Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

www.theherbalhookup.com

Hello everyone,

I have been working for the past few months in my spare time to get a health supplement ecommerce site launched.  I have finally accomplished this and opened the "doors" yesterday.  I built the site using Cubecart and a free template which I modified.

More important than the store I suppose is the Forums section.  I set it up as a place for people to discuss and ask questions about alternative medicine. 

Yesterday I sent out emails and myspace bullitens announcing the launch, and my hosting service gave me some free ad credit on google and yahoo so I put that into effect also.

I still haven`t gotten any hits though, I`ve been reading on Entreprenuer.com about some guerilla marketing methods to bring more traffic, so hopefully that will help.

Right now a friend is helping me put a form in the contact session to make it more user friendly. 

Okay, I guess that`s all I can think of for now.  I would really appreciate any contructive criticism on the design, layout, copy, ideas for bringing more traffic, or anything else that you feel could help.

Thanks a lot in advance!

Craig Peterson
The Herbal Hookup
www.theherbalhookup.com

Congratulations on launching the business!  My comments are from a consumer standpoint since I am technically challenged!  Hope it`s useful though.

I like the color scheme and really really like the header style.  Loved the forest picture.  I don`t like that the body feels so narrow on the page with all the dead green margin doing nothing.  Is there a way for you to widen the body or perhaps make the trees picture go into the margin?  Why is all that valuable space empty?

I would like to see a navigation button at the bottom of the page to get me to the next page (and back).

On your cholesterol products page I happened to notice that your Red Yeast Rice product descriptions say "Red Yeast Rich", which is probably a typo.

I did not try the cart.  But I looked at the forums.  I thought giving a discount for participating in the forums was a nice way to get people commenting.

Would you take a look at my site www.YourSoothsayer.com and let me know what you think?  My signature has a link.

jillybeans

Yeah, I know what you mean about the free space, I should take advantage.  So, I could either make the site wider, or maybe use that space for adverts?  Do you think it would be too unprofression to have links though?  Maybe if I traded links with blogs or similar themed pages...  Either way, thanks for the input Jillybeans. :)

Craig

Hi Craig.
I would consider doing both.  Make the site wider and keep one margin for advertising your products--whatever product is on sale or new.  I`d put perhaps 2 products per page with a nice blurb about them and a button to immediately place the item in the person`s shopping cart.

I see nothing wrong with links, but I don`t necessarily think they should be with herbal supplements sites.  Why not with sites good for the body . . . such as exercise, massage, special products like the gluten free cookies one of our members sells or the pasta sauce another member sells or the shea butter another member sells.
jillybeans

A multivitamin every day is a good dietary supplement to supplement a normal healthy diet but it can never replace a normal healthy diet.

TRX suspension trainer

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Well your site is  Offline.    Could not be found.

Let us know what happened OK?    We warn about some  hosted or generated shopping carts.  Hopefully that is not the problem.

The ideas above sound fairly good, except for sending people away from your site.  You seem to have some interest in links, but do not seem very sure which way you are going on promotion?

Before a site is designed is the best time, or in its early stages, to choose the primary mode of promotion, paid or organic.   Although there is some overlap,  the designs are different.  We suggest a hybrid approach emphasizing ONE mode, preferably paid, PPC, PR releases, non-internet methods, etc. 

Regardless, without some major focus and distinctions, the likelihood of getting ANY traffic  (over 10 hits per day) is nil without a lot of work and a solid strategy.  Being a discount is a me-too, usually fatal-to-the-company strategy.

OK   10 minutes later, still your website is  DEAD.   You watching ?   If you are properly set up on Google, they would be sending you an alert right now that your site is not accessible. 

 BGdesign  and  Web-Success  are trademarks of Buyers' Gruop MG

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RJ, that site probably no longer exists.  That original post was written way back in 2007.  Somebody commented on it recently (who knows why), so that's why it's showing back up.

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David @ Touch Point Digital

 

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David @ Touch Point Digital Marketing
A New Orleans SEO & web design company.