My Online Store is Getting hits but not Making Sales - Open Day for Wedsite Critics

webtargets

I have put a lot of work into a website www.IrishCelticArtStudio.com

It got off to a pretty good start back in August (averaging 2 or 3 sales a week) but it has now been a month since I have made a single sale.

I'm getting an average of 25 visitors a day organically and am planning another adwords campaign for the run up to xmas.

Is October a quiet month in the gift industry or am I doing something very
wrong?

If I am making any rookie mistakes then I would love to hear about it.

Please feel free to take it for a test drive and get back to me with your opinions. Be as ruthless as you like.

I really would value some advice here.

Eoin

When I get to the checkout, the page stops rendering and it's blank (screenshot attached).

When I check the HTML, I can see the following:

<script type="text/javascript">countryRegions = <br />
<b>Fatal error</b>:  Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24 bytes) in <b>/home7/brianduf/public_html/shop/lib/Varien/Object.php</b> on line <b>180</b><br />

Edit - the site is seriously slow for me as well.

Design wise - well, it's what I would expect from an online store, and I wouldn't have any problems navigating around the site personally.

leeroybrown

Similarly to eoin I get a blank checkout. You need to increase (or get an administrator to increase) the memory_limit in the php.ini file. It's currently set to 32MB based on that error which appears to be too low for the e-commerce system you're using.

The site is also quite slow for me.

SunshineCyclist

Hi I have only had a chance to have a brief look at your website, so forgive my ignorance but i do have to say that i think it looks great. A website on it's own will not guarantee you a living however!

I think your biggest issue here is getting your name out there. I'm afraid 25 hits a day will not be enough to get an average of one sale a day! I would advise you to start concentrating on promotion, marketing and incentives for people to buy on your site, easier said than done i know!

Really start working on identifying your target audience and do whatever is necessary to let them know about your website and products. For example I'm sure a large portion of american tourists who visit ireland would be interested in this website if there was an incentive for them to buy. Partner with a travel agent, give special offers, offer free postage.. think outside the box !!

Just saw Eoin's post late, fix that error!

forbairt

Magento is a bit of a beast especially on shared / vps hosting there are a few things you can do still it hits a shared mysql server pretty hard.

As has been said ... 25 hits a day isn't that much ... what is the average time on the site are they browsing the site or going away immediately ?

25 hits a day is what about 750 hits a month what type of ROI were you expecting on that ?

(For example I check komplett quite a bit potentially visit it once a day or more ... but I've only bought from them twice in the past year)

leeroybrown

One small design suggestion. You also have a lot of static image content in the upper half of the site. Set explicit explicit heights and widths for this static content as it will otherwise cause the site content to jump around the place when loading on slow internet connections when someone first visits a specific page. Even on my fairly fast connection the site takes a few seconds to settle down.

Beyond that your issues are probably in getting people to your site and I'm not expert enough in marketing to address that. You really do need to get your hits up significantly especially when you consider that price-wise this will probably one of the most competitive Christmas gift markets ever on the high street before you even consider other websites.

dvpower

Its a nice enough site, but its painfully s l o w ....

The site looks fine, but runs slow. As others said, Magento is a bit of a resource hog. Would it be an option to move the install to a VPS?

Regarding visitors, have you done much work on SEO? What you are selling should go down well abroad. An adwords campaign might be worth a punt.

DrivingInfo

I didn't go ahead with a shop project because of all the comments about the lag in Magento, Just look up Magento speed on Google and you will see.

Users get p****d off if your site is to slow, also check your bounce rate for pages and see trends of visitors.

site looks very well, just a bit toooooooo slow. sorry

remus808

I know this isn't strictly related to design, but it does answer your question: your prices are extortionate. (see here)

RoadKillTs

I have to say the site looks fine but I do agree with the poster above the first thing I thought when I seen the site was that the prices seem very high.

You also have to take into account the currency changes aswell seeing as Americans may be buying your products.

MOH

There's a few things you can do to try to optimise Magento, but if WebTargets designed the site and are supporting it that's probably something they should be doing for you. You might end up needing a better hosting plan.

webtargets

Thanks for all your replies. I wil try to answer everyones questions in one go.

Averagt time on site: 2:39
bounce rate: 0.00%
Pages Per visit: 7

I'm embarassed that the site crashed. I thought I had fixed that memory alllocation problem on the host server and was shocked when I got a call from a customer about it on saturday morning.

I have also done an adwords campaign but didnt get any ROI last time around. I have concinced the owner to give me another shot at adwords for the run up to xmas. I have an adwords book now and hope to see some ROI this time round.

I agree that 25 customers isnt enough and think the holiday company alliance idea was a good one.

The checkout is now working if anybody wishes to check that out. Thanks again for all your replies. Please keep them coming

webtargets

oh yes, about the slowness. Currently the site is hosted with hostmonster on a shared environment. they dont do VPS or Private Servers. Moving the whole site to another hosting provider could be a headache. Do people really think the site is unacceptably slow??

Eoin

The speed looks a little better today. I got as far as the payment details section of the checkout. I think the site itself is well enough laid out, and I wouldn't have any problems using the site. Not much there I would want to buy, but I'm probably not the target market.

TheWaterboy

The layout and design of the website is good but as a shopper a few simple things would really annoy me.

On the product page you should default the qty to 1 and not blank. Otherwise you are forcing a person to enter something before they click Add to Cart.

The estimate shipping and tax is strange too. Im been charged 10 euro to ship a Claddagh Failte to Ireland. Thats a crazy price. Also shipping should be worked out automatically based on the country they enter. Your giving the buyer something else to do and thus another reason not to proceed with the purchase.

I detest having to register when I check out - however its good that you have the option to be checkout as a Guest.

Just spoted a big boo boo - Why would I give you my credit card details and its not a secure site. There is also no information on who processes your credit card payments. This is vital to get sorted ASAP.

Just regarding sales - some of the biggest websites would consider 4%-5% pruchase to visitor rate to be good. So for every 100 visitors 4 - 5 purchases would be normal. Dont get disheartened with your lack of sales. It will take time.

Also you need to do some work on your SEO and page titles - In the "For Him" category the page title is "men". This has no relevance - Even something simple like "Gifts for Him | Gifts for Men" is of more relevance.

Good luck with it.

Macca07

Its a bit slow but not unacceptably slow.
Regarding ur hits and sales, I don't know enough about this so can't help u.
Check it again at the end of this month.
What was the sales to hits ratio for previous months?
Can understand October being a quiet month as coming upto Christmas and ppl not spending.
Looking to get into something similar myself

tricky D

TheWaterboy wrote: »

Just spoted a big boo boo - Why would I give you my credit card details and its not a secure site. There is also no information on who processes your credit card payments. This is vital to get sorted ASAP.

Good spot. This is a showstopper. No lock in the corner, no sale. Bad practice. I've the fear that the payments are processed by hand with the CC info being stored locally and likely without the adequate security which would be needed.


I simply wouldn't give any advice on how to improve sales on an unsecured site.

RoadKillTs

Just spoted a big boo boo - Why would I give you my credit card details and its not a secure site. There is also no information on who processes your credit card payments. This is vital to get sorted ASAP.

That's a major oversight. You need to get that resolved.

Eoin

Whoops, can't believe I missed that! While I don't believe that SSL on its own is much protection, the lack of it indicates a poor setup. For what it's worth, I like the clear checkout process steps, but that's quite irrelevant, until the security is sorted out.

webtargets

Yes no ssl. I have been putting it off and thought the paypal option at checkout might cut it. You're right. I agree. I will get SSL going now asap.

Big thanks again to everyone for their comments. there were some really good ones there such as default 1 for quantity and remove shipping calculator.

Thanks again, and by all means - keep them coming