Hundreds of visitors but terrible conversion rates

[wannaberich]

Hello, I'm new on this site and I thank everyone in advance for reading/responding to my post. It's great to be here ;)

I have a sunglasses web site (impostercity.com). The shopping cart I am running is X-Cart. The site reaches get's a lot of visitors but sometimes I don't even reach 1% conversion. I have done everything to optimize my site for the visitors - like placing privacy policy, secure shopping, shipping methods and return policy on EVERY buy page and on the top header but conversion still stinks. I've even MODED the the x-cart platform to offer the customer UNIQUE ways to shop - add an item to cart, have a choice to continue shopping OR click checkout to go to the shopping cart while upselling them but I'm not noticing quite a jump. I understand this is still winter and my time hasnt really come yet but maybe you folks can do some shopping around and tell me what is bothering you. I've worked VERY hard on this site, have been a lot of money into it and I just need some input. Oh, FYI, the site has been live since 2001.

PS: Site receives 100% organic visitors from engines/referrers. Traffic averages about 500 unique visitors per day.

Cheers!

[binteractive]

So you say that all of your visitors are coming from organic search? So you use any web analytics packages (web trends, hitbox, clicktracks, etc.)? These can help you determine if there are any problems with the users understanding your shopping cart and overall behavior of your visitors. Where is your traffic coming from, which SE's, what keywords?

The keywords that are generating the traffic are the key. Longer, more specific keywords tend to convert better because the person doing the search knows what he/she is looking for already. You have a great looking site and should be converting at better than 1%.

[SearchIA]

If you want my honest opinion, you really should be measuring website traffic with a web analytics tool to see where people are exiting the most. From a design perspective, your homepage is all over the place. You would be surprised what happens when you give visitors too many options in terms of navigation. You need to set up your homepage so it is "task-focused" Break it down into primary, secondary and tertiary navigation levels. Also your product pages are the same way, why make someone click to see testimonials, reviews, etc? One more click means one more thing to distract someone from buying right away. Every click is a new path that leads off the road to conversion. Make the process more efficient.
In terms of Organic SEO:
Look at the following tags:
<td width="50%" align="center"><br><h1>Discount Sunglasses</h1><br></td>
<td width="50%" align="center"><br><h1>Cheap Sunglasses</h1><br></td>

I'd say those are pretty competitive terms, I think you need to re-evaluate the topical focus for your homepage, maybe Replica Sunglasses would be a better choice for you, not sure without doing the kw research for you.

If you have questions on the usability of your site or need help, you can contact me on here or through www.laundrymedia.com

If you're not using a web analytics tool like Urchin, WebTrends or Clicktracks, you need it...it allows you to see how customers are interacting on the site and which pages they are getting stuck on with a little bit of analysis.

Hope that helps! BJ

[ACSSEO]

Your biggest conversion problem seems to be the UI of the website. As a potential customer, I am not sure where to go next. My eyes are all scattered over the place which makes me click all over the place instead of targeted pages.

You need to do is the following.
1. Figure out who is your potential customer is.
2. What is the main difference between your products and your competitors’ product?
3. What is the main message you want to display to your customers?
4. Why should people buy from you instead of your competition?
5. Do you conduct business differently then your competitors? If yes, how so.

After you answer all of these questions, it will help you make a better website based on what your potential customer is looking for. The biggest mistake site owners experience is that they have a website designed based on their preferences instead of the customers preferences.

We just had a redesign based on our target audience. You can take a look at www.acsseo.com and see what I mean. The user knows where to go and the message is very clear on what we do. You also can see that our navigation options are scarce, but it allows us to control where the visitors go throughout the site, which helps us increase our conversion rate. The design is not completely done, but it will be within a month or two. If you have any questions or if you need any free advice, feel free to contact me.