Please look at my website

[brunswickheights]

Hi
I have had this website about 4 months with no business what so ever.
I have a counter and get reasonable viewings.
I paid a web designer to do it.
www.brunswickheightscollectibles.co.uk
Yet I sell exactly the same things on my EBay shop Brunswickheights Collectibles and am doing pretty good too!
Basically I want to know where I am going wrong in not getting customers.
Should I display the shipping fees with the items instead of when they get to the check out?
I down load to Google base.
I am doing blogs.
I have joined forums.
Should I advertise the fact I have an EBay shop as well?..........I had a marketing woman from Business Link come round and she said I should..........
I don't know if this is a conflict of interests?
She also suggested that I have the "log in" on the front page.
Incidentally who is the adminstrator of my website? Me or the web designer or both.
Thanks for taking the time to look.
I have to be honest I am not looking to give anyone work as any suggestions
that seem a good idea .I shall get the guy who did the website to do.
Kind regards
Patricia

[fisicx]

Hi Patricia,

You have a basic ecommence site. It is functional and a good range of products.

But...

The site is uninspring. The product descriptions are very 'ebay' and not consistent. If I were a collector I'd want to see proper written descriptions and links to large high quality images.

So you need to analyse where visitors land on the site (and how they got there), how long they stayed on the site and what they did. And most importantly, where they left the site.

The actual site design is unlikely to do well in organic searches. The page titles need a lot of work and you have some badly keyword stuffed meta description and keywords. Get rid of these now before you get penalised. The links are not well optimised, you really need to use HTML links rather than those DB driven things. Anchor text is not the best either.

There are loads more problems with the site but this is secondary to your analysis. You need to investigate visitor behavior to find out what needs fixing. I'd also do a lot of reading on ecommerce, there are loads of books and tutorials on how to build an effective online store. Then start reading up on SEO, marketing, site design, information chunking, persuasive writing, image selection and optimisation...

It's not easy. When I started out I was spending 2-3 hours a day just researching and I'm still learning today (10 years later).

You asked about administation. Whoever has login to the control panel is the administrator. This should be you and nobody else. Once the designer delivered the website they should have no further right to access the site unless you have a support agreement.

I noticed also that you are registered as a non trading individual. You need to update your registration details to include your address, telephone and email.

Hope this helps, Graham

[brunswickheights]

Hi Graham
Thanks you very much for your review of my site.Feel like not bothering now as I have no idea how to do most of the stuff you mentioned.
I have also looked at competitors and they do not seem that much difference.
Is my site that aweful?
My discriptions and photos are much more than most sites,I can tell you.
Would you mind kindly explaining the following, so that at least I can have ago at trying to improve some stuff.
When you say page titles can you enlighten me more ..
"The page titles need a lot of work and you have some badly keyword stuffed meta description and keywords. Get rid of these now before you get penalised. The links are not well optimised, you really need to use HTML links rather than those DB driven things. Anchor text is not the best either."
Titles do you the word at the top like links or privacy?
Badly keyword stuffed meta description and keywords? Sorry what does that mean in laymans language?
The links are not well optimised,sorry again no idea what you mean.
HTML links have no idea about either.
What is anchor text?
Oh and where does it say I am registered as an indivual?
What is a support agreement and where I get one?

I only took on a website to sell things ,as nearing 58 I don't have the time to learn that much about websites.
I thought the idea of engaging a webdesigner was for them to advise you about all the techi stuff?
Kind regards
Patricia

[fisicx]

Hi again Patricia.

Don't give up. You just need to be aware that sites like these can take a year or two before they really begin to pull in business.

The site isn't awful. But if nobody is buying anthing something needs fixing.

The page title is the words in the blue bar at the top of your browser. This is the bit the search engine look at first when they index you site. The page title can be up to 60 characters long asnd should contain all the important bits you want to promote (your keywords). On one page you have:

Brunswickheights Collectibles - MUSTARD POT AND SPOON (Powered by CubeCart)

Most of this is worthless. Far better to have:

Denby mustard pot and spoon, leaf and fern design, £4.99

Do you see how the page title now becomes more enticing?

Every page has some 'hidden code' called the document head. Someone has added a description and keywords. You should delete these immediately. THe keywords tag is huge and contains so many similar keywords that you could be penalised.

The links look like this:

http://www.brunswickheightscollectibles.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=59

which means nothing to the search engine. Cubecart should have a plugin that converts these links to something more user freindly like this:

http://www.brunswickheightscollectibles.co.uk/denby/mustard-pot-and-spoon.php

Your designer should be able to advise on this.

Anchor text is the bit you see on the screen that links to another page. you use CAPITALS, this is the equivalent of SHOUTING on the internet. Use lowercase. Reduce your category list on the left. Put more links with thumbnails in the homepage. Better still put actual products on the homepage.

Your registration details are public. anyone can see them: whois details

If you go to your host's website you should be able to login and change your registrastion details. If not then try here: nominet

Running an online store takes a lot of time and effort. You do need to do a lot of research to make it successful. Your designer has put together a very basic ecommenrce site but it's now up to you to do all the work to make it a success. You may be consider your images and descriptions better than your competitors but you aren't selling anything. You need to find out why and make the necessary changes.

A support agreement is where you pay someone to maintain the site, fix any problems, upgrade the application and include the widgets and plugins that you need to improve the site. CubeCart is not the best there is but it does the job. They have good support forums and loads of features you could add.

I must stress however that a site like yours needs constant attention. You need to work every at analysing your visitors, adjusting the workds on the page, colours, font sizes, positions, images. And you need to read, read and read some more. I could spend a whole day with you and still only skim over the basics. The only way to improve things is to find out how what doesn't work and fix it. And to do that you need to understand how ecommenrce functions and how people use websites.

Not trying to lecture you but an enterprise like this is going to take up hundreds of hours of your time over the next year before it become a success.

[brunswickheights]

Thanks where and how do I remove "Every page has some 'hidden code' called the document head. Someone has added a description and keywords. You should delete these immediately. THe keywords tag is huge and contains so many similar keywords that you could be penalised.

The links look like this:

Code:
http://www.brunswickheightscollectib...ductId=59which means nothing to the search engine. Cubecart should have a plugin that converts these links to something more user freindly like this:

Code:
http://www.brunswickheightscollectib...-and-spoon.php

Should the web designer do this.....................have I added it when doing discriptions,I didn't know about the http bit being there first?
Looks silly doesn't it.
Would it be possible to actually speak to you so that I can understand what needs to be done so that I can tell my website deisgner or do it myself,he charges £20.00 a session and is not the not the most helpful guy.
I cannot pay much ,but would be happy to pay a small fee.
Many thanks
Patricia

[TWD-Tony]

I wouldn't worry to much about the link looking like http://www.brunswickheightscollectib...p;productId=59 most of the search engines can read, index and rank a site with these type of links without problem... The only time that changing these links into more "human looking" ones is of benefit is if you are planning on some sort of deep linking stratedgy and then the modified links are easier to work with.
If you decide in the future to go with "human links" then it is quite easy to redirect the old links to the new links.

[brunswickheights]

Thanks .......thats saves me a bit of work.

[brunswickheights]

Otherwise you agree with what the other guy says?

[TWD-Tony]

Totally - The page titles are the number 1 concern.

Luckily for you - you are using an "off the shelf" ecommerce system so it should be very easy to change the output of the page titles to a more acceptible format.

At the moment you have <SITE NAME> <PRODUCT DESCRIPTION> (powered by cubecart

with a bit of code re-jigging you should be able to achieve

<PRODUCT DESCRIPTION> <PRODUCT PRICE> <SITE NAME> or similar quite easily...

A good tip here is to keep this in mind when you are creating your product descriptions, the descriptions should be unique to the product and attractive...

Examples of bad descriptions:

WIDGET - BLUE
WIDGET - YELLOW
WIDGET - GREEN

You are better off with

Stunning Blue Widget
Attractive Yellow Widget
Bold Green Widget

You see the difference and how that would look in your revised page titles?

[dependx]

It appears without doubt that you've taken a considerable amount of time to establish your online presence, that's a mistake made by most aspiring online entreprenuers. It can lead to serious fustration as in -- why is this not happening for me?

And it won't. Some are happy to make a sale or two a day and feel that things will just some how catch on and make a real splash into online retailing so that's their hope.

But, atleast you aren't sitting back and waiting for a major correction in market penetration -- I say that you are good for that.

However,

You will need to go back and find a river of good luck with in your established framework, such as, offer a plate as a prize for just visiting the site. And tell your traffic about how you are giving an article away each week to those who stop by to visit. (from that approach)

Then you need to lock those guests into reading your material about something interesting in the making of plates or collectibles. The reading should expand into pictures of your friends or relatives holding the plates in their hands with big smiles. They might even be wearing a t-shirt of you company, something that you could sell too!

If you notice a following happening (send email updates), make it cut right through you present design and spread out into all areas of you site. This way you won't have to redesign everything this week or next week. Just focus on capturing their attention and then get them to reach a bit farther week after week, month after month.

otherwise, I would have to say that your site might awaken a dog if it had some high-pitched sounds, but don't expect much more ......this is common with website stores.

I didn't make up the suggestions and let me repeat, you'll need to put some human interest into the scheme of things! be creative!!