Sales very poor

[fentonalex]

Hi there, the client does/did sell on ebay using paypal, I'm not sure how successfully, but this prompted her to want to sell on her own website.

1 Price - prices are better than the highstreet - so maybe this needs to be made a feature of somehow?

2 Delivery times - pretty quick and stated on the orders page, maybe this should be elsewgere?

3 Contact - tel or email from the contact us page?

4 Method of Payment - currently only Paypal, although I dont think anyone is getting far enough to actually find that Paypal is the only option?

[fentonalex]

Hi, just a quick note to thank everyone that took a look at the site and made a suggestion.

[pinbrook]

Having a merchant acct may also improve inhouse sales.

Most of us who can't really afford designer wear can always buy it with CC.

Todays society is CC driven we expect tp pay for things next week/month/year on CC. We don't save up for things which is what cash/cheque demands.

Maybe your client doesn't want wanna be's in her shop.

[fentonalex]

Maybe we could tap into some footballers wives type circles who would think nothing of buying this stuff online!

[Faulkds]

Sounds to me like you have got the right formula....

personally my prices arnt as cheap in some shops but I play along the line of convienance and customer service....

YOu really need to get that site optimised....

My marketing budget is £150 a month which I pay to Weblinx.

I swear its the best money I've spent.... Checkout these stats from when I started the optimisation

http://extremetracking.com/open;sum?login=faulkds

I was only getting 1 or 2 orders a day using Googles pay and click system. I spent £1700 and the profit i made only paid my Google bill.... I now get approx 6 - 10 orders a day.

[fentonalex]

I think with some further optimisation, cash and stuff, sales should start to show.

[Luddite]

Its not easy having a small site and a small shop (I type this from behind the counter of my shop, with only tumbleweed for company!). We've had to make some big decisions about our business recently and the upshot of this is that the website has got far more potential to make some decent money than our bricks and mortar shop. However, we love having a bricks and mortar shop, but it doesn't take enough money. We have come to the conclusion that the only real way either element of our business can start taking serious money is by investing more money & time into them - hence we move into a larger shop on a busier street later this year, which will free me up to invest more time (and some more money) into the website to improve SEO etc.

The point of this near life story - is that i'm learning that our website needs me to learn as much as I can about SEO/web design/how customers use website/html etc etc as I can. I need to get geeky, and stop being the luddite that I was when we had our website built.

My advice to your client would be (other than get a merchant acct today!!) - if you want your website to do well you've either got to live and breathe it everyday - or find some budget to pay someone else to do it for you (in the knowledge that they'll never care for it as well as you would).

Sermon over!

Nick

[fentonalex]

Yeah, agree it takes a lot of time, money and commitment.

[jont]

Amazes me how many people think their site can be published and just sit there with no further attention after first upload.... in a real world shop the owner is forever sweeping the floors, changing shop displays, tweaking prices, creating sales banners etc etc ... the same philosophy should be carried onto the website and with the same conviction

[Faulkds]

this looks great Mike - thank you. I'm still not 100% convinced about how well 1200 quid jackets sell on a small website, but I think with some further optimisation, cash and stuff, sales should start to show.
My concern is that the client will be spending most of her time running the shop and she won't be prepared to pay weblinx, me or an seo company anything further until she starts getting some online sales (catch22)

I’m not suggesting that she uses Weblinx (I’m not here to promote them) just saying that a company like theirs will optimise the site and do various other tricks to get it listed. I know young developers who build sites and don’t have any idea how to build a site that is optimised ( I have experienced this myself).

Even when you use a site optimisation company it still takes a good 12 months before the site starts to really show a presence on the net. Unless you go for the quick solution of pay and click ..... Then you have the problem that your site is never optimised and you will always have to rely on pay and click for sales…

I was hoping to build a site, upload and just take the cash. In the real world it doesn’t work like that. I spend approx 4 hours a day working on the site. This involves answering email enquires, site optimisation product updates, new ideas etc etc. That’s before you’ve even dealt with dealing with returns and sending goods out... Oh and don’t forget about the parcels that need tracking as the customer hasn’t received the item.

Running a website is like running a shop, it’s a full time occupation. I wish I could have just sat back and take the cash ;-) Saying that, I remember when i got my first order through the site it’ was a great buzz, now its just a pain ;-)

[fentonalex]

It might start to generate sales assuming the right kind of people can be attracted to the site and the other issues are addressed.

[Luddite]

I think her plan from the start though was to get into this side of things herself, so if I steer her in the right direction.........

Steer her in the direction of this forum. which has been priceless for me.
Nick