Conversions for my eCommerce site is low.

**steveorg** · Feb 21, 2013 13:16

I've recently launched Priced Right Brands to market generic refills of Braun Clean & Renew cartridges. I'm getting a surprisingly low level of conversions.

The first problem is that people are not starting the purchase process. This is a surprise given the high value of the product. Most of my traffic is driven by search, but this especially hurts for traffic driven by Adwords. Suggestions on improving 'Add to cart' activity would be appreciated.

The second problem is a high percentage of abandoned carts. This is not surprising because the shipping cost can be high and I have obtained feedback that is an issue. There's not much I can do about shipping costs. My rates are highly discounted UPS rates, which are better than I can get from USPS and Fedex and I'm already subsidizing the cost. I am considering raising the price a little and subsidize the shipping even more so the ratio of price to shipping will be better. Does anyone think that will help? Any other suggestions for dealing with the shipping issue would be appreciated.

Steve

**davidjwest** · Feb 22, 2013 07:28

Does your analytics tell you how people are getting to your site?

Are they getting there by searching for something unrelated and not really wanting your product?

Make the "add to cart" buttons a bit more visible, bigger, brighter.

Maybe make it obvious why they should buy your product, a bit of text to explain.

**steveorg** · Feb 22, 2013 11:06

As I said, "Most of my traffic is driven by search...". To be more specific, it's Google search based on mostly appropriate key words. I say "mostly" because the search terms are 80% similar to 'Braun Clean & Renew refills', which is exactly what I sell. However, sometimes the search term is just 'Braun Clean & Renew', which could be a search for a shaver.

The add to cart button could be more prominent. I'll see if there's a way I can do that.

I have no ideas on how to make the "why" more obvious, but perhaps I'm too deeply immersed and need to see the site through new eyes. Any content suggestions would be appreciated.

**StoreCoach** · Feb 22, 2013 15:37

There are a lot of things I would change but briefly, here are the highlights (or lowlights):

- Having a different image for each product would help - it is a very bland looking website, otherwise.

- Requiring potential customers to create an account is an absolute conversion killer. NEVER make an account a requirement for buying something!

- Because I didn't feel like creating an account, I couldn't tell if you had a real payment processor or are just using PayPal. A HUGE number of people abandon their cart when taken to the off-site PayPal payment page because even though you and I know that you don't need a PayPal account to pay with a credit card, PayPal makes it seem like you do on their payment page.

- I don't think I have ever been to a website before that had no categories. A grand total of six products that aren't the same, but look the same, are listed on the home page, which is the only way to get to them. You would think that a company named "Priced Right Brands" would have more than one type of product and certainly more than one brand.

- All of the product pages say exactly the same thing. Amazing that hasn't become a duplicate content issue (yet).

- The home page has no content at all. I have no idea how this website is ranking anywhere with absolutely no content on the home page to index.

- Your title tag on the home page is not optimized for anything someone would search for

- Because nobody that I could find was selling these in quantities of 12, maybe re-enforcing the fact that there are twelve with a picture of twelve refills side-by-side would help drive the point across that they are getting a TON of refills for the money!!

**BillO** · Feb 23, 2013 04:47

By "conversions" I assume you mean "sales." Is there something wrong with useing the proper word from the English language? I guess to some people, "selling" and "sales" are negative terms. Sorry, just one of my pet peeves. I believe in using clear language.

I'm not sure what the product is. It isn't clear. It says Braun at the top, but then the fine print says, "Not a Braun product." I think you need to make it clearer that this is not a Braun product. This is a refill for ... what?

The Website is not real attractive. It doesn't give me the feeling that I'd be dealing with a legitimate business. I'd be nervous. Every picture is identical, and every description is identical. Only the quantity, and scent changes. Therefore, why keep duplicating the same information and picture? A drop down list with quantity and scent might work better.

Is this your only product? Who makes it, if it's not Braun?

**bestwebsites** · Feb 27, 2013 07:06

which payment gateway you use for your website ?

**RichardAskew** · Feb 27, 2013 08:30

You really need to get the whole site behind a secure connection or at very least your checkout pages. An EV certificate gives you the green bar that you see on many big sites/banks and they are proven to increase conversions, assuming you have the traffic of course. When we rolled out an EV cert on ours conversions increased.

**RichardAskew** · Feb 27, 2013 08:32

Originally Posted by RichardAskew

You really need to get the whole site behind a secure connection or at very least your checkout pages. An EV certificate gives you the green bar that you see on many big sites/banks and they are proven to increase conversions, assuming you have the traffic of course. When we rolled out an EV cert on ours conversions increased.

Hmmm, switched to HTTPS now on the checkout pages. Wasn't doing that a second ago.

**steveorg** · Feb 27, 2013 12:45

Thanks Storecoach and Billo. They are very helpful comments and I made several changes based on your feedback.

First let me defend the use of the word "conversions". Not only is it proper English, I think that in context it is much more appropriate than the word "sales". The usage flows from all analytics and advertising platforms. "Conversions" is the end-point of the advertising and marketing process that considers how the prospect was obtained and how the desired action was completed. In this case conversions result in sales, but that is not true in all situations.

A little more background is in order. The product is targeted at buyers that already own a Braun shaver that uses Clean & Renew cartridges. Since they already understand it, an explanation of the product when a prospect comes to the site would require loss of focus on the main reason that they should buy, which is the extremely low price. Even so, I think that the "refill for what" is pretty obvious. The first thing a visitor sees is the liquid being poured into a cartridge, so the "what" must be the cartridge. However, to the uninitiated, the point of the cartridge may not be obvious.

Priced Right Brands is a very new business that so far manufactures one product, but there are other products in the development pipeline. They fall under the umbrella of inexpensive generic replacements of name brand consumables. With any luck the next product will launch within a few weeks.

Accordingly, for now I'm stuck with one product and one category. There is a category page called "Braun Clean & Renew", which is not obvious because the home page and category page are very similar. When new products are added, the home page will be revised. All the SEO is on the category and product pages, which is why I get any rankings.

However, I added a new category called "Other Products" that explains the reason for one category.

The variety as noted by BillO is in the scents and sizes. The main reason that I created the variety is to get additional shelf space on sites like Amazon, eBay and Google Products. When people see the same product and picture frequently, they are more likely to click through and make a purchase. It's analogous to the fight over shelf space in retail stores, which gave us among other travesties New Coke and Classic Coke.

I was thinking that the variety would also provide my site with a sense of substance. Storecoach's and Billo's comments disabused me of that notion!

All it did was reduce clarity. Accordingly, I consolidated into two products - 6 refills and 12 refills, each with a choice of scents. I also made changes to the banner on top that makes the choices obvious and adds more 'great-value' ammunition. There has always been a second picture, so on one of the products I swapped it in as the primary picture to deal with Storecoach's comment on picture variety.

The site does not require registration. Storecoach - I suppose that you assumed that registration is required because of the My Account link? That could be a common assumption, so I removed the link. If you had another reason for the assumption please let me know so I can figure out a way of fixing it.

I hadn't considered that there are people that are uncomfortable with the possibility of Paypal registration. That right column exists to provide a sense of security to the shopper, hence the "Verified By Paypal". I managed to find a couple of free and credible trust badges to replace "Verified By Paypal". If anyone knows of any other legitimate trust badges that are free or cost next to nothing, please let me know.

bestwebsites - Did you even look at the site? The answer is in the previous paragraph.

RichardAskew - When I read your first message I went WTF?

Thanks for posting the correction.

**arhitect** · Feb 28, 2013 15:01

Hello,

I have reviewed your site and i think you need to make some major aprovements.

1.) Find a freelancer that has experience in design, pay him around 300$ to make you a clean modern design.

2.) You need to show more products on your frontpage, to let people know that you're running a big store. First impression is always important.

3.) Add live chat to your site. That way users with any questions before the purchase, can contact you trough live chat and you can help them trough the sales, or provide a better explanation of a specific product they're interested in.

4.) Go on 99designs.com , find logo to suit your niche, and replace it with the current logo that you have on site. You need recognition.

5.) Add social buttons like facebook, twitter, google+ and make company pages on each.

6.) Replace the images of credit cards and other low quality images with high quality ones...

.............
That is only my opinion, and i'm 99% shure it can nicely increase your conversions.

**navyfalcon** · Feb 28, 2013 17:46

<title>Welcome to Priced Right Brands - Pay Less, Get More</title> (51 characters)

<META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Save up to 75%! Refills for Braun Clean & Renew cartridges
and Philips Norelco Jet Clean Solution.">

Keywords checked using http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
<META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="
braun 269
Clean & Renew xxx
clean 82897
renew 248
norelco 294
norelco shavers 105
philips norelco 105
philips 858
jet clean solution 6
norelco jet clean solution 2
CCR6
CCR2
CCR3
HQ200
refill 267
">

Welcome to Priced Right Brands - Pay Less, Get More seo spam
Save up to 75%! Refills for Braun Clean & Renew cartridges and Philips Norelco Jet Clean
Solution.
www.pricedrightbrands.com - Cached
- - - -
This is a check of the meta tags of your site
Try placing your name last and your good keywords first in the title
Clean is an excellent keyword, I would place that word first
You can have 66 characters (including spaces in the title. You have 51)
Repeat some of your best keywords in the description
Repeat some of your best keywords in the first paragraph (you may want to add an introduction or something so you can)
- or describe the products.
You can have up to 150 characters (including spaces) in the description.
-
This should help your page position and traffic
(FYI) for your information - sales is the correct term for your website (conversions is a general term).
-
hope this helps
falcon

**ajay4seo** · Mar 1, 2013 05:16

Hi,

I have a one question.
Is your website or it's payment gateway is secure means do you have ssl security certificate for the website. If not than it can be the reason of low conversions.

**BillO** · Mar 2, 2013 05:51

Originally Posted by bestwebsites

which payment gateway you use for your website ?

On the one eCommerce site I built for a client, I used Zen Cart. I liked it, though I found it a bit difficult at first to learn how to customize it. That was partly because I was still unfamiliar with it, never having used it (let alone any other shopping cart) before.

Zen Cart is really a complete package, not just simply "shopping cart" software. But, I had already built my clients site from scratch, and when it came time to work on the eCommerce end of it, I couldn't see "re-inventing the wheel," so to speak, so I installed Zen Cart and customized it so that it would, more or less, look like her main site. I was able to achieve the same look and feel using the same header from the main site, etc. As it turned out, it was a good idea to do it this way too, because it saved me a lot of time. All I had to do was upload the products and descriptions with prices, and some photos. This, she was supposed to do herself, but I found out she had no idea how to do such things, and didn't want to learn (she said she didn't have the time), so I became her Webmaster/maintenance guy, and did the site updates for her on a monthly basis for a fee.

Zen Cart is worth checking into. I wouldn't hesitate to use it again, but I'm not sure I want to get into building eCommerce sites again. I think I'd rather just build static sites for companies.

**BillO** · Mar 2, 2013 06:13

So, you remember "New Coke" and "Classic Coke!" Your dating yourself!

If you are interested in marketing (and I think you must be), here is a book that is very informative and a fascinating read by a couple of experts in marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout: "Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind." It is about positioning your products (and your company) in the mind of consumers, and includes many case histories. Very excellent book. I attended two One Day Seminars some years back that were put on by Jack Trout. I learned a lot.

**BillO** · Mar 2, 2013 07:04

Originally Posted by arhitect

Hello,

I have reviewed your site and i think you need to make some major aprovements.

1.) Find a freelancer that has experience in design, pay him around 300$ to make you a clean modern design.

2.) You need to show more products on your frontpage, to let people know that you're running a big store. First impression is always important.

3.) Add live chat to your site. That way users with any questions before the purchase, can contact you trough live chat and you can help them trough the sales, or provide a better explanation of a specific product they're interested in.

4.) Go on 99designs.com , find logo to suit your niche, and replace it with the current logo that you have on site. You need recognition.

5.) Add social buttons like facebook, twitter, google+ and make company pages on each.

6.) Replace the images of credit cards and other low quality images with high quality ones...

.............
That is only my opinion, and i'm 99% shure it can nicely increase your conversions.

For $300, I wouldn't bother. There are far too many hours involved in a custom design, and writing the code that displays the artwork, creating the index files, template(s), etc., let alone the fact that this is an eCommerce site. Surely you are joking, especially when considering that you are also suggesting that "live chat" be added. Get real.

What he has now is a $300 site.

What he could do is to look into Joomla! and a free template.

**arhitect** · Mar 4, 2013 00:46

BillO it looks like you don't know much about what i talked about.

Modifying existing design template does not require creating any big codes, index files etc, as this he already has. For 300$ on freelancer he can get a very professional design for his website and it will be unique.

With your suggestion of joomla and a free template he would only have a 'clone' as the free template he would use is used by at least 100 more ecommerce websites, and that can be bad for his business.

Next time rather don't reply on my comments, as you lack of experience i have as programmer and developer.

Good day.

**steveorg** · Mar 19, 2013 09:39

Thanks all for your input. These latest comments prompted an early response by a day or two, because I decided to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch and the site in almost ready to go. You can see the development version at dev.pricedrightbrands.com. The front end is 95% complete. Most of the work left to launch is some back-end and operational functionality, and SEO.

The reason I switched from my old e-commerce provider (3dcart) was the limitations on design. It's stuck in a web 1.0 world and the ecommerce functionality was way overkill when you have as few products as I do. The limitations on design would have pre-empted the custom design for $300 option, which otherwise was a great idea (thanks arhitect!). 3dcart has a disjointed and disfunctional template system. I think they keep it that way to force customers to use their design services that are $1,000+. As a startup, I do not have that kind of moolah!

I have Joomla skills, so that seemed to be the best way to go (is BillO prescient?). I adapted a Yootheme (killer and incredibly flexible themes for Joomla and Wordpress).

However, none of the Joomla ecommerce add-ons fit all of my needs (some came close), which included: the ability to embed Buy Now buttons and a shopping cart on any page, coupons, a decent affiliate program (I'll be adding Jam from Jrox in a few weeks) and integration with shipping software such as Ship Station that also integrates with Ebay and Amazon. I decided to go with Ecwid, which does have a Joomla module that I'm not using.

I obtained most of the graphics from Fiverr for $5 or $10 (plus some tipping for great work at ridiculous prices).

Very importantly, I fixed a branding issue that I should have seen from the beginning. The site has a brand (Priced Right Brands), but the first product didn't. As you can see on the site, the name of the product is now Shaver Shebang.

navyfalcon - Thanks for the great SEO insights. I'll be using them on the new site. Where did the words "seo spam" come from?

ajay4seo - The important pages are SSL secure.

I appreciate all feedback and keep it coming! However, please hold off on new SEO comments for a few days until after launch since I haven't put that together yet.

Steve

**chargin8** · Mar 24, 2013 23:11

At first glance I liked the design, there do seem to be some issues with the "feel" of the site though.
I build a lot of ecommerce sites and I shop online a LOT, so I sort of have a feel for the way ecommerce stores look.
This one almost doesnt look formal enough. Perhaps have a plain background behind the content would help, keep the colourful background either side only.
product images dont really look professional either, a bit small perhaps and not really "real" looking.
Also, I have no idea what the product is, maybe I skipped over things a bit fast and concentrated on the product page, I saw braun and though shaver refills, but its some sort of liquid for a vacuum cleaner or something??

**steveorg** · Mar 27, 2013 15:05

Originally Posted by chargin8

At first glance I liked the design, there do seem to be some issues with the "feel" of the site though.
I build a lot of ecommerce sites and I shop online a LOT, so I sort of have a feel for the way ecommerce stores look.
This one almost doesnt look formal enough. Perhaps have a plain background behind the content would help, keep the colourful background either side only.
product images dont really look professional either, a bit small perhaps and not really "real" looking.
Also, I have no idea what the product is, maybe I skipped over things a bit fast and concentrated on the product page, I saw braun and though shaver refills, but its some sort of liquid for a vacuum cleaner or something??

The name of this thread is "Conversions for my eCommerce site is low." What you see now is a totally new site and the conversion rate is now on the high side of my expectations!

I mention that to respond to the concept about the site not being "formal" enough. If I was selling luxury goods or table linens, that would probably be a good observation. However, I do not see the relevance in this case. The look and feel should be consistent with the products to whatever extent reasonable (which I believe I've accomplished), but mostly the product and it's details should be communicated as clearly and succinctly as possible, while instilling confidence that it is a good product and a dependable company that provides secure transactions. I also think that the site does that.

You are right about the not "real" looking product images. That's because the label was changed and then superimposed on existing photography. However, we will soon be changing the packaging, so these images will have to do for a few weeks. I did add a light box so full size images are now available.

I'm not buying the "I have no idea what the product is". You must have more than skipped over reading it, but you still absorbed "braun and thought shaver refills". That's correct, but how is it even remotely possible to come away with "liquid for a vacuum cleaner"?

Thanks for the feedback. It made me think about potential issues and led to the new light boxes.

Steve

**webcosmo** · Mar 27, 2013 16:03

Hi, just wanted to say i just LOVE the look and feel of the website, everything is great, especially the background. A problem though, i can`t see the pics in your front page carousel.... I`m using Chrome. Maybe is temporary, i don`t know.

**steveorg** · Mar 30, 2013 10:16

Originally Posted by webcosmo

Hi, just wanted to say i just LOVE the look and feel of the website, everything is great, especially the background. A problem though, i can`t see the pics in your front page carousel.... I`m using Chrome. Maybe is temporary, i don`t know.

Thanks, webcosmo. Pats on the back are always welcome! :-) I've tested the carousel in Chrome on several computers, including a 12 year old machine that's running Win 7. (It's useful as a file and print server, but not much else). The problem seems to be specific to your computer.