Disappointing advertising

[Sally Dickson]

Just thought I would share my sorrows.

I have launched a banner advertising campaign on the NickelOdeon website www.nick.co.uk for my website: www.fairlyoddparents.tv over the weekend. And as it is quite expensive, every day counts...

What we have seen is the following:

Shop Hits: 1125(fri) 1603(sat) 1443(sun)
Computer Games Hits: 179(fri) 267(sat) 241(sun)
Shop. Cart (ca***.pl) 40(fri) 52(sat) 82(sun)
Checkout (os***.pl) 22(fri) 33(sat) 63(sun)

But in fact we have only one sale on Friday, nothing on Sat, nothing on Sun.

So in total: 180 people clicked into shopping cart but only one sale!

We did see the number of names on the database increase by 750 names, under the 'sign up for news and competitions'.

I have spend two hours talking to support this morning, we have improved the look of the checkout pages, removed the T&Cs, changed the text of the payment methods drop-down selection, changed the payment options so paypal is the first choice (60% of our sales come through paypal).

Any other suggestions, we really need this shop to start earning its living!

Please comment on: http://www.fairlyoddparentsshop.com/acatalog/index.html.

[Mike Hughes]

Sally, is the 180 number the number of calls to the checkout script or the actual number of people who reached the first stage of checkout. Remember that the checkout script gets called for each page of the checkout.

I find an easy way to track this is to have a different blank image on each page of the checkout that I call checkout01.gif, checkout02.gif, and then can just look at how many times image is displayed to see where people drop out during checkout.

The other thing I would look at is the practice of displaying the competitors prices on products. Showing a 1p saving against amazon doesn't strike me as likely to boost sales, probably the opposite.

And you should probably take a look at your colour scheme in the checkout. The black text on dark green is hard to view on my monitor and makes it look a bit as if you're hiding the totals.

Mike

[Duncan Rounding]

I don't know your line of business at all but I had a look at the Nick ad which leads you to a flash game. I think that your ad is being seen by kids more than adults - you are then relying upon a nag from the child for Mum or Dad to buy. You didn't mention how many hits you had to your .tv site game relative to the number who clicked thru to your shop.
Personally I think the newsletter signups and orders are what I would've expected - can you see from the types of email addresses that they might perhaps be children.
Again, I may stand corrected for your business - just my opinion.

[Sally Dickson]

Thanks

The blank.gif idea is a good one, and I will programme that in straightaway to monitor.

Good point about the colour scheme, I can also tweak that!

I not sure what to about Amazon when it comes to things like pc-games, do people automatically check your prices against Amazon, in which case it pays to compete or do you just price at a comfortable margin (ie RRP) even if you know products are cheaper elsewhere?

My idea is to do the price comparaison for the customer, on the basis that most of our products are not available elsewhere, so people who like Fairly OddParents have no excuse not to buy their DVDs from us - and also at the same time buy a toy!

[RuralWeb]

I would also suggest kids, trying to see if they can order without having to put in credit card details. They know that some sites will accept an order without payment (credit card details sent separately type of thing) and there is then a chance they will get the goods. I only know because a friends daughter does it

[bwalton]

I recently attended a Google seminar at which they gave some response figures from clicks to orders of around 0.5 - 1% so with 180 visitors your in the ball park, so don't get to dispondent.