A much belated Happy New Year to everyone! Yes, it’s been a while, and after a few weeks away (quite a few!), the Affiliate Docs are back in the swing again and delving into all your questions, conundrums and sites to unearth some nuggets of advice that we hope will help you to move forward over the course of 2011. On a personal level, the break was intentional as I wanted some time out to recharge and enjoy Xmas after missing it in 2009. Now that the New Year is in full flow, we’ve got lots lined up for the coming months. The Affiliate Chatroom will be relaunching in the next couple of weeks, although the Lingr room is still up and running if you fancy a chat with your fellow affiliates, and as soon as the new platform is sorted, we’ll release the details on Twitter and whack something up on site to let you know. We also have a few interviews lined up, with the first one coming in from Lammo.

So without further ado, our first Surgery review for 2011 comes from Darren who fired over the following question to see if the docs could offer some help with conversion rates on his polo shirt site …

“Hi.

Ok, so I have my site www.menspoloshirts.co.uk on page 1 of google for some decent terms, and the site is getting around 100 uniques a day, but the sales are not flowing in. What can I do to try and make more sales?

Thanks

Darren”

Site Preview [click to enlarge]:

Here’s what Carl and Lammo had to say …

Carl

Hi Darren.

I have taken a look around the site.

It seems your site has some CRO issues. Below are a few suggestions that would help increase clicks and conversions.

1. Increase the size of your images

They are currently too small. When people buy polo shirts they will look for detail and mainly want to see the stitching and logo. Also if you look to other fashion websites you will notice they always have a zoom function. Another trick would be to make your image clickable so that when the image is clicked you are taken to the merchant, it’s a little sneaky but that click may offer the visitor the greater detailed image they require.

2. Cloak all your URL’s

As everyone becomes more web savy, people look at what they are clicking on in the status bar. If a visitor see’s a strange looking URL they are less likely to click on it. If you cloak your URL’s you will have a clean URL e.g. www.menspoloshirts.co.uk/goto/bensherman.

There are various methods that are around for doing this. As your site is on built on WordPress there are plugins freely available to cloak URLs. If you know your way around your server you might want to look into editing the .htaccess file to cloak your affiliate links.

3. Tidy up your product pages

I would try to make your product pages look a little more appealing, as they currently look rather plain. Maybe offer more detail by including size, colours, additional images, but this obviously depends on the feed you are using. Use colour and style to make your product pages look a less formal.

4. Call to action

Your call to action button [Buy Now] maybe be a little aggressive, visitors when clothes shopping like to [add to basket] or want [more information] – changing the text of this button may encourage more clicks (and more cookie drops).

5. Use logos 

As you are offering a comparison service, I would make sure the logos of the retailers appear instead of your text. Visitors are more likely to click images as opposed to text. The current table looks a little plain and a little dated; by making this more appealing, you may reduce the bounce rate and increase CTR. Some of these designs on Patterntap and Six Revisions may help with the comparison tables. Highlighting the best price row will help with CTR.

6. Check your feeds

I noticed that many of the items I clicked on were out of stock which can really affect bounce rate. You may need to update your feeds more often. If you receive a lot of long tail traffic it’s likely that the visitor is looking for that particular shirt, and if it is not available the visitor will go back to Google and search again.

Another issue of course might have nothing to with your site; there maybe conversion issues at some of the merchants you are using which is something else to consider.

Let us know if you implement any of the changes.

Lammo

Hi Darren.

What keywords are you getting traffic for? Are they buyers or browsers?

If they’re searching for “mens polo shirts” then they probably haven’t decided what shirt they want to buy, whereas if they’re searching for “ben sherman romford polo shirt”, then you’re more likely to close the sale.

One thing I spotted looking at Ben Sherman and Quicksilver (and quite a few other categories) is the number of products with “no image”. In the fashion sector, you’re never going to sell items that people can’t see – I’d remove every single product that doesn’t have an image, and on the single product page, such as this one for example , I’d make the image much larger (or at least have the option for the customer to enlarge it).

I’d also try offering up some “related” shirts on these single product pages – that way if customers don’t like that shirt, you’re offering them some relevant alternatives (think similar colour/style/brand – one of each), think of Amazon’s “You might also like” feature.

Hope that helps.

Editor’s Note

Thanks for sending in your site for review Darren and hope you find the advice useful – if you need any more specifics, please fire them into the comments and we’ll get them answered. If anyone else has any suggestions or advice for Darren we’d love to hear them in the comments below …

Site Preview [click to enlarge]:

Khalid asks: “Hi all.

I’ve been running CentralScotlandJoinery.co.uk for a little under two years now and I’ve achieved a page 1 ranking for “double glazing” amongst many other long tail terms.
 
The site gets just shy of 2,000 unique visitors per month but the conversion rate is under 1%.
 
I’ve recently installed ClickTale.com to assess where visitors are going and trying to ascertain where I could improve, do you have any suggestions?
 
Kind Regards,
 
Khalid”

Here’s what Dan and Carl had to say …

Dan

Hi, Khalid, how are things going?

Here are some notes that I think will help in your quest to improve your site’s conversion rate. I will keep these mainly to bullet points to hopefully keep things clear.

 
THE PROBLEM

You have 2 main conversion points on the site from what I can see. Both are ‘contact us’ forms. Neither is particularly straightforward. There is no real enticement for anyone to contact you (over & above a competitor), and each of your calls to action is very easy to miss.

NOTES ON EACH OF THE CONVERSION POINTS

Conversion Point 1: This is a little contact form on the right-hand side of most pages. Here are the issues with this:

1. It’s in an area that’s more usually used for navigation, contextual information, or ads, i.e. it’s a place that’s easy to ignore/miss.
2. The text on the form is dark grey on dark blue.
3. The call to action at the top is “We’ll Call You Back!”.

Conversion Point 2: This is reached by clicking ‘Get a FREE Quote!’ from the top navigation.

1. On this page, you’re now asking for the full address (rather than just a postcode).
2. The form is much longer than the one on the right-hand side.
3. It’s full of scary language telling people that by asking for a quote they won’t be “pressured”, it shouldn’t “ring alarm bells” and that they won’t be “pushed into buying”. (There’s no need for this, as they’ve already clicked the ‘give me a quote’ button).
4. The main area that points through to this is the top navigation, alongside that there is a graphic dumped in the middle of some other pages that doesn’t really spell out what it’s trying to say.

HOW TO FIX ALL OF THIS

Here are some suggestions that may help fixing this:

1. Create a simple PDF guide along the lines of “10 Things You Need To Know Before Hiring a Tradesman”. Use this as a friendly extra enticement for visitors to fill in your quote forms.
2. Fix the call to action on your right-hand contact form. You could trial “Claim Your Free Quote” vs “Download Your Free Guide” (with detail underneath) to see which works better.
3. Fix the text colour on your right-hand contact form so that people can read it.
4. Add a large call to action at the foot of the content area on each page – link this through to your ‘free quote’ page.
5. Remove all the scary language from your ‘free quote’ page. Trial simplifying the form. If you really want to add some extras to that page, try testimonials. (I’ve found adding testimonials below forms sometimes works well).
6. Your ‘free quote’ area in the top navigation – you could trial moving that out into the whitespace above to give it greater visibility.
7. Things like ‘Claim Your Free Quote’ on buttons often work better than ‘Send’ or ‘Submit’.

CONVERSION RATE(S)

Finally, in Google Analytics, I would monitor whether these changes have a positive effect by looking at 3 ‘before’ & ‘after’ conversion rates, rather than just 1. They would be:

1. The percentage of site visits that result in someone filling in your right-hand column form (ie. do the changes to that form increase the likelihood of someone completing it).
2. The percentage of site visits that result in someone visiting the ‘free quote’ page. (i.e. do your calls to action get visitors to reach that page, and when you make a change does it increase or decrease that).
3. The percentage of unique ‘free quote’ page views who complete the form.

If you made the changes bit by bit, it would give you an idea of exactly which had the biggest effect, allowing you to follow similar patterns on your other sites. You could run them through Google’s Website Optimizer, though it may take a while with your current traffic.

I hope something here’s been helpful. Apologies for all the bullets!

Dan.

Carl

Hi Khalid.

Conversion Rate Optimisation is not my usual specialist area – but here’s a few deas that might help you out.

1. Display your customer testimonials block higher up the page, it’s currently appearing below the fold. You want to instill immediately trust to the visitor.

2. Change the black and white images to colour, they look quite dull and miserable, making the subject matter seem boring and almost a little daunting.

3. As most people know that the majority of attention is focused on the top right of the page, I suggest moving your “We’ll call you back” to a more prominent location and emphasise that you’re willing to reduce the hassle by calling them back. This will allow for your “recent installations” to appear higher up the page – everyone loves seeing examples of work in any trade.

4. A revamp of your “We’ll call you back” will almost definitely help improve conversions. Make the form look different, maybe number each step, “5 steps to a safer, more environmentally and better looking home” using your checklist from the image on the homepage. Make the form design more interesting in the design of windows around a house, there are some great customised forms out there (see: Pattern Tap)

5. For each image of the “recent installations” gallery add the testimonial to match up – again, this will instill more trust in to your website, as let’s face it, builders don’t exactly have the best rep. A genuine letter and images work well together.

6. The top right of the homepage has a lot of white space, might be worth adding banners explaining how long you have been in business, how many installations you have successfully completed or something like “We have installed enough glass to cover Celtic park x10″, plus any builders association badges you belong to.

7. Change the colours / design of the tabs in the header menu for “Testimonials” and “Why Us” – it immediately lets people know that you’re proud of what you do and that you want them to see the work for themselves.

8. Sounds simple, but a huge red bendy arrow to “Get a Quote” should influence clicks to that page.

9. I see the site is built on WordPress, so I’d suggest using Gravity Forms to help log data but allow you to customise the forms to have more appeal and look more trustworthy; the current forms look a little amateurish.

10. With all the great images you take going forward, I suggest you have a business board in the window to prove that those windows were installed by your business, as it’s quite easy for people to take pictures of any double glazing installation.

As with any building, plumbers or tradesman website, it’s about instilling trust in your visitor and making your business seem family friendly, trustworthy and reliable.

Carl

“Hi.

I would like some opinions on how to increase the conversion rate at Caricature King.

Traffic is healthy, and while many may be just stopping by to look at the images, I feel there is more conversion upside that can be achieved. I have tried various approaches, but with a product that is not just click and buy, KISS is essential. I think it is, but is it?

Many thanks.

Matt.”

Click To Enlarge

Here’s what Dan and Kier had to say …

Dan

Hi Matt, how are you? I think you are right when you say that simple is better for this site.

Using & ordering through the site is a very complicated experience at the moment.

The site has quite a complicated ordering process. That’s likely to be the hardest thing to change, so I won’t cover that here. Instead I will just give you a few ideas of things I might change, and show you one example of how you could simplify the ‘artist sample’ page.

WHERE TO START IN FIXING THE SITE YOURSELF

A lot of people will tell you to dive into google analytics & find the drop off points, run some A/B testing, and things like that. I think though, before you do any of that, just go through the site a few times pretending you are a potential customer. There are lots of confusing elements on the site and, I think if you pretend you’ve never seen the site before, you’ll easily spot them & be able to clean them up.

If you go through each page, look at each element, asking “by having this here, am I making this page more or less confusing? would a new visitor be more or less likely to buy when they see this?”

Here are a few examples of things to fix:

FIX THE HEADER & TAGLINE

At the top of every page on the site, it says “A caricature artist’s market place. Promoting artists since 2005.” That doesn’t really tell a visitor what you do. I suspect if you asked 10 people on the street “what is a caricature artist’s market place?”, you’d get 10 very confused looks. Instead you might want to choose something simple like “Order wonderful personalised gifts from the world’s greatest caricature artists”.

FIX THE “SIGN UP” BOX

There’s a “sign up for our email to win a free caricature” box right in the middle of the homepage.

There are 2 things I would fix there:

1. It doesn’t actually work – it gives a server error if you use it. Obviously error messages make sites feel untrustworthy.

2. You’re giving people the chance to win your only product. Perhaps you could give them a ‘how to draw caricatures’ guide instead?

FIX THE HOMEPAGE

At the moment you just show caricatures on the homepage. I’d be tempted to show the ‘before’ photos too. That’s just a gut feeling.

I’d remove the ‘buy in US $ | buy in AUST $ | Buy in EURO’ from the homepage. I doubt that you’d lose any sales by asking the visitors to view more samples of each artist, with “View more samples from Ben” rather than just “More samples” for example.

FIX THE ARTISTS PAGES

Taking Shane’s page as an example. I think you could hugely simplify these pages. The page begins with ‘CLICK HERE to see estimated delivery times for Shane’. So I click that and it takes me to another page that just lists all the artists & their delivery times. I think “hang on, who was the artist I was looking at again?” & I try to click back but you’ve popped up a new window so the back button doesn’t work. I finally go close the window, go back & then I have to remember that it’s 10 working days. All of that could be avoided if you just published the estimated delivery times on the artist pages.

Further down this page, you tell the visitor that there are discounts of 8%, 11%, 15%, etc. But there are no prices on that page so this is meaningless information at this stage.

Rather than carry on like this, I thought I’d illustrate one way of simplifying it with a mockup.

Click the thumbnails below for a ‘before’ & ‘after’ example:

BEFORE

AFTER

These complications & confusing elements continue through the price & order process. I would go through the rest of the pages on the site, following the same process of removing/fixing anything that’s confusing & simplifying everything where possible. Do it page by page to make sure results are improving rather than decreasing & you should be onto a winner.

Let me know if this was any use & if I can help in any other way.

Dan

P.S. 2 bonus thoughts:

Bonus thought 1: It gets recommended by everyone but, just in case you haven’t read it, “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug is a great book on fixing problems like this through user testing.

Bonus thought 2: If you do want to see what some actual users think, usertesting.com & whatusersdo.com have some very cheap user video services.

Kier

Hi Matt

I’ll admit to not knowing a huge amount about caricatures but the first thing that struck me when I looked at the homepage was that the caricatures you show on the front page could be good or bad but I don’t know, because they aren’t of people I know! Until I click through and see the photos of the people involved it makes it a difficult process to choose more. As such I’d advise you get your artists to knock up some caricatures of instantly recognisable celebs for the homepage so people can judge the quality of their work more easily.

Overall the site feels far too cluttered. There’s lots of interesting stuff in there to make people want to buy, but it’s disorganised and the purchase side of things feels like an afterthought. I would consider substantially simplifying the options in the navigation panel on the left so there is more focus on what you want people to do, which is BUY. You can keep the same content in there, but make it more organised and further from the homepage where the user will land by having nested options within the navigaion, and of course, on each page make sure that the user can go straight to the purchase process at any time. The purchases process itself is far too complicated and text heavy, get this as clean, intuitive and simple as you can. If someone is ready to buy then you want to put as little resistance as possible between them having that intention and following through on it. Also kill that floating competition box, it’s really frustrating!

“Hi.

I bumped into the very friendly Elaine Forth during my recent day out at ThinkVisibilty in Leeds. During a quick chat I explained my teething troubles with my first affiliate site and she recommended I get in touch, so here goes…

www.simplychildsavings.co.uk is my entry into the affiliate marketing arena. It’s 5 months old and full of original unique content for parents looking to save cash for their little ones.

I’m a Dad myself and experienced in financial services so I’ve designed a site that I think is genuinely unique.

The problem is Google doesn’t agree.

Yahoo seems to like me a lot. I’m on the first page for keywords such as ‘children’s savings’ and ‘compare child trust funds’, but my only success with Google seems to be scattered longtail keyphrases.

So, can you help? Have I been penalised for some basic blunder (I submitted my site for reconsideration which has been apparently done) . The site is built using WordPress – is there something I’m doing fundamentally wrong?

I recognise I’ve only got a handful of backlinks but Yahoo doesn’t seem to mind. Is Google so dependent on links that it doesn’t care about content?

Thanks

Simon Westwell”

Kier

Hi Simon.

Google cares a lot about links. I’m unsure from your question exactly what the problem you have is, your site seems to show up in Google. If you mean you aren’t ranking well then yes build more links! That’s the reality of things. Thankfully as you have lots of good content, if you make the time to build the links then you should do well. I would advise making your title tags a bit more focused though, choose on keyword/phrase for each and then put variations of it in the <h> tags. This will give more power to those that you choose. Unfortunately, finance is a very competitive area though so you may find this a tough niche. I’d advise to keep working on this steadily over time, don’t get too despondent if things don’t kick off straight away. Get some other sites on the boil but keep at it. If you know your stuff and the content is good, then with time and links you should be able to make a decent bit off the site.

Lammo

It’s a refreshing change to see someone starting a site that they actually have an interest in.. so many people chase the money and start a site about credit cards or poker tips, and then end up abandoning it after 3 weeks because they’re sick to death of writing about the subject matter. Myself and my fellow Doctors are always saying “do a site you’re passionate about”, so it’s good to see someone doing that already.

I certainly don’t profess to be an SEO expert (a quick glance at the search results for most of my sites will confirm this!), but I doubt very much that you’ve done anything wrong as such to annoy Google – they certainly have around 65 pages indexed for your site, so you’re not blacklisted!

I feel your pain though.. I launched a site two years ago now.. and religously added content every single day for nearly 6 months.. at which point Google was sending me the grand sum of 20 visitors a day.. I was convinced that I’d done something wrong, and even had some SEO guys check out the source code for me.. all was fine. So I kept on adding content and (most importantly IMO) building links. After around 8/9 months, almost as though someone at Google had flicked a switch, I started to see rankings and traffic. After two years, I’m still adding content and building links on a regular basis and have some very tasty positions in the search results, all of which I would put down to not giving up when it seemed Google was ignoring my site!

Are you motivated enough to keep adding content to this site for another 6-9 months before Google pays you any attention? Since you submitted your site for review, the new Coalition Government has been elected and announced that Child Trust Funds are to be abolished. Yet despite that news happening over a month ago, I could see no mention of that on your site? you don’t have “Trust fund” in the domain name, so this news hasn’t killed your site, far from it.. Now that CTF’s are to be no more, many parents will want to know what the alternatives are. You have this page which I would update with a very detailed article looking at the range of options open now that CTF is no more. Then I’d PPC that page for terms like “child trust fund alternatives”, “child trust fund changes”, “child trust fund 2011” etc, to build up not only potential visitors and revenue, but also natural links to your site. Become a source of information in a market that has a lot of uninformed people, and you should succeed. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

“I’m completely stumped as to why my site isn’t making any conversions and I wondered if you guys would mind having a look to see if there’s anything I’m missing.

Website address – http://www.digioutput.co.uk/

The site is a PPC comparison site that (at the time of writing) has only been live for about a week, so I’m quite happy to sit on this for a little while as it’s not costing me all that much. However, I’m mystified as to why I’m not making any conversions.

Over the past week I’ve had 18,500 impressions, and out of that I’ve had 309 clicks (CTR 1.66% – not great, but not disastrous) and out of those 309 clicks I’ve made precisely 0 sales (and I’ve checked the links are working as they should be)!!

I’m reasonably sure my site isn’t crap as I have analytics running on it and it says my bounce rate is reasonably low – 34%, and the average time on site is actually quite high at 2min 46secs. On average each user looks at 5.35 pages and I have almost 90% new visitors … so I just can’t figure out what my problem is? I’ve been creating new content by writing news articles and adding additional pages, but since the site is only a week old, I guess all the content is pretty new.

I know the site’s only been live for a week, but I’m clearly attracting custom to it, but absolutely no one is generating any sales. I’m desperate for some help please Affiliate Doctors, this is driving me up the wall, there must be a solution! Have I just signed up to rubbish merchants?

Very much looking forward to your reply.

Mark”

Here’s what Mark, Elaine and Dan had to say …

Mark Boyd

Hi Mark, thanks for submitting your site to the doctors, I’ve got a few points which will hopefully help you increase your sales figures.

PRICE COMPARISON

The first thing that strikes me when looking at the product pages, is the lack of “price comparison”. Take a look @ http://www.digioutput.co.uk/product/3/Micro1112%20DAB/Goodmans-Micro1112-Dab.html for example, it shows the price from Bennetts, which may well be the best price, but how does your visitor know that unless you show them? You should bear in mind it’s not always about price, there are other factors that come into play when buying online, such as the consumers previous dealings with the company, returns policys, p&p costs etc.. So if I were you, I’d focus on adding as many prices to each product page as possible. You appear to be using ECU, so this should be relatively easy for you.
 
BUY NOW BUTTONS

I’d also have a look at some of the other buy now buttons that ECU have on offer, I personally prefer the buttons like http://www.easycontentunits.com/images/r-sn.png and I’ve found with a bit of A-B testing that they convert visitors to clickers very well! So, maybe give different buttons and colours of buttons a try and find out what works for you.

(buttons updated since review)

CONTENT

Not only does content help to improve your organic listings, it helps give the reader an idea of the quality of the site. If you’ve taken the time to handwrite 100’s of articles for the site, this hard work will be transferred to the consumer in terms of their perceived trust of the site. Again, looking at the Goodmans example, I’d immediately click away from that page and find a site that had taken the time to write a description.

I believe if you focus on those three things, getting them perfected, you’ll see an increase in your sales.

Best of luck!

Elaine

I’ve had quite a good look round your site, Mark, and there’s a ton of stuff you can fix, which will hopefully increase your sales.

1. Why all the review this, review that – I might want to send in a review after I’ve bought something, but not before – I do find it off putting.

2. At first glance it doesn’t  look like a price comparison site – I would expect 1 image and description and then a choice of merchants – it took me a while to detect that some of the products were actually the same – lots of images are missing which makes  it quite confusing.

3. The product images are quite small – I have found that the best converting sites have large images – so you can see exactly what you’re buying.

4. I’d prefer better descriptions or bullet points on the first page rather than have to click through all the products to discover the type I’m looking for – e.g.  I like a few preset buttons so I don’t have to keep retuning.

5. On the home page I’d put the best selling products at the top, with better images and descriptions and keep the blurb at the bottom or remove it.

6. The Digital Coverage page is a tad sparse, the link to the BBC site doesn’t work and the map doesn’t tell my anything!

7. The Radio Stations page is, again, a tad sparse, and the BBC link goes through to the wrong page, so I can’t find out which stations I can receive!

8. And the Why Dab page appears to be in Arabic!

To summarise – I’d spend a while cleaning up the site and providing good quality information without relying on third party sites – or at least ensure the links direct properly. Get rid of the request for reviews and the Add to my saved list – I can’t see that they serve a purpose.  Ensure all the images are available, make them bigger and produce better descriptions.

At the moment it doesn’t look very professional and instill confidence to buy, but with a bit of work I’m sure you’ll get there.

Dan

hi, Mark, how are you?

I like the niche (dab radios). And it looks like you’re using affilistore, which is an ok affiliate price comparison platform. I think there are a few things you could do to improve things if you’re willing to stick with it.

Here are some ideas:

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

1. The first introduction to the theme of the site (DAB radios) is 700 pixels down the homepage. I’d put that right up top, e.g. changing your tagline “doing the searching so you don’t have to” to “We’ve found the best DAB Radios so you don’t have to”.

2. The homepage is largely taken up by a single graphic, which doesn’t really lead anywhere. I’d switch that to a smaller graphic, and link it through to the product page of the particular radio.

3. Product recommendations from 3 different sources are then crammed into a messy area at the bottom of the homepage (from amazon, an affiliate window content unit, and an affilistore content unit). I’d clean that area up & focus on one unit at a time. Figure out which works the best & stick with that until things are working.

4. A simple fix to your search box would be to change the text to ‘Search for DAB Radios here…’ instead of just ‘Search for products here…’

DEAD ENDS

The site is full of little dead ends. An easy way to get rid of these is to click through it asking yourself the question “if I was a visitor, would clicking that link have moved me closer to a purchase, or closer to abandoning the site?”

Here are 2 examples:

1. The top navigation is a series of 4 dead ends. Once a visitor clicks on any one of them, they are presented with a page that takes them away from purchasing anything, rather than toward it.

2. If you’re happy dabbling with the affilistore code, you may want to remove the ‘+ Add to my saved list’ and ‘Review this store’ and ‘Review this product’ links from category pages. These are red herrings that visitors won’t use, at the same time if anyone does click on them, the resulting pages are quite confusing.

PRODUCT SELECTION

On a site like this, the primary function is to help visitors move toward a product selection, and then to click through to the merchant site. Here are a few observations on how you could improve that:

1. The product selection is very broad. There are 17 categories, only 2 of them devoted to the products you’re trying to sell. (and those are buried in positions 15 & 16).

2. In your 2 target categories (‘Portable Radios’ & ‘Radios’), there are 900 products. It’s very difficult to dig through these and, other than brand and price, no reason to click on any one of them. The default sorting seems to be ‘low price to high’, meaning visitors are presented with really cheap radios & left to find anything decent themselves.

3. Your Brand categories are alphabetical, but crammed together with no line breaks. I’d separate those to 1 per line and add the words ‘DAB Radios’ to the end of each (‘Cowon DAB Radios’ rather than just ‘Cowon’ for example). That will look repetitive, but is more helpful to someone landing on the page for the first time, and better for search engine rankings.

COMPARISON PAGES

The pages that should convert for you are your individual product pages (comparing the price of an individual product at various merchants). Here’s an example page & some thoughts:

http://www.digioutput.co.uk/product/7/16893/Pure-One-Mini-Black.html

1. The first ‘add to cart’ button on your product pages is *way* down the page. (off screen if you’re browsing on my laptop – in fact the first price is off the screen).

2. The top product is the one you’re trying to get the visitor to click through on, yet there’s nothing to indicate that. Putting it in a box with ‘Our Recommendation’ (or similar) is a very easy way to present them with a logical next click.

3. The alternate products are presented as ‘similar products’

4. While I like affilistore, I think you have to spell out to visitors what’s going on with each page. On the product page. Heading a product page up with “We’ve found 8 products that match ‘Magicbox Dab Kitchen Radio’ – check out our recommendations below” helps them understand what’s going on.

PATIENCE

Finally, I think perhaps the biggest problem with the site was patience. It looks like you gave up on the site a little early. There are 5 or 6 news items & then it’s been abandoned. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as perhaps you found something more successful & put your efforts into that – but I’d have given it a bit more time & think you could still make it work pretty easily.

I hope that helps – good luck!

“My problem is that I’m pretty good at SEO, but I suck at affiliate marketing, and my site is a prime example.

At the time of writing, it is 4th or 5th in Google in an excellent niche, but I’m just not converting any of the site visitors into sales.  I get the odd adsense click, but no insurance conversions at all.

Can you tell me where I’m going wrong please?

I’ve ended up replicating this problem across other sites, which although some of them get good visitor levels, they have very poor sales.

I just can’t understand what I’m doing wrong.  Surely in the insurance market, I should be coining it in

Thanks.

Dave.”

Here’s what Lammo and Elaine had to say:

Lammo

Hi Dave.

I think the key issue you need to look at is what do your users want/expect to see on your site?

Put yourself in their shoes – you’ve arrived via a search for “insurance groups” on a site called “Insurance Groups” with the URL “insurancegroups.org.uk” – these people don’t want to know what insurance companies you recommend – they want to know what insurance group their car (or more likely a car they are thinking of buying) falls into. As far as I can see, you’re not providing them with that information, so most of them are heading back to Google (apart from a few who might click on an Adsense link that has the headline “Insurance Groups”) and you’ve lost the chance of a sale.

Now have a look at how GoCompare aim to convert those same users. They provide all the info the users are looking for, but also put a friendly (yet prominent) single call to action above the info:

“If you already own your car, or know which insurance group it falls under then why not compare car insurance quotes now? Otherwise, just choose a manufacturer (below) to check insurance groups by model” on the main landing page for the term “Insurance Groups”.

They then change this message to suit the user once they drill down to the car they are looking to buy. Once they’ve found out that their dream Porsche 911 is in Insurance Group 20, the next question they want to know is “ok, so how much is that gonna cost me” – look at the call to action now:

“Use our free car insurance comparison tool to find the best policy for your Porsche 911. Compare Porsche 911 car insurance quotes now.”

Now, as an affiliate you could add a second call to action here if you wish (I wouldn’t advise adding too many or you’ll mix the message and lose the sales) along the lines of “Looking to spread the payments on your Porsche 911? Click here to compare unsecured loan rates too”.

Above all else, don’t make the page too confusing, and give your users what they want!

Elaine

Hi Dave, sorry, but the site doesn’t immediately instill confidence – there are too many Google ads high on the page – I would place them at the bottom.

There is no explanation as to why you’re recommending the various insurance companies, and the first one links to the Buyat home page!

It’s a good idea to have a top tips section, but there’s way too much reading – bullet points, concise and to the point would be better.

You suggest using online comparison sites – and on the same page promote ‘The Shocking Truth about Insurance  Comparison Websites’!!

You also tell folk to check the cashback sites!

You need to give visitors a reason to click on YOUR links and not give them a chance to visit other sites first – they won’t return.

I’d tell the visitors why those companies are the best, and why they should use BeatThatQuote.com and check out your competitors sites – just to give you some ideas.

Good Luck.

“Hi Affiliate Doctors.

I’m having problems with my site FreshGrad.co.uk. I have slowly been improving my readership (but this still needs work). However with the visitors that I do get on my site, I’m not receiving any income through adsense or my other affiliate widget. No clicks at all.

Can you have a look at my website and give some tips on improving readership, SEO and conversion? I have considered adding a shop to the site.

Thanks

Santiago”

Mark

Hi Santiago.

It’s an interesting niche you are operating in. I’m actually graduating (fingers crossed) in July, so in theory I’m your target market! I’ve broken down my response into the three main areas you’ve asked for help on – Readership, SEO and Conversion.

Readership

Your site is in a particularly good niche in that it welcomes repeat visits; if a graduate visits your site and likes what they see, then there’s a good chance they’d also be interested in the content you publish in the future. You therefore have to make it very easy for them to find out about your future posts. At the moment I don’t think you are doing enough to encourage repeat visits. I’d suggest the following:

Twitter – If you don’t have a Twitter account, get signed up! @FreshGrad appears to be taken, but @FreshGradUK or similar would do fine. When used correctly, Twitter can be an excellent tool for identifying and communicating with potential visitors.  Use the Twitter search tool to find people who have recently graduated, or who are about to graduate. Just doing a search for tweeters mentioning “graduation” in July is bound to provide you with a huge list of potential visitors. Think outside the box about how you can get them onto your site and more importantly… telling their friends about your site. It would also be wise to include a feed of your tweets on your site and a big fat “Follow Me” button, so that all visitors to your site cannot leave your site without knowing you’re on Twitter.

Facebook – Create a Facebook fan page. It’s simple, free and effective if done correctly. To get it off the ground, you’re going to have ask as many of your graduate friends as you can to become a fan. Get your grovelling hat on.

Newsletter – One of the most simple and effective ways to get visitors back onto your site is to email them regularly to let them know what’s going on. Make it very easy for your visitors to subscribe:

– Add a form to your sidebar
– Add a form at the end of every post
– Add a checkbox to allow those who comment on your blog to subscribe

There are many free solutions out there. Off the top of my head MailChimp and CampaignMonitor are worth a look.

RSS Feed – At the moment you have a “Blog Feed” link on your nav bar. I personally feel that the majority of internet users haven’t got a clue what a blog feed actually is. On top of that, I would argue that the only ones who do know what a blog feed is know what the RSS logo signifies, so I’d scrap that from your menu and add a nice RSS logo to the header or nav bar of your site, possibly along with a Facebook and Twitter logo.  There are some nice social media icons available at Web Designer Ledger. This will tidy up the site a little but will still allow those looking for your RSS feed an easy way to find it.

Members – I see you have an option for the user to “Register”. To me it’s not apparently obvious why I would benefit from registering and therefore I wouldn’t spend time filling out the form. A strong member base adds value to a website, so it’s a great idea, however you need to have a reason for them to register. If you do currently have a good reason for a user to register, let them know it!

SEO

Analysing your site on the Yahoo Site Explorer I can see you have a very small number of incoming links. Think of each link to your site as a vote, the more votes you receive, the higher up the rankings your site will go. Your site can be optimised perfectly, but if you don’t receive incoming links you may never rank well enough to receive any decent amounts traffic. So, get cracking looking for some relevant links to your site.

Focussing on the on-site SEO of FreshGrad, I’d recommend changing the following:

Title Tags – At the moment, your title tags are not doing you any favours. Let’s take your Job Boards page; at the time of writing your page title is “Jobs Board”. Use your page titles to tell both Google and your user exactly what the page is about. Off the top of my head a more effective title would be something along the lines of “Graduate Recruitment Jobs Board – Find your perfect graduate job today”. This new title has the keywords “Graduate Recruitment” and “Graduate Job” included in it, which already is more relevant than “Jobs Board”. I would recommend sitting down and brainstorming for each page of your site to write relevant “juicy” titles. I can see that you have the All In One SEO Pack installed already, so it is very easy for you to write bespoke titles for each page of the site. In case you are unfamiliar with the Google Keyword Tool, it is a great tool for getting an idea of which keywords are worth targeting.

Heading Tags – Although heading tags don’t provide a great deal of weighting, every little helps. At the moment your H1 tag for your homepage is “FreshGrad.co.uk”. I would recommend changing this to incorporate your main keyword. This also goes for your H2 and H3 tags.

Content – I’m sure you’ll have heard this time and time again – “Content is King”. Well it’s true, the more content you add, the more Google will love you. Adding a post every few weeks won’t get you on Google’s Xmas card list. Add a few posts a day and you’ll get invited round for Christmas dinner! At the time of writing, you’ve not added a post to the site in over 3 months, this would immediately deter me from your site upon hitting your homepage. Keep adding fresh, relevant content and you’ll find your traffic gets a boost from the long-tail keywords you’ll find yourself ranking for.

I could go on for hours about various on-site changes that will improve your rankings and therefore traffic, but so as not to bore you all to death, here’s an excellent post from SEOmoz detailing the various ranking factors you should be aware of.

Conversion

I think the reason you’ve had no clicks thus far is because your affiliate widgets are not necessarily as relevant as they could be. Put yourself in the mind of one of your visitors. You are searching for a graduate recruitment opportunity and you find yourself on FreshGrad.co.uk. Now, what banner are you more likely to click; a banner about finding graduate jobs online or a banner about books on Amazon? Personally, I would be more likely to click on a banner about jobs than books because that’s the state of mind I am in. After all I am searching for graduate job opportunities. Therefore, I’d remove all of the Amazon widgets and focus on promoting recruitment opportunities. I can see that you currently have a couple of WorkCircle widgets. I’ve never heard of WorkCircle and I feel that having a recognised brand on your site would help your conversion. Having conducted a quick search, I believe the Monster.co.uk (a well known brand that advertises regularly on TV) program on Affiliate Window could do very well for you. It pays £2.50 for each “Job Seeker that successfully uploads a completed and valid CV”. Focus on diverting your traffic through to Monster and you could see a handsome return each month.

Finally, utilise your white space. You’ve got a juicy 468×60 banner space available on the right hand side of your header, a perfect place for a very eye catching Monster.co.uk banner.

Please note: Monster is the first program I came across that is worth promoting, I’m sure there are many more available!

Dan

Hi, Santiago, how are you?

Well, it’s sad to see it looks like you’ve given up on the site (at the time of writing, the last update to your site was 21st October). Nevertheless, I think there is something you could do with this site, and you may still be able to use it to make some money.

The main issue is that your niche is very broad, you’ve tried to write content to address that whole broad niche, and you just don’t have the time or resources to fill it.

Here’s what I might do before throwing in the towel:

TIP ONE: Ditch most of the ads

There are too many ads, most in the wrong places. There are currently 5 ads on the homepage, probably getting zero clicks each. That won’t get you many links and probably isn’t getting you any sales anyway.

TIP TWO: Flip your content around

Your strategy seems to have been to write any content you could that a graduate may read. Instead, I’d only create content that meets 2 criteria:

1) Articles a graduate would actively search for.
2) Articles that are related to products/services a graduate would buy.

For example, your latest 3 posts are:

• “Speculative Applications – Successful Email Tips”
• “Symantec hires using Facebook”
• “Top Employers Optimistic for 2010″

I doubt any of those will get much search traffic and, if they do, there’s no indication that those visitors will buy. Instead I’d concentrate on articles like these:

• “Graduate Accountancy Jobs: 5 Books To Get You There” (amazon links)
• “Graduate Loans: Everything You Ever Wanted To Know” (affiliate links & adsense)
• “Graduate MBAs: Top 50 MBA Schools” (adsense)

ie. look for products & services that a graduate would buy/search for; Turn that into content; Monetise the content with tighter ads.

(as a side-note, I’d avoid putting any dates on those articles – write them so that they’ll be relevant forever and don’t put a date on them).

TIP THREE: Email

If you do manage to turn the site around, this would be a great site to build an email list off the back of. If you could manage to bring in 1,000 visitors a day and turn 5% of them into email subscribers, you’d have a list of about 13,000 new graduate email addresses within a year.

Graduates appeal to many different type of advertisers and being able to talk to them, rather than relying on them coming to your site, could be really useful.

I hope something in there helps.

Dan.

Kier

Hi Santiago.

You seem to have some decent content on the site so far and it sounds like you’re getting at least some level of traffic. The main thing I think that would work well would be to lose the amazon ads down the side and maybe adsense too and instead focus on working affiliate text links to relevant products into your articles. This may be tricky given the subject matter of the blog but I’m sure there’s some relevant products you can push.

Editor’s Note

Hi Santiago.

Thanks again for sending in your site for review.  I see you’re using Wordpress at the moment (great choice), but I would seriously think about ditching the theme for something a lot smarter. There are oodles of professionally designed themes out there for a site like yours which ultimately needs to look the part.  We’re not talking a lot of money, in fact, you can pick up lots of decent themes for free.

Another key point is that I’m guessing you put the site together whilst at Uni (or shortly afterwards?), and if that’s the case, then it could pose a potential problem: unless you’re very interested and maintain awareness of the graduate recruitment scene, within about a year to two years tops, you are likely to lose interest in keeping it up-to-date with fresh, relevant content.  As Mark and Dan pointed out, it’s already been a while since you last updated the site. Why not have a think about how you can tap into some of the Universities and see if you can recruit some of the final year students/recent graduates to run some case studies etc..  Hope this helps and good luck with the site.