Banners and Product Placement lead to Increased Sales...maybe...

Maybe my expectations were too high to begin with, but I was hoping for an instant 2% conversion rate.  We're tracking well below that so far.  The traffic numbers are still small, but they are growing steadily.  With each connection (virtual and real world), this trend should continue.


Late last night I worked on product placement, arranging some of the categories so that choice items showed first (and above the fold) and logical items are near each other and site appearance is cleaner.  I also added some banners and blurbs of content to the header of these categories.  Here is why the Sand Toys category looks like now: 

Overall, it makes sense to do this and it makes the site look more professional.  I'm sure it is pure co-incidence, but overnight we received a couple orders.  Instant gratification is amazing!!  It's dead easy (though tedious) to ordering in  Magento.  And adding the content block is pretty easy too, though you do need to know HTML.  One thing I wish I could do though, is add multiple content blocks and define where they go on the page.  That would take significant customization of Magento, I believe.