E-Commerce Fact Or Fiction?

judge

What do you do when you have tried everything spent a fortune on experts most of which are not but are not but you only really find out when you have spent your hard earned money.Turn To the Start Up Nation Forum where you get the best and most honest advise and help from people that have done it the hard way.My StoryFor a long time I had a passion and dream to work from home marketing and retailing on the net.So I embarked on a journey to learn everything I could about web design, SEO, copy writing and e-marketing. I devoured everything I could from every source I could find very aware of applying everything I have learned. Where I could I hired help.What have I achieved poor ranking, hardly any sales.Now Iam not one to give up very easily, but sometimes wonder if unless you are a large corporate with an unlimited budget if it is all an urban myth that you can make money on the net. I am determined to succeed and find a way.So take a look at my website www.classico.com.au slice and dice it and tell me whats wrong? What can I do to get Google to rank me I have, carefully selected my key words, made sure that they are in the copy,made sure the site is easy to navigate, written and published articles sent hundreds of requests for reciprocal links, put a video on you tube to no avail.Out of  every ten visitors I get only 1 out of ten actually buy.Please Help I know there is someone who can help out thereregardsBrian

MNGrillGuy

I always thought 1 outa 10 was good?  What are you expecting for a convert ratio?  I thought 1 was good, 2 is great and 3 is crazy. 
Sounds to me like you need more visitors, not a better ratio. 

Webline

Well, for your SEO .... I think you have too many keywords in your metas, try knocking it down to maybe the 20 most relevant on your index page. Then keywords for every other page should be more defined for that page. Your links have titles, but they`re too generic. Instead of "Main Page", "Shopping Cart", "About Us", try something like "Classico Designer Ties Home Page", "Online Shopping for Classico Designer Ties", etc. Put alt tags in all of your image tags.Who are you sending link requests too? Relevant sites? How are you wording your requests?You don`t have much textual content on your pages; the images are fine, but search engines don`t read images, they want to see actual words that your visitors would see. Create more text that uses your keywords.

vwebworld

I could not get your checkout page to connect (https).
Also, when I added an item to the cart... it did not show that anything was added to the shopping cart (at the top of the page).
It seems your site requires the customer to register FIRST before they can see how much the product will cost (with shipping). It would be better to allow people to see the cart and then decide to buy/register.
~Rolandvwebworld2007-8-28 22:0:50

EccoPoint

My 2 cents.  First, fix your Title Tag.  You sell neckties or mens ties, so this should be your first few words of your title tag. Having Italian Designed Pure Woven is not a key word or phase I would search for. 
To many graphics and contrasting colors, take my eye away from the primary product, the NECK TIE. You want to draw you web visitors eyes to your product, not your heading, or side links and graphics.  Fix the broken image on the home page.  Makes it look like you are not sure what you are doing or do not care to fix it, therefore I would I order from you.
And most important, yours is the first e-commerce I have come across that REQUIRES a potential customer to signup and provide you my information before I can even see what I have add to the chart and what my shipping cost will be.  Shipping is VERY important in online transactions.  Let your customers know before they even start the checkout process what they will expect to pay in total for their order.  Collect the custom information during checkout, like 99.99% of e-commerce sites do.
Oh and I TOTALLY agree with MNGrillGuy statement. 1 out of ten is an awesome ratio!  I wish I had that. )EccoPoint2007-8-28 21:48:50

vwebworld

... While your website is open to the world, it seems you only sell to Australia.
I say this because your registration form only allows Australian addresses/cities.
So, if you only sell to Australia:
(1) you should say that on your site.
(2) you are limiting your market
(3) you need to get specific market feedback about the Australian market.
~Roland

Victor363

What do you do when you have tried everything spent a fortune on experts most of which are not but are not but you only really find out when you have spent your hard earned money.Turn To the Start Up Nation Forum where you get the best and most honest advise and help from people that have done it the hard way.My StoryFor a long time I had a passion and dream to work from home marketing and retailing on the net.So I embarked on a journey to learn everything I could about web design, SEO, copy writing and e-marketing. I devoured everything I could from every source I could find very aware of applying everything I have learned. Where I could I hired help.What have I achieved poor ranking, hardly any sales.Now Iam not one to give up very easily, but sometimes wonder if unless you are a large corporate with an unlimited budget if it is all an urban myth that you can make money on the net. I am determined to succeed and find a way.So take a look at my website www.classico.com.au slice and dice it and tell me whats wrong?What can I do to get Google to rank me I have, carefully selected my key words, made sure that they are in the copy,made sure the site is easy to navigate, written and published articles sent hundreds of requests for reciprocal links, put a video on you tube to no avail.Out of  every ten visitors I get only 1 out of ten actually buy.Please Help I know there is someone who can help out thereregardsBrianHi Brian,Welcome to the vicious game of e-commerceI`ve never met a service provider, nor a freelancer on any forum, that didn`t claim they were a god-like expert in all things e-commerce related. It is pretty overwhelming for an e-commerce neophyte. Especially given that there is an incredibly large amount of incorrect information in circulation. Online selling, as a science, has been around for less than ten years.  Allot of teachings and wisdom, from as little as 6 months ago, is now obsolete. Its disinformation. Thus, its really up to you to gather your own expertise, opposed to relying on the so called experts. Honestly, until you gain that acumen, trying to find one of these real guru`s by yourself is time probably better spent increasing your own knowledge.That having been said, and given my desperate need for a break from coding PHP and CSS, I`m going to do my best to point your site into the right direct (towards higher conversions). I kind of like your style to be honest.First off, be aware that success in online sales is a slippery upward slope. This is because of how Google works when ranking sites (or charging them for ppc ads). Basically, Google wants to ensure a positive user experience - this means connecting potential buyers with the most relevant online business to their query. In the context of e-commerce, Google defines relevance by a websites conversion rate. Thanks to dating mining from their free analytics program (and soon website optimizer), Google has trained their algorithms to recognize high converting websites with the most traffic and the cheapest adwords prices.You have allot of information articles - you should exploit into properly designed landing pages. You must understand, that SEO is no longer about metatags and titles - it is about delivering your potential customers to a product benefit that satisfies their reason for typing in their search querry. This is the main failing of your product pages. You need to change them into landing pages, with a more relevant headline. This is why keyword research  is imperative. My PHP is beckoning me, so I`m going to make some quick pointers. 1) change your product pages headlines to match search engine queries. 2) Get bigger add to cart buttons on the landing pages, user underlined hyperlinks on the index pages 3) Either fix your shopping cart, or have vwebworld install zen cart for you. 4)Registrations always lose you money in the short run! Its the true carnivores, like amazon.com and proflowers that turn this into long run gain.5)Remove the clutter from the left part of the site6) don`t split hairs about SEO; this is not 5 years ago where you could fool Google into thinking your site was most relevant by programming sites directly for the search engines.7) Don`t waste your time on linking schemes - done wrongly it will be damaging. Done correctly, its only of minute benefit.Good luck with your endeavors!Victorvictor3632007-8-31 15:34:45

HondoTech

How does that saying go? Cant see the forest for the trees or something along those lines?
Site issues aside since they have been addressed by other people, your selling a commodity product, a tie.  You can get a tie in every dept. store, wal-mart ,etc.
You need to do it better than anyone else (your site isn`t) and the customer needs a compelling reason to even buy a tie off the web.  For me at least, there is no emotion, no passion, etc. when it comes to buying a tie. I have never though to myself, "Slamdunk! I just nailed the perfect tie to go with..."
Realistically I don`t believe you will ever get the traffic you want simply because of the product your selling unless you can turn it into an emotional purchase.  Put a couple hot Italian female models on your site and in your video tying ties instead of a chubby Australian male and give it some sex appeal.
Give me a reason not to buy at a dept. store / wal-mart and buy one from you instead.