1. Debbie Edwards

    Managing Director at Pergradi

    22 October 2008 11:51am

    Debbie Edwards

    Hi, my name is Debbie and I launched a new online business selling high quality children and baby clothes in November 2007 www.pergradi.com We are just coming up to the end of our first year and am desperately seeking hints and tips from people regarding how to optimise our site for search and also how to convert visitors into sales once they are there.

    As with any start up we have a limited budget and have been relying on PR and a dabble in adwords to get people to the site so far - the results have been mixed. Any key hints and tips out there....???? Gratefully received especially in the run up to Christmas!

  2. dan barker

    E-Business Consultant at Dan Barker

    22 October 2008 12:00pm

    dan barker

    hi, Debbie, how are you?

    Here's a few quick thoughts just from looking at this page: http://www.pergradi.com/detail.php?p=115&cat=5

    1. the page title should include the product name (the title is the bit that you see in the blue bar at the top of your browser. the text you use as your page title is what searchers will see in google if your page appears there). your developer should be able to change this in a matter of minutes.
    2. the product name on the page is an image, rather than text. search engines look at text rather than images, so it would be wise to switch that to plain text.
    3. your site has very, very few 'inbound links'. when another site links to one of your pages, search engines see that as a 'vote' for your page & will bump it up the search rankings for its relevant terms. Encouraging other people to link to you & putting content onto the site that people would naturally ilnk to (eg. blog posts, articles) will help you a lot. i'm surprised the PR you mention hasn't generated more.
    4. I am not too old & have decent eyesight, but the 'Salmon on Salmon' colourscheme is painful for me to read. I would bet that just changing your text colour would increase conversion

    Those are a few quick thoughts - let me know if they're useful/you want to chat more.

    daniel

  3. Denis Kondopoulos

    Technical Project Manager (MBA, MBCS, CITP, CEng) at Naxtech.com

    22 October 2008 15:01pm

    Denis Kondopoulos

    Just to add on the danielb's comments, it may be worth to look into what is called "URL Rewriting" to the list of thing to look at. 

    Basically what that's all about is that your website's page would look like  "http://www.pergradi.com/clothes/" instead of  "http://www.pergradi.com/product.php?cat=6" for example.

    I hope this helps.

    regards,

    Denis
    www.naxtech.com

  4. Chris Carter Silver

    Director of ecommerce at Mezzo Marketing

    23 October 2008 08:51am

    Chris Carter

    Debbie,
     

    In addition to the comments left by the other guys (which are very valid), you may want to think about reducing the size of the page, what i mean by this is that the pictures could be more compressed - great though they are, on slow connections the pages can take a while to load.

    Secondly, more tagging is required on the site, to tell search engines what your site is about

    Thirdly, the customer journey is a little bit unhelpful, for instance when i click on "add to basket" from the link the other guys gave, it tells me to add a colour and no where on the page can i do this - i know i have to go back (press back)  to do this, but is a customer with little web knowledge tried this, they may take a different view. The message should be on the same page as the "Add colour"

    Finally (i could do a thorough review, but dont have time this week) when you go to "check out" add 3 simple thngs to your checkout - allow people to shop for more  - a simple link that says " return to shopping" AND tell them about other things you sell that would go with the Hats for instance, look at what amazon do, you buy a book on Jamie Oliver and they try and sell you a gordon Ramsay book, finaly put your telephone number everywhere and if you can make sure it is answered when most of the traffic hits your site, if you are having all your web sales in the evening, and no one answers the call to help, you are losing a lot of valuable trade

    I hope this helps

    Chris Carter

    Digital Marketing Specialist

    "I specialise in web sales funnel optimisation"

    On 11:51:11 22 October 2008 pergradi1 wrote:

    Hi, my name is Debbie and I launched a new online business selling high quality children and baby clothes in November 2007 www.pergradi.com We are just coming up to the end of our first year and am desperately seeking hints and tips from people regarding how to optimise our site for search and also how to convert visitors into sales once they are there.

    As with any start up we have a limited budget and have been relying on PR and a dabble in adwords to get people to the site so far - the results have been mixed. Any key hints and tips out there....???? Gratefully received especially in the run up to Christmas!

  5. George Chacko

    Programme Manager at Iridium Interactive Europe Ltd

    23 October 2008 09:40am

    George Chacko

    Hi Debbie, we at www.iridiuminteractive.com are into Acquire.Convert.Retain of prospects ie attain eyeballs to the website, convert them to paying customers and have sustained sales through Retain strategies.

    You may want to look at strategy with both Convert and Retain as one as you have captive customers for about a few years. once they shop when they are babies they can stay with you for most of the early years. So think capturing details of baby's date of birth so that you can do email marketing according to the baby's months of aging and the different size clothing needs. Keep the mother as a community member(create an online community called 'New Mommies') and help her understand through white papers and other knowledge items and then also sell her good clothes as her baby is getting older. this is for repeat custom with least efforts. if you synchornise with your offline efforts like a loyalty card, there is nothing like it for the first few years of the baby!

    Please feel free to talk to me anytime for more...

    Thanks and Regards,
    Nish.

    PS: Navigation towards closure of sale is not very helpful.

  6. Eran Ben Sabat

    MD at Runinsight.co.uk

    23 October 2008 16:25pm

    Eran Ben Sabat

    Hi Debbie,

    Since you are on a low budget what I would do is to try and have a relationship with a publisher to get an affiliate traffic to your website.

    I would try and contact a publisher such as http://www.babyfy.com/ since it is very niche market and should work with your products. Try to get into a relationship with them or similar companies.

    I hope this helps.

    Eran

  7. Adrian Kingwell Silver

    Director at Mezzo Marketing

    24 October 2008 09:06am

    Adrian Kingwell

    Hi Debbie,

    You have a lot of good product on your site, and I'd probably use a site like yours to buy a present for one of my nieces, but I found I had to do quite a lot of work to find anything suitable.

    My suggestion is not about driving traffic to your site, but how you convert the traffic that's on it - how you are merchandising your products and what the customer experience is like. Here we go:

    Before anything, what is your target market? Have you asked as many of these people as possible how they normally search for and buy these kinds of products, both online and in the high street? (If you haven't, stand outside outside Mothercare/Osh Kosh/Gap Kids on a Saturday afternoon and talk to them.) What makes them buy? How do they make their decisions? Can they give examples of similar purchases? Take a colour print-out of some of your key pages and ask them for feedback.

    1. Site organisation. Ask them how they expect to find products grouped. Is your website's grouping logical for them - or do they have to dig around a lot to find something interesting? Do they expect to see products grouped by price, by gender, by product type, or by theme? Or do you need a website that can do all these things? It shouldn't be too difficult to add new categories, move products around between categories or to make the same product appear in multiple categories.

    2. Naming. What names would make each category clearer? (I didn't understand what "Home collection" meant or why "Organic collection" didn't refer to food products.) You could make this change relatively simply and it would make a big difference to conversion.

    3. Functionality. Does the site make it easy to "browse"? Think about how people shop in a department store. They pick up several things as they are walking around, and eventually decide to buy one (or two). Many sites let you add items to a "wish list" before making a final decision. Can the site suggest additional items - "You might also like..."?

    In short if you can mirror the real-life customer experience, and make it easy for them to buy, you'll sell more without having to spend more money on advertising.

    Good luck and I hope you have a storming Christmas!

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