Ralphy Boy
11-09-2007, 09:14 PM
I'm probably posting this in the wrong forum, but the Media Center looks a bit like a ghost town and Tech-committee is apparently for moderators of this site only. I need some help with the website for a store that my wife and I own. She runs the store, picks out all of the products and meets with vendors and so on. She really never wanted to be online, but I insisted and she is now seeing that there is value in it. I've pushed for it from the beginning. I have a job that pays the bills but at night and on weekends, I load product on to our website and take care of the books. I'm trying to boost the sales via the internet but I'm clueless on internet marketing. Yeah, I can pay for Yahoo and we have, but I'm needing help with a few things. I'd appreciate any advice I could get. I paid like $600 for the website (hey we're a small business) and $30 a month for hosting so I don't get much in the way of support.
I'll ask a few questions below and you can either reply or email me.
The store is Generations Decor & Gifts and the website is www.generationsdecor.com. She sells women's crap, so while I'll apologize for the shameless plug there, I also realize that most likely not a person on here would buy anything she sells so I'm not likely to benefit in that way.
My "Webalizer" report says we had 54,605 hits in September, but what really is a "hit"? Does it just mean that we are buried in the search results on page 89 of Google or does that mean we were on the first page? It says we had 624 Unique Visitors, 787 Visits and 11,554 pages.
What amount of visitors should we convert to paid customers? Is there a place that has this kind of info that I don't have to pay for to find out?
I've heard that "content" boosts you up in the organic rankings so I've thought about ways to add that. Is that correct?
I need advice on whether to add a bulletin board or a blog to it to drive up traffic. Will that really help? I've heard it will, but really don't know to what degree. She sells some food products so I thought about adding a recipe exchange. She also sells home decor & bath/body so I thought about putting something out there about those things as well either decorating advice or whatever.
I can add a BB fairly easy but it seems like blogs are more common for businesses. What is the main differences as far as operating and bandwith? I've seen on here where the "avatars are getting out of hand" and don't want to screw up the store or server.
Is there a place that I can link to published information without getting in trouble?
Is a flash site realistic for an e-store? I'm afraid of spending money on a fancy site and don't want to do anything to lose the traffic we are getting now.
I can't afford to spend a lot for a re-design of the site, but I am considering doing something.
I don't speak "techno" and since everything I've found on the web is written that way, i get lost in the language.
my email is jeff@generationsdecor.com
Thanks for any help you can give and if this needs to be moved to some other forum, feel free, but please email me where it is sent to.
Jeff
I'll ask a few questions below and you can either reply or email me.
The store is Generations Decor & Gifts and the website is www.generationsdecor.com. She sells women's crap, so while I'll apologize for the shameless plug there, I also realize that most likely not a person on here would buy anything she sells so I'm not likely to benefit in that way.
My "Webalizer" report says we had 54,605 hits in September, but what really is a "hit"? Does it just mean that we are buried in the search results on page 89 of Google or does that mean we were on the first page? It says we had 624 Unique Visitors, 787 Visits and 11,554 pages.
What amount of visitors should we convert to paid customers? Is there a place that has this kind of info that I don't have to pay for to find out?
I've heard that "content" boosts you up in the organic rankings so I've thought about ways to add that. Is that correct?
I need advice on whether to add a bulletin board or a blog to it to drive up traffic. Will that really help? I've heard it will, but really don't know to what degree. She sells some food products so I thought about adding a recipe exchange. She also sells home decor & bath/body so I thought about putting something out there about those things as well either decorating advice or whatever.
I can add a BB fairly easy but it seems like blogs are more common for businesses. What is the main differences as far as operating and bandwith? I've seen on here where the "avatars are getting out of hand" and don't want to screw up the store or server.
Is there a place that I can link to published information without getting in trouble?
Is a flash site realistic for an e-store? I'm afraid of spending money on a fancy site and don't want to do anything to lose the traffic we are getting now.
I can't afford to spend a lot for a re-design of the site, but I am considering doing something.
I don't speak "techno" and since everything I've found on the web is written that way, i get lost in the language.
my email is jeff@generationsdecor.com
Thanks for any help you can give and if this needs to be moved to some other forum, feel free, but please email me where it is sent to.
Jeff