22 replies to this topic

[Jessica]

My website is located at thefragranceboutique.com. I would like any opinions that I can get on the site and what I can possibly do to improve it's rankings and/or conversions. The site is relatively new (only about 2 months old) and I'm sure I still have a long way to go with it.

I will be adding a better navigation menu by the end of the week. It will be an alphabetized menu so it will make browsing the site easier. I also have more graphics coming soon for some of my other categories.

General:
Completed

If completed:
2 Monthes

SEO
Do you have incoming links? yes and I am working on this daily

What keywords are you targeting? discount fragrances, fragrances, women's perfumes, men's colognes, designer fragrances, name brand fragrances, designer women's fragrances, name brand men's colognes

Do you want your code reviewed for errors or improvements? Sure

Marketing
Who is your target audience? Think about:Gender - either
Nationality - any
Age Range - teenage and up


The more you tell us about your target audience, the better. We don't know them- you do! Well, the site sells fragrances so just about anyone wears fragrances.

Why is your site different from sites selling/offering similar info/goods/services? Why will someone want to do business you? huge selection and lower prices than most other fragrance stores online

How important is usability? very

What is the purpose of the site? (inform, sell, online community, support B&M business, contact info only, etc) sells fragrances

Design
Do you want design suggestions? Sure

Edited by Jessica, 21 May 2007 - 02:20 PM.

[nina]

Jessica,

overall, I really like your website.

A few suggestions (although not regarding SEO):
1. I wish it had been easier to specify features I would like in a fragrance such as "price range" "eau de toilette" "perfume" etc. As far as I can tell, right now I can only search by sex and some other very broad categories.
2. By the color and images on your website, I would say you are appealing to a female shopper. That is fine as long as you are fine with it. However, if you want males and females you might consider a different color scheme.
3. Also, when I choose "women's fragrances" I assumed I would go right there and start shopping, but rather all I saw on the screen was more "blah blah blah" . Keep your general sales stuff to the home page. If someone is ready to shop - enourage them with some products easy to see!
4. I like that you have "track your orders" and "newsletters">
5. You have a subheading "store bestsellers" maybe change it to "Most popular perfumes"
6. On the skin care page it says "Click here to Shop All Skin Care Products:". Remove the ":" and the "Click Here to Shop all"
7. I assume you are expecting to make more money off your products than off your Google ads. If yes, I suggest moving the Google ads off the prime home page property to a web page called "more fragrance ideas".

Hope this helps!

Nina

[Jessica]

Thanks a ton Nina! Actually, the design was done by a man - and I JUST LOVE his graphics. We still have a lot of design work to do on the site but the coloring was taken basically from other well known fragrance sites. We didn't want pink and we didn't want blue so the purple was a nice color to stick with.

I will probably add more to the navigation menu but this is going to take some time - I'm working on an alphabetized menu first. Hopefully that will help with the navigation.

As far as the content on the women's fragrances page here is my issue with removing it. The site needs content and lots of it. If I remove all of the content from this page then I will be minus a lot of valuable content. Are there any SEO's out there that could suggest for or against removing the content from the main category pages?

Thanks again Nina for EVERYTHING!!!

[torka]

It's not all about SEO. SEO won't pay the bills. What it's about is sales and revenue.

Every word on the page is "content," when you get right down to it. Headlines, product names, product descriptions, all that stuff. Not every store "needs" huge chunks of narrative text for SEO. Every store I know of does need sales, though.

Is the layout you have helping you sell products on that page? If that chunk of text up top is getting in the way of product sales (and you have at least one potential customer who says it is) then you need to test to see if your conversion rate improves without it. Try it one way for awhile, then another, or get ahold of a split-testing tool and try it different ways at the same time.

We can speculate all day long, but nothing's going to give you the "right" answer better than an actual real world test with your actual real world customers. Try it with the text where it is. Try it without the text at all. Try it with the text down lower on the page and products up top where the customer sees them first.

If it turns out the fragrances page converts better without the text, but you still think you need that content on your site, put it on a separate "informational" page with links to appropriate individual products or product categories. If it turns out the page works best with the products up top and the mass of text down lower, then run with that layout. If it turns out the page converts best with the big ol' block of text up top, then leave it be.

My

--Torka

[Jessica]

thank you thank you thank you! This is JUST what I'm going to do. You guys are the best!!!

[Jessica]

thank you thank you thank you! This is JUST what I'm going to do. You guys are the best!!!

LOL... Made a sale not two minutes after removing that text off of the Women's Fragrances category. I'm just removing the text from places where it might get in the way. Hopefully this will help some. I will place the text in other areas. Thanks for the advice everyone!!!

[seo_challenged]

Not a big deal, but you may want to do a 301 redirect from the non-www version of your site to the www version.

Search this forum for canonical domain to see how to do it.

[Jessica]

Not a big deal, but you may want to do a 301 redirect from the non-www version of your site to the www version.

Search this forum for canonical domain to see how to do it.

Yea this has already been done (but just a couple of weeks ago).

[ScottSalwolke]

One thing that was disconcerting to me was the phrasing of certain sentences. For one it seemed like you were tying to optimize the site for the phrase TheFragranceBoutique.com. Look at the first paragraph.

TheFragranceBoutique.com is an online fragrance store with thousands of genuine brand name fragrances at discount prices. TheFragranceBoutique.com ships to both the US and Canada.

Then other phrases seem awkward.

"At The Fragrance Boutique.com, we pickup only the best products from genuine name brands though out the world." Shouldn't it be we only pick the best products from the top name brands.

And other sentences have misspellings. "If you’re looking for that celebrity sent or just a deodorant spray. Shouldn't it be scent. Go through the page and eleminate all these problems. They are disconcerting and won't impress prospects. They'll only turn them off.

[Jessica]

Oh YIKES Guy! I have someone that just starting writing the content for me last week. Thanks for letting me know about this. He's not going to be able to write for my site anymore. Something I can't stand is bad grammar and spelling.

[Jessica]

Oh YIKES Guy! I have someone that just starting writing the content for me last week. Thanks for letting me know about this. He's not going to be able to write for my site anymore. Something I can't stand is bad grammar and spelling.

I threw back up the old text that I had created (because I saved it for JUST SUCH a thing). The other text had only been up for a few days. Unfortunately I won't be able to use his services anymore. I should have known better. Thanks for catching this for me as this is certainly my biggest pet peeve!

I also changed the first sentence to:

TheFragranceBoutique.com is an online fragrance store with thousands of genuine brand name fragrances at discount prices. We ship our perfumes and cologne products to both the US and Canada.

Any Better?

[ScottSalwolke]

It's a lot better.

[Jessica]

It's a lot better.

WOW and to think that I actually paid him to do that when I could have just done it myself. I should have known better. Especially since this is something that I can't STAND! LOL

[Jill]

You didn't read it before putting it live on the site?

[Jessica]

You didn't read it before putting it live on the site?

Go figure... Pretty stupid huh? I was just in one of those moods and ready to get it on the site. Guess I got what I deserved! That WON'T happen again.