Help marketing a site!

by SCrafted Banned
249 replies
Hello everybody, i just signed up here on WF but i have been a long time observer .

For the last 4 months i have been putting quite a lot of efforts on a website. My sister lives in Rome, Italy and she has a fashion boutique so i decided to build a website selling what she sells; fashion, apparel, handbags, jewelry and so on... in which there is a lot of competition i understand but the stuff i sell is truly unique, really really cheap and beautiful.

It took me about 2 months and a half to build the site and adding 700 products. In a month, around 500 people got into my website but i haven't made a single sale! I don't know what is it that i am doing wrong and i would be really interested in hearing some great advice from more savy internet marketers.

I want to thank in advance for you help and please be brutally honest.

Thanks
#made #needed #sale #single #website
  • Profile picture of the author vic1
    Man is it slow.
    I'm still waiting for it to come up.
    Is it always like this?

    It finally came up; probably took 2 minutes.
    That's a killer right there if this is the norm.

    Just clicked on moleskin link, still waiting...... I hit the back button already.

    As far as design, maybe an eCommerce experienced member will comment.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey Vic, i do agree is really slow. I have many plugins which are slowing the site down. I m thinking about moving to a better server. Before i move to another server do you guys have some tips to improve the speed? This is a wp and i have w3 cache installed, but doesn t seems to improve the speed much... I feel almost embarassed by the speed of this website. It loos like we are back to adsl!!!
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by vic1 View Post

      Man is it slow.
      I'm still waiting for it to come up.
      Is it always like this?

      It finally came up; probably took 2 minutes.
      That's a killer right there if this is the norm.

      Just clicked on moleskin link, still waiting...... I hit the back button already.

      As far as design, maybe an eCommerce experienced member will comment.


      This here is most likely 87% of OPs problem. I gave up & closed the browser tab without the page loading, I'm not waiting all day for one webpage to load in my browser.

      Fix the page loading problem or give up now because nobody will wait for pages that take forever to load...
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      • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Hey Jill, what would you reccommend Bluehost or Hostgator?
        They are both the same. Read about "EIG" brands. Aside from that, your current host is highly likely not the problem.

        Originally Posted by Tonny Robb View Post

        Posts on WF and get more ideas like this also is one of the way to go.

        But try new things until you find what you want.

        Invest to paid traffic methods

        This is our adventure. The most important thing is that " It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop"
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Invest to paid traffic methods
        I am trying to find some free ads coupon. I have registered for bing webmaster because they were offering a 50$ credits. But can t redeem it. Do you guys know something about it?
        Instead of focusing on ads and traffic etc.

        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        This here is most likely 87% of OPs problem. I gave up & closed the browser tab without the page loading, I'm not waiting all day for one webpage to load in my browser.

        Fix the page loading problem or give up now because nobody will wait for pages that take forever to load...
        ^This should be the number 1 priority.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Hey Yukon, you are 100% right but i am working on that!
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  • Profile picture of the author Regional Warrior
    After I click on the link it took 5 mins to load! so you need to fix that up and get rid of the cute mascots, for the different lines you have I would use an image as the later makes it look like a Kids shop also too much green

    Jason
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Yes the site is really slow! Working on the site speed. I think is the server. I am thinking about moving it to a better server soon...
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      • Profile picture of the author Joe Ray
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        I am no programmer and i did the site all by myself without any help from designers or programmers but with the help of a lot of plugins.
        Not a good idea!
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        • Profile picture of the author pawandave
          Banned
          Don't be desperate keep working ..if you manage some budget then run FB ads. You can also start with coupon
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Thanks, that's the plan. Start some ads.
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              Guys i haven t slept in 2 days. Today i managed to collect 700 emails of fashion bloggers, visiting site by site. I am about to send a mailchimp campaign to recruit affiliates. I am exhausted. You know, i used to wake up a 4 am and get back home at 9.30 pm when i was working one of the most stressfull jobs on earth and to be honest working 10 hrs at the computer is even worst!
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              • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
                Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

                @Kingfish85 @Jhon Blum, 42 plugins!!! Now.
                Yeah, that's way too many.

                Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

                Hello Jill, wish i knew what was the problem. I am guessing the plugin but also what Sven pointed out could be the reason. I don t think the theme is the problem. Is a well know themeforest developer and he is really good. Many people are using the same theme.
                At the moment i am using a godaddy hosting eith 1gb ram.
                Do not host on godaddy.

                You probably don't even need VPS but you do need to get off godaddy.

                I'm going to make a wild guess that you also bought your domains there too.

                Never keep your domains and hosting in the same place.

                Pick up a business account for the hosting. There are a few out there that will give you your own SSL cert included, your own IP address, some other goodies - and it's going to only run you $15 or so a month.

                Or if you have the funds go for it on the heavier hosting - but some of it may be overkill for the time being.

                The site you have from when I glanced at it (don't want to go look again because of the speed) most certainly should not need all those plugins.
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                • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                  Banned
                  Hey Jill, what would you reccommend Bluehost or Hostgator?
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello Jason, i agree too much green! I will change that...
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      • Profile picture of the author nancy666
        Hi

        Just checked out your site. As mentioned above, it really is taking far too long to load. Prospective buyers tend to be impatient and are likely to sign off and go buy somewhere else. That I think is where you are loosing a lot of business. Also, at the top in green you have "Check Out Some Deals. Hurry Up!" I would be rewording the Hurry Up part to something a little more subtle such as Check It Out.
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hello Nancy, thanks a lot for taking the time... This is a wp site. Do you have any suggestions to improve site speed?
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        • Profile picture of the author pozy
          Originally Posted by nancy666 View Post

          Hi

          Just checked out your site. As mentioned above, it really is taking far too long to load. Prospective buyers tend to be impatient and are likely to sign off and go buy somewhere else. That I think is where you are loosing a lot of business. Also, at the top in green you have "Check Out Some Deals. Hurry Up!" I would be rewording the Hurry Up part to something a little more subtle such as Check It Out.
          Too slow will not give the buyer safe feeling.They r not just buy products,but also safe feeling.Thats what I think.
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  • Profile picture of the author pickthat apple
    First thing you say to the customers at the top of the page is to hurry up, because deals are ending...but...how do they hurry up?!?
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello there, thanks for taking the time to visit the site and help with your suggestion. I though that HURRY UP would work because the deals will be ending in 3 days and if you click on GO you would be redirected to the deals page but since many of you guys already suggested to delete that or rename it i will go ahead and change that.

      Thanks a lot.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    Your website takes a longer time then usual to load for me so this can be an issue for future potential customers.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      I know it takes a lifetime. The reason why is because i have 40 plugins or more installed! But i need every single one of them. This is a wordpress. Do you guys have any idea on how to improve the speed?

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author talfighel
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Hello Talfighel, i know it takes a lifetime. The reason why is because i have 40 plugins or more installed! But i need every single one of them. This is a wordpress. Do you guys have any idea on how to improve the speed?

        Thanks
        So you need to fix that. You can't have people wait and wait for your website to load. They will leave and never come back.
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    • Profile picture of the author mindtricks18
      Banned
      Originally Posted by talfighel View Post

      Your website takes a longer time then usual to load for me so this can be an issue for future potential customers.
      yes I also facing same website loading problem, second things price is separated by (,) I think it should separated by (.), Example Price $24,99, it should $24.99
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Is it still loading really slow for you. I am still compressing the images, maybe that s a reason...
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  • Profile picture of the author kurttasche
    Improving the page load time will definitely help. As another member said, you want to get rid of the cute cartoon mascots and replace them with something more professional. Perhaps a sample of a product in that category.

    If you want to start getting more sales, create an Instagram account for the business, and start sharing product images on Instagram. Learn how to use hashtags and how to market on Instagram, and over time, you should start seeing an increase in traffic and sales.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey kurttasche. Thanks a lot for your help! I will def do that. Get rid of those illustrations. At the beginning i though they were cool but now I agree with you guys. They make the website look like a kids/toys store. Never used Instagram but i will start to use it, i know it s really important especially for fashion boutiques but i don t like the fact that is only for mobiles .Is there a way to use instagram from desktop? At the moment i m doing great on twitter. Yestarday i spent almost 10 hours tweeting and got 400 followers and around 40/45 unique visits from twitter. This morning i woke up with 90 notifications of followers and mentions/likes to my tweets and was anxious to open the admin panel to see maybe at least 1 order. Not even 1! Sigh
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      • Profile picture of the author amaziff
        Yes you can use instagram from desktop (via instagram.com) but keep in mind that majority of people use it on smartphones so adjust photos to it .
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Thanks amaziff!
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      • Profile picture of the author MrFume
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Hey kurttasche. Thanks a lot for your help! I will def do that. Get rid of those illustrations. At the beginning i though they were cool but now I agree with you guys. They make the website look like a kids/toys store. Never used Instagram but i will start to use it, i know it s really important especially for fashion boutiques but i don t like the fact that is only for mobiles .Is there a way to use instagram from desktop? At the moment i m doing great on twitter. Yestarday i spent almost 10 hours tweeting and got 400 followers and around 40/45 unique visits from twitter. This morning i woke up with 90 notifications of followers and mentions/likes to my tweets and was anxious to open the admin panel to see maybe at least 1 order. Not even 1! Sigh
        You can use a tool called 'Instamate' for posting to Instagram from a PC
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      • Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Hey kurttasche. Thanks a lot for your help! I will def do that. Get rid of those illustrations. At the beginning i though they were cool but now I agree with you guys. They make the website look like a kids/toys store. Never used Instagram but i will start to use it, i know it s really important especially for fashion boutiques but i don t like the fact that is only for mobiles .Is there a way to use instagram from desktop? At the moment i m doing great on twitter. Yestarday i spent almost 10 hours tweeting and got 400 followers and around 40/45 unique visits from twitter. This morning i woke up with 90 notifications of followers and mentions/likes to my tweets and was anxious to open the admin panel to see maybe at least 1 order. Not even 1! Sigh
        Twitter isnt the best social media for your particular business, have you tried Pinterest? I recommend it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Joe Z
    First of all congratulation for you taking action. I like the idea that you picked a good, short, and memorable domain name. "Scrafted" the name says it all.

    My take on this: You need to work on improving the website load time. It will be the difference between success and failure.

    I also liked the opt-in popup, you can also tweak and split-test popups. For example "13000 smart people joined our newsletter .. and you're smart too. ( By nature when customer read that, he will feel inadequate, and the words will push him to signup). You see? just a few things could make a difference to whole business.

    If you need any advice, just pm.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey Joe! Thanks a lot for your comments. At the beginning i wasn t too sure about the name but i already received many nice comments saying is a good name. From what i understand the main issue is the website speed.Thanks for offering your help. It is really appreciated!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Thanks to everybody for the great advice.
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      • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
        This isn't a full list (I don't run ecommerce sites, either, so I'm sure there are other things to consider) but this should get you started on making improvements:
        1. Cut down on the plugins. Go through them carefully. Sometimes we use two plugins when there's one out there that will do the job of both or we choose plugins that aren't the fastest at getting the job done and you could do better with another choice. I can see there are some social plugins (like something called Social Coupon) but if people can't load your site then that plugin isn't going to do you any good. There may be some you could remove for now and research options for faster load times in the future once your visitors can actually get onto the site more quickly.
        2. Do a search either inside your hosting company's Help section or in Google for instructions on setting up W3 Total Cache. Some hosts have an article that tells you the ideal settings for their servers. I know you said you had this plugin installed but it looks like you may not be using the browser cache features and that can help some - at least for people moving from page to page of your site.
        3. Run tests on your site speed using Pingdom: Website speed test. The information is a bit technical but you can search Google to find solutions for each of the areas of opportunity. You'll see which items/plugins are taking the longest to load and the Performance Grade tab will show suggestions for improvement. For the sake of comparison, your site's home page is twice the size of Amazon's home page and takes at least a minute to load compared to Amazon's 2 second load time.
        4. Go to https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/, run pages of your site through that tool and you'll find a list of suggestions for improvements for both desktop and mobile site speed. Again, the suggestions are technical and you may need to research each item in order to understand what it's saying but they have one neat feature that will help you. At the bottom of the results in the Desktop tab, there's a link where you can download some of the fixes they'll provide you. For example, lots of sites use images that have not been compressed and those can really slow down a site. Google will compress those images and they then provide the compressed versions in that download folder. This can save a ton of time vs. compressing the images yourself. You'd then have to upload each image to your site - which is a pain - but you can save a lot of load time this way if you have image-heavy sites.
        Good luck!
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hey Erika Thank You so much for your great great advice. But i do think you are an expert since you have been thanked more than 1200 times! For sure you know better than me
          I am trying to get rid off some plugins but is really hard eheh. Everytime i go through the plugin list i deactivate one and then go back to activate it again... but you are right if people cannot visit the site then all this plugins are pretty much worthless. The Social Coupon plugin is installed on the CART page and so far nobody got that far (to the cart page) sigh! That could be one i can deactivate immediately...
          I have some issues with the w3 cache plugin. I am using another plugin, which is the ESSENTIAL GRID plugin and i am using it pretty much everywhere. This one is a must, because i m using it also to display products. At the beginning this plugin wasnt working (it wasnt showing up) so i contacted the plugin developer that told me that the w3 cache was causing issues with the Essential grid plugin, so i had to deactivate the w3 plugin in order to make the grid plugin work. To be honest i deactivated without caring too much because as i said wasn t doing a lot of difference but maybe as you said it was just because it wasn't set properly. Do you have any other suggestion on a good cache plugin?
          I used Pingdom to test the speed. 13 secs. 90% of all websites out there are faster than mine but haven t seen those options you mentioned. I will def come back to Pingdom to have a look...

          https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights just tested. 4/100 really really bad

          One thing i noticed about the speed. The site has been always slow but got really really slow after i deleted the woocommerce shop page. I was getting redirect errors and stuff like that so i contacted Godaddy which told me the same thing, "the site has many redirects". I really don t know what it means but this happened after i deleted the woocommerce page, big mistake. I will look further into that...

          Thanks a lot Erika for your precious help
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          • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
            Aw, you're sweet!

            I know it can be hard to part with plugins but I do think if you pare it back to the BARE minimum - a) what you need in order to display products and b) what you need so people can buy (and any security plugin you may be using...) - and then compress images, you'll be able to make some improvements without having to change anything major. Then, check the site speed again to see how much further you might have to go.

            Once you get things under control you can start adding in other features/plugins one at a time and test how they impact the site's speed.

            There's another popular caching plugin called WP Super Cache but I haven't used it and you may run into the same conflicts with your Essential Grid plugin. You may be able to manually add code to your htaccess file to leverage browser caching. I have not done it that way but, in essence, you skip using a plugin (which just adds this code to that file for you) and add it yourself.
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              ♥ ❤♥ ❤♥ ❤


              I just deactivated 6 plugins. It was hard but i did it eheheh. Still going through the list...

              Thanks Erica, you are also very sweet
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              • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                Banned
                I have a small update. As suggested by some experienced users i installed Instagram, i didn t like it because i though was only available for mobiles (actually i am using it on desktop with an app called grambler) and is awesome!!! I don t know how i missed that! I posted 1 simple picture of a ring and received 100 likes in less than 5 minutes. Is this normal? Are this real users or bots? Even if are bots im having a great time on Instagram! Thanks Warriors for your suggestions.

                Additional update: 110 likes for my first post on Instagram but no visits to the website
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          • Profile picture of the author thesuccesscoach
            I too found it slow to load (based in spain) i would defo look at google insights and then start to optimise as remember when people shop they shop on impulse but with a slow site the impulse is gone!

            Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

            Hey Erika Thank You so much for your great great advice. But i do think you are an expert since you have been thanked more than 1200 times! For sure you know better than me
            I am trying to get rid off some plugins but is really hard eheh. Everytime i go through the plugin list i deactivate one and then go back to activate it again... but you are right if people cannot visit the site then all this plugins are pretty much worthless. The Social Coupon plugin is installed on the CART page and so far nobody got that far (to the cart page) sigh! That could be one i can deactivate immediately...
            I have some issues with the w3 cache plugin. I am using another plugin, which is the ESSENTIAL GRID plugin and i am using it pretty much everywhere. This one is a must, because i m using it also to display products. At the beginning this plugin wasnt working (it wasnt showing up) so i contacted the plugin developer that told me that the w3 cache was causing issues with the Essential grid plugin, so i had to deactivate the w3 plugin in order to make the grid plugin work. To be honest i deactivated without caring too much because as i said wasn t doing a lot of difference but maybe as you said it was just because it wasn't set properly. Do you have any other suggestion on a good cache plugin?
            I used Pingdom to test the speed. 13 secs. 90% of all websites out there are faster than mine but haven t seen those options you mentioned. I will def come back to Pingdom to have a look...

            https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights just tested. 4/100 really really bad

            One thing i noticed about the speed. The site has been always slow but got really really slow after i deleted the woocommerce shop page. I was getting redirect errors and stuff like that so i contacted Godaddy which told me the same thing, "the site has many redirects". I really don t know what it means but this happened after i deleted the woocommerce page, big mistake. I will look further into that...

            Thanks a lot Erika for your precious help
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              Hey successcoach, thanks for visiting my website. Did you get in recently? I mean in the last couple of hrs? Because as suggested by other Warriors i deactivated 20 plugins and now it seems a lot faster (you can only imagine how slow it was before...)
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              • Profile picture of the author thesuccesscoach
                Hey there

                ok yeah now it took about 9 seconds to load which is a lot better
                but if you could get it down a little bit more it would be good

                Another thing to think about is if the server in general is slow

                Maybe ask your hosting company about the speed of the server too?
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              • Profile picture of the author thesuccesscoach
                although the page has started to load I still can't see the products yet

                this is quite good for checking too and it shows your site is quite slow
                Website speed test
                says the size of the homepage is nearly 15mb which is a lot
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  • Profile picture of the author Rashed0176
    You should market through the social media sites.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      I just quickly read this whole thread, and your site is still trying to load.

      I'd be urgent on getting this resolved first.

      Page finally is here, and the scroll down is wicked fast - like too fast IMO.

      Clicked on a product - layout is horrid. But looks like it's still trying to load something?

      I've got no navigation to go back to the home page.

      Not user friendly at all.

      Clicked to go back to home page and whole thing is reloading all over again. Just white screen.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Hello Jill, thanks for your comments, I feel embarassed about the speed. I am moving to a vps tomorrow. I fixed the scrollbar which was way to fast, i agree with you and you have noticed a very important point. When somebody wants to go back (from the product page) to the shop page they will have to wait for all the products to load again. This is a killer. I need to fix this.
        Can i ask you, what do you mean product layout is horrid? You mean the product page?
        Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author Sven300
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      I don't know what is it that i am doing wrong and i would be really interested in hearing some great advice from more savy internet marketers.

      I want to thank in advance for you help and please be brutally honest.

      Thanks


      1) SPEED

      Your site still takes 13 seconds to load: too slow. Way too slow. This is enough to discourage any user. Personally I do not like Wordpress and I code my sites by hand: all of them load at lightning speed.

      Right now, you make too many http requests on your homepage: you have 99 external Javascript scripts and 77 external stylesheets! You can add Yslow to your browser: they explain in a simple way how to increase speed.

      You can hire someone in India for a reduced price if you are not able to solve the speed problem by yourself. Check this website: Worknhire.


      2) MENU

      A horizontal menu would be better. With a "Home" button on each page (top left).

      3) ABOVE THE FOLD

      The informations above the fold are not sufficiently relevant and engaging.

      4) SLOGAN

      Your slogan "Beautiful Handmade Products from great Artists and Indie Brands" is not very good.




      CONCLUSION

      You asked a frank and brutal feedback...

      You offer your visitors a horrible experience. Why do you want them to remain on your site when there are many others website that are excellent?

      Hope this help! GOOD LUCK!

      P.S. You must solve the problems of your website before worrying about promotion.
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      I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. Thomas Jefferson
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Sven, thanks a lot! Your comments are really helpful. And yes you are brutally honest as well , but that's what i wanted in the first place, for you guys to be brutally honest!

        Well, Pingdom says it takes 13 sec to load but i think it takes much much more time...

        "Right now, you make too many http requests on your homepage: you have 99 external Javascript scripts and 77 external stylesheets! You can add Yslow to your browser: they explain in a simple way how to increase speed."

        I don t really know what this means but you are right! I have heard the same thing from the godaddy team. I think this is what causing the problem. I will investigate asap with someone that can help on this.

        BTW do you know why is this happening?

        "3) ABOVE THE FOLD

        The informations above the fold are not sufficiently relevant and engaging."


        Sorry i didn t get this. Can you explain little more...?

        I just installed Yslow. running a test right now...


        I agree, the slogan i horrible. Can you guys help me finding some better slogan?

        Thanks Sven, great great advice!
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Great advice! Many thanks to everybody!
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          I have a question for wordpress users? To increase speed, deactivating plugins is good enough to improve the speed or should i delete them completely?

          Thanks
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          • Profile picture of the author serryjw
            SCrafted...I am not going to beat a dead horse over your loading...people more knowledgeable than I have told you multiple times.
            I spend 25 years in the apparel industry and can't begin to tell you how much work your website needs.
            What do you think you are Amazon? WAY TO MANY categories. Always start with male/female clothing...I LOVE the bow ties but it is next to printed T-Shirts and pet stuff! Trim the site by 75% less SKUs. Build a loyal following before you give them more...
            There is nothing YUMMY about your website and portrayal of this merchandise that has been designed and made with love. I don't understand the top banner? Is this YOUR merchandise or is the banner taking me to another company? Your logo is WAY to small. HOW are you going to build a brand if no one sees it...
            Sorry, but I passionately hate your domain name. I think of crafting as something mommy makes in her 3rd bedroom. I don't think this is the image you want.

            Sorry for being so brutal but some of the merchandise is terrific. It is just getting lost...
            Email anytime,
            Serry
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              Serry thanks a lot. That is what a call honesty! You killed me at "there is nothing YUMMY about your website" and also "What do you think you are AMAZON" eheheh that was funny.

              Great to hear advice from somebody who has spent 25 years in the apparel industry! You are right, starting with MAN/WOMAN categories is a great idea.

              Regarding the many categories, well i think i would have better options to offer many products instead of only bow ties for example. I know a lot of websites that sell only bow ties, and they do great, but i just don t want to limit my market... I m selling what my sister sells...

              Which banner are you talking about? The big slider? I am not redirecting to any other website...

              Never though the logo was small. I will increase the size...

              As said before i wasn t too sure about the name. So far i have received great feedback on it. Most of the stuff i sell is handcrafted and that s why i though would be a decent name...

              I am no expert on women handbags but I do agree my stuff is terrific. My sister has been doing a great job researching this products and this independet brands.

              I just raised the prices by 10/15% some of them 40/50%. I think this was an issue. They were too cheap and maybe people though it was a scam because of that. I was selling this earrings for 10 bucks https://www.scrafted.com/product/ear...by-ad-lucem-3/ now i raised the price 50%. I have seen similar earrings selling for 80$ on other websites.

              Serry thanks a lot for your valuable advice.
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              • Profile picture of the author serryjw
                I didn't mean to JUST sell bow ties...This could be featured...they are great. I just think you need to eliminate all categories except mens/womens stuff! No home/pets/T-shirts...Keep it upscale. Don't try and be everything to everybody...
                As for the domain name...work on 'handcrafted' to me is different than crafted...How about Handcrafted with love or hand curated with love ( Is your sister designing all or is she buying from other manufacturers)
                I love the words, discerning, discriminating....I would use the extension.club. Turn the website into a membership site...exclusivity is the key.
                I will re-post when it come to your header??

                ARE YOU IN THE US or Italy?
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                • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                  Banned
                  .club for a fashion boutique is bad idea. Also i have red here in this forum that this domains don't have the same authority as a .com and is harder to rank them. Turning a fashion boutique into a membership site worst idea ever. no way, limiting categories to man and woman bad idea as well. I agree i should start with MAN and WOMAN but deleting all the other categories... users looking for something in particular they would have to go through the whole site in order to find what they are looking for.
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                  • Profile picture of the author diegocomercio
                    Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

                    .club for a fashion boutique is bad idea. Also i have red here in this forum that this domains don't have the same authority as a .com and is harder to rank them. Turning a fashion boutique into a membership site worst idea ever. no way, limiting categories to man and woman bad idea as well. I agree i should start with MAN and WOMAN but deleting all the other categories... users looking for something in particular they would have to go through the whole site in order to find what they are looking for.
                    I agree with you SCrafted
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    I deactivated almost 20 plugins and the speed seems to have gotten even worst! At this point i don t think the plugins are causing the speed issue. I think the problem is caused by what Sven noticed:

    "Right now, you make too many http requests on your homepage: you have 99 external Javascript scripts and 77 external stylesheets! You can add Yslow to your browser: they explain in a simple way how to increase speed."


    Does anybody know or can help on how to fix this issue?
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim John Jr
    I have worked with Android quite a bit.Android has a feature for lists where it loads only what is presently visible on the page. It doesn't load what is at the bottom at the page because no one is seeing it!

    I wonder if there is a way to use the same concept for your webpage. It is a beautiful page - only after it loads.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello Tim, thanks for the nice comments about the site, cheered me up a little! My website is mobile ready but i think i need to work on that a little more... It takes a lot of time to load on desktop, on mobile it takes a lifetime. That would be a great thing! Where can i find some more information about that?

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author serryjw
        Ok...Here goes
        1)Expiring Deals on the top...OY!!..Do you want to be the 'deal of the day' or something exclusive?
        Don't sell price...you have no reason to...the merchandise is great. it should stand on it's own.
        2)Small scroll on the bottom serves no purpose...eliminate
        3)The individul boxes with merchandise needs to be small by 25% and artisian name MUCH small...it is distracting. They are not well known designers. People are buying the merchandise not the designer's name
        4) you still need a NAV bar...it is more user friendly
        5) WF has many talented people...use them..Run a contest for a new logo. Winner wins $25

        Your tag line should be something like...
        JOIN THE CLUB!
        Exclusive hand curated products from the FOUR CORNERS of the Globe.

        By making it a CLUB, you are collecting email addresses that you send promotion & new merchandise added to.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    You need to take all that junk off the home page. Your home page should function as an introductory index including your main categories. Use drop-down menus to include your sub-categories.

    Example of very common home page design:

    A slider with 4-6 slides linked to main categories. Below that three or four "feature" blocks general linked to a sign-up, about page, etc. A footer with category and business links.

    That's a nice informative, easy to navigate "index" for your visitors.

    Trim the home page way down and remove every plugin or app that isn't absolutely necessary.
    Signature
    Get Off The Warrior Forum Now & Don't Come Back If You Want To Succeed!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey Brent, thanks for taking the time to visit my slow website. i already deactivated 20 plugins. Did you think the site was still really slow?
      I am going to delete those illustrations and also will work on the footer as you suggested.

      Many Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author apsarasisodia
        There are some website design issues which you should rectify first. Check if you are using too many JavaScripts, images, images without alt tag, poor meta description, etc. The next step is, you should post free advertisements on free online ads sites. I prefer BuySellCart.in. It is the best of all business classified sites I ever know.
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hello apsarasisodia! Thanks for your help!

          There are some website design issues which you should rectify first
          Could you please tell me which design issues you have noticed?

          Thanks
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          • Profile picture of the author serryjw
            SC...ENOUGH!! There is no way to fix this...1)Get A VPN and start from the beginning. You have so many things wrong with it starting with LOAD TIME...nothing else matter if it doesn't load quickly 2) You haven't figured out whom you are. You are all over the board when it comes to design and presentation.
            A) Yes, get rid of the green scroll, get rid of the 'expiring deal' on top, the shipping PAGE makes no sense and at the bottom it has a cutsie background behind 'need more shipping info'... YOU just gave them a WHOLE page. It is not tough to say , 'WE SHIP FROM ITALY'.
            Yes, sorry I hate the logo design and the domain...it is meaningless and does not represent the great merchandise.
            STOP with the Java...you will never have a mobile version with Java...it is so 1990. LOOK how magnificent these pages look...I LOVE THE CSS. If you can't do it, go back to work, do this slowly when you have money. You can't launch a business with ZERO money.
            Percentage of survival rate for breast cancer - Moose and Doc
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      • Profile picture of the author Eagle07
        Use more publicity and endorsement from famous icons in the industry you are in. When you do that, I am sure fans of those stars will follow and buy from your site. Enjoy the profits! ;-)
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hey there Eagle07! I have contacted many flashy fashion bloggers and also bloggers that are just starting out. They all replied telling me they want me to ship some products for them to review them! Mmmm, I have no money and cant do that! If i had money i would do that but since my budget is close to 0 i cant! I raised my commission for affiliates to 20% which is huge compared to the average in the same industry (around 8%). Got 5 affiliates so far. 2 of them are active and send something like 5/6 visits a day, but still no sales!
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          • Profile picture of the author Eagle07
            Create an ebay listing then... in addition to your existing website. Traffic from ebay are hot buyers, you might as well be able to create a big number of customer base in there who can be a repeat customers in the future. The possibilities are endless so do not limit what you think you can do because when you do that, you actually limit what you can achieve.
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        • Look at this site: Buy & Sell Handmade Crafts, Jewelry, Quilts, Soaps & Greeting Cards, Custom Homemade Products Online - Made It Myself

          Not my site, but a quick search of the big G revealed that one....

          This is more along the lines of what you should shoot for....it loaded in 1.94 seconds according to http://tools.pingdom.com

          You want to draw your potential customers eye to making the sale.

          Too many choices make it harder to go from browser to buyer.

          Notice how clean the site is and there are choices, but just not too many.

          Hope this helps..
          Signature
          Improvise Adapt Overcome
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Hey Jack, thanks for the suggestion. I already knew that site. I have been done a lot of research and have visited 1000's of fashion, jewelry, crafts websites.

            Too many choices make it harder to go from browser to buyer.
            I will try to clean the site as much as i can.

            I does help! Thanks a lot
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        • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
          There are certainly wordpress sites with more on them which don't take so long to load.

          It's always good to keep the number of plugins you use down to a minimum - but I think it's not all about your plugins at this point. I will say over 20 is pushing it.

          Could be what ever hosting you are on, could be the theme itself, could be ???
          Signature

          "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Hello Jill, wish i knew what was the problem. I am guessing the plugin but also what Sven pointed out could be the reason. I don t think the theme is the problem. Is a well know themeforest developer and he is really good. Many people are using the same theme.
            At the moment i am using a godaddy hosting eith 1gb ram.
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        • Profile picture of the author Rashed0176
          Originally Posted by Eagle07 View Post

          Use more publicity and endorsement from famous icons in the industry you are in. When you do that, I am sure fans of those stars will follow and buy from your site. Enjoy the profits! ;-)
          Absolutely right.
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Serry thanks a lot for taking the time. I am in the US my sister is in Italy, and the plan is when i get an order she will be shipping it from italy. Could you have a look a my shipping policy? https://www.scrafted.com/shipping/ I am not so sure about this page... I don't want to trick people but i am not mentioning products will be shipped from Italy. I want to market this site for the US market mostly, also EU but mainly US.

    I still could change the domain name, i haven't worked that much on backlinks and stuff like that but it would be a huge pain!

    Are you sure is a good idea to go with some other domain rather than a .com? I have read here on WF that domains that are not .com don t have the same authority and is easier to rank a .com. Is that true?

    2)Small scroll on the bottom serves no purpose...eliminate
    Do you mean the Foobar plugin (the green bar at the bottom of the page)?

    4) you still need a NAV bar...it is more user friendly
    Could you explain this pont a little better. Sorry didn t get it...

    Do you really hate the logo? I though it was cool

    Exclusive hand curated products from the FOUR CORNERS of the Globe.
    Love it, i already changed it
    Thanks a lot Serry. Really appreciated
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  • Profile picture of the author xnice
    1. Your website is very slow. You need to improve it. If I am a customer, I will quit after 30s
    2. You put a lot of image at front page, it makes people difficult to navigate.
    3. With 500 visitors per month, you may not get a sale. You must increase it to 500 visitor /day
    4.You can marketing by existing customer. Each customer visit your fashion boutique store, give them a business card with your Facebook fan page
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey there Xnice,

      1. Your website is very slow. You need to improve it. If I am a customer, I will quit after 30s
      But that is exactly what users are doing. Leaving the website after few seconds.

      I will do that. I will tell my sister to print some flyers and distribute them in her boutique. Great idea. Hopefully she will agree, because those are her customers...
      I know there is not much data to work with conversion rates and I agree 500 visitors is nothing but taking into consideration a 0.5% conversion rate that would had to translate to at least almost 3 orders... and especially with the stuff i am selling which is beautiful and really cheap.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    i already deactivated 20 plugins. Did you think the site was still really slow?
    It was for me, yes. Much slower then I would tolerate if I were a normal visitor. I would bounce.
    Signature
    Get Off The Warrior Forum Now & Don't Come Back If You Want To Succeed!
    All The Real Marketers Are Gone. There's Nothing Left But Weak, Sniveling Wanna-Bees!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Got it! Thanks. I have a Godaddy Linux hosting with 1gb and almost all of the times is maxed out and is on red. Will def move to a vps.
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  • Profile picture of the author christogonus
    In my humble opinion:

    1. No store starts with $0 capital - You must market your website. Just sharing on your facebook wall doesnt get people to buy. It is just like traditional marketing... selling to people around your home.
    2. Move your website to a VPS. There are VPS services that you can start at $6/month. Dedicated IP address that they offer will help your SEO too.
    3. Please your website interface should not be just what you like but what people are used to or what people want.
    4. Look at ebay.com, konga.com and see if you can get UI inspiration.
    5. Adding a functionality that allow other vendors to sell on your store front could help you bring in more visitors that can turn into buyers.

    PS:
    I am not a PRO as I have not implemented all these I have told you.
    But I know they will help you do better.
    Signature
    I am a developer and can support on WHMCS, Cpanel, VPS, SSL and more. Add Me On Skype: christogonus2

    >> I offer WHMCS Setup, Updates & Technical Support <<
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello christogonus, thanks for your help. It is really helpful.

      I will give it another 4 to 5 months. If it doesn t work i am just going back to work on my field, hopefully not, because i really hate it.


      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Update: (i haven t worked on the site at all today) 36 unique today, (not counting you guys 19 visits from WF), bounce rate 46.23%, Avg Session Duration 3.34 min. Page/sessions 2.18. Aaaand 0 sales! I am beating the record here!

    I will let you know when i make my first sale, if i make 1!

    Ah btw, my alexa rank yestarday was 350.000, today it disappeared and it says NO DATA! Do you guys know why this happened!?
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  • Profile picture of the author reachintan
    Read this article How to Make Money Blogging - Guide for 2015 that would be of great help to you.


    Chintan
    Signature

    Chintan Mehta

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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey reachintan, reading it right now. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author maxsi
    Create a squeeze page and start your mailing list. Then find targeted subscribers by using free places, and promote your products to them.

    you can have free autoresponders at the beginning, and there are lot of places to post your squeeze link and receive subscribers
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  • Profile picture of the author Kingfish85
    I deactivated almost 20 plugins and the speed seems to have gotten even worst!
    Good grief. How many plugins do you have installed? This is likely what's causing all of your problems.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      @Kingfish85 @Jhon Blum, 42 plugins!!! Now.
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  • Profile picture of the author MrFume
    You need to completely re-build this site, it is not inspiring confidence-it is way too slow. Have someone who knows what they doing to build it for you if you are serious about doing this. There are a lot of people trying to publish on the internet, because the barrier of entry is so low, it is the execution that separates the successful sites from the plain awful.
    Signature

    Journalism, the profession is undergoing a massive change since the WWW has arrived. I help people to build their personal profile and create a multi-media platform with WordPress, Podcasting, Writing and Video.
    Digital Media for a Noisy World

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    • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
      First off don't quit it takes awhile to become a success, It does not happen over night. If you are overwhelmed take a step back.

      Get a budget together, how do you plan on shipping when you have no money?

      Why don't you have one or two of the best selling products here in the US ? When someone orders from Italy are you shipping it or your Sister? If it takes forever to get here in the US, you will get cancellations. Get a few in your hands take photos and open a Amazon Sellers account as a Single seller not the paid pro version and ship them yourself. Some one else also said e-bay, that would be another good choice. Third party sites like Amazon and E-bay will take a commission but at least you will find buyers that can pay.

      Your site is still very busy and way to slow as everyone has said.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Hello DWolfe thanks!

        First off don't quit it takes awhile to become a success, It does not happen over night. If you are overwhelmed take a step back.

        I am going to give it another 4 to 5 months. If it doesn't happen in 5 months max. i m going back to my job, if they still want me...

        My sister will be shipping and pay for the first orders.


        Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author celente
    anytime I hear someone say

    "This IM is BULLCHIT!"

    Or "I cant make sales"

    or "My website does not make money"

    Study the rich guys, they always build a list first, and the business around that list.

    So I do not have to visit a psychic to work out you are not doing the most fundametal thing, in thriving businesses....BUILDING a LIST, HELPING THAT LIST, and then OFFERING them stuff.

    Even since the 1800's this is what successful companies have been doing, and it was more difficult for them, cause they has to use the phone, and newspaper ads, and offline forms, with ONLINE we have the ability to set all this up within a day, send traffic and build leads within a 24 hour period.

    So, build a real business, build real highly targeted leads, and you will never have to worry about money ever again in your life. No joke!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello Celente, i haven t said that at all. I am asking about the quality of the website because this is the first website i managed to build without any help from designers or programmmers.

      I am trying to recruite affiliates at the moment.
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Thanks everybody for the help!
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  • Profile picture of the author Tonny Robb
    Posts on WF and get more ideas like this also is one of the way to go.

    But try new things until you find what you want.

    Invest to paid traffic methods

    This is our adventure. The most important thing is that " It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop"
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Invest to paid traffic methods
      I am planning to do that soon...
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Do you guys think is a server problem? I am attaching a screenshot of my cpanel http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/...psfdcb1wdi.png. After deleting those 20 plugins the memory now is on green (before was on red almost all the times) but the website is still slow. Do you guys think changing to a vps will improve the site speed?

    Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      Do you guys think is a server problem? I am attaching a screenshot of my cpanel http://i1318.photobucket.com/albums/...psfdcb1wdi.png. After deleting those 20 plugins the memory now is on green (before was on red almost all the times) but the website is still slow. Do you guys think changing to a vps will improve the site speed?

      Thanks
      Disable every single plugin & revert back to the default Wordpress theme. If the page/s still load slow it's a Host problem.
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      • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
        Originally Posted by celente View Post

        anytime I hear someone say

        "This IM is BULLCHIT!"

        Or "I cant make sales"

        or "My website does not make money"

        Study the rich guys, they always build a list first, and the business around that list.

        So I do not have to visit a psychic to work out you are not doing the most fundametal thing, in thriving businesses....BUILDING a LIST, HELPING THAT LIST, and then OFFERING them stuff.
        Did you even read carefully through this thread? OP can't even get to list building stage w/o getting a website people can actually see.

        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Hey Jill, what would you reccommend Bluehost or Hostgator?
        If those are your 2 choices that you've narrowed down to, would kick you to bluehost - but also know they are sister to hostmonster which has a great biz package.

        (to other people reading this - this is not an EIG debate so please don't rip into me on that)
        Signature

        "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          I am going to check this hostmonster but now i m pretty sure the issue are the plugins so hopefully won t need to spend money for another hosting. Thanks!
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            The page that seems to take a lot of time to load is this one: https://www.scrafted.com/scraftedstore/ which is the most important page, the shop page. I am using woocommerce but i didn t like the layout of the shop page my theme had so for each category and brand i have i created a separate page and decided to display products through the essential grid plugin (i don t know if this will affect seo). I am using this plugin (ess grid) pretty much everywhere but apparently this plugin is what is causing this page https://www.scrafted.com/scraftedstore/ to be really slow.
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    • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      Do you guys think is a server problem? I am attaching a screenshot of my cpanel After deleting those 20 plugins the memory now is on green. Do you guys think changing to a vps will improve the site speed?
      Thanks
      No you do not need to change at this time Did you read what Kingfish and Yukon said

      " Aside from that, your current host is highly likely not the problem. " &

      "Disable every single plugin & revert back to the default Wordpress theme. ."

      You have to listen to advice of posters they are telling you the site is way to slow. Keep the plugins down to a minimum. You can make your life easier if you pay attention to what is being said. Don't spend money you do not have as you stated earlier!
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Down to 35 plugins! The site is getting faster. I did disabled all the plugins. The problem are the plugins...
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  • Profile picture of the author Cporter221
    It is alright If you do not get any results right away. Most do not.. Have you tried to post your website to affiliate websites such as maxxbounty,clickbank.. anything like that? You will be able to have thousands of people trying to sell your product to earn a commission on each sale. I think there is an initial fee of like $20 or $50 bucks, but you will make your money back 10 folds. You can also mark up your prices of your items for sale and offer a bigger commission for each sale to get more affiliates to sell your product.You will actually make more $$$ that way
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey Cporter221. I am not expecting results right away. I know it takes time. Yes i added the website to some affiliate directories. I am also contacting fashion bloggers. Got 4 affiliates to register today. I have 9 affiliates total. I recruited this new 4 affiliates by sending 700 emails i collected yesterday visiting site by site. 10 hrs at the computer..
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    I want to thank again all the warriors that went through the site and and gave me feedback on how to improve it. Your help is highly appreciated!
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      Originally Posted by DWolfe View Post

      No you do not need to change at this time Did you read what Kingfish and Yukon said

      " Aside from that, your current host is highly likely not the problem. " &

      "Disable every single plugin & revert back to the default Wordpress theme. ."

      You have to listen to advice of posters they are telling you the site is way to slow. Keep the plugins down to a minimum. You can make your life easier if you pay attention to what is being said. Don't spend money you do not have as you stated earlier!
      I'd advise to change the hosting at some point anyway.

      Godaddy sticks some kind of wordpress plugin of their own on the wordpress sites installed on them. Found it on a recent client site who I moved. Her site btw is running much quicker now after getting them off godaddy and doing a nice clean install w/o those "extra" plugins that get loaded on by default.

      If you have that plugin on your blog, would love to hear about it.

      If you're actually deleting plugins, you're going to want to get the database cleaned up a bit too when you're done because some of them leave junk behind.

      (if you've not killed the hello dolly plugin yet, be sure to kick it out.)
      Signature

      "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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      • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
        Originally Posted by Jill Carpenter View Post

        I'd advise to change the hosting at some point anyway.

        Godaddy sticks some kind of wordpress plugin of their own on the wordpress sites installed on them. Found it on a recent client site who I moved. Her site btw is running much quicker now after getting them off godaddy and doing a nice clean install w/o those "extra" plugins that get loaded on by default.

        If you have that plugin on your blog, would love to hear about it.

        If you're actually deleting plugins, you're going to want to get the database cleaned up a bit too when you're done because some of them leave junk behind.

        (if you've not killed the hello dolly plugin yet, be sure to kick it out.)
        I agree Jill change hosting when he can afford it. I sent him a pm last night about a hosting company to use. Godaddy another company I don't like. I had a domain with them years ago, and got rid of them for namecheap.
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
        Banned
        Originally Posted by Jill Carpenter View Post

        I'd advise to change the hosting at some point anyway.

        Godaddy sticks some kind of wordpress plugin of their own on the wordpress sites installed on them. Found it on a recent client site who I moved. Her site btw is running much quicker now after getting them off godaddy and doing a nice clean install w/o those "extra" plugins that get loaded on by default.

        If you have that plugin on your blog, would love to hear about it.

        If you're actually deleting plugins, you're going to want to get the database cleaned up a bit too when you're done because some of them leave junk behind.

        (if you've not killed the hello dolly plugin yet, be sure to kick it out.)


        Lol, he still has 35 plugins after cleaning house. I can't imagine why anyone would need so many plugins.

        Anyways, counting plugins isn't going to solve a slow loading page because a single plugin running a boat load of javascript could easily bog down page loading time.

        Still, 35 plugins, good grief.
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Do you know why i have so many javascript processes going on? What is it that is causing them?
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        • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          Lol, he still has 35 plugins after cleaning house. I can't imagine why anyone would need so many plugins.

          Anyways, counting plugins isn't going to solve a slow loading page because a single plugin running a boat load of javascript could easily bog down page loading time.

          Still, 35 plugins, good grief.
          Yep and someone recommended the OP to disconnect all plugins and start from there.

          He could use less then 3/4 and still have too many. Until he disconnects his plugins he is wasting his time.
          You and a few others tried to help, time to move on
          Signature


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          • Profile picture of the author Sven300
            OP... you will never get anywhere with this type of website.

            If you are not able to make a functional website yourself, consider hiring someone competent to do it for you.

            And if you do not have the money now, take a break, go back to work and you will make your website when you have minimal financial resources.

            Good luck!
            Signature
            I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. Thomas Jefferson
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              At this point i am getting a little confused. Some people say the website sucks and other say it looks great. I think i will listen to the ones that say is good enough to start.
              Thanks to the 95% here that truly want to help. the other 5% is here just to show off.
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  • Profile picture of the author Yosheena
    You have a good website but you need to optimize it. Message me for more details.
    I was facing the same problem and thought of changing server. However, my problem was solved after optimizing the website. As it grow, you upgrade your hosting plan.
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author ahmedezzezz
    It Depends on Many Things :

    1- Quality of your LP or whatever you are sending visitors to.

    2- Quality of visitors and from where you got them.

    3- Quality of products you are promoting.
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    • Profile picture of the author serryjw
      Ahmed..WP profit builder I can't use for my clients?
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Yes i have fb, twitter, pinterest and i just started using instagram.
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  • Profile picture of the author diegocomercio
    Hi SCrafted, I am not an expert but I'll try to be helpful here.

    After reading most of the replies here I'll try not to repeat every single thing of what's been said (can't promise that LOL)

    1- I think you've done a hell of a job putting up this site. So don't worry you'll be able to have it at 100% in short time just by taking some of the advices people is giving you here.

    2- I had the same issues when installing the w3totalcache plugin but since I couldn't find a better one then I had to change other plugins that could work well with w3totalcache. So you might want to check into that too if you can't find a great substitute to w3totacache.

    3- I agree that it seems you want to show too much on your front page. In my opinion your front page should have more general information and as it's the port of entry to your website it should be exciting and fun and it should entice people to stay and browse.

    You may have nice easy to navigate (drop down) menus for your different categories where people can choose where to go according to their desire.

    4- Yes, you should not use discount deals at the start, that is something you might want to use later on or just for your already existing customers to help cross selling but if what you're selling is not being sold everywhere then there is no need to compete with yourself.

    5- 2 plugins I use to help improve my site's loading time (besides w3totalcache) are WP-OPTIMIZE and WP SMUSH you might want to take a look at them.

    6- Since you're not in the US but want to market to the US you should have a banner or something that can tell people they'll get their order form overseas since people like the feeling of importing stuff from overseas. (you've gottto do your own research to find out the best way to do this but it can definetely help you make people stay and even purchase) you've gotto make visitors feel they will be part of that select group that purchase from overseas.

    7- Besides instagram you should highly consider getting a facebook fanpage (in case you don't have it already). Facebook can really give an edge when it comes to the fashion niche. Since facebook purchased instagram then you can make both work really well to your favor.

    I don´t mean to say this is all you need but it's my 2 cents so far.

    I hope that helps and I wish you al the best.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Diego thanks a lot for your suggestions. I m trying to clean it as much as i can. I am already using wpsmush. Do you have any other suggestion as an alternative for w3totalcache?

      6- Since you're not in the US but want to market to the US you should have a banner or something that can tell people they'll get their order form overseas since people like the feeling of importing stuff from overseas. (you've gottto do your own research to find out the best way to do this but it can definetely help you make people stay and even purchase) you've gotto make visitors feel they will be part of that select group that purchase from overseas.

      Do you think is necessary to say products will be shipped from overseas?

      I do have a facebook and also a pinterest page but it has been really difficult to gain fans there. I am doing well on twitter and i just installed instagram and i am having a great time with it.

      Thanks Diego
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      • Profile picture of the author diegocomercio
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Diego thanks a lot for your suggestions. I m trying to clean it as much as i can. I am already using wpsmush. Do you have any other suggestion as an alternative for w3totalcache?

        6- Since you're not in the US but want to market to the US you should have a banner or something that can tell people they'll get their order form overseas since people like the feeling of importing stuff from overseas. (you've gottto do your own research to find out the best way to do this but it can definetely help you make people stay and even purchase) you've gotto make visitors feel they will be part of that select group that purchase from overseas.

        Do you think is necessary to say products will be shipped from overseas?

        I do have a facebook and also a pinterest page but it has been really difficult to gain fans there. I am doing well on twitter and i just installed instagram and i am having a great time with it.

        Thanks Diego

        SCrafted WP super cache is an alternative to W3totalcache but I have not used it so please look for it and check the reviews and comments about it.

        I don't think it is necessary to say products will be shipped from overseas but I think some how you can milk that fact. You can just think about that later on.

        Don't go crazy about social media. I mean I said facebook and instagram since I know facebook and instagram was purchased by facebook and both platforms work really good for the fashion niche from what I've seen and read. But Don't try to go beyond 2 social platforms at the same time since it can be overwhelming.

        Actually it is recommended to take only 1 social platform at a time master it and then add another one (unless you have a VA that can do the work for you).
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  • Profile picture of the author paulnedo
    Remove the newsletter popup. There is nothing that will drive people away from an ecommerce site than one of those pop-overs.
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    How about the speed now guys? I think has improved a lot.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      How about the speed now guys? I think has improved a lot.
      What ecommerce platform is powering this? I don't want to read through 3 pages to try to see if it was mentioned. Are you using Woocommerce? If not, why?

      No one needs 40 plugins. The site is slow as mud for me and if I hadn't really been trying to see it, I would have left fast.

      So, my adblocker blocked 112 scripts that it would have loaded slowly. I disabled the adblocker temporarily to load the site. I clicked on Shop and Woman and still see no products at all. Nothing but yet another slide in photo gallery rather than products. No one is going to just type in keywords to try to find your products. They should literally slap you in the face when you first come to the site. They should be screaming at you with every link you click on. All that time it took waiting for it to load, and I didn't see one product link.

      EDIT: Finally saw the three green dots that had been struggling to load some products on the shop page and saw some products. I would have never seen them if I were a customer as I would have left long before they loaded.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Wordpress with woocommerce but to display products i m using the essential grid plugin.
        112 scripts? What is causing it? I also been told by some guy here i have many java processes and i really don t know why, do you know?

        Thanks sbucciarel
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        • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
          Banned
          Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

          Wordpress with woocommerce but to display products i m using the essential grid plugin.
          112 scripts? What is causing it? I also been told by some guy here i have many java processes and i really don t know why, do you know?

          Thanks sbucciarel
          Probably due to all the plugins you're using. Like the Twitter scrolling message thing at the bottom. You should use Twitter to bring people to your shop ... not use your shop to take people to Twitter. You should get rid of that.

          Why would you use an essential grid plugin to display products when WooCommerce has lots of beautiful WooCommerce themes that do it without a plugin? That just takes up more precious bandwidth.

          You really need to get the plugins under control. They are site killers, even for sites that are mostly text.

          When I create a WooCommerce store, I use the extensions for customer loyalty (i.e., points for purchases that can be redeemed on future purchases), a gift certificate extension so people can give gift certificates to others, your usual shipping extensions, an extension that makes it easy to notify all of your customers with shop news, etc. Keep it down to real essentials, or you can end up with a site that is so cumbersome that no one will stay. People want to browse products quickly.
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Probably due to all the plugins you're using. Like the Twitter scrolling message thing at the bottom. You should use Twitter to bring people to your shop ... not use your shop to take people to Twitter. You should get rid of that.

            You are perfectly right, never thought about. i need to drive traffic in with Twitter and there is no need for the foobar plugin at the bottom of the page. Will get rid of that.

            I am using the grid plugin to display products because i have noticed many shops are now using a grid layouts to display products, especially fashion boutique, and havent found a theme with a nice shop grid layout but this is slowing the site. I need to do something about it. Will try to contact the plugin developer to see if he has a solution.

            Is it enough to deactivate the plugins or i need to delete them completely?

            Thanks
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            • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
              Banned
              Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

              Probably due to all the plugins you're using. Like the Twitter scrolling message thing at the bottom. You should use Twitter to bring people to your shop ... not use your shop to take people to Twitter. You should get rid of that.

              You are perfectly right, never thought about. i need to drive traffic in with Twitter and there is no need for the foobar plugin at the bottom of the page. Will get rid of that.

              I am using the grid plugin to display products because i have noticed many shops are now using a grid layouts to display products, especially fashion boutique, and havent found a theme with a nice shop grid layout but this is slowing the site. I need to do something about it. Will try to contact the plugin developer to see if he has a solution.

              Is it enough to deactivate the plugins or i need to delete them completely?

              Thanks
              It is enough to deactivate them, but if you're never going to use them, you should just delete them.

              There are numerous WooCommerce themes that use a grid for product display. I think that grid plugin is causing the biggest delays, as it was the very last thing to load for me and didn't come for quite some time.
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              • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
                Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

                How about the speed now guys? I think has improved a lot.
                Still massive slow.

                Tried to run it through https://website.grader.com and it took so long you got an error message there.

                Just tried clicking into another page even after being on the site - too slow.

                What's with the cookie message at the bottom? I clicked accept - and it prompted again on another page. That is annoying.
                I agree with above, kill the newsletter script until you can get the basic site functioning.

                You might be thinking you need all those plugins - but there is always a better combination that can get you well under 20. Shoot for that number first.

                Look what I found on this page: https://www.scrafted.com/?s=furniture

                Furniture
                var lsjQuery = jQuery; lsjQuery(document).ready(function() { if(typeof lsjQuery.fn.layerSlider == "undefined") { lsShowNotice('layerslider_5_1','jquery'); } else { lsjQuery("#layerslider_5_1").layerSlider({keybNav: false, navStartStop: false, navButtons: false, showCircleTimer: false, thumbnailNavigation: 'disabled', skinsPath: 'https://www.scrafted.com/wp-content/plugins/LayerSlider/static/skins/'}) } }); USD, $ EUR, € GBP, £ CAD, $ AUD, $ CNY, Â¥ BRL, R$ SGD, $ AED, د.إ WOOCS 2.1.5 .eg-arthur-wrapper .esg-entry-media-wrapper,.eg-arthur-wrapper .esg-entry-cover{height:410px !important; min-height:410px !important; [...]
                Not sure if you are working on it or the site is very broken.

                What I wanted to do was start looking at the sizes of the images that were uploaded to the site. I'm just guessing now that those are likely not optimized.

                Also, it's likely this whole site is going to need a massive overhaul - but make sure to make some backup copies while you're making all these changes - just to be on the safe side.
                Signature

                "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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                • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                  Banned
                  Oh man, https://www.scrafted.com/?s=furniture haven t noticed this before!!! This site is driving me crazy!
                  Did this happened after you searched for "furniture"?


                  What's with the cookie message at the bottom? I clicked accept - and it prompted again on another page. That is annoying.

                  Really!? Where were you redirected after clicking on the coockie message? I am clicking on it but i m not being redirected...

                  Also there are 25 users right now on the site in this exact moment... maybe is also slow because of this...

                  btw are you from Orlando? I lived in Orlando for almost 4 years. Pretty much everywhere. Altamonte Springs, Longwood, Lake Mary, I went to Lyman high school and Lake Bryant High school. And did my pilot training at Delta in Sanford. Loved it!
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  • Profile picture of the author koz
    Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

    It took me about 2 months and a half to build the site and adding 700 products.
    This totally reminds me of 2005/6. After leaving eBay, I started on my website, spent months putting in products and after1 year building the website, there was 1 sale. Today, I am glad it happened. I was in the Sh** but glad it happened.

    In your case, you have done a good thing with affiliate program and making contact. Problem is affiliate programs are just that - another route to gain sales. It's a strategy you followed but did not understand the truth about this. You have btw done well to contact people to join your program but here is the mistake.

    Contacting affiliates doesn't mean sales.

    Contacting affiliates can mean affiliates.

    Next comes understanding. You run your business, and affiliates are an extra strategy but like you, they also have to act, so results are likely to take longer than you could earn with the site. It's an extra bonus. It is a strategy, but shouldn't be your only strategy at this stage.

    If you want fast sales, advertising and that is it. You need a media spend at this stage.

    Going back, I would recommend anyone reading this, including the OP to make sure only start with a handful of products then expand.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Koz I agree with you 100%. Now i have 10 affiliates but only 4 seems to be active. I think if i work for 5 hrs a day, sending emails, i can get 1 affiliate per day. Maybe in 6 months i will have 200 affiliates and if every affiliates sends 2 to 3 visits per day that would be great.

      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author PBScott
    Too slow to sell, page load speed is not a secondary priority.
    Signature

    If you don't look at this => Really Funny Shirts <= you missed something in life

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    • Profile picture of the author MattStrange
      Hi SCrafted!

      Like many are mentioning about your website speed. The site is going incredible slow here in New Zealand, i also tested the site on pingdom and has a page load time of 60 seconds, i'm not sure if that would of kept on going too.

      You can probably cut down your plugins to four for now until you have found a better host.

      1) WooCommerce
      2) A SEO Plugin
      3) Cache plugin
      4) Contact plugin

      Just the WooCommerce plugin alone can be wonders.

      I haven't checked what your other pages look like as the speed of the site is a big put off for me.

      Go find a similar but more lightweight theme and start with WooCommerce. See if the speed will improve with just the necessaries.

      Matt
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Thank Mattstrange for your suggestions.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cabriz
    Ciao, Scrafted. New guy here. I just took a look at your site, and whilst I may not be a master of coding I feel that you could make a lot of changes.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cabriz
    Sorry. I pressed Return and it automatically posted.

    1. You have too many navbars at the top. The Register bar, Logo bar, and the navbar. Try compressing them into two bars. My suggestion would be to put the FAQ, Contact, Terms/Privacy, Customer Service tabs into the About dropdown bar. Returns/Refunds, and Shipping tabs could move into the Cart tab. Register and Login, Account and Wishlist could stay where it is, but make sure it stays above the other tabs on a smaller bar. The logo is fine where it is, don't downsize it.

    2. The bar on the bottom with your links are unnecessary. Maybe move the social media links to the top bar on the right. Keep them the size they are, everyone knows what they will link to. I am not sure what you could do with the live message chat, maybe it is unnecessary with the traffic to your site being so low. Consider removing it and letting people mail you for now, possibly with a complaints tab in the About Us dropdown.

    3. Your homepage is extremely cluttered. Remove the stick figure links to your different sections. Remove the links to your different brands. Just keep your best merchandise there, WITHOUT the price. Your stuff is good, if they want to buy it, the price should not matter.

    4. Your scrollbar on the right keeps disappearing. Since your page is centred with space on the right, you do not need this extra "functionality." I spent the first minute wondering whether the page could scroll or not.

    I understand that too many chefs spoil the broth. Maybe if you consider some of these changes your site you could remove some plugins and your site may speed up. After all, simplicity=speed, and your site is far from simple, with too many redundant links to too many places. A good place for minotaurs, not shoppers. I look forward to your site being worthy of The Flash. Or maybe I am that extra chef.

    Anyway, good luck, and I am looking forward to your site going global.
    P.S. That guy who said Amazon has a great idea. It may also help in redirecting traffic to your site.
    P.P.S. You could try pinning tweets to the top of your twitter that links to specific products you think may sell well. Everyone likes pinups. You could also link your Twitter to your Instagram in the Twitter Profile. Builld a social media network that ties everything back to your site. Maybe in the future when sales pick up you could advertise on Facebook.

    Take care.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hello Cabriz, my home page is 14 mb which i think i quite a lot. I will delete many of the images i have now, i think that is one of the problems i think. I am worried about this page: https://www.scrafted.com/scraftedstore/ this is the most important page in my opinion (shop page). and is really slow. The essential grid plugin i m using to display products is what i think is causing the issue but can t get rid off that...

      I will follow your advice. Today i m going to work the whole day on the site and post a message when i am done.

      A good place for minotaurs, not shoppers. Ahhahahah.

      Thanks Cabriz
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  • Profile picture of the author jdjenkins
    I just looked at the site out of curiosity. The home page took about 30 secs to load here in the UK. That page seems to have a lot on it. Then I scrolled down a lot and clicked on "Cromoforo". That page took over 35 secs to load.

    One other point is that your prices are showing oddly, e.g. 19,99$ instead of $19.99. I would normally expect to see prices shown correctly in USD, or have a drop-down menu on the top bar to change to my local curreny (GBP).

    Hope you can speed the site up!

    cheers,

    Jon.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      jdjenkins, i just upgraded (10 bucks) the memory to 2 gb and now i have 2 cpu´s and 150 entry processes instead of 125 i had before. It seems the speed has improved a little bit.

      One other point is that your prices are showing oddly, e.g. 19,99$ instead of $19.99
      I need to use a dot to show prices?
      If you look now i have set in the store page a way for users to change to their local currency. I have Us dollars, Euros, British pounds, Brazilian reals, Saudi arabian riyal, Canadian dollars, Chinese Yuan, Australian Dollars and Singaporean Dollars.

      Btw are you an helicopter pilot? I was an arline pilot untill last year eheheh.

      Thanks
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      • Profile picture of the author jdjenkins
        Hi - congrats on speeding up the site! Much nicer now. The prices still look odd though, and I can't see where to change to GBP.

        Yes, I have a private license for helicopters, which I fly just a few times a year, when I feel like burning through my cash far too quickly!!!

        cheers,

        Jon.


        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        jdjenkins, i just upgraded (10 bucks) the memory to 2 gb and now i have 2 cpu´s and 150 entry processes instead of 125 i had before. It seems the speed has improved a little bit.

        One other point is that your prices are showing oddly, e.g. 19,99$ instead of $19.99
        I need to use a dot to show prices?
        If you look now i have set in the store page a way for users to change to their local currency. I have Us dollars, Euros, British pounds, Brazilian reals, Saudi arabian riyal, Canadian dollars, Chinese Yuan, Australian Dollars and Singaporean Dollars.

        Btw are you an helicopter pilot? I was an arline pilot untill last year eheheh.

        Thanks
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          That's nice fellow airman! Even though i know pretty much nothing about helicopters, the only thing i know is that are much more expensive than a small piston single engine plane if you want to go and fly a bit.

          The currency switcher is located just below the big slider in the shop page. Is pretty big but you probably haven't noticed because there are no flags.

          So i should use dots instead of commas to show prices?

          Thanks
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          • Profile picture of the author jdjenkins
            Yes, I'm thinking about trying some gyroplane flying this year; looks good fun. Rotary wing but fixed-wing costs!

            Most currencies are displayed with a decimal point in English:

            £19.99
            $19.99

            - and the currency sign on the left of the figures. The comma is confusing to me, as it makes me think I may be looking at Euros, but it seems to be a USD sign to the right of the numbers.

            Anyway, I'm glad to see it's all working much better,

            cheers,

            Jon.


            Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

            That's nice fellow airman! Even though i know pretty much nothing about helicopters, the only thing i know is that are much more expensive than a small piston single engine plane if you want to go and fly a bit.

            The currency switcher is located just below the big slider in the shop page. Is pretty big but you probably haven't noticed because there are no flags.

            So i should use dots instead of commas to show prices?

            Thanks
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              Thanks for your help! Will take care of that asap.
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  • Profile picture of the author topcoder
    You should correct this issues, whatever badge this is - times out.

    GET ]https://streamtest.github.io/badges/streamtest.jsnet::ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT
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  • Profile picture of the author uangkan
    Selling is not about to ask some for buying our product, but we must build strong trust before gaining first closing.
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    List of plugins currently active:

    AJAX AutoSuggest

    Contact Form 7

    Essential Grid

    EU Cookie Law

    Google Analyticator

    Interactive World Maps

    KnB - Wordpress Knowledge Base Shortcode Plugin

    LayerSlider WP

    Ninja Popups

    Opening Hours

    PressApps Fullscreen Login

    Redux Framework

    Scrollbar

    Team Showcase

    Usernoise

    WaspThemes - Yellow Pencil Pro

    Widgets on Pages

    WooBag

    WooCommerce

    WooCommerce Currency Switcher

    Stripe for WooCommerce

    WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout

    WooCommerce Pretty Emails

    WooCommerce Sales Countdown

    WooCommerce Show Attributes

    WooCommerce SSL Seal

    WooCommerce TM Extra Product Options

    WP Affiliate Manager

    WP Author, Date and Meta Remover

    WPBakery Visual Composer

    WPML Multilingual CMS

    YITH WooCommerce Customize My Account Page

    YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

    Yoast SEO Premium

    Zopim Widget
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      List of plugins currently active:

      AJAX AutoSuggest

      Contact Form 7

      Essential Grid

      EU Cookie Law

      Google Analyticator

      Interactive World Maps

      KnB - Wordpress Knowledge Base Shortcode Plugin

      LayerSlider WP

      Ninja Popups

      Opening Hours

      PressApps Fullscreen Login

      Redux Framework

      Scrollbar

      Team Showcase

      Usernoise

      WaspThemes - Yellow Pencil Pro

      Widgets on Pages

      WooBag

      WooCommerce

      WooCommerce Currency Switcher

      Stripe for WooCommerce

      WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout

      WooCommerce Pretty Emails

      WooCommerce Sales Countdown

      WooCommerce Show Attributes

      WooCommerce SSL Seal

      WooCommerce TM Extra Product Options

      WP Affiliate Manager

      WP Author, Date and Meta Remover

      WPBakery Visual Composer

      WPML Multilingual CMS

      YITH WooCommerce Customize My Account Page

      YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

      Yoast SEO Premium

      Zopim Widget
      AJAX AutoSuggest What do you need this for?

      Contact Form 7

      Essential Grid Already discussed

      EU Cookie Law

      Google Analyticator What do you need this for? Isn't GA enough without a plugin?

      Interactive World Maps What do you need this for? This is probably a real bandwidth hog?

      KnB - Wordpress Knowledge Base Shortcode Plugin What do you need this for?

      LayerSlider WP What do you need this for? Most WooCommerce themes already have a built in slider that would be more efficient than an addon slider?

      Ninja Popups What do you need this for? People hate popups?

      Opening Hours What do you need this for? Overkill. Just do a page with your hours?

      PressApps Fullscreen Login What do you need this for?

      Redux Framework What is this?

      Scrollbar What do you need this for?

      Team Showcase What is this? Can it be done in text/images on a page without a plugin?

      Usernoise What is this for?

      WaspThemes - Yellow Pencil Pro

      Widgets on Pages What do you need this for?

      WooBag What is this?

      WooCommerce

      WooCommerce Currency Switcher

      Stripe for WooCommerce

      WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout

      WooCommerce Pretty Emails

      WooCommerce Sales Countdown

      WooCommerce Show Attributes

      WooCommerce SSL Seal

      WooCommerce TM Extra Product Options

      WP Affiliate Manager

      WP Author, Date and Meta Remover What do you need this for?

      WPBakery Visual Composer What do you need this for?

      WPML Multilingual CMS

      YITH WooCommerce Customize My Account Page What do you need this for?

      YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

      Yoast SEO Premium

      Zopim Widget What do you need this for?
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        AJAX AutoSuggest What do you need this for? this is a filter located on the shop page, just under the currency switcher https://www.scrafted.com/deals/

        Contact Form 7

        Essential Grid Already discussed

        EU Cookie Law

        Google Analyticator What do you need this for? Isn't GA enough without a plugin?If i deactivate it i have noticed that i won t be getting any stats from analytics, for sure there must be another way to get stats without this plugin

        Interactive World Maps What do you need this for? This is probably a real bandwidth hog? https://www.scrafted.com/shipping/ if you hover the mouse on any country will tell you time to delivery, it s pretty cool but is probably a heavy plugin

        KnB - Wordpress Knowledge Base Shortcode Plugin What do you need this for? https://www.scrafted.com/faqs/ FAQs page

        LayerSlider WP What do you need this for? Most WooCommerce themes already have a built in slider that would be more efficient than an addon slider? This is the slider that came with my theme

        Ninja Popups What do you need this for? People hate popups? Will delete this

        Opening Hours What do you need this for? Overkill. Just do a page with your hours? Will delete this

        PressApps Fullscreen Login What do you need this for? "Awesome login page"

        Redux Framework What is this?came with them, if i deactivate it layout will be messed up

        Scrollbar What do you need this for? will delete this

        Team Showcase What is this? Can it be done in text/images on a page without a plugin? will delete this


        Usernoise What is this for? https://www.scrafted.com/product/bagpack-by-columpio-8/ Ask a question button

        WaspThemes - Yellow Pencil Pro

        Widgets on Pages What do you need this for? to display the currency switcher and filter on shop page

        WooBag What is this? hover the mouse over the cart after adding a product, looks awesome

        WooCommerce

        WooCommerce Currency Switcher

        Stripe for WooCommerce

        WooCommerce MultiStep Checkout

        WooCommerce Pretty Emails

        WooCommerce Sales Countdown

        WooCommerce Show Attributes

        WooCommerce SSL Seal

        WooCommerce TM Extra Product Options

        WP Affiliate Manager

        WP Author, Date and Meta Remover What do you need this for? to remove date and author name in posts, probably this can be done with some css

        WPBakery Visual Composer What do you need this for? if i deactivate this the whole layout of the page will look messy

        WPML Multilingual CMS

        YITH WooCommerce Customize My Account Page What do you need this for? Wordpress account page looks really ugly, this gives a better and more professional look

        YITH WooCommerce Wishlist

        Yoast SEO Premium

        Zopim Widget What do you need this for? to chat with users

        You guys are probably right i should sacrifice look for speed. Is just me but when i get into an ugly site (not that my site is great looking, i think is decent) i don t care how good the information and speed is i would leave immeadiately.

        Thanks sbucciarel
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Sbucciarel do you know what this is?

          https://streamtest.github.io/badges/...TION_TIMED_OUT
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          • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
            Banned
            Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

            Sbucciarel do you know what this is?

            https://streamtest.github.io/badges/...TION_TIMED_OUT
            No ... I was wondering what it was when your site was trying to load it.

            On the ones you answered looks awesome when you hover over it and the world map thing, you might consider getting rid of them. You don't have to sacrifice looks and design for speed, but the things that really don't matter to a customer, like how something looks when it is hovered over, just make the slte slower and the visitors less happy in the long run.
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            • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
              Banned
              Thanks sbucciarel! Your help is highly appreciated!!!
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            • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
              Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post


              You guys are probably right i should sacrifice look for speed. Is just me but when i get into an ugly site (not that my site is great looking, i think is decent) i don t care how good the information and speed is i would leave immeadiately.

              Thanks sbucciarel
              It won't be ugly.

              It takes a little more time to customize these things but they can be worked on.

              User friendly needs to be at the top of the priority list over looking pretty.

              I decided to make a really boring video for you so you can see how bad this is from someone elses perspective.

              Feel free to fast forward and note the timing on the video as it was done in real time clicking around.

              Signature

              "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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              • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                Banned
                Thanks so much for taking the time to do this video, it was truly helpful. Now i realize how much the site sucks. Is not taking so much on my computer, is taking a lifetime for you, on my browser is much much faster, but is probably because i am always on the site all the times. Man is soooo sloowwwww! Ugly ugly ugly! Can't believe it! Now i see why haven t made a sale! I would be the first one to leave this site if i was a customer.
                Also i don t have all those layout issues on my browser. Paypal, cart, the flags are not cutted. I will do a video to show you how it looks on my browser.
                What program did you used to do the video? So i can do one to show you.

                I just can't believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                Does everybody has the same layout issues Jill has?
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                • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
                  I'm using the firefox browser on a Mac.
                  Chrome looks cleaner but the slow load is still happening.

                  If you bought the theme you could check in with where you bought it from.

                  Suave - Multi-Purpose WooCommerce Theme - WordPress | ThemeForest

                  See if they say it's a browser issue or perhaps because of what ever you have on the site.

                  Check your stats - maybe I'm the only one using firefox still.
                  Signature

                  "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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                • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
                  Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

                  J
                  Also i don t have all those layout issues on my browser. Paypal, cart, the flags are not cutted. I will do a video to show you how it looks on my browser.
                  I am disappointed now and discouraged. Now i see what you guys are talking about.


                  I just can't believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                  Does everybody has the same layout issues Jill has? Yes FYI it loaded slower on my lap top then it does on my desktop, but still way to slow on both.
                  Please don't be discouraged, now that you learned what we saw you may see the frustration of a customer. You put a lot of hard work into this. Plus you shared your plugins which was a good help. You have bought some Warrior Forum vets out of the basement to help. You asked good questions and showed dedication. Since you have the willingness to stick it out. You maybe onto a great future with the site. Good Luck !!
                  Signature


                  You can earn 10% average annual returns on your investments - https://app.groundfloor.us/r/m2aa7b
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                  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                    Banned
                    Thanks DWolfe, you have been great as well!
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                    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                      Banned
                      still slow but not slow like in your video, and my internet is particularly slow today, i usually see it much faster but i guess is not important how fast it is for me...
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                      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                        Banned
                        I feel like i am abusing the forum. This is the thread that received the most replies in this section. Thanks everybody!
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    I tried to install cache plugins. I have tried w3, supercache and wprocket and all this are messing up the site. After i install them i will get layout issues. So at the moment i don t have any cache plugins. Do you guys have some other reccomandation for cache plugins other than this ones?
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Sorry but i have another question as well. Could it be that what is slowing the site as well is the ssl certificate? I tried the speed test on pingdom and by entering www.scrafted.com it says it takes 10.something secs. If i type https//www.scrafted.com will take more than 60 secs...
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  • Profile picture of the author elmo033057
    Man, you did a ton of work on this. I love the fact that you really hung yourself out there and took a risk.

    Awesome!

    I think your site looks great, but as many have pointed out already, it is moving rather slowly.

    All of that aside, I'd like to ask you a few questions.

    First, did what made you want to sell these particular items and what was the market research that you did on the front end before you actually started putting this site together?

    Also, what specific target market are you trying to sell to? 20 year old females? Male executives that buy gifts for their girl friends?

    Who are you targeting exactly with these products.

    Knowing exactly who your market is will determine exactly what kind of message to send and where to advertise at.

    God Bless,
    Elmo
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Elmo, thanks for the kind words!

      If i can improve the speed the site will be targeted mostly to a female audience i would say 15 to 32 but also to male audiences since i am selling t-shirts, bowties and some other products for man.

      My sister has a fashion boutique and she is selling this products so i am selling her products. I don t stock anything, she does in her store. When i get an order, if i ever get one she will be shipping the products to the customers.

      Thanks for taking the time to have a look at the site...
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  • Profile picture of the author Project Sniper
    Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

    Hello everybody, i just signed up here on WF but i have been a long time observer . This is my very first post and hopefully since there is a lot of knowledge here on this forum somebody will give me some insights of what i am doing wrong.

    For the last 4 months i have been putting quite a lot of efforts on a website. My sister lives in Rome, Italy and she has a fashion boutique so i decided to build a website selling what she sells; fashion, apparel, handbags, jewelry and so on... in which there is a lot of competition i understand but the stuff i sell is truly unique, really really cheap and beautiful.

    It took me about 2 months and a half to build the site and adding 700 products. Now that is ready i have been trying to market it organically since my budget is close to 0 trying to post on free directories, facebook,twitter, polyvore and many other websites, contacting fashion bloggers to see if there was an interest in becoming affiliates (offering 20% on every commission which is quite high compared to other websites in the apparel industry which 8% commission as an average).

    I have sent around 400 to 500 emails maybe more and got 5 affiliates so far.

    So in a month, around 500 people got into my website but i haven't made a single sale! I don't know what is it that i am doing wrong and i would be really interested in hearing some great advice from more savy internet marketers.

    I want to thank in advance for you help and please be brutally honest.

    Thanks

    IF your having speed problems. You need to check for clutter in your server and you definitely need to upgrade your hosting to handle everything that runs your site.

    or you can learn how to code and just write everything efficiently.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      "or you can learn how to code and just write everything efficiently." ehehheh easy to say hard to do.

      Actually has been more than 3 months that i have been working on the site, i would say 6 months because i had to learn wordpress and did some market research. 6 months of my life! Well actually not everything goes to waste. If the site doesn t work, which is a high probability, at least i learned to build wp sites, correction slow wp sites.

      Sniper what is the clutter?
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      • Profile picture of the author Project Sniper
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        "or you can learn how to code and just write everything efficiently." ehehheh easy to say hard to do.

        Actually has been more than 3 months that i have been working on the site, i would say 6 months because i had to learn wordpress and did some market research. 6 months of my life! Well actually not everything goes to waste. If the site doesn t work, which is a high probability, at least i learned to build wp sites, correction slow wp sites.
        Is this wooCommerce?

        You can do things like use cloudflare and the plugin "Use Your GDrive" to act as a CDN for your images. You can find it on code canyon. You seriously need to get VPN hosting or a dedicated sever to run this site though.
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  • Profile picture of the author miltonmahmud
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      miltonmahmud there are so many ways you could advertise your business, this is definitely not one that is going to work. At least for me and especially on this forum, where people can smell the real purpose of your post miles away.
      It is like wasting your time and being rude thinking that we are all stupid.

      He just removed his signature. Great, much better.
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  • Profile picture of the author @iBusiness
    Hello SCrafted, I'm in a similar situation as yours, I just signed up here but I have being doing affiliate lone wolf for a few years now, I just wanted to recommend you one BIG and FREE traffic source you do not mention you using, and you should totally give it a try.

    I'm talking about Pinterest! Pinterest its a great social Network for your niche! Just create an account, create your board and start pinning your items, then start following niche related accounts with many followers, it won't be long till you start getting shares and people repining your stuff, Pinterest doesn't work so well with all the niches, but it certainly does with food and fashion

    Hope this comment helps you! If it does, please let me know! Have a great day!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      I am using it but i find it extremely difficult to gain pins, followers (or whatever they are called on Pinterest) and drive traffic to the website. I am a twitter ninja, now without even tweeting im gaining 50 to 100 followers per day, when i tweet i can get to 400 followers per day (well it just happened once, after spending 10 hrs tweeting), but i have red that amongs the big 4 (fb, twitter, pinterest and instagram) twitter is the one with the lowest conversions. I am so lucky! eheheh.

      Will read more about Pinterest and Instagram because i know that for the particular niche i am in they are the best.

      Thanks @iBusiness
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    I have decided that i m going to sell my brand new sony vaio so i can have 700$ to do some little marketing. I am going to miss it!
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Guys could you advice if the speed has improved? I can't check it because from my browser it looks much faster.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
      Banned
      Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

      Guys could you advice is the speed has improved? I can't check it because from my browser because is looks much faster.
      Yes, pretty nice improvement in speed for me and I live in the country and don't have broadband, so broadband users should see a better speed than me.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Really!? This made my day.

        And i have found out what this was https://streamtest.github.io/badges/...TION_TIMED_OUT
        Some stupid images in the footer that i removed now.

        Thanks sbucciarel!
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        • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
          Banned
          Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

          Really!? This made my day.

          And i have found out what this was https://streamtest.github.io/badges/...TION_TIMED_OUT
          Some stupid images in the footer that i removed now.

          Thanks sbucciarel!
          Good ... glad you found the source of that because it took forever to load them. You have a nice site. Obvious you've done a lot of work on it. Keep it up and don't let plugins bog it down, particularly plugins that don't really do much for the site or your customers except for a minor cosmetic function.
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            If it wasnt for you guys i would have never looked at this https://streamtest.github.io/badges/...TION_TIMED_OUT

            THANKS!
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            • Profile picture of the author Kevin McNally
              Hi

              Speed has improved on your site but still takes a fair amount of time to load for me, in this modern world you could have the winning lotto tickets to give away on your website and some folf would still leave the site if it takes more than 5 seconds to load.

              For sure I would check all your plugins, maybe change hosting but I know that's a real pain. Site looks professional

              I haven't read the whole thread to be honest but I would build another site with the top ten best selling products based on keyword demand and competition and see if you can generate some sales.

              Plug your keywords into keyword tools such as kwfinder.com and you can quickly check the competition and demand for your product. They have a free version.

              All the best
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              • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                Banned
                Thanks Kevin, i know i am still working on it, havent slept the whole night! I know is still slow but compared to what it was before i think is has improved quite a bit. Just tested on Pingdom and got 5.39 secs loading time, before was 60 secs...

                The parallel website with less products is a good idea. Will def consider that.

                Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Dubpats
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey Dubpats you have a really nice website.
      Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    I think the main issue now is the essential grid plugin which is slowing down the shop page. I will contact the plugin developers, again, to see if they can help out on this but i just realized my support has expired 2 days ago, hopefully they will be nice and help me on this considering they told me that out of 15000 customers they have i am the one who broke their b...s the most and never worked so much supporting a customer ehheheh. They have been really nice though.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jill Carpenter
      Massive speed increase there.

      Only took 5-6 seconds for me this time.

      It can go faster, but at least you have something to work with now.
      Signature

      "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Thanks Jill
        Still working though. it needs to get faster.
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        • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
          Wow - you've come a long way since I last checked in! Nice job!

          According to Google PageSpeed Insights you don't have gzip compression enabled. This could greatly reduce your page size and speed things up. Plugins will do this but as you've not been able to use the caching plugin, Google "gzip compression in WordPress" and you'll find instructions for putting code into your .htaccess file to implement the fix. You might look for support articles on your host site for gzip compression to see if they have instructions or check with them on how best to implement.

          According to Pingdom, images are taking up 42% of the load time and make up over half of the page size (for the home page). Compressing your images should make a big difference and Google's PageSpeed Insights gives you the compressed versions in the download at the bottom of the Desktop tab.

          You're getting there!
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Erica nice to see you again!!! Thanks a lot! I will have a look at this immediately (gzip compression). This (find instructions for putting code into your .htaccess file to implement the fix.) seems a little complicated but will read about it and let you know...

            (images are taking up 42%) I already deleted half of the images i had in the home, will try to delete and compress them as you suggested...

            You're getting there! Slowly but now i feel like i am getting closer...

            Thanks!

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            • Profile picture of the author ns17
              Check this plugin if you have wordpress installed it will fix the image compression problem.

              https://wordpress.org/plugins/ewww-image-optimizer/


              Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

              Erica nice to see you again!!! Thanks a lot! I will have a look at this immediately (gzip compression). This (find instructions for putting code into your .htaccess file to implement the fix.) seems a little complicated but will read about it and let you know...

              (images are taking up 42%) I already deleted half of the images i had in the home, will try to delete and compress them as you suggested...

              You're getting there! Slowly but now i feel like i am getting closer...

              Thanks!

              Signature

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              • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                Banned
                Dowloading it right now!
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          • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
            Banned
            Erica i did a quick search on google to check how to start using the gzip optimizer which is installed now on the site and it says there are 2 ways to enable it, either through w3totalcache or through htcaccess as you said. Since i cannot use it with the w3 plugins, because of the conflicts with the ess grid plugins i think i will have to enable through the htcaccess. It says to add this code:

            # compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
            AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript
            AddType x-font/otf .otf
            AddType x-font/ttf .ttf
            AddType x-font/eot .eot
            AddType x-font/woff .woff
            AddType image/x-icon .ico
            AddType image/png .png

            Do i have to add it to the htaccess wherever i want in the file or in a specific section?

            Thanks
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            • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
              You might check with your host first on gzip. Another test tool I checked shows it is in place. The Google PageSpeed Insights tool just may not be picking it up.

              The images - a pain, I know...but if you start with just the few largest on the home page and compare the before and after Pingdom results (checking the Page Analysis tab to see if it reduces the time spent on images) you'll be able to see if the effort is worthwhile or not.
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              • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
                Banned
                So i just install the gzip plugin and thats it? I will contact my hosting to see what they say... Sorry to bother so much...

                Thanks Erica
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  • Profile picture of the author ns17
    Although I am not an expert on website hosting but this might help you Try a free plan on https://www.cloudflare.com/ for improving the site performance. Hope it helps
    Signature

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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Free really?!? Will have a look! Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author abhishekknigam
    Dear, I am also working on same niche for a company. So I am sharing you some suggestion, I am sure those
    will be helpful for you.

    1. Start listing your products on Amazon because your most of the sales are going to come from Amazon & other
    market places not from your website.

    2. Give your Inventory to Amazon fulfillment center. They will help you to generate the sales.

    3. Start Hiring affiliate marketing companies, who can generate sale for you on sales basis not clicks or visits.

    4. Start running normal 2$/day facebook carousal ads.

    5. Read this post for technical issues: http://www.aspmedia.in/article/top-10-reasons-your-website-traffic-increasing-not-your-conversions?utm_source=ASP&utm_medium=Forum&utm_ca mpaign=Traffic%20Is%20Increasing%20But%20Not%20You r%20Conversions

    Follow these simple steps for 1month. And I am sure you will start getting sales.

    If after doing these activites if you will not get sales. Then ping me I will personally check your website at my own end
    without any cost. And I will suggest you the right steps to get the sales.

    Thanks,
    Abhishek
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Abhishek thanks a lot my friend! This morning i registered an amazon and also an ebay account.

      Top 10 Reasons Your website Traffic Is Increasing But Not Your Conversions | Online Marketing Company, Social Media Marketing Agency, Digital Marketing for companies in Delhi NCR India mpaign=Traffic%20Is%20Increasing%20But%20Not%20You r%20Conversions
      Really good article!

      Start Hiring affiliate marketing companies, who can generate sale for you on sales basis not clicks or visits. Seriously? There are affiliate companies that work on a commission basis? That would be awesome! Could you provide some names?


      If after doing these activites if you will not get sales. Then ping me I will personally check your website at my own end
      without any cost. And I will suggest you the right steps to get the sales.
      Thank you so much for offering your help! Really really appreciated!
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      • Profile picture of the author abhishekknigam
        Dear put your total focus on Amazon inventory not anywhere else. Check it's improvement regularly. I am telling you within a week you will start generating sales.


        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Abhishek thanks a lot my friend! This morning i registered an amazon and also an ebay account.

        Top 10 Reasons Your website Traffic Is Increasing But Not Your Conversions | Online Marketing Company, Social Media Marketing Agency, Digital Marketing for companies in Delhi NCR India mpaign=Traffic%20Is%20Increasing%20But%20Not%20You r%20Conversions
        Really good article!

        Start Hiring affiliate marketing companies, who can generate sale for you on sales basis not clicks or visits. Seriously? There are affiliate companies that work on a commission basis? That would be awesome! Could you provide some names?


        If after doing these activites if you will not get sales. Then ping me I will personally check your website at my own end
        without any cost. And I will suggest you the right steps to get the sales.
        Thank you so much for offering your help! Really really appreciated!
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Today i am going to take care of Amazon.

          Thanks abhishekknigam
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          I've been a lurker for some time and just got an account to add to this. Like a lot of people, me included. Great you signed up and started using the forum. This is the best forum on the web!

          You are using multiple tag lines ("Exclusive hand curated products from the 4 CORNERS of the Globe" and "Unique handmade items"). I would stick with one an go with that. You are exactly right, i need only 1 slogan. Which one would you go for? Or do you have any suggestions for a good one?

          The first 4 products I see when i scroll are titled ""T-shirt By Overhead." You may want to either have more descriptive headlines or change the order of products to mix it up a bit. (also, the T-shirts don't appear when I select the Cloths -> Men category?) Agree. I have red that is not enough to write a description title. Need to make them more compelling. I just don' know what to write for a t-shirt...

          Other's have mentioned the speed of the site (particularly when selecting a category from the Shop menu) and the incorrect currency format so I won't go into that but they are big issues.
          Still working on it...

          Thanks!
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hey abhishekknigam
          could you provide some name of those affiliate companies you were talking about that work on a commission basis?
          Also i have registered the site on jvzoo got 10 affiliate request but they dont seem legit... Also had a look at shareasale, that is a great company but i think they require a 500$ fee to list your site and put a listing there. Is that right?

          Thanks
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    • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
      Originally Posted by abhishekknigam View Post


      2. Give your Inventory to Amazon fulfillment center. They will help you to generate the sales.

      Thanks,
      Abhishek
      Yep send it to Amazon and have to pay a fee each month. If he just got a basic free sellers account on Amazon he can list it there and let his Sister ship it. He does not have the funds he said in a earlier post to ship the product here.

      To Scrafted it is back up now. Keep the good work up.

      Here is the link to sell as a individual https://services.amazon.com/services...asus_soa_p_cat Than you will need to scroll to the bottom of the page to click on the individual account.
      Signature


      You can earn 10% average annual returns on your investments - https://app.groundfloor.us/r/m2aa7b
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Wolfe thanks for the link, i was looking for it and couldnt find it! And there is also a free month included! Yeahhh. Signing up now...
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Thanks everybody!
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    Sojourn is right about the images on the front page. If you compress them as she suggested, you'll get an enormous boost in speed. Images should always be compressed on websites for optimal speed.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Doing it right now! I deleted wpsmush, will try what Erica suggested.

      Thanks Sbucciarel!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      thank you everybody!
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  • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
    I can't see the site but from the complaints of others here, your site is dead slow.
    One thing you can do to improve it is host the images differently.

    As far as sales is concern, you need to get a lot of exposures and trust
    before anyone can buy from you especially when you aren't promoting
    a known site or brand.

    I don't know anything about the internet habits of Romans,
    perhaps some traditional marketing like flyers, banners,
    radio jingles, business card can do better.

    And if you eventually make some money, investing in localized
    PPC (adword) and Facebook fan page will be great.
    Signature
    Grow your social media account, Spotify Streams, YT Views & IG Followers & More
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Hey johnben1444

      I can't see the site but from the complaints of others here, your site is dead slow. You can t see the site?! But is it because is not loading for you or some other reasons?

      I don't know anything about the internet habits of Romans Have you watched The Gladiator? We are not really good at IM but we are great at throwing people at lions and tigers... ehehehhehe

      And if you eventually make some money, investing in localized
      PPC (adword) and Facebook fan page will be great.


      I really hope i get to that point.

      Thanks Jhon
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      • Profile picture of the author johnben1444
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post


        I don't know anything about the internet habits of Romans Have you watched The Gladiator? We are not really good at IM but we are great at throwing people at lions and tigers... ehehehhehe
        I haven't only watched Gladiator but love that movie though somehow the part 2 wasn't as impressive as the part 1.

        Back to the point, local advertising will be more beneficial to your business.
        Signature
        Grow your social media account, Spotify Streams, YT Views & IG Followers & More
        Software & Mobile APP Developer
        Buy Spotify, Facebook Bot & IG M/S Method
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          I am actually trying to market the site for the US market. Also Eu but would like to focus on the US market..because I am not in Rome at the moment... Is the site not loading for you or is it that you cant get in for some other reason?
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Optimizing images... 2721 images. This is going to take a week ehehe
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    • Profile picture of the author robertem
      Hi SCrafted,

      I've been a lurker for some time and just got an account to add to this. A lot of people have given you some very good advice here but I thought I might give you a perspective from the consumer end. You have done a nice job on the site but I think there are a few things you could improve (from a new user's point of view) to increase sales.

      • In my opinion, You should be targeting the sale a bit more. You have way to much going on "above the fold." I felt too much animation and not enough information.
      • You are using multiple tag lines ("Exclusive hand curated products from the 4 CORNERS of the Globe" and "Unique handmade items"). I would stick with one an go with that.
      • The main image carousel isn't telling me anything about the products or the company. As a new consumer, I don't know what you are offering. Maybe a text overlay?
      • The main nav menu seems to have a lot of items that would be better suited in a secondary menu on the bottom. Really, to me, the main nav should be what you are showing under "Shop."
      • The first 4 products I see when i scroll are titled ""T-shirt By Overhead." You may want to either have more descriptive headlines or change the order of products to mix it up a bit. (also, the T-shirts don't appear when I select the Cloths -> Men category?)
      • Other's have mentioned the speed of the site (particularly when selecting a category from the Shop menu) and the incorrect currency format so I won't go into that but they are big issues.

      Anyway, you are on the right track and I wish you luck. Keep pushing.
      Rob
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    oh oh site broke down. I m reinstalling an older backup...
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  • Profile picture of the author abdullahshaker
    build back links to you website with defirent descrptions ... google love that
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    btw 2 more affiliates signed up yesterday.
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    • Profile picture of the author JMSD
      Your site took just under three seconds to load for me. Don't know if you've dealt with this issue or whether it's due to the fact that I have super-fast broadband.

      Not everyone has fibre optic broadband so you should ensure that your site will load reasonably promptly irrespective of the broadband service that a visitor might have.

      You've been given really good advice by a number of fellow Warriors but I'll add my perspective, too, so you have some idea of what your visitor experiences are like.

      1 - there is far too much going on on your Home page so that it's difficult to know exactly what your focus really is

      2 - In your shoes, I'd have top navigation links for various categories and then have teaser image/content on the portal page for each category so that a visitor who is interested in say 'bow ties' can click on that link and then view your showcase of bow ties. This will tidy up your site considerably and, I think, speed up your site load time because it will have less images to load when the visitor first arrives on your site.

      3 - Avoid dynamic images/banners that distract the visitor from what you really want them to do. I didn't know where to look, at first, and in desperation, I got out of your site.

      4 - Amazon is a great site to study for getting the look and feel of a retail site just right - to draw interest and then take action.


      As for SEO, you really need to do some keyword research for each category of your products to see what terms people are using to search for products like those on your site.

      Then for each product category (Main Category: Men's Accessories, Sub-category: Bow Ties), make sure the keyword appears in the heading. Also include other search terms for your category within the body of your product description.

      For example: If you see that at least 4,000 people are searching for "silk bow ties", then this term should appear in the heading for that sub-section of men's accessories and related terms should appear in the description of each silk product.

      SEO is a complex subject and attempting to 'do it all' is going to take you a lot of time and study. But the basics are not difficult and you can deal with it, yourself - see this site for some useful information:
      https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo (not an affiliate link)

      For keyword research, use Google's Keyword Tool - You'll need to set up a Google Adwords Account to use this tool - it's free to set up and you can use it for keyword research and nothing else, if you so wish.

      Jamie

      PS - unless you've got deep pockets, I would avoid paying anyone to do the SEO for you. Make loads of money, first and then outsource the SEO, if you still feel that your could do with expert help.
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Hello Jamie, thanks for taking the time to visit the site.

        Your site took just under three seconds to load for me. Don't know if you've dealt with this issue or whether it's due to the fact that I have super-fast broadband.
        It is probably because you have fibre optic. I have improved the page speed but i still think it can be much faster. As suggested i have used a plugin to optimize images but it doesn t seem to have improved the speed much.

        In your shoes, I'd have top navigation links for various categories This is what i wanted to do. A lot of fashion boutiques are doing this but if i do it i don t know where i will place the main menu. As you can see i dont have a footer where i can place the main menu.

        As for SEO, you really need to do some keyword research for each category of your products to see what terms people are using to search for products like those on your site.

        Then for each product category (Main Category: Men's Accessories, Sub-category: Bow Ties), make sure the keyword appears in the heading. Also include other search terms for your category within the body of your product description.

        For example: If you see that at least 4,000 people are searching for "silk bow ties", then this term should appear in the heading for that sub-section of men's accessories and related terms should appear in the description of each silk product.

        SEO is a complex subject and attempting to 'do it all' is going to take you a lot of time and study. But the basics are not difficult and you can deal with it, yourself - see this site for some useful information:
        https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo (not an affiliate link)

        For keyword research, use Google's Keyword Tool - You'll need to set up a Google Adwords Account to use this tool - it's free to set up and you can use it for keyword research and nothing else, if you so wish.
        GREAT INFO! Thanks

        Thanks Jamie
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  • Profile picture of the author MNR
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Guys i need an opinion. What do you like better? This layout for the shop page: https://www.scrafted.com/scraftedstore/ or this one: https://www.scrafted.com/products/
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      • Profile picture of the author JMSD
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        Guys i need an opinion. What do you like better? This layout for the shop page: https://www.scrafted.com/scraftedstore/ or this one: https://www.scrafted.com/products/

        If this were my site, I would classify the Shop Category as follows (also check Amazon's classification to see how it classifies the fashion category):

        Shop
        Fashion >
        Women (not Woman) > Handbags > Hats/ >Jewelry (you have typo there) > Pashminas/Scarves > Phone Cases > (and anything else specific to women's fashion - list in strict alphabetical order)
        Men (not Man) - Bags > Bow Ties > Hats > Jewelry > Phone Cases > Scarves > Ties > and so on

        If you look at Amazon's sites, you'll see that they do not have any dynamic graphics interfering/distracting the customer with what they've come to investigate. Any moving parts on your site (banner images, icons, etc) do nothing but slow down the load time of your site and distract/annoy your customers.

        If I'm looking for bow ties, for instance, the a rotating banner image won't impress me. If anything, it annoys me because it takes up room above the fold where I can't find what I've come to see. I would want to see the link that takes me straight to the category/sub-category that lists all the bow ties without any distractions.

        Your site took just under 60 seconds to load, today.

        Jamie
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Hey Jamie seriously? 60 or 6 was that a typo? Hope so!

          Shop
          Fashion >
          Women (not Woman) > Handbags > Hats/ >Jewelry (you have typo there) > Pashminas/Scarves > Phone Cases > (and anything else specific to women's fashion - list in strict alphabetical order)
          Men (not Man) - Bags > Bow Ties > Hats > Jewelry > Phone Cases > Scarves > Ties > and so on


          Working on it right now. Thanks, really really good advice.

          Thanks Jamie!
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      • Profile picture of the author Sojourn
        For an ecommerce setup, I like the look of the first one better. The products are the focus and they stand out better in that layout than the other. As a consumer, it makes me want to keep scrolling to see all the items. It loads slower than the other layout, though - but I know you're working on that.
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          I agree Erica. Looks better but is much slower. Still working on it with the ess grid plugin developers.

          Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author ruthl3ss
    have you tried building your social media presence?

    build your fb page, twitter, and instagram
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  • Profile picture of the author fahimtm
    Find some ebook on how to make your first affiliate sale and that could help you. one major factor is website authority. make sure your site has a good authority trusty rank
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Still?!?! I got in and it was good enough. I also tested with pingdom, 5.87 sec to load from NY.

      Thanks Jamie
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  • Profile picture of the author danvelasco
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author DWolfe
      Originally Posted by danvelasco View Post

      My client is like the wolf on this subject so i guess you will really find this handy. All his secrets are finally revealed here at - - - - - --.com
      Says who ? This is nothing but plain spam ! Take it elsewhere and take this dude with you "pumasare"



      Scrafted took about 5-6 seconds just now.
      Signature


      You can earn 10% average annual returns on your investments - https://app.groundfloor.us/r/m2aa7b
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      • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
        Banned
        Says who ? This is nothing but plain spam ! Take it elsewhere and take this dude with you "pumasare"
        No worries Wolf. Everybody knows he is a scam!

        Scrafted took about 5-6 seconds just now.
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  • Profile picture of the author sam070190
    customer will not waste their time to wait, all consumer wants a fast performance, and addition on that do an eye catcher so that customer will be interested and do a review, more chance of winning
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  • Profile picture of the author josen753
    Maybe because this is no review below your product page, so people don't trust your website, or your price has no competition compare with other online store.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      There are no reviews on the products page, you are right, that could be the problem but actually the prices are really good! I actually think they might be too cheap.
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  • Profile picture of the author football joe
    Make the info available at a click of a mouse. For example when I click on a purse I need basic information, pictures from different angles, and of course the ability to pay without waiting for page to load. You have too much going on IMO...Something is just off on your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      That could be also a problem. More information about the products would be helpful to customers. I also though that maybe having a zoom on images could help (all fashion boutiques have this option) but i have installed all zoom plugins out there and they are not working. They are not zooming the images. I think the problem is the actual image sizes. I need to upload bigger images in order for the zoom to work. This is a pain in the a..s!
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      • Profile picture of the author subster
        Originally Posted by SCrafted View Post

        That could be also a problem. More information about the products would be helpful to customers. I also though that maybe having a zoom on images could help (all fashion boutiques have this option) but i have installed all zoom plugins out there and they are not working. They are not zooming the images. I think the problem is the actual image sizes. I need to upload bigger images in order for the zoom to work. This is a pain in the a..s!
        This is the Lightbox plugin I used on a site a while back: https://wordpress.org/plugins/easy-fancybox/
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        • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
          Banned
          Subster i know this plugin but i don t think it zooms images... right?
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  • Profile picture of the author subster
    If you're selling items that people can buy on Amazon or Ebay then that could be your problem. You want to sell artisan items.
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  • Profile picture of the author subster
    Use Lazy Load plugin to improve page loading speed and remove unnecessary plugins.
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Thanks! Will have a look at that plugin.
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  • Profile picture of the author Davmac40
    As Vic 1 stated speed if website is essential, people usually only wait a couple of seconds before hitting the back button. But in all honestly I have a friend who sells ladies clothing online and it is very tough because few women will buy clothes they haven't tried on for fit. What they like to do is visit a store and try on things until they find something they like. Then they use their smart phone to see if they can find the exact thing they like in the same size at a better price online. If your Sister's apparel isn't in the shops nobody will be searching for it. Hope that makes sense. Good luck. Cheers, Dave
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Dave i completely agree with you and you have made some very good points. Speed is a major issue and thanks to the suggestions i have received here on WF i have improved it a lot even if i am still working on it... I agree that selling clothes online is probably harder than selling many other things and I agree that many women would like to try first and then buy but if that was 100% true then there won't be successful online fashion boutiques that only sell online such as redressboutique.com for example that sell unique pieces that you can t find it anywhere else. I will see how this goes. Will probably give it 4 to 5 more months, if it doesn t work then will do something else.
      Also i am selling other stuff such as (cheap) jewelry, handbags, and even some home furniture...
      Thanks for your comments.
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  • Profile picture of the author naidyphoon
    At this point I recommend exporting your products to third party platforms like Shopify and Bigcommerce, who have lightning quick hosting and great support. The technical side of things is the least you should worry about when starting out - it's the marketing!

    I've left a post on one of your other threads here as well :

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...l#post10602562

    Good luck!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      @ naidyphoon
      Thanks a lot! Your comments on the other post as well were really great. I already created an Instagram account, so far 300 followers. I know it s nothing but i started less than a week ago. I will check Instagress right now! I also have a facebook page but i find it really hard to get fans. I am doing well on Twitter now (8000 followers) but the low traffic i am getting from twitter doesn t convert into sales.

      Do you suggest moving to platforms such as Shopify because you think the site doesn t look professional enough or slow or ugly? Your comments about this would be really helpful...

      Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
      Banned
      Just signed up on instagress. Looks like a great tool. Will study it a little more tonight. Thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author bluemotion
    As so many others have said, the site takes far too long to load. Also, and this is prpbably a personal preference of mine, I don't like being forced to give my phone number on the sign up page. It should be optional with a note saying that you will only use it case of an order query.
    Signature

    [Smash The Competition With This.
    Video Here

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  • Profile picture of the author Ploppi
    I clicked on a section and it took too long to load. Hence people leaving the site and not coming back.

    I think a good site redesign might help, plus it doesn't hurt to set up a BigCartel store and Wordpress etc and direct traffic to that plus as many on here say set up a Youtube channle talking about and displaying your products and fashion and beauty tips etc and direct traffic to your shop.
    Signature
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Working on the speed guys. Is caused by the essential grid plugin. I am working with the plugin developers right now.

    Thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Essential grid developers are working on the site. And it seems it has improved quite a bit?

    Could you guys confirm it?
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  • Profile picture of the author SCrafted
    Banned
    Nevermind, they are still working and still slow...
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  • Profile picture of the author azaria2410
    I really feel surprised I hope you can solve this problem.
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