Mysterious lack of orders

[SamL]

Hi,

I run a site called www.cookmate.co.uk, the design is several years old and is about to be updated with improved navigation, clarity etc.

The mystery is that until about 3 weeks ago orders were healthy, all of a sudden they stopped and hardly a single order has come through.

We have tested ths system and although it still uses Java encryption (SSL will be part of the re-design) it works fine under test.

What we are interested in is if anyone is aware of a blacklist that we may be listed on, or some form of hacking that would prevent 90% of the public buying from the site. The log files still show healthy visits and the pricing is competitive.

This is vague I know but has anyone experienced anything like it? I run many actinic sites and this is the only one with this problem...

ALL ideas gratefully received.

Thanks, Sam

[Mike Hughes]

I took a quick look and can't really see anything wrong. For me though the layout is horrible and I wonder if it's your message that says:

"We have recently fixed a problem which prevented some visitors from placing orders, if you experience any problems with ordering please contact us on 01432 275 013. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused"

that is causing the layout problem?

The other possiblity is a loss of position in google. An established website can still have lots of visitors (and a lot of them might be search engine spiders- I don't know which stats package you're using) but if it's lost the fresh targetted customers that the search engines bring then that can really hurt sales.

Most customer don't refer to third paty blacklists or anything like that so it's most likely to be:

a) You're not getting the same visitor numbers.
or
b) you're not converting them into sales as well.

Mike

PS. I put through a test order but didn't go through payment. (all the details are 'test' so it'll be easy to identify and delete).