Site review, been up a year

bobbins · 8th August 2005, 12:43 PM

I could do with a site review on this oscommerce Site
www.toys4me.co.uk

I want to achieve a higher convertion rate (rate at the moment is 1%), I have heard companies can increase this..... Discount codes are in use and work well.
Tried free shipping and it was too good, it was costing me too much as the toys are heavy, so I put a stop to that.

Any ideas ?

Best wishes
Sean Buckley
www.toys4me.co.uk

ChrisEvans · 8th August 2005, 12:53 PM

Hi,
That's a really nice site you've got there.

Perhaps the 1% conversion is standard for your market online? Have you looked at other peoples conversion rates (if you can find them

)?

The customer testimonials don't stand out - I thought that was a description of the site initially.

Chris

MrBen · 8th August 2005, 01:05 PM

Hi Sean,

I agree with Chris, it's a good looking site - I like the dragon at the top

It's been a while since I was interested in the toy market really, how do your prices compare with high streets & larger stores (Toys R Us springs to mind)? Price is potentially a big reason because it is easy for buyers to check out lots of stores and compare prices.

A couple of threads you might be interested in started by Richard (richandzhaoyan) who is in a similar market to yourself,

Ben

ChrisEvans · 8th August 2005, 01:11 PM

One point to make from MrBens suggestion about pricing - you could signup as an affiliate to other stores - they'll then provide you with product data.

If you find you can't offer a certain product at a low price - reffer them to another store that can & earn the commission.

Andy · 8th August 2005, 01:17 PM

Site looks fine ..apart from a problem with the far right hand side section when viewing the site in Firefox. And also make the customer feedback stand out more like Chris suggested.

I'd think repeat business and customer recommendations may be the best way of getting more business and a higher conversion rate. Perhaps send out a monthly newsletter to your existing customers if you don't already. Last week i bought a wind-up/solar powered/ torch/radio off Maplin purely because i'd seen it in their email newsletter as a clearance offer. I would never have thought of even searching for that product! I do tend to buy a fair amount of stuff in a similar way.

Or how about letting customers store dates for when their kids birthdays are and whether they are boy or girl so that you could better target them with newsletters containing toys suitable for kids of their age and close to birthdays and christmas - the times parents spoil their kids the most. That leads me onto another idea of categorising toys suitable for particular ages. I know when i go shopping for toys for my 3 year old nephew I spend ages looking for toys suitable for his age. I also like to try buy him educational toys so i would suggest a category for educational toys too.

Andy

bobbins · 8th August 2005, 01:22 PM

Thanks for the info & links, I am reading richandzhaoyan post at the moment, will see if he will swap links, different products but on the same wave.

We are cheaper that the other stores, I personal check the prices...but argos/toysrus tend to grad the headlines with 2 for 3, with I can't match. So I have started 20% sales and other marketing tricks they use.
Guess I want to clear some stock before Xmas, maybe an ad in a kiddies magazine, would help.

I am on Froogle, but setup wrong, I appear on the US site and not UK, don't know how that happened, but contacted them yestaday to try and sort it.

Best wishes
Sean Buckley

ChrisEvans · 8th August 2005, 03:09 PM

It doesn't help that toys4me.com doesn't point to you - in terms of repeat traffic.

richandzhaoyan · 9th August 2005, 12:28 AM

Hi Sean,

Firstly, congratulations on a very good site. Looks to me that you have all the important aspects that I have been working on this year in place. SEO looks good, see you have SEO urls and header and meta tags for categories and products. (The way I see it, if you have this in place then every product you add will have an impact on the search engines.)

Your 1% conversion rate looks similar to mine. Its hard to calculate exactly - depends really on how targeted your traffic is. I know from my Urchin stats that I get (currently) around an average of 800 unique sessions a day, however, having added a banner to my home page, I see that I only get about 100 views of the homepage/day. This shows that alot of my traffic is entering the site not via the homepage and that only around 10-12% of people are getting as far as viewing the homepage. If I was to buy from an internet site I reckon I would allways look at the homepage. So, just thinking quickly, I guess I could say that my conversion rate is only about 1% from all unique sessions but a rather more pleasing 10% from any visitor that has made it to my homepage.

Again, thinking quickly (and on the fly) this may mean that improving my main landing pages would increase conversion rates.

One simple thing that may help is showing your telephone number prominently on all pages. I know I recieve between 1/4 and 1/3rd of all orders by phone.

With regards to increasing sales, I have a very simple outlook on this at present - being a bricks and mortar store owner, increase the stock range. I only have the one shop but reckon I still only have about 30-40% of my stock range available to buy onine. There is no doubt in my mind that now that your site is SEO optimised across all your categories and products, if you add more, you will feature more in the search engines (have a greater search engine saturisation - learnt that technical term somewhere!) I think for myself this is the easiest way of increased traffic and (assuming I can maintain the same conversion ratio) increased sales. One way of increasing your catalogue is to try and find quick suppliers/wholesalers. I have recently added the full stock range of a company that is local to me and who let me collect from their warehouse. This means I can put all their products online (around 1000) and can supply them within a week without having to stock their full range (would bankrupt me!) - Unfortunately this only works for a (very) few of my suppliers as in the gift and (not quite as bad) toy trade alot of the suppliers can take a month (and in some cases 6 months) to deliver.

I know you mentioned free shipping - I offer this on orders over £50. Like yourself, I have the problem that some of my items are very heavy (mainly the tableware) and as such it is costing around a fiver an order to ship. Its a bit of a catch22 as I know a lot of people suggest offering free shipping and incorporating it into the cost of each item. This however has the effect of making your items look expensive compared with anyone who charges a set rate for shipping. I charge £2.50 for orders of less than a tenner, most of which I can send via the post office. £4.50 for orders between £10 and £50 most of which I have to send via the carrier for a fiver. And then offer free shipping on orders over £50. There is no doubt that I am losing money on some orders - particularly the ones just over the £50 mark but I work on the theory (proven) that people who shop once will come back - If they place bigger orders at x-mas then its worthwhile.

Talking of x-mas - If you have been online for 12 months now, you should have a good idea of how much you are up on last year. I would guess that x-mas is the main time for you as it is for me. I started the site around April of last year and know that x-mas sales kick in at the beginning of October. I am about 100% up this summer on last year and so am working frantically to get ready for October where things are (hopefully) going to go balistic. To quote figures (generally very hard to find on the internet) I am getting about 10 orders/day during these summer months (enough to cover costs) and am hoping for aroud 30/day during October, November and December (the time to make a few quid). This is nowhere near the number of sales in the shop but tends to be much higher value/order - I am hoping to be doing as much on the internet (in value) as in the shop by this time next year.

Right, better wrap up, just a couple of quickes on points you made:-

Firstly, Froogle - this will be of benefit when you sort it. Not necassarily on froogle searches but more so because google are now featuring a couple of froogle results right at the top of their main search pages (on page 1!). Again, the more items you have in your catalogue the more results you get.

The multiples!!

- Arsegos and Tossers-R-Us! You cant compete with them. Try and stock what they dont and specialise. Couple of well known Toy examples. Playmobil and Lego, we make next to nothing on the bigger £40+ lines as they cut price them. We make our markup on the smaller lines that they dont bother to stock. £1.50 for a Playmobil figurine may not sound like worth bothering with but if no-one else stocks them and you are doubling your money....... Believe it or not I make nearly as much on that as on a £40 set stocked in Argos!!!

The point Chris made may be a good one and it applies to me also - Heritage and Gifts are very popular terms. Hence the .com is unavailable but I wanted to use our name and have the gifts in the URL. My way around this is to refer to ourselves as heritage-gifts.co.uk on all correspondance/paperwork. Also, we feature at the top of all search engine results for heritage gifts. If the .com became available (for free) I would snap it up but till then I am not going to lose any sleep over it.

Okaaaay, I think thats about it - Couple of quick questions from me, you say the discount codes are working - have you tried gift vouchers? Also, how about the affiliate scheme? These are both things I would like to put in place, along with a wedding list but they are not now likely to happen until next year. Any feedback though would be much appreciated.

Apologies for the length of the post but hopefully it will be of some use to you and others and again, finally, congratulations on what I would consider an excellent site.

Cheers,
Rich

bobbins · 12th August 2005, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by richandzhaoyan

Hi Sean,

.........
Cheers,
Rich

Hi Rich,
Thanks for the meaty post, it covers all the stuff.
I have read your posts and many other posts on SEO in the past and have learnt the things that work on SE, still need to go further.
I have no retail outlet and want a purly Web present, so hence the need for greater sale convertion.
I aggree with you on the product range, I started out in business with a soft toy wholesaler (pitching an ASP website to him, quickly change to oscommerce

now the wife runs the business) and now I source from different wholesaler, bringing an even bigger range (SE saturisation as you explained). I have to hold

stock, but do drop ship some larger items.
Got the froogle sorted out this week, I am on the UK froogle. ;-)

Telephone number you said.... yes it should on each page I will put that into place.

You mention Gift vouchers, I never put them on, because I heard about CC fraud with them....as the vouchers aren't shipped to an addresss, so when they order

the goods later, you have no way of validating the address.
Affiliate scheme, yes I am on with Affiliate future as it was hard to get affilates to join the Osc one. I am not making a profit from the system as only a

few affiliates out of the 300 have made sales....but over the xmas season am sure that will change. (you're got to try things and then force yourself

to keep going as I know Affiliates are a path to sales, just got to find the right ones or right products)

Your site is great, I have been there before, the tabs are a good feature and the site is clean, might be due to the feature throttle you have done, as people can carried away on OSC.

Can I suggest a few things, that I have done (for your site) ?
I noticed like you that the product page were being landed on.... so I put a "what's new" under the products (only 6 extra products).
Also I put the thumbnail browse other products in this section, so they can scroll through the product range on that screen.

Your prices show Vat and Ex Vat which guess curse the Vat man you have to live with, but on the specials it looks a confusing as they are 2 prices crossed

out, and 4 prices on the screen. (don't know if you have to live with that or could modify it ?)

Thanks again.

Best Wishes
Sean

uncle-ed · 20th December 2006, 11:27 AM

Now points to your site.

I happened to see this thread just the other day

When you contacted me about aquireing the name
I offered you Rental - Lease or Purchase.
As to the value of toys4me.com
the appraisal may seem too much.
But I didn't make it up it is Fair market value

Which is an interesting term. To someone who will not
benefit in some way the price is way too high. Yet to
someone that can make this into a MultiNational
Million dollar concern it is way too low.

As you can surmise I am not hard to work with and
Do not expect something for nothing. I can also
co locate the site her and do order fulfillment
etc. in the US.

I can say honestly as to the value of toys4me.com the appraisal
I guess may have seemed too high But I did not make it up.
Actually had to pay to get the site "appraised"

I hope to be be able to change all this by helping you become
more sucessful So for Now I point to you and hope you do well.
With hopefully more traffic.

If you want me to remove the pointer to your site
Please let me know!

Gl 2 you merry xmas

-=Nothing is as it Appears. Yet Everything is Exactly What it is =-

Vger · 21st December 2006, 01:03 AM

Well, the last post was a bit of a waste as the original poster hasn't been online here for over a year.

If he had been I would have pointed out that his major problem is that his website uses the Simple Template System, which acts as a barrier to most search engines (same effect as using frames). This is why his homepage gets a Google Page Rank of 4 while most other product pages don't get a page rank at all.

Vger

uncle-ed · 24th December 2006, 04:35 PM

I did not pay attention as to the dates of Post
But Alas! Maybe better late than never to get additional browsers!
Wish I had picked up on this thread a year earlier!

Been doing htis stuff too long and it still amazes me how little
weight most people give to typos .com's other significant traffic
generators. While search engines are good Never underestimate
the real value of good name and typo's.

Happy Holidays to you and the best to you in the following years!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vger

Well, the last post was a bit of a waste as the original poster hasn't been online here for over a year.

If he had been I would have pointed out that his major problem is that his website uses the Simple Template System, which acts as a barrier to most search engines (same effect as using frames). This is why his homepage gets a Google Page Rank of 4 while most other product pages don't get a page rank at all.

Vger

bobbins · 13th February 2007, 06:21 PM

I disagree with the STS being like frames, as any product I put on the site is indexed by the SE the next day!
So I am worried about removing STS and going with the standard OSC in case of the site goes down in rank.
I dabbed in SEO but can not repeat the initial succees of the site and it does roughtly 2000 vistors a day but I can not get it to the next level.
I don't know if other site owners suffer the getting to the next level, as when I started I was working on it every night for hours to drive it foward, I don't do that now (I have a little bit of a life between the site).

If I thought getting rid of STS would be the next logical step, then I would do it.
Or is waiting for the the next version of OSC the answer, but with no Chemo doing the SEO how good would it be?
Any ideas Vger/anyone ?
Are blogs a way forward ?

Thanks for pointing the .com to my site, join the affiliate program and earn while you point!
Sean

P.S We have moved to business premises with a retail outlet, but the website is still my main sales.

Vger · 13th February 2007, 06:54 PM

Well, if you hold your breathe waiting for osCommerce MS3 you'll be a long time dead before it is released. The 'Alpha3' version came out 6 months ago, and there's supposed to be an Alpha 4 and 5 before it becomes a production release.

Having said that the code base is very very clean, all object orientated programming with most data being pulled in from the database and xml files. The problem is going to be that it is not going to be as accessible for modification as MS2 because MS3 is so specialised.

We have our own loaded version of osCommerce, which we call ReadyCart, which is HTML and CSS compliant with W3C, and with most (though not all) of the osCommerce table structure gone. We haven't gone overboard with features like CRE Loaded has, concentrating on the most wanted e.g. Ultimate SEO URL's, cDynamic Meta Tags, Auto Thumbnailing of images, Affiliate System, Discount Coupons and Gift Vouchers, Review Approval System, PDF Catalogue of products, and a Login page in the style of Amazon - plus some other things. The code base is a lot cleaner than MS2.

Unfortunately the osCommerce Team is never going to allow Chemo back on the forums, and each time he signs up under another name they delete him as soon as they realise who it is.

Chemo and I do work together on projects he is involved with in the USA and, quite frankly, given the level he is now working at I don't understand why he'd even want to help out on the osCommerce project.

Vger