Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Okay, so I made quite a few changes on my website and I am in to the stage of promoting my site.  I had my site crawled by Alexa and the progress report is not so great. What am I doing wrong here? Can someone help me figure this out?

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www.islandgoodies.net

Alexa often takes time to get a better ranking. It is based mostly on traffic stats, it can fluctuate, and I believe it only is affected by visitors with Alexa add ons in their browser.

That shouldn`t be your first concern.

I somewhat remember seeing your site before. I don`t get all the keywords at the top of the main page. It doesn`t look professional as it is. From an SEO viewpoint, it looks more like keyword stuffing.

What are "local accessories"?

As before, your product images don`t sell the product. They are too small, and there is no description for the products to tell me anything about them.



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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I suspect it may be time to re-think the "do it yourself" approach.

If this is your second or more try at this, it is time to consider hiring a web designer.  With your current design, customers are not liable to stay for very long to shop. 

Just a few major fixes that are needed:
1. Google ads along the side make it look like a scam.
2. The logo needs a graphic redesign and update.
3. The big "HI" on the homepage and the long word document-looking text block does not look professional
4. Using paypal may seem cheap on your end at first, but for the average customer who does not have a paypal account, they will turn around and leave once they realize they have to go through paypal to buy from you.  Look into merchant accounts and get an ecommerce hosting package with a custom cart system.

I recommend reading this article to get some more insight.  And remember, web users are ruthless these days, demading only the best in site look and usability.  If your site is hard to use or not eye-appealing, most people won`t think twice about leaving and finding something that looks more authentic and `hip`.  The Clueless Business Owner`s Guide to Going Online

Let me know if I can help,

(HostRail, Great analogy of doing it yourself and the bride and groom doing the whole wedding and reception themselves! I would`ve liked to see the analogy carried forward in all the various article sections.) :-) 

Have you looked into even an open source like oscommerce?? I think you would benefit.

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