Practical eCommerce

babydirect

I wanted to have somebody else take a look at our site and tell us what might be going on.

www.BabyDirect.com is receiving an average of a thousand plus uniques a day coming mainly from keywords like baby stores, baby products, baby furniture, discount baby cribs, diaper bags, etc. yes, the keywords are generic but still we are only receiving just a couple of orders a day.

Our prices are competitive (don't look at the dresses), some categories are empty but still, we have more than 2000 products, our images are clear, the site is easy and attractive to navigate, we have options for payments, 1-page checkout, low flat fee shipping for orders over $100, hacker-safe logo, phone number posted on all pages, affordable but good search functionality (I'd love to have Endeca).

I know a bit about usability and understand that the site is not perfect but I have seen them worse and they convert better.

I would really appreciate any feedback from the usability experts and anybody. I guess I am too familiar with the site to have a neutral biased-free view.

Thanks a lot

BabyDirect.com

kabucas · **Date:** Thu Aug 09, 2007 6:35 pm **Subject:** here is a few tips

Hide your empty categories.. its just a pain for a customer to have to hit the back button

In your Sale & Clearance.. I only see one product that is marked as on sale (it may not mean a lot to you.. but if the shoppers are anything like my wife.. if they think they are saving $15.. its a quicker decision to add it to the cart

I didn't see any way not to register.. although your market may not require this option, it may increase your rate

If you are ashamed on your dress prices, probably not a good place to put them on the home page.. with such a cute and large image.. I first clicked on it.. saw the prices, and about left the site as i figured all other prices would reflect this range.. but since I was testing.. I stayed

You may want to put something on the products where someone can view the shipping before going to the checkout page
This is rather scary
Note: This is an overweight item. Additional shipping & handling might be applied to the order at checkout.

Which tells me I can spend the next hour shopping, only to find out later.. at checkout.. what my shipping charges are..
And in your customer support page, I didn't see anything besides what services you use.. promote items that have free shipping on the product page such as the pedal cars.. although your price is some $20+ higher than directly from the supplier

Your site is well done.. but as far as traffic.. you can have 100,000 hits a day.. but if what they are searching for isn't what you offer.. won't be many sales..

You might want to work on your meta page titles.. ie remove your company/site name from them as not many people will be searching the keywords along with your name.. but leave them on the home page.

Are you using any PPC? you can generally get better value using a good campaign as before the customer clicks, you can filter them out with a good ad.. and also send them to the right pages

babydirect · **Date:** Fri Aug 10, 2007 3:52 am **Subject:**

Kabucas,

I really appreciate your comments and suggestions. They are very constructive and make a great point. I will try to answer each of them the best way I can.

1- The empty categories must be certaily bothering customers. I was thinking about taking them out but they already have a good page rank. I prefer to fill them with products (don't you agree). Soon we will be adding around 4000 products at once. I will wait until then and, if there are still some that remain empty, I will delete them.

2- Sale and Clearance. Great point, I already removed the regular priced products and added the one deeply discounted.

3- Registration: I am not sure I understand what you mean. To place an order and pay with credit card, customers need to register. I don't think the system lets me bypass this. I found a way to let customers pay without registering though. If you can pay with Paypal, you don't need to register. I will place the note next to the Paypal button.

4- The dresses are competitively priced. They are high end products and we have a great margin, that's why I am pushing them. But you are correct, unless we are Neiman Marcus, they won't sell much. We'll take that banner off and add a non-cluttered multi product banner with some discounted products.

5- Shipping prices, we have a little technical hurdle here. We are working to implement an AJAX based shipping estimator in the product page and checkout. I see now that we must prioritize this project.

6- Meta Titles: Although we try to add them by hand one page at a time, it is close to impossible to edit every page and the system adds generic titles where we don't put a custom title. Sometimes we run out of creativity in the titles as well Wink

7- PPC: We are using very limited PPC. Our budget is very limited and costs can skyrocket. We are focusing in organic rankings and have been very successful so far. I will try to put some more resources into long tail keywords PPC

I really appreciate the time you took to DELETED BabyDirect.com and hope that others can take a look and let us know their thoughts too.

Thanks a lot!

Ernie

tcraw1010 · **Date:** Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:20 am **Subject:**

I think your site looks fantastic !!

How long have you had it up and running? May I ask what shopping-cart platform you use?

Volusion · **Date:** Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:28 am **Subject:**

Do you have DELETED of some kind? Where is the traffic dropping off? That should be the biggest indicator.

athanasiusrc · **Date:** Wed Aug 29, 2007 7:42 am **Subject:**

I would recommend putting the actual discount percentage next to the discount price on your sale items.

Nice site.

Volusion · **Date:** Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:14 am **Subject:**

Studies have shown that having allowing your customers to ask you questions via live chat can help convert sales. Here is a free version of livechat:
http://volusion.com/livechat_software.asp

TackleToyStore · **Date:** Tue May 13, 2008 8:59 pm **Subject:** Product Reviews

BabyDirect,

I think you have a wonderful website, I love the layout, not a lot of scrolling. I went through the ordering process, and you require that a customer register to make a purchase. This is not something that people feel comfortable doing. On my site I offer both a non-register option and a registering option. This is inclusive of normal credit card sales, as well as paypal, and Google Checkout.

You have Hacker Safe, which is great, this helps. I had Hacker Safe, but switched to Control Scan. I have more than one E Commerce site, so I pay one price for upto 5 websites. Control Scan made more sense to me.

Someone mentioned pricing. You need to be competetive, so I would shop for what you sell, and see where you are in relation to your competition. A big part of my business is monitoring what my competitors are doing. I don't know your industry, however in my industry there are many companies that have MAP requirements. Personally I like doing business with manufacturers that protect their retail. This allows me to sell my products at a good profit margin. When the retail price playing field is even across the board, customer service, and product knowledge generates the sales. This has worked out very well for me. In addition to search engine purchases, I also enjoy referrals from customers who recommend me to their friends. I do more phone sales than actual direct internet purchases. In all fairness, some of my products are rather expensive, and rarely do I get orders for $800 fishing reels without a phone call first.

Customers want to know what their shipping is going to cost. I offer USPS as well as FedEx. Personally USPS takes 98% of what I ship, they are my preferred shipper for most products, except fishing rods, which are large boxes with lighter weights. These "volume calculated" shipments are tricky, I can ship 6 fishing rods for the same cost it takes to ship 1. In these cases I offer combined shipping to my customers, or free shipping as much as possible, this is an added incentive which can an extra sale from the same customer.

USPS facilitates free shipping. USPS will give you boxes free, as well as free pickups, in addition you can print your labels on USPS.com. I personally place my shipments in the the postal carriers truck, and give them a nice bonus during the holidays. I have found that using USPS is much cheaper than the other carriers.

On my website, I also added a personal touch. I let the customer know that when they buy from me, or call my company, they will talk to me, the owner. When the customer calls, they always say "hi, is this Louis?" That goes a long way. Something to think about. I know this is not possible for all internet businesses, so this may not be possible in your particular case. In addition, I also answer messages 7 days a week. This is a necessity in my line of business, most recreational fishing takes place on the weekends, and I get a lot of product questions during these days, as well as holidays, being there after the sale is as important as being there at the time of the sale.

Practical eCommerce

Community Forum

1000 daily uniques - 2 orders a day

Ecommerce Articles

Search Articles

Ecommerce Community

Ecommerce Resources

About Practical eCommerce

Page 1 of 1
Practical eCommerce Community Forum Index » Conversion: Convert Visitors to Customers