David Fiske Affiliate Marketing & Web Development

I thought I would post a couple of seminars - the first is a look at Compare Sat Nav in it's current form; the second will look at the new version.

So, here's a look at what the site does now, what's wrong with it and what works.
 
Let's start with a screenshot of the home page:



Images

The first thing to notice is the lack of images. For a site encouraging sales of satellite navigation systems, a distinct lack of images is bad! People buy on what they see as well as what they read, not just the latter.

There is a banner but this only appears on the first page and is AJAX based. From my stats, it rarely gets clicked.

Navigation

The AJAX navigation bar next to the logo is great in principle but has it's problems. Firstly, because the site is nearly tableless, the code I have used to form three columns in the navigation means that the navigation sometimes doesn't work in Internet Explorer. 39.8% of all unique visitors to date have used IE version 5 or higher (historically, IE had a market share of around 80%+ but it appears Firefox is on the up!). So, ultimately, I could be losing 40% of my traffic if they couldn't get to grips with the navigation.

Plus, the navigation is organised how I would use the site. It's not necessarily how shoppers would use the sight. For example, finding the cheapest sat nav system is located under the Menu tab. I would hazard a guess and say not many people would think to look there.

Colours

The colour scheme is not the best but it is adequate. Blues suggest a professional website. The shade of brown used is the best shade to compliment the shade of blue used.

I could have used another colour instead of blue but blue links tend to encourage clicks (surfers are programmed to thinking anything blue and underlined is a link).

Statistics

The stats package I use makes use of JavaScript tracking. his is great when JavaScript is enabled on the browser but if it is not, no stats are tracked.

Plus, the package I use is limited in what it tracked. For example, I can see Unique Visitors but I cannot see Hits. I can see stats for the current day (such as keywords, popular pages, etc) but this isn't archived which limits the power of the software

Servers

At the beginning, I had to put the price comparison section onto the DBFCS server and the static content onto the Compare Sat Nav server. It doesn't take a genius to figure that this is not ideal.

Product Page

An analysis of the home page is all good and well but it doesn't reflect the sales page - the product listing.



Each product page is keyword targeted and as a result, the product pages are more frequently landed upon than the home page.
Each page follows the same format. There's a description at the top (with a thumbnail image that when clicked, reveals a larger image care of even more AJAX code!).

A bar that highlights potential savings is also shown. This is good as it shows the visitor that they can save money. It's bad in the sense that it takes the focus off the main function of the page - price comparison. I need people to look at the prices. Yes, showing a saving works but it also distracts.

The price comparison follows which features logos. Logos have a positive side in that people can relate to them but have a negative effect in that it draws attention away from the prices.

The best price is highlighted to show it is the cheapest. In hindsight, it should be bigger, bolder or brighter as it doesn't necessarily convey that it's the best price effectively.

Underneath the price comparison, there is a suggestion of other similar models. I'm in two minds over this. It's good in the sense that if someone doesn't want product A, they can quickly go to product B. It's bad in the sense that if they were nearly about to buy a £500 system and then see a £100 system, they could end up purchasing the cheaper system. Six of one and half a dozen of the other.

Overall

Compare Sat Nav does what it says on the tin - it is a satellite navigation price comparison search. It doesn't really do much else. There is no reason to come back.

Great in the short term but bad in the long term.

I need to start building a cache of returning visitors so that when they look to buy another system, they come back. Why sell one when you can sell one every 5 years?

The New Site

I cannot reveal too much just yet. I have a few things left to do ready to launch the new version. The worst bit will be setting up all the 501 redirects from the DBFCS server because everything will now reside on the Compare Sat Nav server. I'm also considering a couple of new advertisers and perhaps more frequent updates.

I can tell you I have got round to setting up the mailing list and I have some very unique features that I have not yet seen on any other price comparison site.

All will be revealed soon....

Video: Russian Tunnel Syndrome