Would anyone be happy to let me know what they think of my website please?

A couple of things...

You say you're not getting any customers... Can you provide some more detail ? Are you getting site visitors but those visitors aren't being converted into sales, or are you not getting any site visitors at all ?

If you're not getting any visitors, then that's your first hurdle. No matter how good it looks, if nobody sees it, its not going to generate sales. If this is the case you need to focus on promoting your website. Let us know if this is the case because then we can have a discussion on that rather than astethics.

With regards to the asthetics... In general I think there's way too much text, particularly small text for my eyes and brain to take in at first viewing. There's principal in software user interface design called "Don't make me think!", and you're asking your site visitor to do just that... you're asking me to spend 30 seconds, taking in the first page and thinking about where I might go next or how you want me to use your site. You can alleviate this problem by reducing the number of options on the first page. The easiest way to do this is by using a font-size of 11 or 12. This will force you to make decisions about what is important enough to go on the first page and what isn't (your customers will thank you). Compare your homepage to that of Amazon.co.uk and that of your competitors.

The Green Beginnings logo is lost amonst the equally if not bigger sized text listing your phone number, once again you're asking me to think who am I dealing with here ? A cool green company or a phone number ? Also with regards to the logo... I like the use of overlapping leaves. That's really pretty, however the Comic Sans font is very dated looking and impacts on the professional look-and-feel that I think you're trying to create.

On the plus side... The colour scheme is good and the site is really fast, especially clicking through to the deeper levels.

Hope it helps,
Ijonas.

hello and thanks for the comments.

I am not getting many visitors at the moment at all.

Do you have any related advice?

Many thanks.
Samantha.

Hi Samantha

What methods are you using to drive people to your web site? Are you ranked near the top of suitable google searches - have you issued press releases? - how have you advertised your web site? - are links to your site provided by other sites? have you tried direct marketing? etc etc

I am sure that you appreciate that creating a great web site (although I think you need to look at your font sizes because I gave up reading) is only a small part of running an e-business.

Coconuts

Hi Samantha,

Have you looked into Google Adwords?

https://adwords.google.com/select/

I'm not going to go into how to get your website seen as it's very indepth but i'll give you some basics.

Just having a website will not get visitors, no one knows it's there (and there are a few to choose from)

Adwords is pay per click advertising and is one way of getting your site seen and it works. If you do a search on google you'll get 2 lots of results organic and paid ads the paid ads are the 'sponsored listing' on the right and at the top, organic listings are the ones on the left. If your site is new you've little chance of getting in on the 1st page organic listings! these are results that come up from people doing a search and the search engine deeming your site relative to what they have searched for (the 'keyword(s)') to get in the organics you need a site with lots of good and relative content to what you are selling. So you need to know what people would search for to get to your site, I'd say 'Organic baby products' would be a good one so having that in your sites content a few times would be good, however the site still needs to be readable by humans. also what is good is having links back to your site, It's called link building so get posting in forums and in a blog.

PPC can if done properly, but it is time consuming believe me, so you are better getting someone else to do it

I know and use someone who does my PPC and she can tell you more about it she's Google Adwords qualified (trained by Google) and can tell you a lot more about it than I can, she's really good and knows her stuff and will get you visitors to your site.

Her site is

http://www.mymustard.co.uk/

You can get her number from the link below
Give June a call and tell her you got her details from Paul Jennings, She'll be happy to explain how it works

http://www.mymustard.co.uk/get-in-touch.htm

I hope this helps Sam and sale come flooding in.

Paul

PS I was in Dorset a few weeks back on holiday, Lovely part of the country. but it was when it was a bit windy!!1

Take care

ELECTRICAL CONCEPTS
Design, Install, Maintenance.
Domestic & Commercial

www.electrical-concepts.co.uk

call 0800 458 9118

Hi Samantha,

First, like ijonas suggested, it is important to understand the number of unique visits per day and even better, understand how this compares to your competition. Traffic volume will give you an indication whether to first concentrate on getting more visibility with your listings or concentrate on conversions. As your search engine listings improve your traffic volume will increase (i am just referring at this stage to your organic listings). I did notice you were running analytics, use this to identify your traffic sources (and keywords) you are currently getting found for. Identify, the ones you are not getting any traffic from and keep an eye on the quality of your traffic.

Second, let me know your top 5/10 keywords / key phrases you would like to be found for via the search engines. Let me have these in priority order. I will feedback how well you are placed.

In addition, assuming you had good listings you would then start to look at user browsing conversions and for this you need to start looking at your meta description data and title tags. If you are getting the visitors then this is down to on site conversion techniques.

Most on-line marketing strategies not only need an organic search strategy but a paid search strategy. Sparkatrician suggested Google AdWords which is a good idea. PPC can be done the DIY way (i.e. yourself) but this is an area where you could benefit from getting help, if only while you learn. It is a very good way to get targeted customers quickly to the site.

Last of all you need a link building strategy. Try to get good high quality relevant links with good anchor text. This can bring additional traffic and sales and help with your listings.

I have glossed over a few issues here but I do hope this helps…

Kind regards, Jon.

crikey,
thanks everyone. what a lot to take in.
I have had other comments about the font size and will take that on board. I wnated to get the information in for keywords etc but I didn't want visitors to be greeted with a page of words and so kept the font small.

I have very few visitors each day so my main priority is to get people to my site first and then work on the conversion rate. I have tried adwords ion the past but found that I may just as well have thrown my money in the bin!!!!

Don't worry - the consideration of keywords is not about pages of text. The Keywords should be the fundamental starting block for any on-line marketing strategy. Keywords are what people will use to find you. To survive, you need to be listed well for those keywords (that includes product names, colour, model number). Page 2+ on Google is not going to be good enough. The difference of page two and a top 3-5 slots will be significant amount of traffic and orders. Applying these keywords correctly will get you the listings and therefore the volume of traffic. Within reason, the more people you get through your door potentially the more orders your will get.

Also regarding Adword - I currently have a number of AdWords customers who are using and significantly benefiting from Google's AdWords service. Don't discount it. It needs to be set up correctly and that includes using negative keywords. On the dark side it is suggested that you will get click fraud anywhere from 5-20% but don't let this put you off as Google runs prevention software and in addition there are other ways you (or the web master) can also identify this and manage this.

To benefit from your AdWords you need to be using it in conjunction with your Analytics (or similar type of program). Using the ecommerce function you should be able to tell how much revenue has been generated from what source and from which keyword. Example - To have any chance at understanding what is actually going on you need to understand the keyword used in the search, in which search engine it was used (ie the traffic source, for both organic and paid), value of the order and number of items and in what timescale. As you can imagine this becomes very powerful. This will clearly identify if you are loosing money (as you will know your total budget spend and quickly be able to identify how much revenue has come from your AdWords) and more importantly where, which source. If you don't have this capability then you are running blind. The best bit is once you have identified the profitable revenue streams, you can increase your budget in the sound knowledge that you are not throwing your money away.

In addition, you need to put all the above into perspective with overall keyword volumes to get an idea how many people in total are searching for your products.

Yet again I have glossed over some issues but this has helped me reduce my reply - yes imagine how long it could have been… Sorry but hope it helps…

I will guess some key words for the site and do you and SEO report to illustrate part of my reply…

Cheers, Jon.

Hi Sam,

You said you tried Adwords, Did you do this yourself?

As Jon said it can be done the DIY way but it is far better to get some help, many books have been written on the subject and Adwords itself has hours worth of online material to help familiarise yourself with it do you really have the time to learn a new skill, your time would be better spent developing the business! while it's good to have a play on it and try to learn a bit about it (I do) so you can understand what's happening PPC and SEO are time consuming subjects, Time that really is better spent running the business.

It's good to have an underlying knowledge and understanding of all aspects of business each one could be or is a full time job which it better to get someone in!

Jon is right you need a mixture of PPC and SEO so link building and making your site nice for the search engines. Along with some offline activities such as press releases or an ad campaign.

Ideally you need a mix of 3-4 marketing activities that each compliment each other to be successful, and they need to be targeted to.

Cheers

Paul

ELECTRICAL CONCEPTS
Design, Install, Maintenance.
Domestic & Commercial

www.electrical-concepts.co.uk

call 0800 458 9118

Hiya

I have a similar problem, paid for a website without realising that just because you have a site it doesn't mean that anybody is going to find out about it, visit it or buy off it. Adwords is great but Google Analytics will help you understand where people are coming from e.g. Who came via google, via yell or other search engines and from other websites etc.

See if you can get your link added to other people's websites and vice versa. I'm finding that helpful to build hits. It can be tricky finding people with the same target market that don't compete with you but if you can find people and are able to add the links yourself it's a freebie way to get extra people to your site.

Good luck

Claire
p.s. get your web address on everything, leaflets, till receipts, letter heads, emails (you get the idea)

Thanks for all your comments everyone.

I am still plodding along slowly. Built myself up quite well but then changed my website address to www.greenbeginnings.co.uk so have slipped back down a bit. Back to work then, eh?