Customer dropout at checkout stage?

[jxm28788]

Most of my UK competitors show less than me.

Your goal is to be as good as or better than your best competitors, rather than better than the worst...

The site you found for Attack! (Eagle Games) is the manufacturer!

Something I found on my previous sites is that most manufacturers will say yes if you ask if you can use the product images from their website... this saves taking product pictures yourself, and they are usually of a high quality...

And it arrived this morning! That's pretty good going for 'standard parcel' posted on Monday. I don't think I'll be getting too much work done today...

[acompton]

John,

I hope you like the game. I posted it myself on Monday at 8:30am.

I have improved the site entry for this item (it was one of my early efforts).

On the subject of Froogle ranking: by simply renaming the entry from "Attack" to "Attack Board Game" as per the competition, I have achieved page 1 ranking (does this imply ranking by association?). I'm not convinced by Jont's suggestion about keywords, because most of the competion have even less descriptive text than me.

Many Froogle fans hit the 'sort by price' option, which makes me no. 1

Alan

[jxm28788]

Many Froogle fans hit the 'sort by price' option, which makes me no. 1

I tried that but got a whole bunch of irrelevent stuff priced from £1-2... guess it depends on the search word...

ps. Yes, that is an improvement - but you might want to remove the ships from the picture, they're not in the game - I think they're from the expansion pack. Also, 'click for more detailed info' isn't very clear/obvious - I nearly missed it. I'm not an SEO expert but I suspect you would be better off putting all that text on the page rather than a pop-up, maybe someone else can comment...

[jont]

I'm not convinced by Jont's suggestion about keywords

You were so convinced this is what you did .... keywords for a games supplier stocking board games would be "game" and "board" ... so "Attack Board Game" is now keyword friendly.

Whether you place the keywords in the page name, title, meta, product name, description or the Froogle listing they all go towards the greater good.

At the moment you are purely targetting Froogle by changing the keywords there (and it it is obviously working as now on page 1) but this will obviously not affect standard Google searches (or MSN, Yahoo etc)

[pinbrook]

despite the fact I religiously upload feeds to froogle, I never use it for my own searches. Just don't seem to think about using it, to entrenched in using google.

I'm not an SEO expert but I suspect you would be better off putting all that text on the page rather than a pop-up, maybe someone else can comment...

ideally it should be on both. in different formats of course

[jxm28788]

despite the fact I religiously upload feeds to froogle, I never use it for my own searches. Just don't seem to think about using it, to entrenched in using google.

Though google does sometimes list some froogle results at the top between the top sponsered results and the 'standard' results - which is a good reason to keep uploading to froogle...

[pinbrook]

Yes i agree, I am saying that even though i see froogle results and I am obviously aware of the exsistance of froogle, i simply don't remember to use froogle for searching , I stick to google.

I may be alone in this behaviour, although I suspect I am not, therefore I am suggesting that concentrating on froogle to the exclusion of natural groogle results is a bad move

[Luddite]

I may be alone in this behaviour, although I suspect I am not,

No, you're not alone. Google sits on my toolbar and unless i'm checking out how my own site performs on other SE's, its all I ever use.

[jont]

i simply don't remember to use froogle for searching

I know of many many people who have never even heard of Froogle.

As store owners with e-commerce software having the ability to output to Froogle and all the work we do on SEO it is often very easy to forget the millions of people out there who have no idea about sites beyond the homepage, inbuilt search bars etc.... it is an easy trap to become too polarised on aspects of a site based on your own knowledge and experience. I often use a testing group when assessing sites including users who still struggle with the concept of left or right clicking!!

[jxm28788]

including users who still struggle with the concept of left or right clicking!!

ah yes, I use my dad for that.

[pinbrook]

I often watch to see what other members of my (extended) family do, and often a site visit to a client is illuminating.

You tend to think that clients might be abit more clued up, but often they are not (vested interest etc)

thus I learn alot from the behaviour of others close to me, and despite the fact that my knowledge on ecommerce is slightly larger than the average, there are still things that I do that are worth examining and putting into the mix .

[acompton]

I'm not an SEO expert but I suspect you would be better off putting all that text on the page rather than a pop-up

I don't see that text as targetting SE's. Its there for customers who have gotten past the 'flavour' text and really want to know more. Its actually the first time I've used an Extended Info pop-up. We are warned about keyword saturation.

I'm not convinced by Jont's suggestion about keywords

What I meant was: I'm don't think Froogle parse the site page when considering ranking - just a guess on my part.

I know of many many people who have never even heard of Froogle

But those that have use it ruthlessly. About 1/4 of my trade comes from Froogle.

Also, 'click for more detailed info' isn't very clear/obvious - I nearly missed it.

Yes. I haven't found a satisfactory colour for links

I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor guy that started this thread. Its been well and truly hijacked!

[jxm28788]

thus I learn alot from the behaviour of others close to me, and despite the fact that my knowledge on ecommerce is slightly larger than the average, there are still things that I do that are worth examining and putting into the mix.

Maybe we should start a list (a new thread?) of customer behaviour...

Whenever you are shopping online and notice yourself leaving a site that you might have purchased from, then post to the thread with the reason - we already have a few good ones from this thread (insufficient product info, unclear delivery charges).

We can also post when we become aware of our own customers leaving if they let us know why... and of course results of family testing would also generate useful insights for all...

[jxm28788]

We are warned about keyword saturation.

The more text you have the less the saturation will be - as I understand it SE's don't necessarily care how many times the phrase is repeated as such, more as a % of the text. So 10 times in 500 words is better than 2 in 20... and from memory your page was probably lite on keywords...

I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor guy that started this thread. Its been well and truly hijacked!

yes and no. I think we well and truelly asnwered the original question, and this sort of stuff benefits all - including the originator...