General
Is this site completed or under construction?
Completed - as much as these things ever are!
If completed:
How long has the site been up?
The shopping section has had a major upgrade which was completed this week. Excluding other modifications and additions this version has been up since March last year.
SEO
Do you have incoming links?
Some, but getting more is definitely high on the priorities list
What keywords are you targeting?
Pretty much every page has at least one keyphrase, but there's too many to mention them all here.
A sample of the ones I have targetted directly from research are purr, cat beds, cat gifts, cat nip, catnip, cat products, cat supplies, cat supply, cat toys, cat treats, catnip, catnip toys, cats funny pics, cats funny pictures, cute cat pictures, cute kitten pictures, feline. (these were all done before the new products were added to the shopping section)
The keyword research I have done has thrown up a number of seemingly good suggestions, but I've found the most effective (i.e. ranking/traffic generating) keywords/phrases have been the longtail ones that happened by accident, for instance 'what is catnip' brings in some good traffic, as does 'why do cats purr' and 'funny cats'.
Although I totally accept the value of good keyword research, my own research (or maybe my implementation of it) doesn't seem to have benefitted us anywhere near as much as the accidental phrases, so I recently been trying the approach of (where applicable) using the most effective phrases from our stats as a guide for what phrases to target, and that seems to work pretty well.
For new pages where the content doesn't fit with the stats we already have (e.g. some articles and some of the new shopping/product pages) I'm trying the approach of using the phrases I think describe/fit the content of the page and wait to see what comes back before targeting any specific phrases. I was pleased to find that, on doing a little research after making the new product pages, some of the phrases I've used would have been good contenders had I researched the keywords in the way I previously had, so I'm hopefull that we'll get some good results - although there's nothing that cannot be improved!
Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements?
certainly. I don't think there's much wrong with it, but if you spot anything amiss I'd be grateful of the info.
Marketing
Who is your target audience? Think about:
Gender
Nationality
Age Range
Income/Education level
Likes/Dislikes
I can make some generalisations that would apply to maybe 50% of our current customers. I'm of the opinion that we can increase that percentage by targetting those generalisations and create a virtuous circle, but so far it hasn't seemed to have a measurable effect.
It's difficult to be too specific about some of this stuff because there seems to be a huge range - all sorts of people own cats, as they are independent enough not to need too much looking after but affectionate enough that you can spend a lot of time with them if you can spare it.
The generalisations are: -
Women (just to contradict myself, this is actually more like 75%)
Aged 20-50
Caring people who have an interest in humanist subjects, such as animal welfare and the environment
Family people who have either already got commitments to family members, such as kids or older people, or would like those type of relationships.
Eccentrics - a lot of our customers and certainly everyone that works here is a bit eccentric - especially when it comes to their cats!
Morally concious people who would rather pay a little more for something that is exploitation free and/or of a higher quality.
Also, 90% of our custoemrs are in the UK. We are happy to sell outside the UK but for many reasons we are concentrating our efforts on the UK for now.
Why is your site different from sites selling/offering similar info/goods/services? Why will someone want to do business you?
We have a unique product (Purr) and are building our brand to reflect integrity, high quality and good customer care
How important is usability?
Quite important in general terms, but I think most of our customers are quite comfortable with the web.
What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc)
Primarily to sell, but that is largely a practicallity that allows us to continue what we do. Our secondary objective is to engage and inform people, to help them become better cat carers.
Design
Do you want design suggestions?
Certainly
