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islandgoodies

posts: 3

Jul 05, 2008 7:10 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Hello everbody. My name is Chris and I recently started a website, http://www.islandgoodies.net and I am trying to find ways to drive more customers to my website. Anyone got some ideas that I might be able to implement for promoting it?

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www.islandgoodies.net

Webline

posts: 687

Jul 05, 2008 7:52 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

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I think the first 2 sentences should end with question marks, not periods. JMO.

You need more textual content on your pages, and better onsite SEO. Search engines look for certain things within your pages, things which your pages don`t have. Better titles on your pages, h1/h2 tags, no empty alt tags, etc.

Yahoo sitebuilder doesn`t create the cleanest code, so you have a lot of excess baggage behind the scenes.

Personally .... I don`t think I`d pay $30.00 for a hat, or $155.00 for sunglasses regardless of who made it, where it`s from, or what`s on it, let alone buying them with no description of them that I can find. Who made them? How do I know they`re worth the money? What are they made from? You don`t tell me anything about it, and if you do tell me, it isn`t obvious or easy to find.

Where is your page with a product guarantee, or product return policies, shipping costs, shipping time ...... ?

You`re leaving too many unanswered questions for your visitors, and I think a skeptical buyer is pretty much the same as a non-buyer.

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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

CraigL

posts: 9051

Jul 06, 2008 2:32 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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And besides that, the page transitions to the "click to see more" took forever.

Webline

posts: 687

Jul 06, 2008 8:45 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Actually, after re-reading my first response, I realize I didn`t really answer the question; I got off track, although I do think the comments are valid.

Look at sites that are selling the things you are, by finding them in searches. What is getting them on the first page of search results?

Probably a combination of SEO and on-page content.
They may be advertising via AdWords, or something like it. How are you promoting your site?
They probably are doing reciprocal linking with other sites. How many link exchanges have you done?
They probably have a large amount of content and information on their pages which is keyword rich. How do your pages compare to theirs?
You have coding errors, excess/bloated code, and a low code to content ratio; that`s what site building programs do. How do your competitors pages stack up?

Just a few things to start with. Basically, compare your site to the top competitors. See what they`re doing that is effective, and try to implement it into your own site.

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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

islandgoodies

posts: 3

Jul 06, 2008 9:06 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Hey thanks alot Webline. Your ideas help enormously. I made a few changes to my site and I joined a couple forums. I also signed up for reciprocal links on Shopping.com and a couple of other sites. Its starting to help me get noticed. Thanx again.

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www.islandgoodies.net

introniche

posts: 5

Jul 07, 2008 8:45 AM ET Quote Report Abuse

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Hi there,

I concur with webline that SEO is probably one of the best things you can do.

Link exchanges will definitely help you with that.

However, it would even be better if you`d start a blog about your products and from time to time refer to other blogs on the same subjects. Follow up with a back link.

Or you can try to execute other cross-marketing ideas on <a href="www.introniche.com">this classifieds marketplace</a> for co-marketing ideas. Cheap and cheerful as they say in the UK.

consumertreehouse

posts: 64

Jul 07, 2008 10:31 PM ET Quote Report Abuse

Points: 0 Vote

Link exchanges, forum signatures, and in my case a Myspace page, have all worked great for driving traffic to my site.

Good Luck

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The ConsumerTreehouse.com Team
www.consumertreehouse.com

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