32 replies to this topic

[awall19]

I recommend not optimizing the site for another month. Let the time expire, then do the work yourself.

You would be better off to spend the next month learning about website usability, copywriting, and SEO stuff before making any changes.

I certainly would not pay $900 to any company that wanted to make no changes to the visible copy. Why should you do all the work to get top rankings - only to reward them with your $900?

[joker]

Hey toby--

that grill looks pretty interesting, is it too late to qualify for it? haha

Looks to me like you have two issues that you need to deal with if you want your website to be the sales channel you hope it is. First off, you need SEO to optimize your site for the right keywords (this seems esp. crucial in your case) and get people to your site, then you need to do something with them when you're there.

I will leave the SEO stuff to the others here (but I will mention that you should probably do more with your <title> and <alt> tags, and i don't think that the presentation on the homepage works in your favor).

Here are some of my ideas of what you can do with the visitors once you get them there:

1. Use permission marketing to get people to sign up for a periodic newsletter -- something akin to "To sign up for our monthly newsletter of barbecue tips and recipes...", and then hit them up with special offers and promotions. You will want to make certain your newsletter has recipes for both users of your grill as well as people who don't use your grill yet.

2. Set up the free cookbook you offer in a digital format and put it up on your site. It should be a great tool to encourage repeat visits as well as what I call "peripheral traffic": those people who come to your site looking for one thing, and wander into the other parts of your site.

2a. If you have the room in your budget, try using other forms of digital media as a way of getting your point across. For instance, a side-by-side cookoff of your grill vs a competitor done in flashware could be pretty impactful.

3. Re-evaluate your homepage: I think you want to have the goal of, if a visitor visits only your homepage, he/she should know exactly what the cooker is, why it is special, why he/she should want one, and how to get it.

4. This is just a personal picky thing, but condense your "About Us" information and "Contact Us" information into a single page -- though i imagine some might disagree with that statement.

5. You mentioned radio ads, and that is good, I think a trap too many people get locked into thinking they can only use the web to market their site: I think another great secondary way to market a site is direct mail marketing. And don't forget promotional giveaways that prominently feature your URL.

6. You might want to consider using those "Tell your friends about us" links as a way to promote your site.

7. As far as measuring the response to your radio ads, you might also want to consult your server logs. Much in the same way that you can determine the success of your ads by looking at order zip codes, you can also determine where your web visitors live by examining their IP addresses.

8. You might also want to consider "intra-site advertising". I know some people don't like this, but my experience has been that a pop-up ad or banner ad on your site advertising a special promotion or a particular product can generate some good traffic. If you could implement it quickly, I would say an ad or promo targeting tailgaters could be huge.

9. Re-think that login link on the top of your homepage. If there is a customer support page, put it in your toolbar. If its for admin purposes, hide it in the bottom left or right hand corner.

10. I think you might want to be a bit more aggressive in the branding on your site.

11. This is out of left field, but I would recommend that you try to incorporate more photos of food (without the cooker) in your site. I think your best bet is to get people to focus on the great results they will get with your cooker, and not the actual machine itself.

Anyways, hope this helps. Don't hesitate to send me a message if you have any questions.

[Peter]

(but I will mention that you should probably do more with your <title> and <alt> tags...)

Those are not your first worries. Alt atributes are ignored unless the picture is clickable.

2a. If you have the room in your budget, try using other forms of digital media as a way of getting your point across. For instance, a side-by-side cookoff of your grill vs a competitor done in flashware could be pretty impactful.

Be carefull with heavy graphics,.. most people still use a dial-up modem to connect to the internet.

but condense your "About Us" information and "Contact Us" information into a single page

Makes sense.

You might also want to consider "intra-site advertising". I know some people don't like this, but my experience has been that a pop-up ad or banner ad on your site advertising a special promotion or a particular product ...

Correct, most people don't like pop-ups. Why not put a promotion in the page it self? Also, be aware that pop-up blockers are getting more popular.

I think most importantly is getting your web site in the top 10 of the search engines. Other marketing stuff has little value without visitors. Spend your time first on the search engines.

Regards,

Peter

[tobychance]

Hi Awall19, Joker and Peter

Many thanks for your responses. They are all food for thought and I will be discussing them with our web developers next week in a general meeting about optimising the site.

It's interesting to note, re the search engines, that last Wednesday our traffic on http://www.thecobb shot up from 20 a day to 193 then settled to around 150 a day - most of the hits coming from a PPC site called About BBQs that I'd signed up and paid for, with some from Google and Yahoo, neither of which I have submitted the site to. How can the site appear on the SEs if I have not submitted it to them? Does it get there through the backdoor of appearing on About and other shipping sites/directories? Traffic on the cobb.earthfireusa.com URL, which the SEO company supposedly submitted to the search engines, is still chugging away at +- 20 hits a day.

Another point worth mentioning is that the SEO company are confident of the cobb.cearthfireusa.com site appearing in Yahoo even though they are not spending the $299 to sign up. What do they know that we (I) do not?

I'll be focusing the next couple of weeks on optimising the content on both the sites and waiting for the first report from the SEO company!

Toby

[Peter]

Toby,

Yahoo is just a normal search engine that will find web sites on its own. Perhaps you have a couple of links pointing at your web site from other web sites. You don't have to pay yahoo to get ranked. You pay to be included faster.

The same goes for all other search engines. Even when you don't submit, it still will be found. The simple fact that you posted a link in this forum can already be a reason that some search engines found your web site.

When they find your site through a directory, that is not called a back door. That is just a normal back link.

As you see, a normal web site with a couple of links pointing at it will get indexed. SEO will help you get higher rankings, and with that more traffic and sales.

Regards,

Peter

[Jill]

How can the site appear on the SEs if I have not submitted it to them? Does it get there through the backdoor of appearing on About and other shipping sites/directories?

You never have to submit to the spidering search engines, because yes, they will find your links from places like About and other directories you submit to. There are many threads on here where we discuss this.

Peter said:

Yahoo is just a normal search engine that will find web sites on its own.

Which isn't actually true.

Yahoo is a directory, which at the moment also pulls results from Google's database. You will be shown in Yahoo results if you're being shown in Google's results, but you won't be actually in their directory (thus not having to pay the $299).

What I find disconcerting is that your SEO company did not tell you this, and instead apparently is trying to make it sound like they know something special and secret to get you into Yahoo for free. That bothers me a lot. Why would they not explain it to you the way I just did? Companies like that give us all a bad name because they take advantage of their client's "ignorance" about the search engines and directories.

Jill

[Peter]

Jill,

You are right,... Sorry about the confusion. No idea where that came from,..



Peter

[awall19]

Another point worth mentioning is that the SEO company are confident of the cobb.cearthfireusa.com site appearing in Yahoo even though they are not spending the $299 to sign up. What do they know that we (I) do not?

Originally Yahoo was a free directory. Those sites which were in there a long time ago never had to pay a fee...and thus still do not have to. Also non comercial websites (content sites) can be included free if they fit one of the non commercial categories.

It is important to note that most people use Yahoo search when they use Yahoo. A much smaller portion of their user base comes from people searching the directory.

[plasma800]

Also keep in mind that your stats program should be setup to DISclude you, your designer and your seo company. Just a little tip to keep your stats very accurate, specially if you are looking at small numbers. Who knows how many visitors you got just from people here previewing your site. This post has been viewed 278 times..thats a bit.

I wouldn't mind giving you a couple of design ideas while I'm looking at it.

The VERY first thing that pops out to me is, where is your phone number? Do you take orders over the phone as well, or are you trying to push ALL internet sales?

If it were me, I think I would ditch the black bar above the grey and use the grey bar to house my phone number, link to contact page (ie. Contact Us Online) and shopping cart link (login if needed). The black bar is a waste.

Speaking of logging in. My personal opinion is they stink. No one wants to keep up with more passwords and user names, if I could ditch it, I would! Use a cookie to remember the customer if you really want to, but otherwise, just let them buy it and make it as easy as could possibly be.

Back to black... If you could get around the black nav bar I would. I think the logo carries enough black and black is heavy, stick to a sexy color thats not rough on the eyes. Light grey, light blue, light something.

The awards are GREAT! As mentioned, use the heck out of them, but Id use them in a side bar on the right of the main picture. Not only would they show better, but they would allow you some space to type what they are for, and that can carry keywords. IE: The Cobb Grill won the 2003 Vesta Award as the Best Charcoal, Wood Barbecue Smoker. Think Right column, ad, text under, little space, ad, text under. Or both ads and one bit of text. Figure something else to do with the pics in the right. Use a sentance under the main pic to highlight the fact that this thing is fun traveling, camping, sporting and adventuring.

Speaking of the pics... Ask your guy to lose the rounded faded pics. One, I think they kinda hose the feel by being funny shaped. The fade not only increases the size of the pic but also can be hazy and distracting. Lose the red circle around the product, use nicer fonting (and bigger) for the tag line...matter of fact, that tagline is good...I would try to work it in as text somewhere near the top of the page, maybe that black bar at the top would be handy for something.

Also, the pics at the top, to either side of the product are canted with a nasty shadow. Cut the shadow, straighten the photo. Keep everything as crisp and clean as you can.

All of this will for sure help your conversoin rates. clean and sexy... can make a huge difference.

I also dont think that I would like my nav to refer to the cooker as "the product". Im out of ideas at the moment, but maybe The Cobb Cooker at least. Folks out there will search for this thing by name im sure, and that would help further that cause. Im confused too, cause when I go to thecobb.com, it redirects me to the erathfire site. I fully believe that you should keep your own domain. None of that .earthfire stuff.

Want me to draw up a design platform for ya (since I just picked that one to death) Seriously...

anothet note, your only notion to buy this thing from your hompage is buried under the nav. tsk tsk...

Inner pages for grilling, linked from home page.. would be great if the copy next to the photos was real text. looks cleaner and helps you, drops file size ...all kinds of good reasons.

[plasma800]

Also

<title>Barbecue smokers, bbq pits, smoker grills, barbecue grills, bbq grills, meat smokers</title>

Just use common sense on the titles, i noticed yours at the top of my browser and it looks funky.

<title>The Cobb Barbecue Cooker, the best little cooker you'll ever own.</title>

or something like that. A good normal sentance that describes the page.

[tobychance]

Hi Plasma

Sorry not to have replied sooner to your splendid post - thanks very much for your excellent suggestions. I will talk to our web designer and think very seriously about taking up your offer of design services.

I think your are top of my list so far for the Free Cobb offer I made when I started this forum!

On the question of the URL, we are waiting until Nov 4th for the report from our SEO company before we switch over to thecobb.com URL, but I take your point exactly.

Toby

[plasma800]

Well thanks for the comp, I appreaciate that. If you like, I can draw up a design template in some spare time, show it to you and if you like it, just drop me $150.00 if you don't like it, I can toss it.

[Minerva]

They said they would create 10 Directory Information Pages (DIP's), each with a unique URL and domain targeting our keywords,

Are DIPs considered "unethical?" Does Google figure out the trick, eventually?

I hadn't heard of that one before!

-Andrea-

[Jill]

Andrea, they're just doorway pages with a newfangled name.

Jill

[kelly001]

I'm on a mac so I'll give my two cents. it looks good on this browser. the only thing I could find is on your home page there is the following snippet of extra code at the beginning of your code.



if obviously shows up in the browser at the top of your page.