Your comments appreciated...

[dshipe]

http://www.scriptcalendar.com

The website above is pulling in traffic from google, but conversions are very low.

What am I doing wrong? Are there improvements to the copy you can suggest? What recommendations do you have?


Any help is very much appreciated...

[MikeS]

[Steve MacLellan]

Hi Dan,

You have a nice looking website and calendar -- well done.

I wonder if the low conversions could be because of the amount of competition? Anyone doing a search for web calendar software probably has the technical know how to do an installation, and there are a number of free packages around.

For example is a great one that is easy to use and supports MySQL and http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/ offers a service where you can create calendars for free that other people can access using their RSS feedreader.

Of course this doesn't mean that some people would not be interested in buying yours, but many people will opt to take advantage of some of the free ones.

Is there any chance this might be affecting your conversion ratio?

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

[ChristyK]

[MarkL]

Hi Dan,

Fascinating product.

The other members made some well-focused and helpful observations and suggestions.

If I could, I'd like to add a couple more:

As cliché as it sounds, the sales copy gospel of showcasing your product's "benefits" versus solely detailing its "features" seems to hold true in this case. You DO have the benefits dotted throughout the text. However, I fear they are hiding among dense sentences that, as the other members commented, might be a little tech-heavy and daunting to the casual Web site owner who just wants to add a simple interactive calendar to their site.

If you could pull your features out in a clean way (e.g., through the use of bullet points, headers, and appropriate formatting and display with a controlled use of color and script techniques such as varied fonts sizes, bolding, underlining, and italics), the site would instantly pull together.

You've done a great job of placing a lot of useful information on just the main page. Perhaps if you broke it out (as described above), you'd be able to immediately grab your visitors' attention and appeal to a variety of consumer styles (e.g., those visitors that just want to scan for information as well as those who will take the time to really get in there and read the fine print). Information design is so important these days--especially when a visitor can (and will) click right on by your site if they have even the slightest bit of confusion as to the how/what/where/why of your site, products, and/or services. Keeping your design as clean and straightforward--so your excellent product speaks for itself--is always a great goal to shoot for. When elements on your page compete for the viewer's attention, readability suffers.

All in all, Dan, I think you're almost there. With some minor reformatting and possibly some editing with a focus on highlighting those user benefits, you'll surely begin to see some higher conversion rates. Assessing price points and marketing strategies, particularly targeting your most likely demographic with surgical precision, are also ways that you might take your product to the next level.

Cheers and best of luck.

Mark

[KansasDragon]

[dshipe]

[Maggie]