Muse Help Needed

[Drewkerr]

Alright guys I need some help with a muse. I helped my girlfriend start a muse she thought of for a pretty niche market, you can check it out here;

The problem is we cannot get a sale during the testing phase. here are the stats over the past week and a half:

26,746 impressions, 219 clicks and no sales.
main page: 452 hits
product 1 description: 66 hits
product 2 description: 32 hits

All in all we have about 52 specific keywords with are average CPC less than $.29. Based on common ratios we should have at least two sales by now?????

Competitors prices range from $60 to $85 for the same thing. We also have a colored option which isn't really offered anywhere else. Plus we offer the Lifetime replacement guarantee, and money back guarantee??

Any suggestions?

Drew

[Mike Rhodes]

Hi Drew,

Here's my 2c worth for ya.

Step 0:
Add Google Analytics to the site. Looking at the code, it doesn't seem to be on there. The report you're going to want to focus on is the 'Funnel Visualization' report under 'Goals'
you want to know of those 219 people how many clicked on a product page
how many added it to a cart
how many then clicked checkout (might get harder to get data once you go of your site - depends on the yahoo store you're using)

What I'd want to know - is the (fairly painful) process of using the yahoo shopping cart system to blame, or do people not even get that far

Step 1: Sell the product
improve the photos - they don't really show the product at all. they need to be bigger. show the product in pieces & assembled. and maybe show many different angles (close up of teeth etc)
improve the name (is 'space age' the best benefit?)
make more of the price - larger font. show the savings as a %

step 2: design
I'd change the background colour
grey on dark blue will be very hard to read for may people
books are white for a reason, go with a white background
and increase the font size - you can't go wrong with 14pt font (or even larger!)

step 3: conversion improvement
add credit card logos to the site
if you can add the main benefits on the order page - remind them why they're buying
add a graphical 'add to cart' button - get rid of the grey :)
simplify the page - with just 2 products you don't need the 'breadcrumbs' across the top, you don't need a search box & you can lose the item # G-63 code!
more benefits are needed - if discreet packaging is the best you can offer - they'll probably look elsewhere... (sorry to be harsh, but it's true)

on order page:
can you add a larger photo?
change description to be benefit driven, not just boring product name

bonus:
is there a bonus you can offer
some herbs to grind??
related products that people might want - measuring/weighing device?
cookbook (written on elance for $100) with 101 receipes to delight your friends & amaze them with your knowledge about herbs...

the guarantee is good, I think you need to make more of it
add a graphic next to it to draw the eye to it. 115% is strong, but at the moment it's lost on the page


#4 traffic:
are you just using adwords? sounds like it
try yahoo & msn - they tend to be better converting (but less traffic than google)
try ebay - great source of buyers rather than info searchers
also you could try image ads on content network
ezine ads in related newsletters/ezines
and forum signatures in cooking forums
I don't think articles or a blog would work too well - but could be worth a try


hope that helps. good luck,
mike

[jonparker83]

The first question I'd ask is where you are positining yourself in the market?

Are you cheaper?
Are you selling something that no one else does?

Obviously I don't know which keywords you are bidding on with AdWords, and I'm certainly no expert on herb grinders, but a regular google search for "metal herb grinder" turns up a lot of results that are considerably cheaper than yours

If you are trying to compete on cost, you aren't doing that.

If you are trying to compete on quality or something else, you need to make the customers aware of that, and then specifically market to those customers.

In addition to this, you get 2000 keywords you can use on AdWords per Ad Group so use them.

Try adding misspellings and more specific search strings. Even though these are less likely to be searched for, when they are, you'll typically pay less per click than with generic terms and also have less competition from other AdWords advertisers displayed alongside you in the search results

Hope you can take something useful from the above

Cheers

Jon

[outofbandii]

The guys above have made some great points.

Don't worry about your conversion rate yet - if you get 10x as much traffic and still no conversions then you need to rethink.

Your design is definitely too dark, but I think I know the kind of quality look you're going for. Pay a decent designer a few quid to do it professionally - saving on your design costs is not realistic in your business.

[Drewkerr]

Ok thanks for the replies.

One, I hate google with a passion. I am using them among many other search engines with my other muse, but at the moment I am using all yahoo for the testing. And I have their conversion analytics running.

As far as product. There are two products on the market, one made out of a low quality metal (low grade aluminum or steel) and the other is a high quality aero space aluminum which ours is. As far as the high grade aluminum we are at the bottom range for price, and what very few others have is anodized options. We actually have several colors but are waiting on sample products to come in before we add BETTER pictures (which we will take) and the different colors.

Out of the 50 some very specific key words only half are getting impressions, not enough searches on the others. And there are another couple 100 hundred more general terms I can add but the CPC gets up in the $1 to $2 range.

But MIKE RHODES thanks for all the input on the way the site looks. I stopped the campaign and going to try and make some of those changes before resuming. The only thing is I don't know how many of those I can change with just the general store front. I might have to drop the coin for the customization FEE (which i was planning on down the road, just not in the testing phase.overall great feedback Mike.

Thanks

Drew

[Marcie]

Hi Drew - one other thing (that I struggle with too) is an 'about' page or the like, people are often looking for 'who the heck am I buying from and do I trust them?' factor. Perhaps even "why we are passionate about our product" will do and explain (as you have here) why the competitors don't stack up.

HTH!

[Drewkerr]

ok guys after the suggestions we made some changes. All for no cost, just the time factor. Overall Yahoo store is easy to use, there were some parts that I had to learn basic HTML code to manually change, but other than that, check it out and give me some more suggestions please.



Thanks

Drew

[Mike Rhodes]

Hi Drew,

Mate, good on ya for putting the ideas of the group into practice & asking for help!

For what it's worth my 2c on the new improved site.


Home page looks great. Much better.
Still a little dark for my tastes... figure out the demographic of your main target market (eg 35-45 mums, shopping from home because they're too busy to go to the store) and look at other shopping sites that they might use - get some ideas from there.

The only thing mising for me on the homepage is something that explains the differences between the two products. Is it just the material they're made from? Or is there more I should be considering?


On the product pages themselves:
I think you need a lot more text (& preferably more images) about the product. I realise there's not a lot you can say about a grinder, but it needs more info to appeal to those detail people
at the moment it doesn't say anything about the product - just about you & restating the guarantee (which is worth doing)
more benefits!

also something to sweeten the deal would be nice. a bonus of some sort.
even if it's a few tips about which herbs/spices you can use this for
what foods they go well with
cooking tips & suggestions
nothing major - something you can get done on rentacoder.com for <$100

credit cards
definitely get rid of the link to atmexperts
you're giving them too many chances to leave your site..
you can't make them go to the order page, as they may not have chosen the product yet, so I'd remove the link altogether.
same with the paypal button

order page:
can you add a graphic acros the top?
restate your guarantee on this page
put them at ease, mention your returns policy

I'd also increase the font sizes & colour to match you page - that way it doesn't feel like I dropped off the end of the KindGrindz world & landed someplace completely different


Down the track I'd probably also experiment with & test using a google store & google checkout instead of yahoo store (since I'm guessing most of your visitors will be coming from google adwords... so they might be marginally more inclined to buy using a google checkout button (as it's a brand they know & trust) ... just a thought - it'll probably have no difference at all!!


good luck mate,
mike

[jonparker83]

Well done for making the aesthetic changes to your website - It definitely looks better now

I'm still concerned about your marketing though...

1) What differentiates your product (in the eyes of your customers) from much cheaper 'regular' aluminium products that aren't aerospace grade?

2) Are there enough of these customer who appreciate the difference in metal quality to form a sufficient market?

You can have the nicest website with the best sales copy in the world, buy if your niche market it *too* niche, then you need to find a new product

Jon :)

[Mike Rhodes]

Hi Drew,

I'm so impressed with you - you're making it happen. Good on ya!

So I'd like to offer you a deal.
I'll take a look at your AdWords account & make some suggestions for you.
How to set it up the best way
How to find the right keywords (including negative keywords - which means 'google, don't show my ad for this word' - very important)
How much to bid
What to write in your Ads
etc

Whatever I can squeeze into a 20 minute video.

I video the screen as I look through your account, you see my mouse moving around & hear my voice - it's basically like you're watching over my shoulder. I won't make any changes - just point out what I see & make suggestions for you to action (more leaning in it that way!)

If you're interested PM me. No charge for a fellow 4hww'er who's out there making it happen :)

Cheers,
Mike