Help me review and make suggestions for the state of my site

[Adam_Maynard 0]

Hello, We run a site that sells new machinery and tools for woodworking and metalworking.

I have had a decline in sales in recent times, and I am unsure if this is due to problems with my site.

I would love some feedback and suggestions on how to optimize.

Our site is https://www.bibbtool.com/

I am new to the back end of optimizing the site and don't know too much, so I appreciate the help.

Thanks!

 

[ArtcoInc 359]

@Adam_Maynard Everybody is experiencing a decline in sales! So, what can you do about it?

Ask yourself, what sets your business apart from the others? Products? Service? Pricing? Where/how are you advertising?

Regarding the site itself, just a couple of quick observations ...

1) You have a paid ad in the middle of the home page that is not responsive. This means that when viewing with a small device (ie: phone), there will be a left-right scroll bar *just* to accommodate the ad.

2) When viewed on a large screen (ie: desktop computer), the left column is quite narrow, resulting in the 'Best Sellers' to be a very long list, with each displayed listing broken up into lines of only 2 or 3 words. This make for awkward reading. Either make the left column wider (preferred), or choose a smaller font.

3) Under 'Categories', you have listed 'Powermatic'. This is a manufacturer of woodworking tools, is it not? Why is it in it's own category?

4) You offer free shipping on a $10k+ bandsaw weighing over 1400 pounds (Jet 7060) ???? You need to emphasize this more! I did not catch it at first in the scrolling slide show at the top of your home page!

Again, just a couple of quick observations ...

Malcolm

[Jack_mcs 970]

7 hours ago, Adam_Maynard said:

I would love some feedback and suggestions on how to optimize.

In addition to what Malcolm said, you need to work on the SEO. The web page title for your home page is "Bibbtool". That means the most important keyword you are going after is a word no one will be searching for. Take a look at your competitors and see what they use. Yours might be different if your focus is on a specific product line. You can use the keywords tool in your adwords account (it's free) to find keywords relative to your site. 

On your category and manufacturer  pages, you need to use the description options available through Header Tags SEO. The search engines base the majority of their ranking on text but those pages don't have any relevant text. You need to provide text (a short paragraph is usually enough if worded well) to give the search engines help in knowing what the pages are about. If you don't provide the text, they will do it for you. Take a look at your listings for table saws. It starts with "Products 1 - 20 of 27 - New Customer. I am a new customer.".  Doesn't do much for getting good ranking and attracting visitors.

[burt 5,151]

To my eye (and I do realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder), your site looks dull, boring.  It looks like a "bolt on" that no-one really looks after or cares about.

• Have you ever seen a successful site that has "shadows" on every box ?
  Even worse, when you mouseover a category in the index page, it expands and has a shadow.
  
  Get rid of all these rubbish effects.
   
• You have categories and brands in the horizontal bar
  why have them in the left hand column.  Vice versa.
   
• You have a *massive* white gap at the bottom of your site.
  Which is obviously some sort of error in the code.
   
• Your product page is bare of data. 
  No title, description, keywords.
  Product descriptions are dull.

Where are the videos of your tools in action?
Where are your Customer Reviews?
Where is your blog that explains how to use Tools, ideas of things to make and so on.

[LeeFoster 207]

4 minutes ago, burt said:

Where is your blog that explains how to use Tools, ideas of things to make and so on.

You didn't give us that addon yet, lol

[♥ecartz 593]

5 hours ago, LeeFoster said:

You didn't give us that addon yet, lol

There's one right here:  https://wordpress.com/

No login integration but that's not really necessary for this purpose. 

[ArtcoInc 359]

6 hours ago, LeeFoster said:

You didn't give us that addon yet, lol

(off topic, but ...)

28 Days ... 2016 - #28

[LeeFoster 207]

36 minutes ago, ecartz said:

There's one right here:  https://wordpress.com/

No login integration but that's not really necessary for this purpose. 

 

23 minutes ago, ArtcoInc said:

(off topic, but ...)

28 Days ... 2016 - #28

I was actually joking.

[♥raiwa 1,343]

• On desktop, your store logo looks unsharp. The logo image file has enough resolution, but you for sure upsized the left part with the logo.
• As you are using correct sized thumbnailes for the category images, when they get zoomed in, they look pixelized/unsharp
• the shipping estimator doesn't show shipping costs when entering zip code as a guest
• the shipping estimator gets out of focus when the page reloads after entering a zip code and clicking on the update button
• the layout of the shipping estimator module looks broken on mobile (other parts too)
• there are no pages with info about your company, shipping, privacy. conditions.

 

[♥14steve14 588]

I had a quick look at your site and I have to agree with most of the other comments.

There is huge whitespace at the bottom of some pages.
The seo needs to be sorted on nearly every page.
For some reason the index page is narrower that the full width of the page in places. I would also make more of the free shipping box on the front page.
There are lots of duplications of bits such as the boxes in the left column. get rid of one or the other of them. Personally I would get rid of the left column and keep everything in the header or footer.
On the index page all the drop shadows distract from the products so either lighten them or remove them. Same as the image borders - remove them.
On the product pages the model module looks a bit silly and out of place where it is by the buy button. Move it up to under the product title
If you could get your Categories drop down listings in the header to look the same as the Brands one that would be even better.
I am not too sure about the way the login/create account link works. That flyout thing does look a little weird and the page does look cramped.

As Phoenix is modular make use of the easy to change sort order of those modules.

My only other advice would be to look and see what your competitors are doing, and try to make your site stand out from those. Look at your site from your customers point of view and make sure it offers what they want. So if you have product data sheets, or supplier pdf data about the products add them to the product. All that is needed is a link or an image or something that is a clickable link. Once all that is done add in all your company legal stuff such as all the policies you must need, and good luck.

Dont be disheartened by all the negative comments as most of them are an easy fix.

Edited September 24 by 14steve14

[Hotclutch 130]

Why assume a problem with your site when most economies have changed due to Covid ? What's the demand for the products you sell now in Covid conditions ?

Anyway, I don't see any major issues with the site. If it was driving traffic before it should still do so now, nothing significant has changed recently in the online world.

1) You could assign better more descriptive titles to your pages.

2) Your use of the rel="canonical" meta tag is wrong. Probably Google is saving you from yourself and ignoring it.

3) You have blank meta description tags on a lot of pages.