I Don't Get It!

I hired someone that I thought was a good web-designer. I paid Network Solutions to guide me for several months mto get the site up and positioned. They assured me that I had the right title, description and keywords. I ran 3 months worth of paid advertising ... and so far I've had one order for $40 that cost me $51 to fill.

I suck! SO - I'm about to call it a day before I go broke - paying out money each month just to keep a dead site alive. And, all I ever wanted wanted was for it to pay me back a few hundred dollars a month after expenses.

www.usstrings.com -- that's the site. It looks good to me. CityMax (the ISP / design site) says that I've had 20,000 hits to the site in 5 months -- so, WTF? If only 10 or 20 people (of the 20K hits I am supposed to have had) stumbled onto the site - I should have had more than 1 sale; forget for a minute the smart and competitve amateur and pro musicians that I originally targeted.

I know I still have some work to do on my pricing. But, many of my prices are the lowest or are highly competitve. Could it be the way the site looks? Or, is it that I'm just OFF THE RADAR?

I am beginning to think that my source material is all wrong. Net Solutions says one thing about source language. Yahoo! another. Someone else says something else again!

I met an SEO 'genius' who actually re-designed my site and says he has the key to getting my site onto the appropriate search engines. Well, @#+% -- that's what I paid a webdesigner & Net Solutions to do 5 MONTHS AGO! Think about all this wasted time and wasted money!

Pls. share your thoughts with me. I'd be very grateful to find someone to discuss this with. Ultimately - I need someone to emply this SEO guys' design ideas - including populating the site with my products -- and helping me solve the SEO problem.

I want this site to work very much; I've put hundreds of hours into it.

Sincerely,

Larry --
US Strings.com

I'm sorry to hear about the troubles. First off don't listen to Network Solutions. They are one of the worse DNS providers and overcharge. Atleast thats my experience.

How have you advertised this site? Obviously the first and cheapest thing to do is Search Engine Marketing. I believe overture has a keyword tracker which shows how many views a keyword gets last month. I forgot the address but google keyword selector. Also ad-words can provide some traffic as well, of course depending on the keywords you can fork over fom 50 cents to 50 dollars a hit and not return any investment.

MediaPost provides excellent resources on Search Engine and Email Marketing. Join www.mediapost.com and check out their free resources.

Also to go from browser to buyer the website is a major factor. Easy navigation and payment will bring in the money. It wouldn't hurt to have a redesign of the site. Remember you gotta spend money to make money. And you have to advertise to get traffic.

I hear you & I agree about Net Solutions. I have about 350 products on my site; guitar strings, pedals, tuners, straps, picks, and a hundred other things.

AnyBroser.com says these are my keywords: guitar strings accessories bass banjo mandolin effects pedals picks polishes daddario dean markley dr ghs fender martin gibson discount prices

This is what Net Solutions and my webdesigner said my key words should be. They are all names within my site -- but, I have no idea if they are RIGHT. IT doesn't make any sense to me!

The SEO dude I mentioned gave me a completely new site design. Which I like - but, I've got to answer these other questions 1st.

Thanks.

I'm sure the SEO mentioned about using your keywords in your content on your homepage and all that jazz. He should be able to guide you to better keywords. The problem with generic keywords is everyone uses them and you willl have a harder time getting a higher ranking. I recommend keywords that are more specific than pedal or guitar string. Hopefully your SEO is working with you to narrow those down.

Really it sounds like your webdesigner didn't work on your SE placement and NetSol is just worthless. Work with your SEO and I'm sure you'll get more traffic. Now I do recommend researching Email Marketing. Getting customers to sign up then sending quality newsletters will keep them coming back and purchasing again.

To be perfectly honest, I think your site could do with a major overhaul - at least in a visual sense. The overall look is incredibly amateurish, and not befitting of any sort of online retailer.

As Slayers has alluded to, you have been taken for the proverbial ride by Network Solutions and your site designer. Not content with leaving you short in almost every area (hopefully you weren't charged too much for either of their services), they continue to subtly deceive you. When most people think of 'a hit', they automatically assume it means 'a visitor'. In fact, it relates to the number of files requested from your host server.

Let's say that your site is made up of 50 pages, and that each has 10 images (photos or graphics, it doesn't matter which) contained within it. If I were to visit yourdomain.com and browse all 50 pages, a total of 550 hits would be registered - 50 + (50x10) - but only one visitor would be accounted for.

So, working on the above example of 50 pages each with 10 images, 20,000 hits could simply equate to 36 people having trawled your site in it's entirety.

If I were you I would now look for a cheap, reliable web design company to spruce up your site and seek the advice of a reputable SEO firm (or better still, by a book on the subject).

SLAYERS - could you e-mail me? info@usstrings.com I can't PM you yet here. Send me a return e-mail address, also. I have some questions and a request.

Thanks,

Larry --

I agree with LGR, the design is not all that great. Your designer must not have put a lot of time or thought into the layout. It does look amateur, things are just all over the place, and there are pixelated images everywhere. In my opinion, the site could definately use a new layout, if not a complete redesign.

Larry,
After taking a look at your website, it is very obvious as to why you are having these problems. The first main issue is with your overall site design. This kind of design might work for informational purposes only, but not for a place where you have products to be sold. Your website is a virtual storefront, treat it as if you had customers walking in the door ready to buy things.

If you were a customer, would you feel confident with your purchase if there was junk thrown all over the place, or if things were clean and tidy? Your website is FULL of content and has an extreme potential to be more successful than you say it has been.

Another issue I would like to make you aware of is the coding of the website. It is very amature and sloppy. It has many errors that can and will effect your website when it comes to SEO.

If you would like to speak with me further about your website, please don't hesitate to contact me.


-Ron
ron_at_fixatemedia_dot_com