Hello all, This is my first post. I was a lurker for a long time but had trouble signing up with my old email. Regardless, here I am.

I launched my new website last week. So far I received 0 leads from the website. Not one email - no nothing. I am currently on an active campaign to rank higher on google. I am using some google ads, and linking all my social media accounts etc. In the near future I will be adding video and maybe a blog to the site to gain more ranking. Next week the site will be mobile compatible too! I love critique and feel that is very important to grow and learn. If you can critique my website and let me know why I may not be getting leads (maybe it's a little early yet?) let me know. I am fairly new to all this technology so any help would be much appreciated. http://www.magicalnick.com Thanks so much! Nick

I think your biggest advantage is the copy of the site. A lot of strong wording, could be a bit tighter with some work.

If you need design work, shop around enough and you can do it on the cheap at fiverr.com. Not all sellers are created equal though...

Regarding booking shows, it's not an "if you build it, they will come" scenario. Keep in mind it can take up to two weeks for google to have their spiders crawl your site. And, you simply may not be catering to your keywords well. And, your message may not be on target for your designed clients. The nice thing about the internet is you can change as you go.

A website is not just a brochure that slides in gigs without future work. It needs a method of consistent traffic to funnel in clients. Did anyone know you built your site? Did you have people who may want to buy visiting it? Or have people visiting who could promote the fact that it launched?

Per the source code it looks like you have Yoast installed = Good! A few things you can change to help your rankings:

1. Your title is currently "Magical Nick - Central Pennsylvania Magician Children's Entertainment." I'd change this to include more keywords. (here's a hint: the word "children" is not a good word. "Kids" is better)

2. Your meta description is: "Magical Nick is a Central Pennsylvania Magician, solely specializing in children's entertainment. Serving towns like Harrisburg, York, Camp Hill and more." Again, more keywords.

When I say more keywords I do not mean stuff your meta with "magician for kids, magician, magician, etc."

Make it flow nice and easy, but using "magician" more than once is perfectly fine.

Design-wise there is no distinct path for the visitor to go and if you're doing adwords you'll be spending a lot more than you should because I'm assuming your bounce rate is in the 70-80% range.

Josh

I advise you to purchase the book "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies." All the secrets are listed in that book. I know because it worked for me.

Thanks for the input! Josh- Can you elaborate a tad on the design of the site. I was trying to act like a customer that came to the site for the first time. I did notice my contact information is not visibly seen until I click on contact info or packages info. Is this what you mean? The box in the middle of the page that says "birthday star package" used to say contact information that linked to the contact page. However, I found that I would rather have the customer go the packages page first and then get contact information from there.. That was my theory for changing that box. I didn't design the site but am working with a web guy that created the page. I am at a loss for what I can do to change the path? I tried to correct my title and meta description. Hopefully I did it right. If not I can always tweak again.

Nick,

First off, I do not see any type of lead generation whatsoever. The contact form does not count as lead generation either. You need to have a system in place to gain an email for follow-up campaigns. But you need to have a way of getting it to where they feel THEY want to give it to you. THESE are the ones who are willing to give something to you and THOSE are the ones you want.

Also, besides SEO I would also show some TLC to your FB page as well. I checked it out and it seems like you only have 70 fans. Now, if these are 70 fans who have either hired you or are potential buyers, than that's great. What other networking efforts have you tried both locally or regionally? Also, how much time would you say you put into your social media content per day and what content are you providing?

In regards to using social media, the idea is to "stir up the pot" on a weekly basis. If you can generate higher engagement by having your fans commenting, sharing and "liking" your posts, your impressions will increase and you'll increase your chances of being seen by more people thus increasing your abilities to be booked. By your MESSAGE is critical and how you engage is just as important.

Are people talking about you? Look at your Google Analytics and see where a majority of people are seeing you and what keywords are working for you. I am not a huge believer in SEO like I was 2 years ago. So many factors now play a role and how people find you. Now everything is leaning more towards relevance and location-based popularity.

If I were you, my first piece of free advice is to go on Facebook and seek out groups who you believe would be interested in hiring you or at least networking with you. These could be Facebook communities such as Mother's, family oriented businesses, and other local businesses that will be willing to encourage their clients to use your services and you return the favor back to them.

I could literally talk about this stuff for HOURS as this is what I do for a living but I am about to head into a meeting. Just thought I'd chime in

Good luck.

My question to you would be what exactly are you expecting? Eatonmagic is so correct in that everything to operate properly and efficiently requires systems to be in place. It is 95% wasted effort without it.

I also agree that many get a web site thinking "build it and they will come"...they won't. You have to get them to come, you have to invite them to come, you have to give them reason to come, you have to make it easy for them to find you and come, and you mostly you have to have the system(s) in place to get them to respond EXACTLY as you desire when they come. If any of these steps is not in place, weak or broken the entire thing collapses.

If these systems aren't in place you will not be able to monetize it and everything up to this point is wasted effort and expense. You need to fill in the rest of the structure, the rest of the puzzle.

It is a process and you must control each step to get the desired result.

Your site screams of the typical kids party entertainer, rather than separating you from the pack. To be honest your first line on the About Magical Nick page of "Magical Nick has performed magic for audiences since the young age of six." I would leave the page right them and there, but that's just me. It screams unprofessional, yet so many magicians, especially kids performers seem to like and use this approach, which creates such a poor perspective. It's not a professional or respectable perspective, but rather a cute scrapbook memory, but not what would make me part with my hard earned money and trust the success of my kids event to you.

So my thoughts are, good you have the basics of a web site up, good for you, now you have to create the draw, motivation and key aspects that resonate with the prospective target customer to take your desired call to action. Are you saying what they are seeking or what you want them to know? These are often two different thing, many times opposing perspectives.

As also mentioned there is not lead gen, which without I don't know how you can expect results other than by dumb luck or laziness or price shoppers if your price is low-end (but based on your site they potential customer may never get to that).

I like the feel of it for your market, just needs some further thought, effort and system creation. Best of luck, some good info offered here is a start.

Mindpro- Thanks for your honest opinions. It helps to get a better view on what I am doing and can do to improve. Ever since my website was launched an hour hasn't gone by that I haven't been planning,tweaking and getting ideas to improve not just the site but other aspects of my business too. I am working on a lead gen as we speak. I am not going to post here what my goal is or where I want to take this but I do have a goal and my mind is set on that. I can say that I do want to stay in the market of birthday parties, daycare's, and family events. That is my niche and something I truly enjoy doing. As far as the website goes I will continue tweaking and making improvements per everyone's input and suggestions. If there is anything more you would like to share please do.

Good for you. As long as you have a clear vision and direction, you don't have to share it here (although you may get more specific assistance and answers from here if you do).

You are also correct in that a web site is continually a work in progress if you are evolving through new and additional implementation, testing and tweaking. My first advice is not to let it overwhelm you, yet also understand that when you look at others web sites (which we all tend to do) that their goals, direction, targets, call to action and systems may not be the same as yours. As said earlier, one size does not fit all. Some of my web sites if seen by many here would not like it or think it is effective, when in reality it is very effective and much the way it is by design, testing, knowing my markets inside and out, knowing my target prospects and most of all knowing the process of their needs, interests thinking and the process of how I want them to respond. This is one reason I will not share my sites with most others. They are not intended for them, they will not understand the process behind them and even then I have probably 20-30 sites and each is specific and different from the others.

My point is take the advice as offered but make sure it is first good advice, and then that it is advice that is applicable and precise for your specific systems, targets and markets. It is a science. And all of this is before you ever even get to SEO, social media, PPC, Ad words, and all of the current related available tools. Many of my sites serve me well without any of them, yet other may rely on them most importantly. My other word of advice, and this is so popular among kids performers, is don't think you need to know it all and do it all yourself. Trust, use and outsource to others that specialize in the areas that you are not familiar or skilled in. This is a key part to successful business. Way too many performers spend way to much time trying to work in their business (by trying to master all of these aspects) rather than spending this so important time and effort to work on their business.

While many will not understand this or will choose to argue with this, while it may appear to be less expensive and save you money to learn and do some of this on your own, that is often a misperception, as your time, effort and investment spent on outsourcing or contracting with those that specialize in an specific area will actually save you time, effort and most of all money, getting to results more quickly, while allowing you more opportunity, time and effort to work on your business to progress it.

The kids and family market is a great, strong market. Most of all it's a market that most in it do not operate and function to it's best potential. Many kids and family performers get stunned in the growth process, become complacent, and do not have the best business skills. They tend to focus on many of the less important or wrong things. Just look at the Little Darlings section in the Café 95% of the activity is about the tricks, props and very basic performance topics, rarely about business and effective success practices. The threads with the lowest posts are the ones about non-performance or trick-related topics. What they often consider professional is often very questionable. It has been this way for the 38 years I've been in entertainment. This makes this still, as crowed as it may appear, a wide open, easy to dominate market if approached and executed properly,

There is so much more but that's all for now, as when I start to offer my advice it tends to bring out others who often quickly derail threads and do not appreciate it. Best of luck, you are on the right track (just by asking and being open-minded and sincerely trying to understand this shared info puts you far beyond many others).

Prospects like to see promo videos. Start recording your shows. Work on having a videos fro 2 - 3 minutes long. I record my own by bringing my camcorder.

Dynamike - Thanks! I actually have been recording all my recent shows for this purpose. I need to start working on getting these together soon. Nice to meet you Dynamike your performances look like a lot of fun!

Hi,
I only have this to say... purple and green should never be seen!
Ade

Hey Nick,

I checked out your site and it looks good. I viewed it from the perspective that I was checking you out to hire for my kids party. There is nothing that turns me off to make me look for someone else.

I would like to see the prices of you packages, and not have to wait for you to respond to my request. People are busy and do not want to wait. (I filled out your form 15 minutes ago, and I still do not know your show rates, It is 6:30 in the morning though) On sites like yours I like to see more photos of kids reactions. I would change the photo on your home page from the one of you with your face in the roll down magic wand to the one in your media section of the kid with the multiplying wands.

I like the photo on you show packages square. I do not like the one on the About Nick square. I really do not care that you did magic when you were six years old. I care about my six year old and will he have a great party.

Adding some video on you site would help.

I also did a Google search on Pennsylvania Magician and your site did not show up on the first 3 pages of Google. I don not think you should rely 100% on searches for clients to find your site. I lot of clients find my page from promo I give out at shows, like my business card and souvenir programs.

Good Luck
Gordon

Just a quick follow up to my post above. Nick responded with a phone call to my request for info by 8:00 AM, on the morning I filled out the form on his site.

Gordon

An autoresponder will help deliver rates, emails and additional touches while you sleep.

I use MailChimp but have also used Aweber in the past.

Plus, you gain more subscribers.

Josh

Gordon, Nice talking with you over the phone this morning. I am in the process of making some changes to the site as we speak. I think I am finally getting to a point where the site is coming together. I have a good vision of what I want the customer to do and feel while on the site. I still have a lot of work to do though. Thanks to everyone with there critiques and words of advice. It helps!

So much great advice here! I'd like to throw out a product I use called LeadPages.

It's a great tool for capturing leads and optins. They have turn-key landing page templates you can implement right away.

Here's a simple one I made for a free ebook: http://clickconvertprofit.com/newsletter (feel free to sign up for some great marketing tips)

They can be found at LeadPages.net

Josh

I rather like the purple and green, but that's me. Keep playing with the SEO and check your page ranking frequently. As others here have suggested, synergy of all your marketing is what will get the calls coming in. I would suggest that you describe what you mean by "hassle free". What is required (or perhaps better, NOT required) on the part of the client? Describe how simple it is to book you, have the show, and pay you. Lastly, I'm sorry to say that I'm not a fan of the caricature you are using. Best of luck.

Do you really want the unvarnished truth?

That's why I posted this Vick