Trafic troubles

[Nikki]

Hello all, I am very new to this but am determined to make this work. I currently have a adult toy / novelty site. I am getting minimal traffic but after two months no one has purchased any products.

Can someone who knows more than I do please view my site and tell me what I am doing wrong.

www.nikkistoybox.com

[Hammer]

It's Friday afternoon and I'm about done for the day so I don't have time to look around much right now but the first thing I'd suggest is removing the traffic leak banner you have for those AFF scammers on the index page because they're stealing traffic from you in two ways.

1. It's a traffic leak. When someone lands on that page you want them to enter your toy store and not get sidetracked looking at some bogus dating site they probably won't sign up for anyway.

2. AFF is tied in with the fucking scam Zango and any surfer that has the Zango toolbar installed is automatically shown AFF anytime someone lands on any page that has certain keywords that AFF is paying for. Any time a surfer that has the Zango toolbar installed lands on your index page AFF will pop up and it won't have your ref code so they'll get the signup and you'll get jack shit.

[theviking]

LINKS AND AFFILIATES?

For WHAT affiliate does it benefit to click on any of those links?

Clean up youre site!

[grimfang]

I'm with Hammer on the whole "its Friday and its late" deal... I'll try and see if I can really take a good look at it later...

A couple things hit me right away when I took a quick look...

My first impression is STICKER SHOCK. The very first item I see offered on the site is a $1300 product. Yeah, I know thats what those things sell for, but its still a shock to the system to see a price like that for a vibrator on a bench. The price of the item does not really make itself a viable option for most of your surfers... try reshuffling the items a bit, and present them with some other premium items that might be a bit more affordable. You never want to open with your discount items, but the high end items just scare customers away quickly.

I was not impressed by the splash page. It looks like an amatuer job... the red background does not work with that banner, and the banner design looks distorted ( probobly due to resizing?) The overall effect simply does not do much to entice a surfer to enter the site. I would suggest a complete redesign of your homepage.
Ditch the 'affiliates and links'... move it into the main site itself and put it in a less prominent position. Its one of those traffic leaks that hammer mentioned earlier (the Links portion). And you will have better odds getting affiliate signups INSIDE the site, where they can see what you are actually offering.
I would suggest getting a few pg-rated product images on that homepage, to give people a better idea of what you offer... if they like what they see there, they are more likely to enter the site.
You do offer a few specialty items that are not availble everywhere else (like the stripper pole... those are a hot item if promoted correctly.) Highlight those a bit, but continue to promote the more typical items as well.


I'll have time for a longer look later.

[Buddha]

Well everyone is being honest and I am in complete agreement with the constructive criticism given above.

Initially I would like to suggest that you visit as many of your competitor sites as possible to see how they have organized their merchandise. Notice how items are grouped in respective categories, what those category names are and if your skills permit (if they don't then this is great practice to gain those skills) begin to compare the sites to each other and make mental note of what appeals to you and what doesn't... then begin to apply those mechanisms that do work onto your own site.


You have a great concept, a great domain name, and the conceptual graphic is appealing (at least to me) but... what everyone said above and:

The graphic looks pixelated on my monitors. That's a visual turn-off to me and suggests something is not quite right inside. What, I don't know but that's the impression it gives me.

Inside it seems to be unorganized. The top right menu bar currently is ordered like this:
Home
Shopping Cart
Contact Us
Home Parties
Sex Education
Why no dildos or vibrators
Links
Admin

It's not in an intuitive order. Links & Contact us should be at the very end of the bar. The essays would probably be best kept to the left verticle nav column. Why does a regular surfer need Admin access? Access to my account yes, but Admin access? Hmmm....

The left vert nav bar needs to be organized. Things do not appear to be placed in an intuitive order there, either. If it's possible to group category names together under a header that would make it easier to understand but right now I have difficulty understanding what's good for me and what's not.

You have Home Parties and Sex Education under the Help menu but those would probably be better placed under a new module titled "educational articles" or something to that effect.

Methinks you have your work cut out for you! This is a learning process that takes a lot of time and hard work.

I do see a lot of potential and all criticism aside, it's a great first step.

[sunfunbill]

Hi there Nikki. Well the people above pretty much covered it, but I am surprised no one said what I thought of first thing. The net is VERY OVERSATURATED with toy stores. Every lingerie store, fetish store, most porn sites etc. has a little side toy shop.

I myself have a lingerie store and will put up a little toy store in it, but only as a little extra. It's like opening a T shirt shop, there are just too many. If you could make another site or store, and then link the toy store to that, it would be better. But thinking your going to make a lot off just the toy store, I don't think so. Good luck.

[balls_deep]

everyone pretty much covered it...

Welcome To Campus

[mynameisjim]

All the above advice and...

Selling tangible products on line is a tough gig, sort of a black art really. Two months without a sale isn't really all that crazy if you're not getting much traffic.

I'll give you the first things I noticed when I loaded your site from my experience selling goods.

1) Don't make people register at checkout. Let me say that again, don't make people register at checkout. When the customer clicks to checkout they need to go right to the page where they fill in their info. Don't ask them to choose a password.

2) The first thing I read is "Registration is FREE...Let us know how to make our site better" That's a great line to post here but not in bold type on your homepage for your customers, it looks like you are totally new to the business and have no idea what you are doing. You have about 5 seconds to gain a surfers trust. A banner phrase like that is not the way to do it.

3) You need big attractive product images on the home page. The list with thumbnails is good for categories as the surfer digs down but the home page needs to show a few top selling or fun items to get people interested and hooked so they stay around. Some ideas for the home page are

a) Top selling items.

b) New arrivals.

c) Customer favorites

You get the idea. I'm not sure what cart software you are using to build the site and how much you can customize it but the home page does need to change.

Is that Anime toon girl your logo? If so it needs to be more prominent so the site has some personality. Make sure poeple know that's "Nikki" and it's her site.

Anyway, that's what I saw at first glance. I'm not trying to rag on your site, but the things above will go along way to getting you your first sale.

And welcome to Cozy!

[Lana]

Nikki pm'd me a few days ago about traffic and other things before she exposed herself to Cozy. She's very new and eager so I swapped links with her. Yeah, the site needs work and all your well qualified opinions will serve her well. She's got a great vibe so I say ... give her a text link. Don't post her banner it's fucking huge. She knows what I'm talking about.

[Hammer]

Good vibes don't make anyone money. Giving her a text link isn't going to help her much and since she has no affiliate program will do nothing for us. Most of us aren't in the altruism business.

As has been explained to her, starting yet another toy store on the Net is going to be a nearly impossible thing to do. There are many very large toy stores that have thousands of affiliates pushing traffic to them. That means that any paid advertising that she does will be wasted money and the chances of ever getting any search engine traffic are slim to none. Think about the thousands of PECash affiliates that have optimized pages for the SEs already.

Blowing smoke up her skirt and encouraging her will accomplish nothing. The kind thing to do is to be honest with her. If she was selling unique products that no one else had it would be one thing but she's not, she's marketing the same stuff as thousands of other online toy stores.

[artwilliams]

Welcome Nikki.

Everyone has covered some good ground.

I would like to reiterate 2 things.

1.) Traffic - I am not a traffic expert. There is a lot that can be read on this site about getting it. You need to find that type and volume that will give you some conversions. Small volumes of traffic are not necessarily bad if the quality is good. Sure there are a lot of toys shops out there but you're going to be the next big thing!

2.) Design - Your design to me is blah. The colours on the warning page don't match the main site and neither do the fonts.

On the main site you are using all shades of blue. You need to add some contrast to pick the site up a bit. If it is your design, consider adding orange or red to give it some punch. You can buy colour books (or reference the web) if you are colour challenged (like I am). These books will give you colour combos that work together. Since orange/red is the contrasting colour use this colour when you want to direct the surfer's attention to something.

The note about registration in the "Comic Sans" font is out of place with the rest of the fonts used on the site. I would use Arial and make the font a bit smaller.

The logo in the top left corner looks amateurish. It needs to be re-done.

Consider adding a sliding banner program to showcase products. Look at http://www.adamevetoys.com for an example. Find one that works for your shopping cart program. Check hotscripts.com and similar places. Alternatively if that is not possible, use some graphical links to products to add some some appeal.

I hope I have not been too harsh. Please take what I say "with a grain of salt". Myself, I've only had a handful of sales so what do I know? Analyse other toy shops and figure out why they look and function better than yours.

Finally don't get discouraged and good luck!

---art

[anotherF]

It dosent look very profesional, low quality images and an out of the box feel. I would worry about giving you my cc details.

[Nikki]

I am truley, truely greatful for everyones criticism it has been quit an eye opener. I do not want to use being a newbie as an excuse, but as a learneing curve that apparently needs to be brought to date. I thank everyone for their constructive suggestions and honesty. I am not going to give up, but am determined more than ever to correct my shortcomings. I am so majorly impressed with everyones support and suggestions. I would have never expected that, but am so amazed at how this site accepted a newbie with open arms.

THANKS!!

Nikki

[anotherF]

Here is my suggestions:

Get rid of landing page it's a shop lets see the shop straight away. Improve pictures of products.

What software are you using? oscommerce? pay for a custom theme. Make sure it's got all the seo plugins.

Start a blog about the products you sell, go into detail with links to your store

Also look at someone like worldpay to handle payments, and paypal as a backup.

[Lana]

Good vibes don't make anyone money. Giving her a text link isn't going to help her much and since she has no affiliate program will do nothing for us. Most of us aren't in the altruism business.

Yeah, mkay. But I just liked her.