The "Critique My Site" feature offers AuctionBytes readers a chance to submit their ecommerce websites for critique by readers, who will offer their suggestions for site design and for enhancing search engine placement. Today, Dylan Collett of Advatum Services Inc. submits his site, http://www.advatumdisplays.com.

AdvatumDisplays
Dylan created AdvatumDisplays.com using ProStores from eBay. The site offers quality tradeshow equipment. The company also sells on eBay under the User ID advatum. The trade-show equipment business is a success - Dylan said it turned into a "bona fide multi million dollar business" within a year of launching. But Dylan said he is perplexed about the failure of the website to convert visitors to buyers. Here's more about that, in Dylan's words.

"I've worked hard on it, but know it needs much more work because I spent about $2500 on Google AdWords and didn't get one sale. The Google AdWords strategy was likely not the problem, though I'm sure much could be tweaked. I focused quite a bit of time in researching and selecting keywords relevant to someone searching for our product. Google provides a handy tool for this, and I've always been pretty keyword conscious since my early days on eBay when titles were 45 characters long so I've kept an eye on how people found us for years now.

Some keywords, such as "trade show displays" (CTR 2.71%) got amazing traffic early, but no resulting sales. I paused these keywords, worrying about them being too broad and concentrated more specific keywords unquestionably related to our product.

Specifically, the AdWords campaigns together had the following statistics:
Total Clicks: 624
Total Impressions: 27,005
Total Click-Through-Rate: 2.31%
Average CPC: $3.90
Total Cost: $2,434.24

This ran for about four weeks total."

AdvatumDisplays.com displays the company phone number prominently at the top of the website. I asked Dylan if it was possible that Google AdWords was driving people to his website who then called to place an order. He said five sales have gone through the website, but each one is directly traced back to the client service team directing them to the site, and are not sales derived from AdWords visitors. Dylan said he keeps track of "how heards" as carefully as possible.

If you have suggestions for Dylan on site design, layout, search and navigation, marketing or search-engine optimization, please post a comment here:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=21443

In the last issue, readers critiqued AdLibPromo.com (http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y206/m12/abu0180/s03). Six readers reviewed the site and made suggestions focused on drawing in the shopper and making it easier for them to find what they are looking for through navigation and design techniques. We will check in with AdLibPromo's owner Juli in a few weeks and see if she has found the process helpful and if she was able to act on any of the suggestions. In the meantime, please feel free to add your suggestions to AdLibPromo:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=21353

And if you have suggestions for today's feature site, AdvatumDisplays.com, please post them here: http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=21443

And if you would like to be considered for an AuctionBytes "Critique My Site" feature, let me know by emailing me at ina@auctionbytes.com.