Switching our site from Flash to HTML - Help!

[maxreynal]

Hi All,

Based on feedback I got in this forum a couple of weeks ago, my partner and I decided to make our site more search-engine friendly and more e-commerce friendly by making it an HTML site rather than a flash site.

Our traffic is increasing, but our conversion rate is very low (we are selling a baby video that our company produced that is similar to the Baby Einstein or the Brainy Baby video series -- for toddlers and babies under two). We're quite sure we have a good product because we've gotten really great customer feedback on the ones we've sold so far.

I would love to get your advice on how to improve our conversion rate -- is it a design issue? Or do potential customers need some bit of information or some other "thing" in order to decide to buy?

http://www.jackthecuddlydog.com

Thanks so much for any help you can provide!

Best regards,
Max

[cubeshark]

Hi Max,

Currently, how are you tracking your visitors? Can you analyze the click throughs, and exit pages?
How are you getting your visitors to your site? Are your landing pages a continuation of your Ads?

If you can provide more info, then perhaps we would be more able to help you out :)

[maxreynal]

Our internet host provider is websitesource.com and they have a statistics software called awstats that lets us know the number of visitors and exit pages.

By changing to HTML from flash we've seen a quick jump in traffic -- also due to the fact that I place an ad on Google Adwords yesterday that got 22 click throughs onto our site before I reached my daily max budget. Overall we had 63 visitors yesterday, versus a high of 26 last week. The landing page from the Google Adwords ads is our homepage.

The key selling tools on the site that I was thinking would help customers decide to buy our baby video are the video preview (which looked better when we had the flash site), and the parent reviews we posted. I know that when I'm on Amazon buying a book or CD, those are the two things I look at - reviews, and a sample of the songs or "search inside" the book. But at the moment it seems we need something more for people to take the step to become buyers.

Thanks again for any thoughts you might have!!!

[JPnyc]

I doubt it's a design issue. The site looks well done to me.

[EWB-James]

Looks pretty good. I would suggest adding some Babies! People tend to look at eyes when they browse the internet.

As far as conversion, I would suggest you talk to a professional copywriter who is good at sales copy. Your text could be stronger.

Also, ALWAYS speak of benifets, new Mothers are exceptionally moved when you tell them that it is the best thing for their baby.

[maxreynal]

Three GREAT points. Will try to address them asap. I appreciate your input.

Best, Max

Looks pretty good. I would suggest adding some Babies! People tend to look at eyes when they browse the internet.

As far as conversion, I would suggest you talk to a professional copywriter who is good at sales copy. Your text could be stronger.

Also, ALWAYS speak of benifets, new Mothers are exceptionally moved when you tell them that it is the best thing for their baby.

[justinpowell]

First off, I wish these videos were available 2 years ago! My twins are 3 1/2 and we went through the developmental video stage in a big way. My boys may end up being partial to women with blond hair because of all the times they saw Julie Clark at a young age. Jack the Cuddly Dog seems really well done and would have been a good alternative. Next time I'm in the city, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for the dog in the park.

But on to your site. I thought the overall design looks good and I commend you on having the courage to embrace HTML instead of Flash. HTML will be much more friendly to getting search engine traffic. However, if there are elements of your old site that you thought worked better using Flash, there's no harm in having a Flash animation embedded in an HTML page. The key is to have your content text and site navigation on the HTML page and limit the embedded Flash to animation only.

I also had to scroll down to see that you had a sample animation. I would make that more prominent, as I view that as a good way to convert visitors to buyers. Since I had to scroll, I didn't even see it in the side nav right away, I saw the text link in your footer first. I would suggest making this really obvious.

You could probably also reduce some of the 'white space' in order to fit more of the page content in the browser window.

Good luck!

[vbeal]

I went to your Web site to have a look and was VERY impressed. I did not click through to make my purchase however, because the buy now went directly to PayPal. I had expected to find out if you offer shipping to Canada (i.e shipping info page), and I also could not locate any information on your return policy or anything like that. So there is one reason why a purchase was lost.

I think your Web site information (other than mentioned above), and the design and images are perfect for the product you are selling.

(And yes I still would like to purchase your product)

Cheers!
Vangie

[maxreynal]

Thanks, Vangie!

You can feel free to email me directly at max@jackthecuddlydog.com if you like. We certainly will ship to Canada, and if the rates are the same as first class US Postal rates in the USA, shipping will be free until the end of the month.

Thanks for your input. Very helpful.

Regards,
Max

I went to your Web site to have a look and was VERY impressed. I did not click through to make my purchase however, because the buy now went directly to PayPal. I had expected to find out if you offer shipping to Canada (i.e shipping info page), and I also could not locate any information on your return policy or anything like that. So there is one reason why a purchase was lost.

I think your Web site information (other than mentioned above), and the design and images are perfect for the product you are selling.

(And yes I still would like to purchase your product)

Cheers!
Vangie

[Quan]

That's a great website! Very children friendly. Looks to me like you would want to target moms and dads. You could use Smarter Stats, a free tool, to see from which sources your visiters are coming from. Hopefully the search engines will now pick up your site better.