Question

Topic: Website Critique

Looking For The Barriers To Conversion On My Site.

Posted by dana on 10/23/2013 at 11:59 AM ET 125 Points
Hi all,

I am looking for some advice on finding the barriers to conversion on my ecommerce website - coldpressjuicers.net.

Over the last week and a half I have driven about a thousand visitors to my site, mostly through CPC campaigns:

google keyword: 215 visits, 3.14% CTR
google PLA: 116 visits, 2.62% CTR
facebook news feed ad (with lots of likes and great purchasing friendly comments, and a call to action to buy): 519 visits, 3% CTR
bing keyword: 69 visits, 1.79% CTR
and the balance from organic search and twitter/facebook posts/tumblr posts.

The keyword ads (with sitelinks, average rankings usually 2-3) are targeting mostly the individual products, with landing pages such as coldpressjuicers.net/pages/tribest-slowstar/. Keywords for general phrases like cold press juicer land on the homepage. The ad copy has several varations, mostly stuff like:

*Manufacturer* *Model* Juicers
Buy a *Model* juicer and make
healthy and delicious juice at home!

... so I am hoping that prequalifying is not an issue, as the ads have pretty clear calls to action for purchasing. Visitors to the site have a 60-65% average bounce rate, and visit 3 pages/visit average with a 3 minute average browsing time.

Throughout the last week and a half I have been refining my site with the information coming in through all these clicks. I have made sure there are paths to purchasing on all supporting pages, added the free shipping/60 day returns banners on all landing pages and the homepage, and removed from the hero image rotation on the homepage any images that weren't oriented towards a product.

Of these thousand visitors, I have had maybe 5 add a product to the cart, and only one small purchase of parts. Can anyone help me identify the trust issue that might be involved?

I wonder if the lack of product reviews, or the brevity of the existing product reviews. Or do I present too many options? Alternately, I am out of stock of a couple of the most popular juicers... I suppose this combined with my small sample size might be enough to make it hard to draw any conclusions.

Either way, any advice on where improvements could be made to my site would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 10/23/2013 at 5:21 PM Accepted
    Given the price point for your items, my first inclination was to compare your pricing/offer with Amazon. In no case did I see Amazon's price higher than yours. Given their customer support, if I was in the market for a cold press juicer, I'd likely go with someone I trust rather than you.

    Also, it's not immediately clear what the benefit is of cold press juicers over a "normal" juicer. Can you convince the casual visitor: cold press is better for you, cold press is safer, cold press juicers last longer, etc.?
  • Posted on 10/23/2013 at 5:35 PM Accepted
    Just guessing at this point:

    I suspect the message match between the search term entered, the ad itself (in the case of Adwords traffic), and the landing page could use some attention. Are they all using the same terms?

    The site is devoid of images of happy customers. Isn't that what you want people to identify with?

    Needs great testimonials to let people know that you deliver what you promise.

    Copy is mostly about you, not about the benefit consumers should expect. The actual count is 5 "we" references and 3 "you" references. Take out the "we" and beef up consumer-benefit words -- especially emotional payoff words.

    What is your positioning? It doesn't come through. What unique and important benefit do you offer? Who exactly is the target audience?
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 10/23/2013 at 6:07 PM Accepted
    Hmm.

    The site looks nice. Perhaps a little too cool, temperature-wise, but nice.

    How about a few shots of the products in use?

    You might also want to ditch the text that reads:

    "We are proud to sell the best cold press juicers available. We sell only cold press juicers because we believe they are the best kind of juicer.
    We support our sales by providing you with knowledge and ideas to help make juicing a rewarding, healthy and delicious experience. We hope you enjoy taking a look around our site for inspiration. And when you buy a cold press juicer, be sure to check out our blog for some recipe ideas to get started!"

    Here's why:

    Although it's nice that you;re proud of what you sell, I, as a potential buyer, really couldn't care less.
    What DOES concern me more, as a potential buyer, is free shipping and ... and you're not going to like this, but it's important ... a 365 day guarantee.

    As guarantees go, 60 days is too short. But a YEAR? That speaks of reliability. Any returns you're likely to get will happen within the first 30 to 60 days. After that, the chances of refund requests go down.

    So, make a bigger splash about a year-long guarantee 9with free shipping as an aside), run a control group of your ads again, with half going to your CURRENT page and its current text, layout, etc, and with the other half going to a newer, warmer looking page, on which you show shots of the products in use, OR, in which you show healthy, smiling souls enjoying the results of their juice (happy smiles, lost weight, and with a few testimonials thrown in if you've got 'em ... but do NOT make them up), and in which you play up the extended guarantee.

    Free shipping these days is expected. But a long guarantee is not.

    Make the text of your guarantee similar to your current layout, but split test page elements with red in them (links, buy now buttons, etc.), and be less shy about telling people, what to do: click here to watch the video (got a video on these gizmos in action? No? Get one. Make one. S'easy.) ... then, be less shy about telling people: Do THIS, then do THIS, then BUY HERE.
  • Posted by Moriarty on 10/27/2013 at 8:12 AM Accepted
    Firstly, well done for getting a campaign up and a decent CTR.

    Now: when it comes to Adwords, forget the keywords in your ad. Google doesn't take much notice of this - they do notice the CTR (it's 80% or so of the QS).

    The deal with Adwords is what the customer wants when thinking "juicer". Think about what people love about juicers, and what they hate about non-home-made-juice.

    Tangy orange wafting in the morning air [too wordy but you get the idea]
    - or - Supermarket orange juice is like sludge!

    Try them, one will be better (and probably give you a better CTR than 3%). Imagine the result of having that lovely machine in the kitchen and the pleasure it'll give them for years on end. Work on their desires and niggles!

    Also make sure you've got around 1500 negative keywords, and have your settings to "search only" or whatever they call it in English ... this will target buyers better (you can extend later).

    Do you have an email autoresponder for those who are interested but not buying yet? Remember that many people don't buy on the first occasion. A well integrated Google Analytics package means that Google will know if someone who buys two months later DID come through an initial click - and will reward you accordingly.
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