For website owners doing affiliate marketing or selling their own goods, generic contextual advertising such as Google Adsense should be an afterthought and not the focus of a site. Today’s review is an example of someone who aims to sell products online but they start mucking it up by sending users offsite through Adsense. I received a request from a Digital Point user, SFOD_D223, to review his site: Wares4Life. I didn’t ask for much information on it since if I’m going to tell someone how to fix their site, I better be able to figure out how it works and doesn’t work right now.
It took me a moment to figure out exactly how this site intends to make money:
The main feature greeting the first time visitor is the Google Adsense for search box! Is this a made for Adsense nightmare? No, I wouldn’t bother typing about one of those. It turns out this site is either a wholesaler or works through a dropshipper to find closeout goods and then markets them online. If the user does manage to scroll down on the index, they are faced with a nonsensical mashup of goods– everything from a decorative lamp with scrollwork and cherubs… to a pizza baking stone… to a home phone that looks like a cell flip phone. I was still puzzled as to what this site was trying to be.
I’ve never been a fan of huge online malls. If your name doesn’t start with Ama and end with Zon, I wouldn’t advise wasting your time trying to sell all things to all people from one site. If the user doesn’t recognize your store brand right away, the next best thing is to be specialized merchant that offers only a specific range of goods– that specialization imparts some degree of trust.
However, In an effort to fix what we have instead of start all over, I’ll offer up this quick blockup of what an mall site might look like:
The four columns of items (or even down to three columns) give visible separation and allow you to classify them into categories. Show that you have more lamps and more home lighting accessories. Show that you have other kitchen gear and a section for more baking items. This gives the impression of lots of stock rather than just a few items of random selection. And speaking of random selection, vary up the home page. Any programmer should be able to give you a solution in PHP or javascript that allows you to rotate what images and what items appear on the index. I don’t necessarily advocate rotating them on each page refresh but you do want to update them perhaps once a day.
The major thing I want to address about this site and the mockup is the simple point of wasted space above the fold. ‘The fold’ is a newspaper advertising term that refers to what people see without having to unfold the paper. On the browser– what does the user see without having to scroll down? With the current site, all they see is stock photography and a Google search box. That is a certain invitation to LEAVE the site as quickly as possible.
Get your products above the fold. Minimize the waste of space in the header as this is the most important part of your page. Above all, stop giving people a reason to click off of your site– you’re there to sell products, not push Adsense!
