
I desperately need help understanding why my website isn't getting conversions.
I have invested a lot of my personal money into my dream, my hopes, and my lively hood. I'm on my last hopes and running out of time. I've spent all my money, my unemployment benefits from the government is running out, and I'm stressed out so much.
I'm looking for opinions, suggestions, help, support, just anything to keep me going now. Everyone I talk to suggests the Warrior Forum to me because they said its the best place for what could help me turn my business around and make some real money.
I started on eBay 3 years ago, and made some profits. I sold thousands per month. All profits I did make I put back into my business and registered it a LLC company, opened bank accounts, opened up a ebay store, and even gained access to hundreds of dropshippers as I built my portfolio. Btw, it's health, beauty, fashion and recently added wedding products that I now sell online.
About a year ago when I was doing taxes I realized that ebay took a lot of money of my sale, over $1200 a month I was paying in ebay fees when I started. As I noticed also that as the months went by, my sales were decreasing as more and more and more competition started coming. When I started, many of the products I was the only seller on there for that product, now searching, there's 10 other sellers with the same products just pennies cheaper then me.
I decided I wanted to move away from ebay so I started learning how to start my own eCommerce site, and I found Magento. I hired the same company that did my template for ebay to match it for Magento, and I spent a few weeks making tweaks. Then a few weeks more putting a few hundred products on.
I did everything from photos, titles, descriptions, short descriptions, prices/taxes, shipping methods, and most importantly, meta title, meta keywords, and meta description for SEO.
I set up promotions, banners, and did lots of graphic designs to prepare myself for advertising. Then finally I started. I tried a few different things.
Here is a list of everything I have done in the last 6 months. I have been working 60 hours a week by myself on this non stop.
-Facebook posts with promoting them. (without promotion they get 100 views total of my 6200 Facebook fans - promoting is the only way to ensure people see it)
-Facebook pay-per-click and impression advertising for targeted audience.
-Twitter posts.
-Google Adwords with around 10-15 different campaigns to test.
-Youtube promotional videos (made on Fiverr) - Even promoted for a few days on adwords.
-Created 3000 business cards on Vistaprint and put a coupon code on them and handed them out at dozens of stag & does for door prizes and events.
-Designed and created 25,000 double sided flyer and had them distributed to my city.
-Had 15 different Fiverr gigs hand out/post over a few thousands (in total) flyers at top universities and colleges in North America.
-Did 3 radio ads, aired 4 times each.
-Did over a dozen paid advertisements on Kijiji.
-Did 2 paid advertisements on Craigslist
-Did 1 paid advertisement on LinkedIN
-Did 1 Youtube Video Sponsorship with same-niche Vlogger that gets 800,000 views per video, we donated products to them in exchange for mentioning us in the video.
-We have done over a dozen press releases.
-We have been in our local newspaper.
-We have hundreds of P2 or higher backlinks to our site.
-We have been mentioned in several "supposedly" popular blogs
Basically in a nutshell, I've been working hard getting lots and lots of advertisements up and running to bring real traffic to my website. In the last 6 months I have had just over 105,000 visitors total. But here's my issue, I have 0 conversions so far, and only 10 signups.
Over the last 6 months by bounce rate's averaged out to 74%, which is very high!
I've been on many forums, got suggestions from professionals and many reviews of the site done (started 5 months ago). I've adjusted the advertising, branding, promotions, design etc as suggestions came in. Months went by, and months went by, and the changes didn't help.
-I've added a points & rewards system - with a higher giveback reward then any site I've seen.
-I've offered free products just for sign-ups.
-I've offered buy 2 get 1 free deals.
-I've offered free shipping.
-I've offered contests to giveaway $500 in free product (which got 3500 views around, and no participation)
-I've integrated Facebook for easier registration and log-in.
-I've got a toll free number and mailbox address for the business (when i started I didn't)
-I've re-written my 'about us', 'shipping' 'returns', etc pages to be more professional.
-I've added 'hot' products that were selling super good on ebay and offered at amazing prizes.
-I've added a live-chat button.
-I've added convenient social media sharing toolbar that floats on the right side.
-I've advertised on Pinterest, and Instagram Also.
-I've tried engaging social media followers, ocasionally of the 6200 likes on Facebook I get 1-2 people that participate, but then stop.
-I've read hundreds of how-to blog posts and even copied popular companies ideas, its not working.
-I've gotten litterly over 20 reviews saying that my website is great and should have no problems selling. But why aren't people buying anything?
Most of my products prices are cheaper then retail stores (even without coupons) and I'm always offering 10-30% off coupons almost at all times. PLUS a 10% off first order. After using a coupon, I think all my products are cheaper then even ebay sellers. But I still haven't even made 1 sale yet.
The one-page checkout and payment has been tested. It's not broken, buyers can pay using Paypal, or their credit card thru Paypal for buyer security.
We get over 100 views a day, generated from different traffic avenues, but still a 54-95% bounce rate. In fact, March 19th and March 20th both had over 150 visits and both were 95% bounce rate.
Page Speed tests show fine, A, and A+ ratings from some sources, and anywhere between 79%-91% ratings on others. Load speed is well below 4 seconds.
So in 6 months, $17,000 of my personal money went into this as I ran out of business money, and over $30,000 of my business money went into this. That doesn't include inventory. That money was only spent on site creation, optimization, and advertising/marketing.
Currently all profits made monthly on ebay are paying the monthly/yearly fees of running the website/mailbox/phone number/other services.
I have no more income coming in for myself or my new wife and newborn son. And I'm very very desperate to find out the reason why this isn't working because my money is running out fast.
The website in question is erikashealthandbeauty.net
I'm used to having my pride and never have asked for anything in my life, but I'm asking now, I really need help :/ I don't know what to do. Suggestions and opinions on where I am going wrong would be much much appreciated.
-Damien
I've started testing changes according to dozens of suggest, so it might look wacky now
--UPDATE-- - April 7th, 2013
I've had a chance to read through all 55+ replies and I thank everyone for suggestions and support. I'm going to take a step back and reflect on whats been said for a few days and see what I can do to salvage this in the future.
For now, I do have a new brand launching in USA and Canada for women cosmetics products and I can work on that with my trade shows and wholesale for now.
As for this online webstore; perhaps a simple host transfer to fix the slow load times and a complete template/color overhaul (from a cheap but crisp looking template) to fix the eyesore would be able to bandage this up for now and perhaps earn money at minimum costs. I think I've spent enough on advertising. And I think I've spent enough on professional design.
.
Martin Platt
martin-platt.com
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