Forum Moderators: buckworks
I work at a small sign/digital print company in western NY and have been tasked to create their webpage. This started as a 2 day a week thing a little more than a year ago. I have dabbled in site design since the advent of the wysiwyg (yes ADVENT!), but am really more of an artist than a code guy.
The site is up and functional (yahoo hosted) and I've been active in getting good results in my campaigns with adwords, and every once in a while we see a surge of sales! ..3 sales in a week would be a surge.
Our CTR are pretty impressive at 13.15, 8.16, 4.70
and these are not uncommon. I've read, tweaked, optimized, but our ROI is in the red. We can't fr'ggn give away a conversion. Seriously- we've sent out coupons emailed codes for discounts.. nothin.
Now my dirty little secret.
I have never been terribly impressed with anything that's trying to be sold there, and I have told my boss early on "maybe we have to assess nobody likes the product?" but just cuz I don't, I can't assume the world has the same taste... (but I think we have enough data now to say that most of the world doesn't have BAD taste)
My boss has me on the bubble now.
We've bumped all of our campaigns down to half of what we were spending and now haven't seen a sale in 10 days. Which really isn't that unusual either.
In closing- I just want to say; follow your gut when it says "who would want that?" Because only a few of us know how to sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves, and I don't do sales.
I don't do sales.
As far as no one wanting the products, I would hope that a thorough business analysis was done long ago by the company that shows otherwise. If not, then yes, that could also be a big part of the problem, and I strongly suggest one be done imemeidately.
Obviously, SOME people buy it. What sort of research has been done among those people who have bought your products? An complete marketing analysis should be done to find out why they bought your products, how they use them, if they would buy from you in the future, how they found you, etc. Ask them for permission to use any positive evaluations and post them on the site.
It has been made very clear to me that I have not much say in anything, and it sounds to me like those suggestions may actually cost money. Unless a mkt analysis has already been done- it ain't happenin here I'm willing to bet.
So I really don't know why I'm posting- I suppose I'm a bit disillusioned and mad. But if this were a question or call for advice, it would be this:
Does anyone know of a next to free service that will take over my job and guarantee high sales? Ok really- a small hosting/development team in the Upstate NY area that won't place us in a link farm and can update the site regularly and work the adwords for a commission is one thing I would like to suggest to my boss, but if I say it to him it probably won't be taken seriously- and no, I don't have a bad attitude- this is learned behavior!
The site has been designed fairly well considering the heavy use of graphics (ignored advice #2) and flash animation (he loves that stuff that moves around! ignored advice #5) but now the ball is on the other foot. I'm getting tired of being looked at for guidance and having it get ignored. Our campaigns perform very well- with most of our search terms showing in the top 2! If you don't have a product that sells itself after the customers arrive, you can't hold a gun to their head like if you had a brick and morter shop. In the privacy of their own homes the people have spoken with the back button!
I quit, anyone looking for a designer that doens't code or do sales?
I'm getting tired of being looked at for guidance and having it get ignored.
It maybe a good product but not one that would do well over the internet. One thing that I have learned is focus on conversions before you increase your advertising expense.
When you can acheive a decent conversion then go balls to the wall.
There is a great problem if you can't take information that you learned here or elsewhere that will inprove sales and put them to use.
I had a similar problem with a company that was very large but was run by a family, they insisted on doing things their way until they ran the company into the ground, it was very sad.
My advice is learn what you can from the experience and work on your own projects on the side, if not you'll always be living on the down side of life.
Dave
If you are getting less than one conversion in 30 visitors its either an expensive product or something is wrong at the site.
I'm guessing its the site :)
Lots of people run horrible little companies as vanity projects.
My favourite TV show in the UK is 'The Hotel Inspector' where this woman prises mooseheads and flocked wallpaper from (almost) the cold dead fingers of no-star hotelliers, who visit posh hotels and figure using the same brand tissues they do is enough for a four star rating.
I'm never sure whether to roll round laughing or slash my wrists :)
You sound like a person of taste and discretion though. How about setting up your own site selling anything you choose, them flip them the finger in a year's time?
Failing that, getting a payrise usually helps people take you seriously. Ask for one, and be 'busy elsewhere' till you get it.
I was in the print biz for a couple of decades so I understand the market.
Your company will need to find/forge a narrow niche to make it work online.
It is there, you just need to find it.
I sell jewelry and beads, I have 3 online shops. It's a fairly competitive market as well and there are a lot of other beady girls jumping on the bandwagon as well. I get to know them through messageboards and there are frequent complaints such as: "why won't anyone buy my jewelry?" and the correct answer would be: "because it's hideous and overpriced". So I know some people are completely blind to the quality of the items they are selling.
And those person I am mentioning sure don't use adwords. If you are doing adwords for that company and still no sales, it must be like flogging a dead horse.
So why don't you take advantage of all the things you have learnt in the process and start your own shop? I think you have done all the trial runs now.
Stuck adsense on (which isnt edible) and do alright like that.
Ill sticky you for the URl.
Back when I was initally researching similar products because of slow sales, I ran into an interview of a CEO of a very successful site carrying some similar products. For the sake of conversation we'll say he sells "Key Fobs". He went on to say how difficult it was to establish himself due to the commodity like nature of his product (buying large lots of product from other mfg?).
Now this guy has every advantage over us because we ONLY sell Key Fobs that WE design. The boss doesn't want to go get legal licensing to sell NFL fobs, Disney fobs, Yankees, Nascar, etc. And I have yet to see any other ...fob sites out there that don't sell these licensed products! Talk about a niche!
Armande, Alex, TTDave and my girlfriend have suggested opening my own shop! I like this idea. Now I just need a product.
Now I just need a product.
Firstly adjust your PPC campaigns - are they selling specifics or category general. As you want to curtail your burn rate on your ad budget, kill the broad ads and ramp up the specific ads. True, traffic will drop but you should lower your spend rate and increase your ROI as people have obviously purchased from your site so the product has demand for online shoppers.
Secondly you may have a design flow issue in your site. Think of a design flow to help meet the “buyer’s thinking process” and guide them. If they don't buy but do go through your flow funnel (which you can track though your click trails) your design is working, and the issue may be product features and/or price.
Also check your site search and you may find what people are looking for and cannot find, then re-design to help them find what they are looking for.
Create new campaign with different landing page with your thoughts and ideas only input from your boss on sales copy , decrease the flash and pretty graphics down to 10% of current offering , and try similar campaigns / ppc costs then if your right i.e. boss should take advice then money ROI talks .
Also point out to boss few facts
1 Not all users willing to wait for slow load times
2 Most often buyer wants to see product and price instantly not fluff.
3 Do some testing with internet dummy re: your buying process just in case you have missed the obvious
4 Target keywords much tighter on PPC
5 make sure your new page also has a link from somewhere to see what SE's think of it
just some ideas possibly you have been through them already
steve
I agree on this. Your CTR in the neighborhood of 13% indicates that you will spending a lot on ads for clicks from someone who isn't really interested in the first place. If you make both your keywords as well as text for the add more specific you should be able to turn red numbers in to black ones on the bottom line.
Ask the following question (and answer it):
How many clicks does it take for my keywords before somebody places an order, e.g.:
Name - Clicks - Placed Orders - Clicks/Order
keyword1 - 200 - 4 - 50
keyword2 - 400 - 4 - 100
keyword - 800 - 4 - 200
*) Excuse my collapsed table above, hope it makes sence
No wholding this up against your CPC, coul deasily show you that keyword 1 and 2 have a positive revenue, but keyword3 a negative one. The drop keyword3 or make it more specific.
[edited by: JesperFJ at 1:17 pm (utc) on July 25, 2006]
If nobody likes the product it's usually a case of targeting the right market and audience.
Another important factor is listing the shipping fee with te product, or better still include it in the price.
In other news, Since this thread started, I've seen 6 sales in 4 days. Yup, that's a surge.
Thanks everybody!
Retrobate, if you are going to start your own shop, take something that you love and know a lot about. That means you also know what sort of people are looking for that kind of product. Makes it much easier to market it.
I've taken a lot of advice from this discussion, and some suggestions have already been tried. One thing I failed to mention at the beginning of this post was that a bunch of users were bailing at the shopping cart. Bossman finally got me in (security pass) to make some tweaks and saw the "shipping may be added to your order" (thanks Essexboyeee) at the top of the page- That might make me bail!
It's been over a year now and I think I'm still in the sandbox. Apparently having an adwords account doesn't help your relevancy ratings even if you have high CTRs?
Now I have a whole weekend to wait at home and cross my fingers.
Thanks to everyone's great advice here- I may try my own store some day, but keep the day job.
[edited by: lorax at 12:00 pm (utc) on July 29, 2006]
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is the product expensive?
