Suggestions needed (1 Viewer)

[RSnodgrass]

@Jonty pointed out an issue on my website that I've struggled with and hoping someone may have a suggestion.

Please look at how my Store is now arranged and let me know what you think if you were going there to order a standard frag rack.

Shop | Slide Loc® Aquarium Systems

Shop all of Slide Loc® coral & aquarium products. Purpose built aquarium devices that are made to last.

www.slide-loc.com

I'm at this awkward stage where I'd prefer to transition & drive sales through our retail partners but some products are not available through them. I'm a bit stuck of how to list my products however and it's perhaps my mental limitations along with website limitations.

All products currently listed individually are not available through anyone else.

 

[Jonty]

I understand thank you, FYI I have been trying to find some of your products inline/ retail (New Wave ext) to buy and no one has them it's been frustrating as I think you have a great product and want to support.

 

[reef junkie]

Being a consumer that just wants to get in and get out.…

I went to look just for a individual item. Because im lazy and did not read your entire post. LOL When clicking on the individual items its a little confusing that they are not sold on the site. It makes sense once you look around on the main page. And the “Enter Shop“ link makes on the individual items makes it feel like your being sent to a place to purchase. Again if your just looking around fast to see where to purchase. Maybe just having the banner showing where to buy or having a link to a page that has your vendors listed would be easier for customers?

What do you think about changing up the categories at the top of the main page………
Home(brings you back to main page),
Product(sub catorgory with all items you have)
Vendors(or where to buy with links straight to your page on there website)
Shop(sub catoagory listing the items you do sell on the website),
Etc…..

Do you have words listed on your site that if people type these words into google you come up? Can’t remember what this is called. LOL. With my own business we have key words listed that If you type any of these words into google we are listed. Then ask every person you know to google the crap out of you to help move your name up the list. You can pay for this as well through google click ads. Im not sure how this would work with out driving people directly to your website and or to your vendors but there is something to be said about direct to consumer. For myself before knowing your product was even a thing and I was shopping for probe holders I never saw your items come up for google or BRS. Curious if adding these key words would help?

 

[RSnodgrass]

I understand thank you, FYI I have been trying to find some of your products inline/ retail (New Wave ext) to buy and no one has them it's been frustrating as I think you have a great product and want to support.

Good feedback, I'll shoot you a PM.

 

[RSnodgrass]

Being a consumer that just wants to get in and get out.…

I went to look just for a individual item. Because im lazy and did not read your entire post. LOL When clicking on the individual items its a little confusing that they are not sold on the site. It makes sense once you look around on the main page. And the “Enter Shop“ link makes on the individual items makes it feel like your being sent to a place to purchase. Again if your just looking around fast to see where to purchase. Maybe just having the banner showing where to buy or having a link to a page that has your vendors listed would be easier for customers?

What do you think about changing up the categories at the top of the main page………
Home(brings you back to main page),
Product(sub catorgory with all items you have)
Vendors(or where to buy with links straight to your page on there website)
Shop(sub catoagory listing the items you do sell on the website),
Etc…..

Do you have words listed on your site that if people type these words into google you come up? Can’t remember what this is called. LOL. With my own business we have key words listed that If you type any of these words into google we are listed. Then ask every person you know to google the crap out of you to help move your name up the list. You can pay for this as well through google click ads. Im not sure how this would work with out driving people directly to your website and or to your vendors but there is something to be said about direct to consumer. For myself before knowing your product was even a thing and I was shopping for probe holders I never saw your items come up for google or BRS. Curious if adding these key words would help?

Good feedback, these things should be obvious and it's helpful to step back and reassess.

That menu certainly is more suggestive of the path to purchasing. Helps clarify the frustration I've felt in similar situations. It would be good to avoid excessive clicks IE: Products -> Category such as Frag Racks -> Actual Rack Variety. Not likely to have my cake and eat it to though.

Maybe with my employee it's unavoidable until someone carries 90% of what I have and I simply need to have the products available to buy. Then highlight a comment on each page "for faster shipping consider buying through our retail partners".

As for meta tags/seo, yes I do. I likely could pay a few people to improve them. That said, my ranking is downgraded because I don't sell everything and thus don't get the same traffic. Death spiral as it were.

 

[RSnodgrass]

*Made some initial changes, hopefully it’s a step in the right direction. Also found a fatal flaw as a result that prevented some links from working and fixed that.

 

[Mathew0]

Frustratingly, I can’t buy or even price out the isolation boxes on your website. Going to the aquarium specialty link, doesn’t take me to the product page, either. Searing for “isolation box” on their website provides no results. I finally found it by looking under “shop by brand” and picking Biotek.
if this is the experience for other products, it is going to drive traffic away.
Hope that helps some.

 

[RSnodgrass]

Frustratingly, I can’t buy or even price out the isolation boxes on your website. Going to the aquarium specialty link, doesn’t take me to the product page, either. Searing for “isolation box” on their website provides no results. I finally found it by looking under “shop by brand” and picking Biotek.
if this is the experience for other products, it is going to drive traffic away.
Hope that helps some.

It does... I was following 2 little fishies example to avoid other sites changing their landing pages and breaking the links. Aquarium Specialty being an example of where that happened, not sure which is a better potential outcome.

What would you do?

 

[RSnodgrass]

Frustratingly, I can’t buy or even price out the isolation boxes on your website. Going to the aquarium specialty link, doesn’t take me to the product page, either. Searing for “isolation box” on their website provides no results. I finally found it by looking under “shop by brand” and picking Biotek.
if this is the experience for other products, it is going to drive traffic away.
Hope that helps some.

I need to add pricing fields to each screen as well (not just in the store). This week that will have to happen.

 

[ikserk]

It does... I was following 2 little fishies example to avoid other sites changing their landing pages and breaking the links. Aquarium Specialty being an example of where that happened, not sure which is a better potential outcome.

What would you do?

I would link directly to the retailer's product page directly, and accept that they'll change it at some point.

I use Oh Dear (ohdear.app) to monitor my company's websites and their service does site crawling looking for broken links (among many other things). I would link directly to the product page at the retailer and rely on the broken link crawler to notify you when the retailer changes the url for the product page.

I don't know if that makes financial sense for you, but it is a solid option to send user's to the page to purchase and also keep it updated without you always manually checking.

Oh Dear does a lot of other site health checks in addition to broken link tracking, but $17/month may be a bit high for a small business.

 

[Mathew0]

Our company used Bitly links for health professionals and gyms to link directly to a specific product page. If we ever change the url, our web service should automatically redirect the bitly, but should isn’t always.

 

[ikserk]

Our company used Bitly links for health professionals and gyms to link directly to a specific product page. If we ever change the url, our web service should automatically redirect the bitly, but should isn’t always.

Sounds like you're talking about the other direction, where you have control of the destination url and know when you change it, so you update the bitly url. Giving the bitly url to people linking to you.

Maybe I'm unclear on that though.

Ryan doesnt have control of the site he's linking to. To use a bitly url like I think you're talking about, he'd have to coordinate that with each retailers website team. Probably not likely.

 

[Livestuff]

I looked at the web site yesterday and was going to make some suggestions but I'm not good at that. I sometime don't see the hole picture before commenting. But I definitely see a big difference from yesterday to today on the site. Think I'll buy some skimmer juice since I don't have a skimmer on the system. Been craving some lately..

 

[Mathew0]

You are correct about the Bitlys. We create them for the people that are linking to our websites.

 

[RSnodgrass]

Appreciate all the suggestions, still some improvements needed but it's at least functioning far better than before.

Now it's a matter of paying someone to validate my seo or keep learning as I go.

Either way, traffic is way up and had another industry reach out again this week regarding my levers. This time through a random Google search.

 

[miltonkl]

After looking at your site, I've decided I want at least one of everything you make.

I think that having a dedicated section for learning about your products and then a dedicated store section would be really helpful. I also think that if you're going to sell anything direct, you should probably offer everything direct. If you have an item that you have some sort of exclusive contract to sell through X/Y/Z retailer, you can just put a big banner on that page saying it's sold exclusively by them.

I think you hit the nail on the head with [ Home | Products | Retailers | Shop ] being the only categories but I don't think you need the subcategories to drop down personally. I'd rather click the sub categories off the next page; otherwise, it can get confusing or I could run into issues on mobile trying to simply expand the sub-menus but clicking on the main category or something.

When looking at your transport containers (those look awesome!) some of the pictures have a TSA Approved banner on them, but no comments anywhere that I could find about what that means and that seems like a big selling point. I'd love to know that I could take one of these lunchboxes on vacation, stop at a coral shop and fly back home with them, but I don't know anything about the rules for that. Having a little blurb dedicated to traveling and how these fit into that role would probably be a selling point. Also, does TSA approved mean you actually got TSA to inspect this in some way or is it just below some volume threshold? I think clarifying/adding a proper TSA logo could help.

I love that all of the pages have these little how to use videos. They're a really great addition I think!

On an unrelated note, I have some 8x6x4 shipping boxes (brand new, probably around 40 of them) that I never seem you use but may be a good size for shipping some of your smaller items. If you're ever swinging past Savage, you're welcome to them.

 

[BlindSwordsman]

I think everybody has touched on the technical part, and I'm not going there. One thing I would say is: I usually work with the Communication and Marketing group, and if they take a quick glance at your website, they will frown upon the different kinds of font use that you have (e.g. your footer is in a different font compared to the rest). Just saying! .. .. That is a quick fix though.

 

[RSnodgrass]

I think everybody has touched on the technical part, and I'm not going there. One thing I would say is: I usually work with the Communication and Marketing group, and if they take a quick glance at your website, they will frown upon the different kinds of font use that you have (e.g. your footer is in a different font compared to the rest). Just saying! .. .. That is a quick fix though.

Would speed up the site as well... tried to limit use of fonts to titles and everything else but overlooked that, thank you!

Edit* went and looked again... yaaaa going to have to change that and get more consistent with font sizes. It changes things on mobile significantly from page to page vs pc, but even still.

 

[RSnodgrass]

After looking at your site, I've decided I want at least one of everything you make.

I think that having a dedicated section for learning about your products and then a dedicated store section would be really helpful. I also think that if you're going to sell anything direct, you should probably offer everything direct. If you have an item that you have some sort of exclusive contract to sell through X/Y/Z retailer, you can just put a big banner on that page saying it's sold exclusively by them.

I think you hit the nail on the head with [ Home | Products | Retailers | Shop ] being the only categories but I don't think you need the subcategories to drop down personally. I'd rather click the sub categories off the next page; otherwise, it can get confusing or I could run into issues on mobile trying to simply expand the sub-menus but clicking on the main category or something.

When looking at your transport containers (those look awesome!) some of the pictures have a TSA Approved banner on them, but no comments anywhere that I could find about what that means and that seems like a big selling point. I'd love to know that I could take one of these lunchboxes on vacation, stop at a coral shop and fly back home with them, but I don't know anything about the rules for that. Having a little blurb dedicated to traveling and how these fit into that role would probably be a selling point. Also, does TSA approved mean you actually got TSA to inspect this in some way or is it just below some volume threshold? I think clarifying/adding a proper TSA logo could help.

I love that all of the pages have these little how to use videos. They're a really great addition I think!

On an unrelated note, I have some 8x6x4 shipping boxes (brand new, probably around 40 of them) that I never seem you use but may be a good size for shipping some of your smaller items. If you're ever swinging past Savage, you're welcome to them.

Great feedback, thank you for all the detail!

Clarification, I didn't do the even more simplified categories (which would look good) because I was trying to limit clicks to get to places. Main Page -> Main Page -> Mag Racks -> Specific Rack. Technically this is still within the three clicks to get anywhere rule from 15yrs ago but what's your opinion?

As for TSA I'll add more detail. They will not allow a formal sticker because they only do that for specific items. It was cleared through my brother in law (while at TSA), independently through the TSA back office, and subsequently through use buy a number of people. The exception is that it's necessary to support life of a living animal and this the volume is of little consequence. Apparently they need to be removed from the koozies before going through the line through.

I'll think up a way to summarize.

 

[BlindSwordsman]

Would speed up the site as well... tried to limit use of fonts to titles and everything else but overlooked that, thank you!

Edit* went and looked again... yaaaa going to have to change that and get more consistent with font sizes. It changes things on mobile significantly from page to page vs pc, but even still.

Okiiieee ... So, this might be just personal preference, but here's what I also see ...

1) The small mobile version lacks a company logo on top. I opened the page on my phone and I went: Where is the company logo? ... It shows a transparent, sticky menu button (that sorts of reminds me of the watermarks that I put on the websites at the time when I was still using Netzero ). Check out how someone did the TCMAS page. It's a sticky menu with the TCMAS logo with extra links, which are also helpful. Even though, yes, that does take a bit more space, I still think that is better.

2) The company logo (??? ... Something with the R or something on white background) on the footer: I think it might look more professional with a transparent background, but then you will have issue as you choose the footer's background to be black (?), same color as some text on that logo.

Again, it's just my personal look of the thing. ... Alrighty! I probably should do something that somebody actually pays me for .