Site Analysis
What’s wrong with this Web site?
Little Dudes and Divas is a small business with some very big competition. Started seven years ago by Steve and Susan Karasanti, husband and wife, the company has three employees and sells clothes and accessories for infants and toddlers. Ninety percent of the sales come through the Web site, the rest through a newly opened brick-and-mortar store in Rockaway Park, N.Y., where the company is based.
“Our business model is based on keeping things fresh and selling only items which we feel are of the highest quality,” Steve Karasanti said. “If a new bag or print comes out, we want to be the first to have it on our site. You don’t want your customer to tell you that she saw something on another site from a manufacturer you carry.”
Can a company this small go head-to-head with such powerhouses as Macy’s, Nordstrom, Target, Babies “R” Us, and Diapers.com? It isn’t easy. “When we first started selling diaper bags and diaper bag accessories online, there was much less competition,” Mr. Karasanti said. “It’s extremely challenging to compete with such well-known Web sites that sell the same items as us. It’s very hard to compete with the bigger online companies on price, but we can compete by giving our customers personal attention.”
For example:
- “If a customer wants to see a particular bag packed a certain way, we will make a video for them and post it.”
- “We will spend time answering all your e-mails and sit on the phone with you until you feel comfortable ordering and all your questions have been answered.”
- “We have customers that call us when they had a bad day and need to talk, but they still manage to pick our brains about that diaper bag they had their eye on.”
- “We may have a store policy, but we always find a way to make a change to keep our customers happy.”
To get the word out, the Karasantis have increased their e-mail marketing efforts to relay sales and promotions to their customers. They have also invested heavily in search engine optimization. “We did extensive research on S.E.O.,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We only use methods that are considered ethical. Our site is filled with meaningful and unique content.”
The Karasantis say they review their Google Analytics reports constantly. “We started to concentrate more on reports and customer behavior while shopping,” Mr. Karasanti said. “These reports help you understand why a customer may click off a page, or why they abandoned their cart. You can tell things like what page gets the most clicks, what page customers see when they leave the site. If you have a page on the site that gets a lot of clicks, but customers don’t continue to shop and just leave, it’s a good indication that something is wrong. It could be a price error, a missing picture, a bad link, or the page is not loading correctly.”
The Karasantis have also been active in social media, using blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to try to drive more sales. They post frequently and respond quickly to visitor comments. “We use them to keep our customers current and give them reasons to keep coming back,” Mr. Karasanti said.
So why were they interested in having their site reviewed here? “We are hoping to get a different angle on the things that we are doing well and the things that can use improvements,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We are not scared of criticism. We are scared that there might be something that we can do to improve, but we just don’t know about it.”
Please take a look at the site and consider a few questions:
- Does it provide enough information to make you want to buy anything?
- Does it make it easy to buy?
- Does it create a sense of trust?
- What do you think of how the company is using social media?
- Do you have specific suggestions about the design, navigation or marketing?
- Why would you buy from this site instead of one of their bigger competitors?
Next week, in our follow-up, we’ll collect highlights from your comments, and I’ll offer some of my own impressions. And we’ll get Mr. Karasanti’s response, as well.
Would you like to have your business’s Web site or mobile app reviewed? This is an opportunity for companies looking for an honest (and free) appraisal of their online presence and marketing efforts.
To be considered, please tell me about your experiences — why you started your site, what works, what doesn’t and why you would like to have the site reviewed — in an e-mail to youretheboss@bluefountainmedia.com.
Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development and marketing company based in New York.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=927b30a92444dcc336afda251bfe5344
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