Traffic Is Growing, Need Conversion Next

[purdue512]

Could use constructive feedback on growing conversion rates on this site:

http://www.miserlymonkey.com

Traffic is UP UP UP, so I think the SEO is okay (not perfect, mind you). But I'd like to focus next on conversion. Tell me why you'd leave the site without buying? I can take it.

Thanks

[jv16]

Well, it's difficult to give you any conversion tips when I have hard time figuring out what your site actually does. Is it a site selling products? Or is it just affiliate selling eBay stuff? Are these products made by you or are you just a reseller? There's no need to answer me here, you should put the information to your front page.

For conversion animations are bad, that flash Verisign animation is very annoying. Certificates like this are good to build trust, but go for non-animated ones.

To be fully honest with you, I wouldn't buy anything from you. You have some of my trust thanks to those certificates, but the overall look of your site is quite cheap. You should polish your look, hire a graphic guy for a few bucks to do you some graphics, especially the header image and use some colors on your site. The cheap looks is the number one reason I can see that hurts your conversion.

Secondly, the buying process is not as simple as it should be. For example, I click the cooler products from the front page. I get a list of all your coolers. How can I buy one? Where's the buy button? OK, I'm supposed to go to the product details page first, but why? That's not good for your conversions, especially when the link to product page doesn't look like a link at all (it's not underlined).

And when I get to the product page the Add to cart button is very small, it's easy to miss.

OK, now I have a product I would like to buy (or test buy, at this case). When I click the checkout button the cart opens up and at the bottom it says "Items remain in your Shopping Cart for 120 Days". That's cool, but that's geeky talk, there's no need to give this kind of specs to the customer.

I have just spent a while browsing your products only to see at the checkout that you don't do international shipping. At least it seems so, you can only select United States as the country. Would it be possible to mention this policy somewhere in the site? While this might not increase your conversion rate it would be kind of you to mention.

You have a verification code in your checkout process. Let me put it this way: do you want to sell products? If you answer yes, you should remove all additional difficulties in making an order. Having a verification code is one of them. I for one had hard time figuring out what the verification code was, and I got it wrong the first time I tried it. How about someone who is 50 years old?

And what is this: "New customers need to create a customer account"? that's just another way to kill conversions. Ok, let me put it this way: do you need to create an user account when you buy groceries from your local store? No. Forcing users to create an account is not wise and kills your conversions.

While you do have a verification code, you don't verify the email address the user gives. I was able to go to the next step with an email address of "fdfasfsa".

[franglix]

I would echo most of the sentiments, but the thing that puts me off the most is the affiliate links next to what appears to be a camp equipment site image-wise (always what I 'see' first). Straight away I get the impression you are not about customer service.

[purdue512]

Thanks guys. This is great food for thought. I appreciate your time and feedback.