Considering a major upgrade to my eCommerce site

endplate

Hi folks,

I have had a eCommerce website for quite some time and it has ticked along nicely but never making big money. My wife met somebody recently who also owns a eCommerce website and she recommended a company of web developers up North as her sales have gone through the roof since she launched their version of her website. We have no reason not to believe her as she has invited us to visit her home to see for ourselves. Which we have yet to do.

We have since gotten a quote from the same company and to put it mildly it's expensive. I am happy to pay if I feel it worth it. My question is. If you put your money into a reputable company who are prepared to build a new website on the Magento platform fully customised for us (we are currently using Bigcommerce) is it always going to be better for sales than keeping to a small budget website?

Sorry if I come across vague but if you want I can PM you more details.

Thanks

TrueDub

Surely it's what you're selling that drives your sales, rather than your platform itself? I can understand that ease-of-use, modernity of the platform etc. are considerations, but ultimately the platform is simply a tool to enact sales. Or have I missed something?

PrzemoF

Purely from a customer point of view: I avoid some sites because of poor user interface or search options that are hard to use.

wonga77

Id agree with both above. I do avoid certain sites if I feel they are poorly laid out and hard to navigate. On saying that if the end product is good value then I dont mind so much. Good layout is vital but surely what your selling is the final point. Before going for a complete overhaul (which may not even work) id look at 2 or 3 areas in which you could improve first. Areas such as social media promotion etc.
You dont mention the type of product involved so its hard to say

awec

I think the first question which you need to answer yourself is why is it only ticking along nicely now as opposed to making serious money?

Buford T Justice

I find it hard to believe that a website rewrite on its own would do this. Careful you're not comparing apples and oranges with the types of product you sell vs your friends

endplate

Buford T Justice wrote: »

I find it hard to believe that a website rewrite on its own would do this. Careful you're not comparing apples and oranges with the types of product you sell vs your friends

That's why I'm asking here. She could have been the a case of the right product at the right time whereas my product might never be as big as hers (I don't know). I'm wondering if anybody has personal experience in going from a basic to a premium website and found a significant improvement.

BrokenArrows

You need to do a review of your site to see whats wrong with it.

No point in spending money unless you know the reason why.

If you identify "user experience" with a reason for the lower sales then a new website will help, if it the product then a new website will do nothing for you.
Im assuming you already have google analytics running. So you should be able to review what pages each user is visiting and why they never reach the checkout. If you have lots of user instantly bouncing off the site or milling around the homepage then you know you have an issue.

Feel free to PM me your website and ill have a quick review of it.

BrokenArrows

Got your pm.

I wouldn't pay for a whole new site.

For the most part what you have is pretty good. Spend some money on what you currently have.

1. Mobile site is mostly ok but on some pages the desktop size images are showing which messes up the page.

2. Get a .com address. .ie is great if you're dealing with something specifically irish, but your product is global.

3. The checkout process is a bit busy. Try and clean it up and reduce what the user sees and needs to do.

4. The checkout has some broken functionality regarding the prescription requirement and the required entries. If you have no prescription do shouldn't need the dates.

5. Checkout is displaying some sample modules.

6. Checkout has some broken images.

Overall I think your checkout process is whats letting you down. Use Google analytics to find out how many customers you are losing here

Also I couldn't find you using Google apart from entering your websites exact name.

Edit. Also I think your products may need some modernisation. You don't sell the main brands in your market. The high price value items will draw people to your site, even if they don't sell.

M.T.D

Do you have analytics installed. Before you do any changes you need to find out what the problem is.
The next statements are assuming you have a saleable product that people want to by
If you get 3 visitors and make 3 sales - the site is working and just needs to found more often.
If you get 3000 visitors and only make 3 sales then the site or your presentation has a problem.

BrokenArrows has highlighted checkout problems, even small glitches can kill a sale.
Also if you can only find the site by typing in the exact url then you have indexing problems.
Are you using Google webmaster tools?

mneylon

Before going off and spending money on a new site you'd need to look at what is and isn't working for you now.
Others have looked at the site itself, but I'd also look at how well the site is ranking in search, for what keywords etc., and your entire online and offline marketing.

Put another way, you could build the most amazing website in the world, but unless people who want to buy the products you sell are visiting it there's no way it could succeed.

devildriver

As much as I dislike BigCommerce (used it for a client for a year) it does have all the functionality and features that you could possibly need.

I can't see any huge benefit to moving to Magento (obviously we're talking blind here so I don't know the whole story).

Focus on products, pricing and user experience first and then see how you can apply those as changes to the site.

Aswerty

One thing that hasn't been touched on yet is looking at how you can reach a larger audience. Analytics is fine for improving conversion from your existing visitors but this can be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Since BrokenArrows couldn't find you on Google other than searching for your company name; that is an indicator of having poor search traffic for search terms relating to product names and so on. Then again, it could just be you're in a very competitive space and it's hard to appear on the first page. I've been in that boat myself.

Increasing visitor numbers organically is a very wide topic since it involves the like of SEO and content marketing. Beyond that, other methods to boost visitor numbers include online advertising and increasing social media activity. For the best results a mixture of improving conversions from your existing traffic and increasing visitor numbers will give the best return rather than focusing on one or the other.

Of course the downside of what I'm talking about is this stuff takes time and commitment. I've spent the last year involved with online advertising and SEO; it feels like I've only scratched the surface.

I'd be a bit wary of just doing a site rebuild in the hope of this magically improving business. You need to understand what the problem is and then act on that information. Some reasons why the other business did well out of a site rebuild could be to do with page load times, improved mobile experience, user trust factor being higher due to a well designed site (very important for certain industries), and so on. These are just some of the out of the box benefits you might get with a new system.

zig

OP, as someone who sells and makes websites (including ecommerce) for a living, I can tell you a new site alone, even an amazing one with huge thought put into UX, modern designs, well placed call to actions etc wont do much more for your sales without a digital marketing strategy around it. Unless the existing site is SOOO bad that you are getting tonnes of traffic and its all dropping off. But somehow I dont think so.

counterpointaud

zig wrote: »

Unless the existing site is SOOO bad that you are getting tonnes of traffic and its all dropping off.

This. Create a simple funnel on Google Analytics (or find someone who knows how to) and get some concrete numbers. Unless it points to a major problem with people dropping out early for some reason, a new site is not a magic bullet.