That time again! Critique our site!

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Its usually slow this time of year but the past month our conversion rates have been cut in half. Page and Keyword Search Impressions have increased about % 20 since changing over to Magento but we still have no real Google click traffic. We have a few duplicate meta descriptions but other than that no obvious penalties.

We have strong links from Magazines and Manufacturers but we just arent ranking in such a competitive market. A Wordpress blog is under development but thats not going to solve the lack of Google traffic unless we have something go viral.

What do you think? Any On-Page suggestions? Any traffic building suggestions ? SEO suggestions?

Any professionals have advice for increasing our search engine traffic ? Ive been working on our on page SEO for months for such little change. Starting to seem like a waste of time. We get out ahead of competition and release a product first. I pump it out to Google+, Facebook and Forums. We Rank extremely high intially for the products for a few weeks then once the competition gets the products up our rank just plummets and we get pushed on the 3rd + page. What are we lacking? What have I missed?
#critique #site #time
  • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
    I just clicked on your link. It took way to long to load, a normal buyer would of hit the back button before it loaded.
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    • Profile picture of the author Shashie
      You could better optimize the design..
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  • Profile picture of the author Peak Curiosity
    In your navigation bar, you should take off the word "by" so it would look cleaner.
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  • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
    Looks like you've got some available menu bar real estate up there between "Shop by Brand" and the Search Bar.

    I would recommend throwing a link to your Featured Products section -- even if it just takes you down below the fold. Your Featured Products are a great call to action, so it might help you in a big way to have that featured somewhere above the fold. Makes it easy for visitors to get to it without having to scroll down.

    Hope this helps!

    _ Sean
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    • Profile picture of the author newrykillz
      Originally Posted by Solid Commerce View Post

      Looks like you've got some available menu bar real estate up there between "Shop by Brand" and the Search Bar.

      I would recommend throwing a link to your Featured Products section -- even if it just takes you down below the fold. Your Featured Products are a great call to action, so it might help you in a big way to have that featured somewhere above the fold. Makes it easy for visitors to get to it without having to scroll down.

      Hope this helps!

      _ Sean
      Thank you! Thats a great idea. @ the other replies. We arent having page load / speed issues at all. Our homepage size is around 2000 KB which is actually pretty small for a modern ecommerce store with thousands of products. Its either your connection or your route to our CDN. I could sprite a few images but you wouldnt notice that either..You say we could better optimize the design? How could we better optimize the design?
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      • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
        "Optimizing your design" is a pretty vague statement. It most likely means one of two things:

        - tweak aspects of the design for better load time/SEO...which it seems like you've done, or

        - optimize your design for mobile devices, or make it "responsive."

        This would mean that your site would automatically notice the size of the screen upon which it's being viewed, and would resize all of its content accordingly. When this is done right, sites are able to find a way to present all the same information, but in a modified design that's better suited to a mobile device.

        A lot of your favorite websites are probably responsively designed. This basically eliminates the need for having a separate "mobile version" of your site. You can basically see which sites are responsively designed by making your browser window into a more "cell phone" or "tablet" shape. Ie, thin and tall. If the content automatically adjusts and/or resizes itself so that it all fits real nicely...then the site's responsive.

        Honestly, doing this is pretty important. More and more shoppers are using their smartphones and tablets to make purchases. Any search including the words "mobile," "commerce" and either "2013" or "2014" will throw a ton of numbers at you about how more and more people are using mobile devices in their online shopping process.

        The only problem is that it'd probably involve a pretty thorough redesign of your site. If you COULD do this, though? It'd quite possibly be one of the smartest moves you could make.
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        • Profile picture of the author newrykillz
          Unfortunately MagentoGO doesnt support any type of responsive grid or layout system due to being a closed SaaS platform. The current site scales really well and Ive modified certain elements with media queries to make it very functional on mobile devices.

          The limitation at this point of design IS the platform itself. Transferring the site over to a Magento CE platform would be a straight forward process in the future if it comes down to a lack of viewport/responsiveness holding us back.

          Our problem is a lack of traffic. Im in the process of designing and implementing a sub domain WP blog but Im not really expecting a lot of traffic to or from it. If I could figure out how to rank for search traffic it would be a blessing. Our SEO and query ranks/ctr are increasing but its painfully slow in such a competitive market , especially with no online marketing funding.
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          • Profile picture of the author Solid Commerce
            Right, and that's a common issue, figuring out how to get traffic to a blog so that it can wind up actually being something that helps out your site.

            Honestly, the best way to get people coming is to just start posting content. Post content that's high in quality, and post it regularly. Google has really shifted away from a numbers game. They're a lot more interested in quality content now, so if you can be posting content that doesn't suck (ie, isn't just stuffed with keywords, is long enough -- 500 words per post, at least -- to have a good amount of info, and doesn't directly copy other sites on the web), your site will be a lot more likely to start rising in the search results.

            At first, you'll have to rely only on this. But once you've started to get a bit of content online, the strength of that content can help you connect with other thought-leaders in your industry. They key here, is to avoid blogging about yourself. Try and write a blog that one of your CUSTOMERS would want to visit every day. So talk about things that are relevant to your clientele's lifestyle, even if they don't directly relate to your company and/or its products.

            If you can do this relatively well, you'll have an easy enough time connecting with other industry thought leaders. This will get you more exposure and ultimately help you set up a situation that's self-sustaining in the way it continues to drive traffic to your site.

            _ Sean
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  • Profile picture of the author Dawn M. Smith
    Thank you for this information.
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