18 replies to this topic

[foamcow]

Site URL: http://www.designease.co.uk

General
Complete - though more work will be done to improve/add content.
The redesigned site has been up for about 6 weeks. The old site has been up well over 12 months.
There is an Adwords campaign driving some traffic through the site, though I feel that the keywords its targeting are a little generic and aren't leading to a huge number of leads.
Currently the site is drawing around 250 clicks per day with only around 10-20 of those clicks resulting in the user contacting the company or registering on the site.
I have advised my client that they should make their targeted keywords more specific and he now understands the rationale behind that so we will be looking at his AdWords ads over the next week or so.
I have a feeling that there is an indexing issue with the site, at least within Google. It seems to have taken a very long time to get the new homepage into Google's index and it's fluctuating in and out a bit. There doesn't seem to be any sign of the new pages being indexed yet either and what's more there are a number of old, now defunct, pages still in the index (these lead to a custom 404 page). There used to be many more pages in the index, but Google seems to have dropped some but not all of them. If anyone can offer any advice or insight into this I'd be glad to hear what they have to say. Perhaps I'm being impatient as things do appear to have just started to happen - but how long should I wait on Google before thinking I might need to change something?

SEO
A few backlinks, nothing major. I've started with some local directories and directed the site owner to talk to his customers to try and get some good inbound links.

What keywords are you targeting?
folders, ring binders, polyproylene, organisers, packaging, presentation folders - I'm open to suggestions as the words were 'decided' upon before I started work on the project. I think they need serious refinement.

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
Sure! Can't guarantee all changes will be made. I want to make a few changes to design and colours myself but I need to get over the initial indexing hurdles first.

Marketing
Who is your target audience? Think about:
Target audience is anyone who needs to bulk order custom presentation materials. These may be design agencies, marketing companies, we even just had an enquiry from a well known religious group! Anyone that needs to distribute documents, CDs or whatever in a branded pack. Designease specialise in polypropylene bug can also supply metal, paper over board, PU and leather items.


Why is your site different from sites selling/offering similar info/goods/services? Why will someone want to do business you?
I guess its the quality and creativity of the work and perhaps the small business nature of the company.

How important is usability?
Very.. shouldn't it always be of high importance?

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)
Inform customers and provide a taster of what is possible. There may be plans afoot in future to sell through the site but given the bespoke nature of the products it would be rather difficult. The main purpose therefore is to generate contacts and leads that the sales team can convert into, er, sales.

Design
Do you want design suggestions?
Yes, but again I can't promise that changes will be implemented unless I can make a really good case. Once again there are things that I feel need changing and I will be bringing up in future meetings.

[foamcow]

Hmm, I've just discovered that the url www designease.com is also in use and is loading designease.co.uk into a frameset.
I don't think this will negatively impact things since the search engines will still see the 'content' as being at designease.co.uk, right?

[projectphp]

Wrong.

[foamcow]

Are you saying if one has a frameset at URL A and loads a page from URL B into it, that a search engine will index that content under URL A and possibly 'mark it down' as duplicate content?

If this had a detrimental effect to URL B's ranking then wouldn't that be an easy way to drag down a competitor's ranking? e.g load your comptetitors site into a frameset of your own making?

[Jill]

Are you saying if one has a frameset at URL A and loads a page from URL B into it, that a search engine will index that content under URL A and possibly 'mark it down' as duplicate content?

I don't think anyone is saying that.

[foamcow]

Perhaps I misunderstood then....

I don't think this will negatively impact things since the search engines will still see the 'content' as being at designease.co.uk, right?

Wrong.

Perhaps somebody could clarify which bit of what I said was "wrong"?

The SE will see the content being pulled in to designease.com as actually being at designease.com or will it see that the content is actually coming from designease.co.uk?

Perhaps the SE will not see it as duplicate content then? Even though, to all intents and purposes, it is.

[Karri]

Quick question: why do people have to register before they can access certain sections of the site (pricing for e.g.)? I suspect your client is losing a lot of leads this way - people get annoyed by those kinds of barriers. Especially when they can easily click over to a zillion other sites that sell schwag and get a price immediately.

Few other things I noticed at a glance:

-> Text is a bit difficult to read (not enough contrast).
-> All the body copy on the homepage celebrates how wonderful the company is (to itself) and does not give the visitor a concrete reason to investigate further. Mediocre copy -- compared to the company's innovative image.
-> Online forms are way too long. People are lazy and won't fill them out. Could the brochure not just be emailed to the user? I'd cut the online forms in half at least.
-> What does the nav button "Specification" mean and why do I need to register to see the products listed in the drop down menu?

On the flip side - this site showcases some amazing looking product. Perhaps though, let people digitally "flip" through the images themselves rather than having them automatically flash from one to the next? Just a though - you might have to test that.

Karri

[foamcow]

Good points, thanks Karri.

Your suggestions are by and large things I have already marked to bring to the client's attention.

I definitely agree about the copy. When the new brochure is complete I will see what I can use from it.

The registration section was wanted by the client - although I have pointed out that the best content is in there and he should consider not blocking it off. Its main purpose is to gather names and addresses - its working quite well so far as even with the relatively low traffic. So far hes collected around 300 contacts. There is a search facility on the back end so he can search the database for contacts in a particular area if he is going to be in that area then download their details as an excel file and get on the phone to make appointments.

Long forms... hmm. Not sure how I can shorten them really. There are only 3 required fields! The address info is needed if they want a brochure so if the brochure box is checked it gives the user a reminder if they dont fill their address in. As a user, and as a site owner, can you offer any further suggestions on how to approach that contact form - how can I make it shorter?

I will offer a digital download when the new brochure is complete and I have the artwork in digital format - that's an excellent idea.

I'm not sure what you mean by letting the user flip through the products. Do you mean the large image(s) on the homepage? If so, that just shows 4 or 5 examples, personally I wasn't convinced about this but it was a decision made before I started working on the site.
Clicking the nav items on the left will show you more (around 150) samples that you can flick through at your leisure. Again though, I have recomended that this part of the site should be handled a little differently - and I hope to be making some changes there soon with better product descriptions, page titles and less clutter.

Again, Karri, thank you for you help. It is much appreciated.

Edited by foamcow, 21 October 2006 - 03:45 PM.

[chrishirst]

Hmm, I've just discovered that the url www designease.com is also in use and is loading designease.co.uk into a frameset.
I don't think this will negatively impact things since the search engines will still see the 'content' as being at designease.co.uk, right?

The only thing an SE will "see" at the .com is

<H3>Redirection</H3>
  Your browser does not have the features required for you to be taken
  automatically to the site you're looking for, so you need to follow
  this <a href="http://www.designease.co.uk">link</a>.

[Karri]

Long forms... hmm. Not sure how I can shorten them really. There are only 3 required fields! The address info is needed if they want a brochure so if the brochure box is checked it gives the user a reminder if they dont fill their address in. As a user, and as a site owner, can you offer any further suggestions on how to approach that contact form - how can I make it shorter?

Well, even though only 3 fields are required, I wonder if a lot of people might just see that long form and think "nah." Most users are not tech-minded like us

What if you only asked for their email and name and an optional comment / inquiry box? The rest they can give you later once you actually have "permission" to direct market to them. Does that make sense? The main thing is to get their email and name - everything else can be captured later. It would be interesting to test the current form against a simplified one - even though the actual required fields would be exactly the same (email and name).

Essentially, you need a relationship with people before you can get good responses on things like mailing addies and phone numbers.

Just some thoughts.

Regarding "flipping" through products: yes, you are right about the homepage if it's just a few samples. But maybe on the deeper product pages make it a bit more obvious that you can in fact "browse" the other products in more detail. For example, it says "Page 1 2" at the top of the Pres Folders section, but I didn't even notice that the first time I visited, let alone that you could click there. So maybe make it painfully clear that "page 1" and "page 2" are links, along with a call to action that these categories can in fact be browsed to get more detailed specs. i.e. "Click a presentation folder thumbnail for specs." Or something like that but perhaps briefer verbiage.

Karri

[foamcow]

Good points!

I'll put the idea forward about shortening the form. Not sure it'll fly as I've just made the forms simpler anyway... originally ALL the fields were required and there were different forms for contacting and brochure requests!
It would be interesting to test though.

Your comment on the product samples is something like the idea I am preparing to put forward anyway. I think it should be more obvious that you can click for a bigger view and also each sample 'page' should be a bit richer in content with proper page titles and better product descriptions.

Again, many thanks.

[foamcow]

I'm at a loss to explain why Google still isn't indexing the entire site.

The site has been around for some time, I recently did a revamp of it. The URLs of the site changed.

I have set up redirects with htaccess to send requests for the old URLs to the new equivelent pages, this has worked with a test URL so I am happy it will be ok with the other pages in Google's index.

What I don't understand is why Google will not index any of the new pages and add them to it's index. I thought it might be aging delay, but doesn't that work at a domain level rather than a page level? And if it is aging delay then why has another, unrelated site, that I built after this one been fully indexed? The other site has virtually no traffic, no backlinks and no PPC.

Could it be that the product pages within the Designease site are seen as being too similar?

This is really puzzling me!

[Dragonusthei]

Nice looking site. Javscript menus are in the html so thats good.

All round very nice site.

[gsimerlink]

I like the overall look of the site. Good layout, muted colors and easy to read. My biggest problems are the pre-registration sections, which I noticed others had mentioned, and the lack of close up images. I really don't think the images shown do the products justice. The product detail seems to be the same sized picture just cropped a bit closer.

I also think that the title tags need a major change. i.e. the first word of every tag is "Examples". The basic copy could also use some reworking, it just doesn't seem to sell or create interest.

Another problem, the "Leather & PU" link brings open another window with only the header.


Overall a great looking site though.

[foamcow]

Well as of November 28th Google seems to have started to list the site. There are currently 192 pages in Google's index.

So by my estimation, that took around 75 days to be properly indexed by Google.

Thanks for the comments...
I was thinking about changing the titles actually.

There are no javascript menus! They are done with CSS.

I agree about the images. I have suggested an alternate way to address the product pages that would be better for users and SEO. I also want to open up the registered area as there is some good content in there that doesn't really need to be kept secret. Waiting to hear back from the client.

The Leather and PU link actually goes to another site outside of my control, it should load into a frameset with the header at the top and the external site below. Seems to be working now. Nothing more I can do about it.

Anyway, the initial issue is now resolved and Google has picked up the new pages.