Santa needs your help (Full Version)

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bwatford -> Santa needs your help (9/14/2005 0:29:49)

First off hello to all I am new here and need ome expert feedback.

My company does Santa Letters for the Christmas season and we have revamped our entire site this year. We are getting orders already but the marketing budget is out running the profit at this point by just a few dollars. We're not really worried this early in the season but we seem to only be getting about 15% of users past the main page on the site and I would like some reviews and comments on the site design and why you guys think we are loosing them on the main page. Don't hold back let us have it. We are installing a customer service ticket system so the mailto: on the menu will not be there much longer. Just trying to tidy up before the busy season.

Temp URL:

http://santasmailbag.no-ip.com

Thanks In Advance,

BWatford



Nicole -> RE: Santa needs your help (9/14/2005 1:52:18)

Hi B

At first glance, and I'm sure this is what 85% of your visitors are judging you by, your site is too serious. It needs to be fun, bright, happy, colourful, lots of red and white, snow, sleighs, reindeer, good quality images, easy (simple) navigation, even though it's not aimed at the children themselves, it obviously has to appeal to those who get excited about this aspect of Christmas and want their children to receive a fun, simple, colourful letter from Santa.

Also, how are people ffinding your site? What keywords and phrases arre they typing into search engines, what sites are you linked to?

That's my opinion anyway,, hope it helps.

Nicole



womble -> RE: Santa needs your help (9/14/2005 5:37:41)

I agree with Nicole, far too serious looking and text heavy, and I don't think the black background helps much. On the nav, you've got an awful lot going on there. Some of the nav, e.g. the T&Cs, privacy policy etc. are things that while they need to be there, probably are best not on the main nav. Why not just use plain text links at the foot of the page - works for many business sites [;)]



bwatford -> RE: Santa needs your help (9/14/2005 8:40:38)

Thanks so far guys and gals.

We did have a colorful, "fun" site last year and in the original web design this year. However with the graphics heavy fun version dial up users are killed off. The load times were terrible taking about 38-60 seconds at dialup. With the current design it is at about 15 seconds. Any suggestions there?

Here's the PPC keyword list from google.

christmas
claus's
clauz
elves
kringle
letter from santa
letters from santa
letters from santa claus
mail from santa
misseltoe
norad
north pole postmark
northpole
nothpole
personalized santa letters
raindeer
reindeer
reindeers
santa
santa claus letters
santa letter
santa letters
santa mail
santa's
santa's mailbag
santaclaus
santaclause
santaklaus
santaland
santas
santas mailbag
snowman
snowmen
xmas
"a visit from st nicholas"
"christmas trees"
"frosty the snowman"
"jolly old"
"kris kringle"
"letter from santa"
"letters from santa"
"north pole"
"personalized letters"
"sant claus"
"santa claus"
"santa clause"
"santa clauss"
"santa klaus"
"santa letters"
"santa's little helper"
"santa's mailbag"
"santa's village"
"santa's workshop"
"santas mailbag"
"st nicholas"
"st nick"



womble -> RE: Santa needs your help (9/14/2005 10:16:57)

15 seconds on dial-up still seems a little slow, considering you've mainly text on the home page. You nav is all images though, which may be contributing to the slow speed. You've an awful lot of styling in your code, and you could probably reduce that by using css for styling, though moving completely over to css for positioning and everything is a lot of hard work and a very steep learning curve, particularly if you've only got a short amount of time. You could style the nav relatively easily with css though, and that may shave some time off. You may want to check out the css forum here though - there's loads of useful information there.

As far as keywords go, you seem to have it pretty well convered, though I'm an expert on neither SEO or Santa. [;)] What's really going to help your ranking is inbound links though. You need to work on getting other relevant sites to link to yours. You've currently got a Google PR of 0, which you'll need to do some work to improve. You may want to check out the SEO/business forum here for more info on SEO.



bwatford -> RE: Santa needs your help (9/16/2005 1:17:52)

Ok I am revamping the site to include more graphics to color it up and am revamping the text heavy pages. So far it looks really good. I will have it done in about a week and will give you guys a heads up when it's ready.

btw we are going to drop the black background for a white one with snowflakes.



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