I'm about at my wits end on this...

Sorry, I put it at bottom.

Thanks for taking the time, Will. You have some excellent ideas that I will start on immediately.

This is really good advice for the most part. Except for 4 and 5. I say it depends on the variations and longtails of the keywords shes receiving her searches from. If they include buying triggers, like "sign up for self defense program" or "female self defense pepper spray" then sell sell sell. I think fixing the first 3 things mentioned by WillR, right off the bat will start getting conversions. I would wait to change over the concept from sales to thinly veiled info site. My first thought when getting to the site was what the heck are they selling. Design was bad and it looked like it was some info only site that was outdated.

That being said I would like to offer some help. For converting your current visitors. I think your organic positioning on the keyword is providing you some real opportunity. Re-modelling the site should bring some sales almost immediately. I would recommend making a 1-1 copy of the site onto a test server and making all the changes there before going live to not disrupt your current visitors during construction and just make a changeover in an instant.

You should definitely be building an opt-in list and have a LARGE call to action above the fold, somehting like SIGN UP NOW for a FREE SELF DEFENSE GUIDE.

Now expanding to ...bringing more visitors, specifically more qualified visitors. I would start building links to individual product pages. To me it looks like all of your current links are coming from nofollow comment links on relevant articles. You could pick up a few (12-25) social bookmarks, a handful of wiki links, a couple of guest posts, and dofollow links on some of your actual product money terms, links anchored to words like "buy pepper spray online" and link them to the product pages for pepper spray.

Start re-targeting your visitors on Google ad network. Setup a re-targeting campaign with paid traffic on Google ad network and keep showing your banners over and over and over and over to the same people who came to your site already and didn't convert. They showed interest at one time by visiting. Now beat them over the head with well designed banner ad impressions until they buy something.

PM me if you need help with this project, wouldn't mind working on this one, as I think you have some good opportunity with this one.

Ummm...it IS an ecommerce store, lol.

Also think about your main target market.

What they need and want. Look on amazon for instance and see what type of products actually sells and how. The titles, descriptions, everything.

Also keyword research is very important. Via Keyword elite II I can se that it was not hard to rank number 2 for Female self defence.

Another self defence could be peace and harmony. I guess you are in the US not the far east.

Glad you liked it.

I think you could get away with the outdated design and get sales just by doing that. Remember, marketing is about selling someone something.

They may not be in "buy mode" when they get to your site, so you have to push those buttons for them. As a marketer, it's your job to make them go "OMG, I totally need to buy this!"

And you don't get that reaction by just throwing up a page with products and praying they'll buy something. I wish it was that easy, though.

I see. That would yield you more $$$ per sale, no doubt. Although it's significantly more work for you.

I'd personally go the Amazon route just because it's easier to manage and I don't have to run around buying and shipping items as orders come in.

Think about this: Can you handle scaling this business model? What would happen if 3000 orders came in next month? Could you handle that? What if 3% of the items ordered were out of stock at your supplier?

Those are some of the reasons I'd opt to go with Amazon. I just worry about traffic and watch the sales come in. And I'd also think you'd get a higher conversion rate with Amazon as opposed to using your own sales page.

Anyways, that's just my own opinion. Like I said before, your current method would get you a higher commission per sale. But it can lead to more problems and is less hands-off. Just some things to think about.

Just wanted to add a little informational resource on how different forms of traffic are converting. Email Is Crushing Twitter, Facebook for Selling Stuff Online | Wired Business | Wired.com You have the organic traffic already coming in. Email, and PPC are the other big two, get a list going immediately and try and find a few hundred bucks somewhere to get a PPC retargeting campaign going as soon as you overhaul that design. Sell something that you can re-buy later when you have more money, or just skip a few nights of partying or something. It will come back to you if you do it right.

Also I have a couple dozens themes I'll donate one to the cause if you're that hard up for the money to buy one from themeforest.net (~$45) PM me for a list of options. (don't everyone take this as an opportunity to beg me for free themes, bc it's not happening..)

Are you already holding inventory? If not I would strongly consider using affiliate products or buying wholesale inventory asap. If you buy it wholesale you should be able to reduce your prices and keep good enough margins to compete with Amazon. Then you can also list all of your products on ebay and amazon as well and start selling there too. The problem with not holding inventory and I can tell you first hand from an e-commerce site I run is people are impatient and you're at the mercy of your supplier. If an order comes in on Friday and your supplier doesn't work over the weekend you cant get your inventory shipped to you (to turn around) until monday. by the time it gets to you gets repackaged and turned around to your customer its been too long, a lot of customers will process paypal returns and chargebacks if they don't have a shipping tracking number in 48 hours. This is directly from personal experience and its a hassle trust me.

Sounds like a plan.