New Website - Google advice

Maeveb

hi
I have just launched a new hamper website www.babyelephant.ie and I need to better understand how to make google work for it - natural and paid for. Any general advice would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Maeve

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

In Brief cause this is a huge area.

Natural search (called organic / Free listings) is found and indexed by google finding links to your site from other sites like this and then judging by its content what its about. As in if you talk about "babies" lots that becomes a keyword and google knows your site is about babies.

PPC or paid listings is an auction tool where you bid for your ads and the highest bidder somes up top of the listings for key words that people are entering into google to find your type of service / product. Read more at adwords.google.co.uk

Its a bit of a mine field and there are plenty of scammers who would offer to take your money and not provide any value at all. So read up on it as much as you can, plenty of websites have good info.

onemorechance

You should also get on to Arvan Williams on get him to change the link to his website on the bottom on each of your pages. It opens his website in the current tab / window, thus moving the customer away from your site, instead of having his website open in a new tab / window thus leaving your website there for the customer.

TheCostumeShop.ie: Ronan

Thats a big mistake, also the countries option is white on a light yellowback ground so its not easy to read. That kinda stuff is important as it makes the site amaturish. Also put in more descriptive detail on what some of the products do and their benefits.

TheWaterboy

Im getting an error when trying to check out. Ive filled in all my details both billing and delivery and all the required fields.

I get a JS popup saying "FAILED - Error: Please fill in all fields marked fith *"

Some points that might help:

Put a Privacy Policy into the Footer. Maybe there is one there at the moment but it needs to be easily found. There is no mention of who your payment processor is. Get a logo in somewhere

There are no page titles on any of the pages - Quite important from SEO

Put in some title and alt tags on your images and links

I would put some better introduction text on your home page - try and incorporate your keywords into this text

I would do something with the menu options on the left hand side - the text is very hard to read. There is number 1 and 2 at the top two menu options and then no more numbers.

heggie

Fancy Dresser wrote: »

Thats a big mistake,

Actually there are differing opinions as to what a user expects when they click a link. Opening an new tab isn't necessarily the best option when directing away from a site.

onemorechance

heggie wrote: »

Actually there are differing opinions as to what a user expects when they click a link. Opening an new tab isn't necessarily the best option when directing away from a site.

From the OP's point of view, having users leave their site completely is not the best option. Opening the web designer's page in a new window / tab is the best option. She is running an e-commerce site for her own business, not an advertising / referral site for the web designer.

heggie

then take it up with the designer. I'm saying from a usability point of view, it's now believed that opening links in new windows are not what the user wants, if the user clicks on a link, it generally expects that link to be opened in the current window.

For example, if a user has seen all they can/want to on your business site, and wish to go to the designers site, why annoy them by forcing it in a new window or tab?

Justing pointing out that it is not a clear cut THAT IS WRONG statement.

onemorechance

heggie wrote: »

For example, if a user has seen all they can/want to on your business site, and wish to go to the designers site, why annoy them by forcing it in a new window or tab?

*Because I want them to buy something from my site.
*Because I do not want them to forget that they were on my site.
*Because I want the user to see my site again.
*Because the user may not have seen all they can / want on my site.
*Because the user may get distracted by the other site or links on the other site.

heggie wrote: »

Justing pointing out that it is not a clear cut THAT IS WRONG statement.

I see where you are coming from, but I do believe that in this situation it is clear cut and wrong.

blue4ever

do everything possible to keep visitors on your turf - I fully agree that the designers site should be a new window if it has to be there at all!!!

I have (on many a site) got rid of their link completely - they were paid to build a site - not to biggyback on other peoples traffic. Thats the easiest solution to that one.

heggie

I don't think you're giving your visitors enough credit.

onemorechance wrote: »

*Because I want them to buy something from my site.

They've already decided to leave at this point, or have already bought something

onemorechance wrote: »

*Because I do not want them to forget that they were on my site.

How does a link opening in the same window affect their memory?

onemorechance wrote: »

*Because I want the user to see my site again.

How does a link opening in the same window impact this?

onemorechance wrote: »

*Because the user may not have seen all they can / want on my site.

Down to bad design or they're not your target customer

onemorechance wrote: »

*Because the user may get distracted by the other site or links on the other site.

Which has already happened at the point of clicking that link, whatever effect it has upon opening.

onemorechance wrote: »

I see where you are coming from, but I do believe that in this situation it is clear cut and wrong.

I think we would need more information to definitively say.

edit: just a little article worth reading -

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/01/should-links-open-in-new-windows/

Maeveb

Hi all
thanks so much for all the advice its all really helpful and I am planning to update this week.
Many thanks again
best wishes
Maeve

onemorechance

heggie wrote: »

edit: just a little article worth reading -

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/01/should-links-open-in-new-windows/

Since large web-sites (Google, Amazon, AOL, Yahoo & Co.) open links in the same window

They are all portals, except for amazon, which is a retailer, and how many links on Amazon link to an external non-amazon website?

Every rule has an exception

the link may interrupt an ongoing process.

this website is the exception honey,

i.e. buying something on my website.

the link leads to a large image which takes time to load.

i.e. yer mans website is s l o w loading.

In this case, i.e. www.babyelephant.ie, having the link to an external website open in the same tab / window is wrong.

Try clicking on that link there, good enough for boards.ie.

Also, if ya click on the ad links on the website with that article you pointed to, guess what, they open in new tab / window.

heggie

Best of luck with the site Maeve, sorry for the sidetracking!

Maeveb

heggie wrote: »

Best of luck with the site Maeve, sorry for the sidetracking!

Many thanks Heggie its amazing how much useful advice I have got and thanks for the good wishes
all the best
Maeve

zAbbo

Well done Maeve, I'm sure you've been busy getting the website live and it's great when a project finally does, also the product looks brilliant.

Just to add some clarity to your question, and I'd loosely break that down to [1]Technical and [2]Marketing, and there is a crossover in both.

Bearing in mind, I'm assuming your goal is to increase website traffic, and ultimately website sales

Technical
As some of the guys here have mentioned, some technical aspects which can certainly be improved. These all concern ensuring your website has the best possible chance of generating natural website traffic from search engines. You will probably have heard (and will hear!) tips and tricks and lots of mentioning of SEO. In a nutshell - ensure the website follows best practices(correct use of title/image/head tags) and conforms to web standards (valid coding). There are more elements, but this essentially means that you get your shop in order.

Also ensuring your analytics package is tracking correctly, I see you're using Google Analytics, is it linked to your Adwords account?, and has it been setup for Goal conversion and other metrics?

Marketing
This covers parts of SEO above, as well as paid advertising (Google Adwords / Online Advertising). So marketing elements will include keyword research - checking popular search phrases for your products and feeding that into your website. This is where Adwords can help, again using your Analytics to separate paid from natural traffic and feeding paid search results back into your SEO efforts.

PPC/SEM/Paid Search - whatever you want to call it, is purchasing keywords and phrases from a search engine in order to return your ad. You pay the search engine when a searcher clicks on your ad. So basically it's a method of getting targeted traffic quickly, applied correctly - it can be an extremely profitable method of marketing. Applied incorrectly, it can burn a complete hole in your pocket.
My advise is to set aside a small budget, €20-30 a week - and bid on lowly competitive phrases at a level which you're comfortable with. This micromanagement will let you test variations of phrases and ads. Again your Analytics package will help you determine the amount of money you need to pay a visitor to make a profit (you can calculate Revenue and Profit per Visitor in excel)

Online Marketing, with a product like yours, I would be looking to build up partnerships with websites like :- Rollercoaster.ie, Boards.ie and somewhere like beaut.ie.

Something which I think would really help you is an element to create new content, a blog would be ideal - especially with all the rich content you can have around babies wearing/using your products. This could allow you to gauge the interaction with your customers as well as their reaction to special offers, You can also build up CRM activity with a newsletter, or a combination of both (newsletter by email through your blog)

---

Creating your website and getting it live is only the beginning and any website requires continual improvement.

All of the above is just my quick 10min advice, hopefully some of which can be useful

Maeveb

Hi Zabbo
Thanks a million for all this its really useful. Planning to get started on all this.
best wishes
Maeve