Hi All! Gee, this is getting to be a trend. I'm posting the Monday review on Tuesday again. Seems I forgot what day of the week it is. First of all - for anyone reading - this post isn't about buying anything or joining anything. It's about members learning together, k? Good... read on... REVIEW: GIFT SITES I've had several gift sites ask me how to make their site work better. One of them is Leonard Berghoef's site at; http://www.cedarrockgiftshop.com I used Leonard's site for this example, but you can apply this information to any gift site. Most gift sites struggle to make profit online - but that's not your fault as the site owner. It's because of the shortcomings of the parent company that fills the orders. I suspect they didn't yet know what "sells" online when they created their database. And -- I don't mean the products. The products are pretty cool, actually. The problem is that, on the Internet, we can't pick something up to say "Oh my God, isn't this the CUTEST thing!!" So, we need words to do it. Let me SHOW you, okay? First look at this page; http://www.cedarrockgiftshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2744 Okay? Seen it? Now go to this page: http://www.lindacaroll.com/giftsites/ And another example... Look at this page: http://www.cedarrockgiftshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2746 Now go look at this; http://www.lindacaroll.com/giftsites/girls.html See the difference? Making a gift site work "as is" is very difficult and takes a LOT of promotion because the response rate is SO, SO low. And it's no wonder. The parent site doesn't give you the kind of pages that inspire sales. Here's a two step approach that can help you start making some sales. 1) Monetize the Exit Door Sign up for Google Adsense and put Google Ads on the pages. You'll find people clicking on your ads to leave - which is better than clicking on the back button because at least you make a few cents a click. But that's not the entire solution. 2) Think Niche! Pick a really tight niche. Not "gifts" or "kitchen" but something that might encompass 2-12 items. A SMALL selection to target a specific marketing niche. Side note: This will be time consuming, so pick the areas you make most profit on to start with. Not a $5 item. Create a little site with enticing descriptions, like the example pages I created to show you. Use a domain name that describes what it sells. Like gifts-just4-girls.com -- or Make-Christmas-Memories.com. Side note: When choosing a domain name, use hyphens between words. Search engines can't read "runon" words, but the hyphen is a delimitor that helps them read the keywords in your domain name. Domains are only $8.95 at GoDaddy.com As you create the mini site, you can use the larger photo provided by the gift supplier. You add the description. Your "buy" link can put the item right into the cart at your "big" site. Once you've done one - promote that one. When sales start coming in, you can build another. Looking through their cart, there's TONS of niches you can hit. 50's memorabilia, bath products, scented candles. The nice thing about building your niche sites is that you can add links to affiliate programs in that niche. For example, if you only have 3 scented candles, go to CommissionJunction.com and find a candle vendor. Add their products to the right hand column of your niche site. Once you have 2+ niche sites up, you can link them together. A little space in the left column could be devoted to "our sister sites." Those links will help elevate your search engine ranking, too. If you try that approach, do come show us your niche sites when you start building them. : ) Linda P.S. If you need help with creating the site, let me know and I'll toss a couple of low cost options out, too. : )

Thanks for the great ideas, Linda. I'll have to give this a try if I can make some time available. We just started ours a week ago and we are getting heavy traffic. I am working on the backlinks and seo but if I could divert the traffic to a nitch site it should improve the conversion ratio. We are having problems with the dropshipper so we may have to change everything up before we can move ahead. I'll send you a link when the mini site is up and running.

Hi Arthur; With your site, I wouldn't switch to niches. The gift sites that should are the ones that have hundreds (or thousands) of low priced gifts in many categories. With your gift basket site, there's one thing I find confusing - and that's the crossover of items. For example, when I click "baby gift baskets" in the left column, I was expecting to see baby gift baskets. Instead, the first thing I saw was "bath and body baskets" and "birthday baskets" It took me a minute to realize that if I scroll down to the lower part of the page, I'd see the baby ones. That creates confusion and as soon as a shopper gets confused, they leave. DO you have a way of removing those "feature" listings at the top so that the baby baskets show at the top of the baby page? I'm not sure how much you can change on your site, but a couple of things I'd recommend are; a) Remove the banner rotation at the bottom. Banner rotations are a subconscious message that says "amateur marketer" because so many new sites use them to try get traffic. b) If you're able, change the top header. It looks very much like "we do this from home" and doesn't have the professional edge you need in the gift basket industry. To give you some ideas, have a peek at these sites; http://www.winecountrygiftbaskets.com/ http://www.expressgiftbaskets.net/ http://www.cuddlesngifts.net/ c) Change the tagline from "lowest prices and best service." It's never a good idea to even suggest competing on price unless you're Walmart. One gift basket company uses the tagline "sending smiles across the miles" -- that's the kind of tagline that shoppers can identify with. THey'll automatically think "Hey, I can send a gift to (someone's name) from here, too!" While you can't use their slogan, you can work on thinking of a more creative one that will create the frame of thought that you'd like in your shoppers. d) I'm not sure if you can modify those pages or not.. but if you can, you could add small snippets from buyers in the right column. For example, if I was looking at the Prince Charming basket and saw a little text bit in the right column saying "My husband loved this basket.. thank you so much" - those things affect buyers. : ) Linda

Hi Linda, Thanks for the information. I have tried so many things on my site that now I seem to have a jumbled mess. Im just not sure where to start to clean it up. Thanks again Sharon

Thank you so much for the review and suggestions. I don't know about the featured items but I think I can do the rest of the changes. I'll give it a try and let you know.