Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Heather:

Overall, it's a clever site (too clever?)...perhaps too busy.

Define "lots of hits"...getting a vistor to buy is called a conversion; the conversion rate will tell you how successful you are...more than the dollars and/or sales made. It's not only what's cheapest...in fact, you can under-sell your product. Have you received any queries for specialized lists? Do you have a good idea who your potential customer is....why they need your list?

I'll check back after you provide some answers.

Debi Brady
Writing & Marketing Consultant

How are you advertising the site? The answer to your problem may lay with how you are advertising and what you are promising!

I am also confused why would you sell Realtor's list when they are readily available from MLS or NAR?

Debi,
Thanks for your feedback. I agree the homepage looks too busy. Yes maybe my lists are too cheap and if I better describe the advantages and refine my site I can command a better price. My customers are:
40% small businesses marketing products or services to real estate agents
20% internet sites that cater to real estate agents (directories, real estate marketing programs, etc.)
20% real estate agents marketing to other RE agents
20% other

Kathleen,
Thanks for the great suggestions, I will implement every one of them.

Andrew,
Your suggestions are very helpful.
I am advertising mostly ppc, to those who are searching for real estate agent lists.
I can't afford a different credit card processor besides Paypal. I went to a lot of trouble to get paypal integrated into the site. I went thru 3 months of development so that after paying through paypal, a page is displayed where you can instantly download the lists. So I'm discouraged to hear that Paypal is no good! I know the Paypal page doesn't look good, but what can I do, it's their page. Also, I don't get the https thing, because when you click to pay by credit card, it does show https, as it's Paypal's secure server. Oh no, I just don't know what to do.

I will re-think the bounce-back rate thing. It's a fine line between managing expectations and advertising. 25% bounce-back is the truth due to spam filters, full mailboxes, etc. The e-mails are all valid, but it depends on the way they send the e-mails. If they try to send 165,000 emails thru their hotmail account, their bounce-back will be 99%. I should word it more carefully, probably.

Jdeems and zelvenschi,
Thanks for your feedback. Please see my client base above. If the lists were readily available on NAR or MLS, I would never have sold any at all!

Everyone makes great points so far. I am interested to know what web stat program you are using. I currently use StatCounter.com (free service), which gives me pretty detailed descriptions of user path flow.

When I started using them, I was having similar issues of low conversion.

If you are using a similar software program for stats, you should be able to see each visitors exact path, how long they were on your site, what city their IP address is from, what links brought them to the site, and what pages they left on.

You should be able to quickly realize which pages potential customers are clicking from the main page and which were pages/information is being overlooked. You should then be able to get rid of (or move) the information/links for pages that you feel are not the most important.

Then you can place emphasis on which pages you feel the customers want to see and/or make it easier to locate the pages your customers are viewing the most.

This also works great when testing marketing campaigns at different times.....you can setup multiple Index.html or Default.html pages and use one specific page per advertising link. That should help you track which advertising links/sites are bringing in the most traffic.

Here are a couple of suggestions for improvement based on my part-time web design experience over the past 4 years:

1.)Make your main menu more noticeable and contain the links most important to your customers and/or most important to complete the sale. A simple "Purchase List" link would definitely help improve the purchase process.

2.) Don't repeat the same data on your main index/default screen. I notice you have FAQs on your main menu and an FAQs section to the right. Have a simple main page with a menu (to the left if you like) and let your visitors go from there.

3.) I like te web form section that can be used to contact your company, but add your actual business information. If you place an e-mail address out there, I would suggest using an image instead of script in order to reduce the amount of Spam Crawlers that pick up your e-mail address.

I know that I have customers that want to mail me things, and they don't want to have to e-mail me to get the information.

4.) On a general design look and feel, I would suggest
-making your banner at the top of your page thinner (so users don't have to scroll down as much...users are lazy),
-placing the search tool in the same place on all pages in order to make the look and feel of each page consistent
-Create a "Why US" or "About Us" page. This page would be a huge selling point for your business and staff. It should explain why you are better than the competition (other than prices), what kind of experience and credentials you have, etc..

5.) This is my last suggestion, and probably the most important (I hope you made it this far in the reading).....You need to create a sitemap for your site. I equate a sitemap to "pressing zero for an operator" when talking to machines on the phone.

Your sitemap doesn't have to be anything dramatic. I would suggest looking at all you pages you have stored out on your server, organizing those pages in some sort of logical table on paper, and then simply re-create the table on a page. Of course, you will only include the pages you want your users to see for free.

A great thing about a sitemap is that it allows your users to see every page that is available to them on one screen, and then go from there.

I would suggest starting by placing your sitemap on your main menu, or make it your main focal point at first. Once you have done this, you can use your statcounter stats (or similar program) to see where your users are going and what they are viewing. Once you start to see a normal traffic/flow patter of users, you will need to make sure the frequently used and most important pages are on your main menu. Then you can move the sitemap to the bottom of your screen where it is not as noticeable, but still there as a crutch for users.

I hope this helps you out. Let me know if I have confused you at all.

Dear Heathers26,
I'm going through the exact same issues as you. You'll find my issues under 'all men and women required' in the e-marketing forum. I too get plenty of traffic but with low conversion rates. This makes me then look sideways...is the product wrong...is the site not user friendly...are the prices wrong...you've done the same as me and asked some members to take a look and probably like me, you find the critisism quite cutting but thats what we both need. I feel that your site is a bit busy because I had to really study the first page to see what it was all about. I too use Paypal and find it totally reliable and a brilliant concept. As an example, Paypal and ebay are together in business, now part of the same set-up as far as i'm aware so I can't see how Paypal would look unprofessional to anyone using your site. Also, I would add that anyone buying email address lists must have some sense about them, i.e. the likely response rate. Any direct mailing operation would probably look at a positive responce of only 5% of returned correspondence from prospective clients, whether all the emails actually get to their destination or not. I feel that it would be beneficial to point out what a conversion rate on a list would realistically be assuming that all emails are read by recipients, so therefore you may be able to offer other lists of other people who may be interested in receiving an email. Bounce-backs or even mentioning them is a negative point. Don't hide it, but if any client believes that all emails get to their destination then they havent got much clue about ecommerce. Try to monitor returned responses from your clients if possible, its time consuming but sends out great signals to your clients. Once you can piece together average successful responce rates then you can use that formula as a positive on the site by assimilating it into how much business company X gained by using a list for example. Hope this will help. I am no expert in marketing, but I did previously manage an inbound outbound call centre and fulfillment centre which did offer me experience in responce rates and conversion rates. Kind regards, and the best of luck, Graham

Thank you everyone for your invaluable feedback. I will re-vamp my site over the next few weeks according to your suggestions.

Heather