Online for a year and 1 sale!! Err.. Site Review required, I think

[wayfarer]

Hey All,
Well, the title kind of says it all really.
It's true. I have sold one product since going live early this year.
I have 3 different niche sites feeding into one shop.
At least one of these averages 500 users a day.
I have checked technically, and everything seems OK, i.e you may order if you wish.

It's a real mystery, and kind if getting me down after the effort I've put in to my 3 sites.

I have concluded the following after my own review:
- the shop should be made to look more 'trustworthy'
- i have the wrong products for my 3 niches?
- the shop looks too plain

I have been persuaded to buy a better template, but would really appreciate your expert advice before throwing more money at it.

The shop from my main site is here:

http://www.drpregnancy.co.uk/acatalog/Dr_Pregnancy.html

And if it helps at all, the feeder page that all 3 of my sites link to is here:

http://www.drpregnancy.co.uk/acatalog/Home.html

For your info, Im a full time (low paid!) health worker in the UK and looking to develop a long term business online - so I'm prepared to do whatever it takes and Im in it for the long haul (and it does seem like it;s going to be one!)

Many thanks in advance.

Keith

[RuralWeb]

I have 3 different niche sites feeding into one shop.

Why?

At least one of these averages 500 users a day.

I assume this is for the main information site

I have checked technically, and everything seems OK, i.e you may order if you wish.

Wrong - the navigation on the main site does not allow people to get into the shop

It's a real mystery, and kind if getting me down after the effort I've put in to my 3 sites.

It should be one site IMO

I have concluded the following after my own review:

- the shop should be made to look more 'trustworthy'

Apply the main shop design to the shop part

- i have the wrong products for my 3 niches?

You may have - what does your statistics package tell you about what people are searching for. You are N01 for some items so people may not be looking for what you sell

- the shop looks too plain

Easily sorted - you are currently using a standard actinic template so it would be easy to transfer the design of the main site to the shop and create a better navigation system. All three sites can be built into actinic

I have been persuaded to buy a better template

There are some good ones in actinic already - get your best sellers/new products/also bought etc etc all working on the site. Templates are an expence you could avoid.

Take a snapshot and play with some of the newer templates in the software eg hotshot which is pretty good

[parklifeclothes]

Apart from the phone number that is pretty well placed the only other info I could find was a P.O box number that just gives the impression of small part time business, obviously we know that it is as you've told us, but you need to instill confidence in possible customers.

It would also benefit from some info about you (the business), delivery, faq's.

[Mark H]

Your homepage

www.drpregnancy.co.uk

has far more going on and looks much better than your shop page - the first thing I would do is to carry the deisgn of this (with links, side stories/images etc) into your shop area.

[bamboo]

Thankfully I have no idea what it is like to be a pregnant woman however my wife has been such a customer twice and she has looked at your site and hasn't a clue what it is you are selling!

Welcome to the IQ Healthcare Solutions shopping experience. IQ Healthcare Solutions is the parent body for a range of subsidiaries including:

Meaningless twaddle that says nothing to anyone let alone pregnant women!

Why have you got this item as your sole best seller?

Arthritic Knee Wrap

You really need a few pregnant women to go over the site and LISTEN to what they say about it.

If you have three different niche sites then presumably you have three different target markets and expecting one shop to speak to three different markets succinctly enough to generate sales is foolish IMHO.

Stop worrying about the design and figure out what you want to sell to who and make all the changes based on what you find out from this process.

[wayfarer]

All,
Very grateful for your responses thus far, just lurking here pondering on them.....

Not sure if the questions posed are rhetorical questions designed to stimulate ideas, or if you guys expect answers, so I'll try and deal with a few:

-3 niches into one shop - I have 3 niches (more in the future) and tying them together into one 'backend' seems to make sense

-'About Us' is under t & c's, but I guess if it can't be seen, needs to be more visible. Point taken about FAQ's

- I didn't realise that my main shop theme could follow into actinic - I guess I'm still an actinic newbie and don't fully know how to use it

-Why is the arthritic knee wrap the besteller? because that's the only item that I have sold a handful of, through one of the 3 lesser visited feeder sites (www.arthritiskneepain.co.uk) and so actinic automatically promotes that as bestseller.

The common suggestions seems to be about placing products that are relevant, which means doing away with the 3 sites into one shop scenario - am I right in thinking this has significant licence implications, or is there a way of doing this that I don't know about - I figured having one overarching entity (IQ Healthcare) would resolve this?

Keith.

[RuralWeb]

You are using actinic simply as a shop which is ok. However it's very confusing for people comming from your mini sites as all the branding changes eg I jump from an arthritis to a womans pregnancy site. If you stay with this method you can have the same layout for each mini site in different sections of actinic feeding through to a plain checkout.

Also all your links to the shop pages are at the bottom of the mini site pages -people will not read that far.

I see why you have done it is to avoid multiple licence requirements but if you bought business plus you can build as many sites as you want. This may be cheaper than paying for templates. You can then have separate shops.

But continuing the way you are will bring the same results - no sales. The main problem is no clear route from the mini sites to the shop and when people get there they are confused.

[RuralWeb]

One other thing to consider is that google may see your current setup as an attempt to manipulate it's rankings ie the creating of doorway pages from multiple domains.

[parklifeclothes]

All,


-Why is the arthritic knee wrap the besteller? because that's the only item that I have sold a handful of, through one of the 3 lesser visited feeder sites (www.arthritiskneepain.co.uk) and so actinic automatically promotes that as bestseller.


Keith.

Use the best sellers list to promote things, you can manually set the best sellers list to show any item/s so why not try and put something there that you want people to think, wow, I need one of them.
Maybe set it to show 3 'bestsellers'

[RuralWeb]

You sold me darren -- just what I was looking for as a last minute present for my wife. She will be so surprised.

[RuralWeb]

You are assuming that people will arrive on the product page after reading all the sales pitch on your feeder sites. This is the wrong assumption - they can arrive directly on the product page so you need to sell it to shoppers there or give them access to the onto they need. Your site is one way is there is no way people can get from the product to the feeder site as you call it.

Who told you to set things up like this - the same people trying to sell you another template??????

[pinbrook]

if you prefer one shop for all niches, this will be fine as long as there is a loose theme joining them together.

if the loose theme is medical (ie pregancy and arthritic knee) then the design needs to reflect this. don't try to sell the knee stuff from a pregnancy site.

Go for one product per page, describe the product in full on this page and people will then land on the page to buy , forget all this doorway and feeder site tosh (thats SEO practise from 5 years ago)

[bamboo]

Your current set up has failed miserably because you are trying to be all things to all people and focusing on license costs instead of profits from providing solutions to your customers.

You are in the wrong mind set IMHO to ever make any money from this venture.
Ignore your current results, set up etc, and spend the holidays figuring out which market is likely to bring in the most customers.
Not knowing what your third niche is I would suggest that although there are clearly more arthritic people that pregnant people in the UK most of them will be older and usually more careful with their money.
Pregnant ladies have a much higher 'need' for an immediate solution so out of the two markets the one with fewer people may well bring in more money once you get on message.