Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
- I'm not clear what you're selling. Some kind of online tool relating to web services?
- Are those $49 orders every few days the only orders you're getting? Or have I misunderstood?
- Are the 1000 users paying customers?
best, a.
- the user base consists of free and paid users. of 3 service levels, the lowest was free to applicants and invitees. (some of whom have upgraded). The lowest service is now $49.
What kind of conversion rate are you getting at the moment?
The reason I'm asking, is that I'm trying to find out whether the problem is:
a) you're getting lots of site visitors but they're not buying,
or
b) there's a decent chance of each visitor buying but you're not getting enough visitors
best wishes, a.
For example if your top entry pages (where visitors land on your site) and top exit pages (where visitors leave your site) are the same, then you need to work on making those pages more captivating to hold their attention and get them to click through to the next page. Too many people are using web analytics services as nothing more than a "glorified hit counter" and that's the wrong way to use it - many of these services are very in-depth and can give you the information you need to make your website better and retain more of your visitors (or at least know if you're getting the wrong kind of traffic and how to fix it) - iWebTrack starts at $10 a month, WebTrends starts at $35, and Omniture starts at (I think) around $199 - all offer free trials, so check them out and pick the one that gives you the information you need within your budget.
lots of visitors not buying
or decent chance but no visitors...
I imagine its a little of both. Since visitors can either order service or buy products (from people who order service), then probably not enough visitors and basic issues with both ordering service and buying.
A good google campaign, landing pages and combinations of other details could hopefuly create the kind of growth I am after. Comments in this thread are going through my head.
I have done a fair bit of testing using Craigslist, and the continuous wordsmithing improves results.
A few suggestions/comments on marketing and presentation are below.
I would suggest benchmarking against the sites that allow individual photographers to sell stock photos - that's a similar market. Google for 'sell stock photos' and some of the results are those kind of sites.
Take a look at some of those sites - it's interesting to see what they put on their home pages. I'd say they're much more up-front than you are about the sales proposition - it's much more 'photographers - sell photos here', 'photo buyers - buy photos here' than your site is.
From your home page, it wasn't clear to me that the art works were actually for sale. I've taken a look at some individual artwork pages, and I'm still not clear on:
- how do I buy? I don't see 'buy now' or 'add to cart'.
- is it the artwork itself that's for sale? or a digital image of the artwork?
- how much does each artwork cost?
I guess maybe I'm misunderstanding the market - I've never been an art buyer myself (although I have bought stock photography) - if the market responds better to not having pricing information, then you might be going along the right lines by not displaying prices. Even if that's the case though, I would say you need to make it clearer what action a potential buyer should take if they're interested in an artwork.
Similarly, the 'join' link (for artists) really is hidden away. If I were you I'd state - on the home page:
- the benefits of membership (quantify them if possible, give success stories and testimonials)
- the benefits of the higher-priced plans over the lower-priced plans
- how much it costs
- 'join now' link, direct to the payment page.
If you can get up to a decent conversion rate for the visitors you do get, then improving the volume of sales will be a matter of increasing the number of visitors - ie advertising. I know you said you'd tried Google Adwords, but it's probably worth persevering in optimising your campaigns (there's lots of info on this elsewhere on ww). There are other options for PPC advertising of course - most notably Overture.
I would have thought that offline advertising could be a good route to go down for your market, given that there's probably some publications and events that have a very focussed readership/attendence of new artists and of art buyers.
Anyway, just some thoughts - hope that they're helpful to you.
Best wishes, a.
PS I should mention SEO of course. Lots about this elsewhere on this board.
PPS It's also, of course, worth talking to customers (and ideally non-customers) about whether the packages you're selling are a good match for their needs. I'm guessing you're already doing this informally - customer surveys can be a useful tool to assess how high a value customers give to different aspects of your service.
this is us at 4000 items.
