can't please everyone.

When the death camps were liberated at the end of World War II, rescued women prisoners craved lipstick even more than they craved food or safety. The thing they wanted most was to feel human again.
Click to expand...

Emphasize the deep symbolism of rings and shit like that.

Add some hands wearing the rings and pictures of happy couples.

Study your competition.

wwwjjdotam05.jpg
 
You asked for it:

1. Not feeling your general layout - a CSS Grid layout would definately help with it looking a bit more professional.

2. Your logo design does not really work for me, what message is it conveying?

3. Your site in general looks like it was put together in about a day. Your not making use of space, and in general it seems a bit 'squashed' to me.

4. You need a better call to action, some sparkles - anything to make it stand out a bit more.

5. Why not promote your free postage worldwide a bit more? Surely that will push up sales? A small insignificant link does not really do it justice.

These are superficial changes that may or may not benefit sales, from a quick bit of research it seems you are targetting "Base Jewellery" as your primary term, I'm not too sure about that to be honest, why not go for Tungsten rings etc.

Your 8 backlinks won't help either, it beggars believe that you have managed a sustainable income on this, especially because FaceBook users are notoriously tight with their coin.

Step your game up boi!
 
What Maitiu said is quite right. I recommend investing money into a web design from a company experienced in high-converting sales websites rather than investing PPC into a non-converting website.
 
cheers guys taking it all in... and glowleaf i totally forgot about valentines day.. i will definately work that. Thanks for the link, i should have known...
 
My God, that first pic...
....what was your question again?

*snap*

Oh yeah, your site..

Well for one, the site does not look good at all in my laptop's widescreen resolution of 1680x1050. I second the idea of using css to format things a little better and tighter.

Your logo may not be bad in itself for branding purposes, but I think you should rework the top header background behind it. Looks too busy.

Add some more photos.

Make a few different landing pages. Some catering to women who want to buy a ring for their boyfriend,fiancee,husband,whatever. Likewise, make a page for men just looking to buy for themselves - with some pics of how studly they would look wearing these. (You could probably get a nice pic of some dude with a hot chick on his arm from Shutterstock)

Change your headline. "A bit about us.." doesn't draw me in right away. Don't be afraid to lengthen the headline and have it play with the visitor's emotions.

Also - the color scheme looks a bit feminine. I would go for a more macho design with perhaps darker colors. Experimen and split-test some color variations if you can.

Bonus tip: Go to eLance and hire some 3d gfx designer to render a slow-rotating, 3d animation of one of the rings with reflection. You could show this on the first page, or as a "click here to see this ring in 3d" animated gif or flash. Shouldn't cost you more than $50 to have it done, and could be worth it.

Now back to that first pic..
 
its not bad, but also you dont have a ton of pages indexed in G. Have you tried PPC? Whats your bounce rate like?
 
ImagesAndWords, great tips.. thanks mate. btw fantastic album!

narsticle, PPC is the only thing ive done. My bounce rate is 29%, avg time on site is 3.5 minutes, so its not too bad.
 
I suggest you set the default currency to USD instead of AUD if nothing else. Most of the world will associate $ with USD. Customers wont take notice of that little warning in the left column. It comes for them as a nice suprise in the end (with the ratio being 3:5 in favor of USD), but that wont make you any bread.

Good Luck!
 
fixie said:
I suggest you set the default currency to USD instead of AUD if nothing else. Most of the world will associate $ with USD. Customers wont take notice of that little warning in the left column. It comes for them as a nice suprise in the end, but that wont make you any bread.

Good Luck!
Click to expand...

Thanks for noticing that, but my target market is australia for now (well all my ppc traffic is australian).. I figure once I get things running smoothly here i can expand overseas.
 
Urghs..

- That header is SHIT. (sorry, but I can't even make out the frigging logo on that BG)
- The layout does not work

On a more technical note:
Work on your URLs some more

"Tungsten rings" Should be more important than men, right?
Still, your url says:
mens-tungsten-rings

And unless you are selling to the gay crowd (Wickedfire) you should have the default set to womens jewelry or AT LEAST have a jump to the womens section right on the front page.

Who buys rings for valentine? The men.

::emp::
 
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