Looking for some honest advice

Hi everyone
I would like some feedback on my online shop . There are two areas that I am looming at . The first is that I think that my rate of conversion is a bit low and I think that there might be something lacking from the content . Any advice in this area would be greatly appreciated . I bought the template and have modified it to suite my needs . The other area is in SEO it seems to be a bit slow moving up the rankings and if anyone can see any glaring errors I would be happy for any advice on this . This is a business site so I am looking for brutal contructive honesty . Thanks in advance
here is the website
www.biltongonline.co.uk

__________________
biltong - South African food to write home about.

I suppose you're not aiming at the veggie market, but as a veggie myself - one look at your header sent me straight to the 'back' button!

__________________
Martina

Pet Portraits by Martina Newton
Drayton Private Tutoring

Your website appears to have been developed by a company that advertise SEO and marketing, I am assuming that they only are doing the website for you and not the SEO side of things?

Your site is nearly there in my opinion, does not offend etc, however not sure you are making the best of your layout, you have a section "our shop" I assume you have an actual shop? - if so why are there not any pictures of it that will help build trust that you are legit etc.

You home page tells me you have a new chutney, but shows me none of the products that I may want to purchase on the first page, take for example a member here who works with Box.co.uk if you click this site within seconds you know what they sell, but the name of the site makes no reference to computers, your first page should be your shop front, get as much as you can into your shop front.

Many things you can improve on to make a difference.

__________________
PDF Software | K Rend | Claim Back Construction Retention |Fast Drying Screeds

Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance

Thanks for the advise , i had never thought of the front page as being the shop , it has been set up that the front page was supposed to be completely optimized for my main key word . I can change it around so that the home page is the front page of the shop is the home page of the website , do you think those buttons i can make into images and have this as my front page and make the page that i have a secondary page .. that would help a lot with with the rate of conversion i hope,

__________________
biltong - South African food to write home about.

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion about capital and lower case letters and the punctuation has gone a bit wonky. If you want me to help with this in my professional capacity, please PM or email me.

Another thing that stood out is that the Titbits link at the top opened up a new window in my browser. I guess it's mostly personal taste, but I HATE when sites do that with no warning - it makes me think it's a pop-up ad. Other links open in a new tab, still others navigate within the same tab. Think about choosing a policy (for instance, internal site links are in the same tab, external links in a new one) and stick to it.

I have to admit that I have no idea what Biltong is. And after clicking the link on your site that says "what is biltong"... I still have no idea what biltong is or might be, nor what I should be doing with it. It's fair enough that you wanted to write your personal story about how important and special it is to you, that's good, making it personal, but it doesn't answer the question! Some sort of condiment or cooking sauce? What does it go with? What's it made of? How is it made? Why might it not be ready on time to be shipped? And above all, why is YOUR biltong better? Okay, many of your customers already know. And you say that there are lots of articles about it online. But it's not really great business practice to tell your customers to JFGI.

__________________
Virtually Mary - Virtual Assistant Services
Follow VirtuallyMary on Twitter

Thanks for the pointers and opinions I have some good ideas going and will impliment some of the changes over the next week or so . If any one has any. SEO Pointers tha would also be a great help . I have some theoretical knowledge but little practice (or confidence ) i working on vgettin back links by using squidoo and such sites as well some other web2.0 platforms such as posterous . All slow going at the moment . Anyway again thanks for the constructive advise I will show it again when it has worked on some more

Thanks all

__________________
biltong - South African food to write home about.

Bit late, but thats me

Overall, I love it, looks the part. But echoing Mary's comments, never heard of Biltong, so no idea what it is, and looking at the description, still none the wiser, guessing its some kind of beef jerky.

SEO wise, your page titles could do with some work, home & our shop have the same, contact us says... contact us These are SEO gold dust, so make the most of them.

Audience wise, who are you aiming at? Is it exposing UK people to biltong, or is it a niche market for UK based South Africans? If it's aimed at non South Africans, then you need to very quickly explain it, whilst capturing my attention to investigate further. Currently the assumption is that we've all heard of it.

Every one like to try something new, with more of us becoming wannabe Gordon Ramseys in the kitchen, so make me want to order it and wow my friends!

Maybe example dishes and easy recipes, like good old Levi
Levi Roots' Reggae Reggae Sauce™. Put music in your food! Recipes

Or comparisons, "this tastes better than sirloin steak but is much cheaper" something that we can identify with.

__________________
cheers Steve
Forum Admin - teaboy and general gofer...

Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance | Find me on Google+ | or even Facebook!

My Local Services - The UK and US Online Business Directory | JobsVitae - Recruitment Help and CV Creation

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

thanks for your comments Steve I can see that there is a lot of work that need to be done to the front page . Please can you tell me what i should be doing with these pages. I am not sure what you mean by being SEO gold dust.
thanks for your time on this it is very much appreciated !

Sebastian

__________________
biltong - South African food to write home about.

No worries, put simply, the page titles are a really important factor for the likes of Google when it comes to SEO. There are lots of other factors, but page titles are important, and easily remedied.

In theory, each page should have a good descriptive title, corresponding to that page, but incorporating keywords that users are likely to search for.

A good example is look at Marks & Sparks, then select a page and look at their page title.

__________________
cheers Steve
Forum Admin - teaboy and general gofer...

Forum Rules and FAQ's at a glance | Find me on Google+ | or even Facebook!

My Local Services - The UK and US Online Business Directory | JobsVitae - Recruitment Help and CV Creation

If you're here to spam, then expect a ban

Here's a link to Steve's SEO 101 post - lots of people have found it very useful when starting their SEO.

__________________
Virtually Mary - Virtual Assistant Services
Follow VirtuallyMary on Twitter