Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

My website has been live for approximately 3.5 weeks.  My business is polished stainless steel marine radar and satellite tv and satcom antennas targeting pleasure boaters and yacht owners.  The goal of the website is strictly sales.  I designed it to reflect the fact that we are an American manufacturer and have a high quality product.  The site was also designed to have an easy, intuitive navigation scheme that will take the visitor from a general product description to a page that focuses on their radar/satcom manufacturer, and then to a page with all available styles, prices, etc.  I utilized PayPal as the shopping cart to provide a comfort level for the customers financial and personal information being protected.  As I said, the goal of the site is strictly sales.  I have made it as search-engine friendly as I could since this is my sales vehicle.  Not sure if I have succeeded.  Right now I am utilizing pay per click advertising almost exclusively until I begin moving up in the search engine rankings.  I would truly appreciate any feedback you may have on the ease of navigation, the copy itself, if you see calls to action on any pages and if you feel they are strong enough.  I would also like to know if you would personally feel comfortable purchasing a product from this site. I would also like to know if there are any SEO suggestions as well.I know I've left quite a bit of information on this post.  Any guidance or ideas you can provide will be greatly appreciated.  Thank you so much!

www.battlewagonmounts.com

Hello,

I personally would hold off on a PPC campaign and put the money into hiring a professional firm to help get the look down. Site visits are in vain if the site isn't anything special or stand out among the white noise that is the internet. The site looks sort of dated, if I were visiting . You've got a great product, geared towards a higher end demographic. Do you feel as though this is appealing to people with money?

This seems to be pitched to actual boat owners versus other businesses for resale.  So these people need to be sold, I would certainly put some images with practical uses of your product. As for SEO, there is a lot of great content on your site as is. But its a little slim and taking a look at the code, meta crawlers don't respond well to dreamweaver code... I would really look into investing some money into getting a professional designer. In an industry that isn't overly saturated, which it seems this isnt, decent SEO could be achieved pretty easily with a well designed site. Good move on paypal, that definately adds cred.

Great product, Great start and the best of luck with your business. Let me know if I can help any further.

Chris Carter

SEO and site indexing - there are a few things that should be done.

• Your web site styles should be put into a style sheet and removed from the web page(s) html.
• It would be better if your menu was not java script but text based so that the menu names could impact search results.
• Rather than use form buttons for "select radar mount", and other buttons... you should use text based links. Again to affect search results.
• The is you home page title: "BattleWagon Marine Radar, Satellite TV & Satcom Mounts Home Page". The title tag is one of the important factors for search results, so are these your targeted keywords? Using your domain name in the title is unnesessary because it is your domain name.
• Meta Keywords - you have many, but recognize the keyword meta tag is not used by the major search engines.

It does not appear that your site has not been indexed by Google or other major search engines. Have you submitted a sitemap to Google and to Yahoo? A couple of inbound links for other relevant site will get your site indexed.

You might consider signing up for Google analytics too.

Design - while the design is ok, personally, I think a different color sceme would better show off your product and be relevant to the "boater" - your target market. There is a lot of black space. Also, the view must scroll down to see content. This is ok unless the content  (they have to scroll to see) is important.

How do I buy? There does not appear to be a clear way to order or buy your product. It is critical to make it easy for people to buy. Rather than have separate buttons to select a mount... put links in the web page content so as the viwer reads the content the link is right there. There is not really any call to action.... the "select your mount" buttons are not really call to actions. "Buy now", "purchase stainless radar mounts".. are call to actions.

Contact - while providing email addresses is fine, it's a good practice to have an online contact form. It is more user friendly. Plus publishing your email addresses can generate spam to your addresses.

~Roland

Dude, you are seriously wasting your money doing PPC for this site.

Black text over dark blue is a huge no-no which causes catastrophic drops in reader interest and comprehension.  Big error.  Black text on a white or slight off-white backgroun is the way to go.  DO not argue with me - this advice will make you money, your present site will not.

The copy is bad.  It's features-oriented.  The information you have on this page does little to advance your selling process, because people buy because their emotions have been stirred-up.  Copy should always be benefit-oriented.  Hit the books or hire a pro, because the correct style of writing does not come easily.

You need padding, 30px, within your tables.  No-padding makes the site unfriendly to readers.

Looks like a good product undermined by ineffective  marketing.

Thank you Loren!  I appreciate the straightforward response.  What do you mean by "padding"?  I apologize for my lack of knowledge.  This is a new venture for me.  Thanks again!

Thank you Roland!  The site map has been submitted, and I have a couple of inbound links.  Yesterday it was ranked # 53 on google for "marine radar mount."  I appreciate your comments, especially regarding the black space and calls to action.  I have been using google analytics.  It appears that only a few visitors are actually following my funnel from landing page to the available models and pricing page, so your advice is well taken.

I am grateful to you Chris for your feedback.  You are correct:  I am marketing to the end consumer and it is a higher end product.  Target demographic is males 35-55 who own boats from 32' to 55'.  What would you change about the colors and layout?  Do you have thoughts on design specifics targeting a more affluent market?

Thank you again Chris!

Padding is a margin feature within HTML code standards.  It's like the margins on a typewriter and creates white space top, bottom, left, and right around your text.

It's written something like <padding: 30px>

The above isn't accurate HTML, since I seldom write padding code by hand the correct format is not stored in my brain, but when you look at code it looks something like that.

Appealing to affluent markets is about understanding what's important to them.  It's mostly in your message, since the more affluent people become the more discerning they tend to be as well - they look beyond packaging to where the real value is.  Notice how the cheap products at Walmart or whatever have flashy packaging.  More high-end products tend to have less flashy packaging because there's an understanding that more affluent customers are not easily fooled by flash.

It's not the graphics or layout that will get you the business, though a general standard of attentiveness to design is appropriate... it shouldn't totally suck but don't put style before substance, which is an all-too-common problem with websites.

If I were doing it I would go with yacht-type color schemes:  white, navy... maybe some green.

I would honestly start from the ground up buddy. Creattica.com has a great examples of what is current in the designer world. Let me know if you would like to talk about what my company could do for you and your product. Our portfolio is www.atonecreative.com

Thanks,

Chris