Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Hi Paul,

The good news is you are so close. Your website is professional and nicely formatted. The content is for the most part also excellent.

The other good news is that mbarber gave you professional advice worth hundreds of dollars. Read his reply and take good notes. (I would also suggest sending him a complimentary sample pack).

My comments:

You are missing 2 key components:

1) A strong, clearly defined, don't pass this up call-to-action opportunity. You want one that makes no mistake to the visitor why they want to clickthrough to find out more and/or make a purchase.

2) A clearly visible signup box for visitors to enter their email to sign up for your e-newsletter/email marketing offering. Clearly state the benefit of doing so, i.e. " you will receive regular mailings offering specials, information, discounts (etc.) offered only to our coffee loving email subscribers. Your privacy will always be respected".

If you need more help with the email marketing side of it, click on my name and contact me, I work with many online entrepreneurs like youself and will be happy to answers any questions you have.

You may also want to considering setting up a "landing page" specifically for those people that see the ad and respond to it. This way it is personalized to them and acknowledges them in more of one-to-one manner than just sending them to your home page.

I hope that helps!

You've already gotten great feedback so far, so I'll just make two comments:

1. If you took out advertising and drove people to the home page, you may have wasted some money. The ad might have done better if it were offer-specific (was it?), and then the URL provided should have also been equally specific. (You could have also used that special URL to know with precision how much traffic was generated by the ad.) Of course, it doesn't end with the URL; the page should have closed the loop on the offer. You might have even taken them directly to an order form.

2. I think the PayPal thing is a bad idea. One minute people are on your site, the next they're on PayPal. Some people may not have a clue as to who or what PayPal is. It's confusing. Also, if they don't already have a PayPal account, it's unlikely that they'll open one just to buy coffee. Bottom line is that there are too many steps to get from your ad to a final sale.

Just my $0.02, overvalued even at that. (But feel free to remit two cents to my PayPal account!) ;)

Paul

I'm no expert on web page design (sure sounds like good advice above to me) -

but my comments on your site are:

1) the coffee seems quite expensive. What does that $.80 per cup translate to in terms of price per pound?

2) Are you selling me the coffee, or the tin it comes in? If I'm paying to dollar for coffee, I want to know it's good coffee, and having a "tin" container doesn't do it for me. I'm not even sure a "tin" container would be the best place to keep my very expensive coffee. (At those prices, have you considered gold plating that tin?)

3) You want me to believe that this is outrageously good coffee, but how do I know? What proof are you offering me?

4) Who are you targeting? You provide some good advice that I need to grind my beans just before serving and that I need to use filtered water, but you sell neither coffee grinders nor water filters. Rather than trying to target the "great unwashed" who have probably never brewed a cup of great coffee themselves in their life (e.g. the brunette on your web page) you seem to be targeting existing coffee lovers, and these folks probably already have their favorite brands.

If it were me, I'd create a gift pack which included a small coffee grinder and eithers some bottled water or some water filters, and I'd target existing coffee drinkers, attempting to sell them on the idea of great coffee.

Paul, I love forum threads like this one... so many good ideas, so much valuable advice.

I can't think of anything to add. Except the only thing missing from your website is a Scratch-n-Sniff spot for experiencing that fresh coffee aroma.

- Shelley ;]

Paul,

You really have received some great advice here.

Here’s an option to consider:

-Find Starbuck’s best tin premium coffee product offer.

-Match your product offering as close to Starbuck’s as possible but with something more.

-Your “ad” should be a side-by-side comparison graphically showing your offer relative to Starbuck’s offer* with yours being the better choice.

-Place the comparison ad at the top of your site.

Rationale: Starbuck’s is the standard. Some people will want to choose the alternative (your brand). You are leveraging the billion’s of dollars that Starbuck’s has invested in creating their brand. Even if it’s a breakeven deal for you, you will get some traction.

*check with legal, there is a way to do this.

Good luck,

- Steve

What was the offer you used to bring peiople to your website? I'm curious to see what kind of carrot you dangled to entice people to visit.

Its one thing to have a website, like the Field of Dreams...if you build it, they will come. Unlike the Field of Dreams, just because you built it, it doesn't mean they will buy.

Every person in the world listens to to the same radio station: WIIFM

WIFFM is: What's In It For Me

What did you offer? Is a 2.80 savings enough?

The most powerful word in the world is FREE. FREE Stuff always Tastes better! Do some risk reversal. If you buy one tin, we'll give you another FREE! Oh yes, we'll even give you a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied, and keep the free tin as out gift!

WIIFM...free tin if I buy one, and no risk if I'm not satisfied. Heck, why wouldn't I buy?

Use an understanding of WIIFM to make an offer that not only drives traffic to your site, but makes an initial sale. Once you have created a list of first time buyers, back end them into the second, then the third, fourth...etc, etc.

Compared to FourBuck's coffee....80 cents a cup looks good. Including something free, and maybe the guarantee....heck, I'd leave the Frappacino at the alter.

Food for thought I hope.

Darcy Moen
(Customer Loyalty Network)

Paul,

I have visited your site and think it is a cool site. Wih a little effort you could close more sales than you are doing now.

The message on your site is buy.......buy........buy and they dont buy.Why because your site is just selling. Most netprenuers keep on making this mistake.

One Ken Evoy says presell then sell. Preselling is warming up your visitors get them think of reading more. Let them think of you as an expert in coffee .........knowledge of coffee from different parts of the world, benefits of taking coffee, diseases that coffee cure etc.

Engage your visitors with powerful content.

Then and then only try to sell to then try to sell them with a powerful sales copy.

Secondly, I dont know what you wanted to achieve with your site as mbarber says. Probably you were not very clear on what you wanted to achieve with your emails or if you did you didn't execute the strategy well.

You need to evaluate what was you Most Wanted Response (MWR) and get to see what mistake you made. This should be carried out right into your site upto the point they fill in the orders. Failure to do this you will continue to experience the same problem you are experiencing.

Let me also add that you need to give the visitors a reason to come back. Having the 300,000 vistors come back to yor site again and again will allow you to convince them to buy from you. In that case you havent't lost them.

I would recommend a powerful resource from which I'm sharing this answer from a helpful book called Make Your Site Sell https://myss.sitesell.com/online-profits.html

Kind Regards,

sammykarij