eBusiness.Life.Passion

Help! My website is not making any sales

As you may already know – I take great pride in the fact that we not only design great ecommerce sites – but we also own a few too. I love ecommerce. The concept it brilliant, especially when it works.

But what about when it doesn’t? I have owned (and closed) a few “duffer” sites. Ecommerce sites that I thought would be great and turn a tidy profit. But how do you know whether or not it is a “duffer” site and close it or persevere with it?

Well, firstly, I am going to assume that you have a demand for your product and you are not selling it at uncompetitive prices. This is a big assumption to make, because without these two things – you will have a “duffer” site.

But let’s say you have a great product with good demand and reasonable prices and excellent service.

There are two other things to check – your traffic and your website, and I would check them in that order.

To get any useful statistics from your website, you need to have had at least 1,000 unique visitors. You can monitor these using your server logs, Google Analytics (free) or a subscribed service like our zStats system.

Unique visitors are different to page views and hits. Forget about hits. This was trendy lingo a few years ago – but it is meaningless for the purposes of your site. You need to know how many people have visited your site.

If you have had under 1,000 people visit your site – then you should boost your traffic (try using Goodle’s Adwords). If you have had over 1,000 people come and you haven’t had any sales – then you should check the quality of those visitors.

The reason I like Google Adwords so much is that you can get highly targeted traffic to your site. There is no point having some one interested in buying a mouse-trap visit your website that sells digital cameras. You have to focus your traffic.

So if you have had over 1,000 highly targeted visitors to your website and it is still not selling anything, then your website design is not working for your customers. What is happening is that you have highly motivated buyers coming to your site and they are not buying anything (remember, we have the demand, right pricing and right visitor). So your website cannot be designed correctly to persuade your visitors to buy from you.

What makes a successful ecommerce website design? Well the principles are simple: easy-to-use navigation, quality search facilities, effective headlines, easy order systems, secure credit card facilities, telephone orders, simple layouts, fresh content and intuitive processes.

If you think there is a problem with your site, give me a call and we can give you an honest appraisal – but before you go down the route of re-designing your site, check your demand, pricing and traffic first!

EU laws 'will hit online trade'

I just wish that Europe would stop their interferance...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6285823.stm

You still have to take a risk with your website

Here’s the thing – you have planned out your website. You have your hopes. Your ideas. But, if you’re new to the game – you cannot be sure at all about how it will go.

So we do some research using tools like Wordtracker to see what kind of traffic you might get. You could sign up to Google Adwords and use their keyword tool to try and figure out how much traffic you can buy.

But honestly – you won’t know until you bite the bullet and launch the site. And once you have launched your ecommerce site – things don’t stop there. You have the tweaks and the testing to do.

We launched one site and got our first order in a few hours. Another order the next day and a few more the day after that. It wasn’t a spectacular beginning and we were expecting. So we spent a few days playing on Adwords testing different ads and offers on the website – and within a few short weeks – the site was doing great. It was doing so well that it beat all of our estimations and ideas.

So, we thought we had the “magic formula” after spending a while analysing the site and what we thought we the key factors to its success.

So we launched another site – using those principles. And that site started the same way – but stayed there. It did a few orders a day. Not massive amounts of business – enough to pay back the initial investment and start turning a profit in 12 months – but nothing like the first site.

Now we sit around and think why. Maybe some of our “Magic formula” didn’t work. It caused us to put our third site on hold for a little while whilst we thought about it.

But you know what – as experienced as we are I am sure about this one thing – you can research and plan, hypothesise and generate success principles – but you can’t predict the success of a website. For that – the proof, as they say, is in the eating.

I was naïve enough to think that the internet could remove what has been the backbone of entrepreneurialism for centuries – namely risk. If I can predict the future – I remove risk. But market research, Wordtracker and Adwords cannot give you the future. They can look at the past and give you an idea – but they cannot tell you what the future holds.

We shouldn’t shy away from risk. Sure we should minimise it. Don’t be reckless. Research and plan. Listen to those who have experience and successful websites. These are prudent things to do. But just because this is the internet and we can measure a lot more doesn’t mean that we can predict the future. Ultimately you have to believe that you can make a success of what you do and be willing to work at it until you do.

The internet doesn’t give us an “easy” ride – just a different one. You still have to think like and entrepreneur. You still have to be willing to take a risk.

American Crew Jersey - Our Lastest eCommerce Website

Well, today has been another busy day and we have just launched our latest ecommerce offering. Our client, based in Jersey, is doing well with their group of websites and www.americancrewjersey.co.uk is set to follow in the same path.

American Crew offer men's grooming products -- so a great site to get Christmas presents! Have a look and notice some of the features on the site.

Comments welcome!

http://www.americancrewjersey.co.uk

Get ready for Christmas

Firstly – apologies for the silence recently! I have had the pleasure of travelling recently, mixing business and pleasure on a trip to the States.

This week has also been busy as we try and make 3 more ecommerce sites live to take advantage of the Christmas shopping period. A rep from the Bank told a client of mine that the 3 months leading up to Christmas account for almost half of their business.

My experience is much the same – looking at the stats on the sites – the Christmas trade is taking off and new “records” are being set by online buyers.

Part of making the sites live is sorting out the graphics for the Christmas offers, the gifts sets and the shipping deadlines. I have noticed it more this year than any other year – clients are preparing for Christmas earlier than they ever have done.

So if you own a website that can take advantage of the Christmas traffic, make sure you have your offers in place, your text and graphics on line and your packing ready. Traffic is picking up. The orders are being placed.

Great products to sell online

I heard a comment today that "it is great to get paid money to do what you love". And I have to agree. I get paid money to do something that I love to do...

...and the thing about it is - most people that make money online start off doing something that they love to do.

So - if you want to sell products online - find something that you love. Why? Because people will want to call you and ask you all sorts of questions about your products. They want to speak to an expert and get the right product. They want reassurance. So, the chances are if you love what you do - you will know a lot about it. Therefore you can give great advice to your clients.

Of course, there are other things that help to make a product a great product to sell online - here are a few of them:

1. Repeat Orders. A product that can be repeat ordered on a regular basis is a great product. It is easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one so repeat orders are good, as are...
2. "Upsell products"...what do I mean by these? Well, you know the "Customers who purchased also purchased" idea? It is simply that - if you have a customer that is willing to buy - have a product that you can upsell to them to maximise your returns.
3. Niche products. Trying to sell everything to everyone can be exhausting and a fast road to bankruptcy. Selling to niche markets is a great way to keep you stock costs low and your profits high!

If I use a recent customer - www.jerseybeautycompany.co.uk that sell dermalogica products to the UK - it meets all of these requirements, and is part of the reason they do so well:

• They have a phone number on the site, and people call it. They call just to see if the company is there, but mainly to get advice - so at the end of the phone, they have helpful people who know how to advise you! Try it and see.
• The product is definitely a "repeat order" product.
• The "customers who bought also bought..." section accounts for a large percentage of turnover. Customers love to know what others have purchased and will often buy the same. The makes it an "upselling product".
• It is definitely a niche market - people who use Dermalogica products. The marketing is not towards the beauty market - just the Dermalogica market...and it works well!

Of course, there is always the exception to prove the rule, but if you are thinking about setting up an ecommerce site to sell products but you are not sure what to sell...hopefully this will give you a few pointers.

How to make money whilst you sleep

You know I am constantly amazed at the benefits of the internet for your business and one of the great ways the internet can benefit your business is through ecommerce – which in simple terms if putting your products on line for customers to purchase.

I know this is a simplistic view – but my experience on this matter is simple – if you have a product that people want to buy and you market your site right on the internet, you will make money whilst you are sleeping.

UK 'Europe's top online shopper'

                

 

Well, according to the BBC website - the UK is now Europe's biggest online shopping market - spending £6.7bn online in 2005.

However you look at it - that is a lot of cash, and the online shopping marking in the UK is growing at a fast pace...research is claiming that internet sales rose by 51% in 2005 and they expect the figure to triple by 2010.

So if you don't have an online shop for your business - get one! This market is too big and growing too quickly for you not to be a part of it!

For more information about our ecommerce services visit the following link:

http://www.lutroo.com/services_ecommerce.php

To read the full article on the BBC website - click the link below.

BBC NEWS | Business | UK 'Europe's top online shopper'

Actinic ecommerce software - on trial

My very first ecommerce website was set up using Actinic ecommerce software. We used the business version because of the extra features that it gave us.

We chose Actinic because we didn't have a clue what we were doing! I own a web development company that now specialises in ecommerce web development - but at the time, we just did straight forward web site design. We knew nothing about php (code) at the time (frankly, it scared the **** out of me).

I knew we could change the web design template that actinic uses - so we chose that software.

What we my overall thoughts? Well, the experience was such that it made me learn about php and develop my own!

Don't get me wrong - there are a number of clever features about Actinic Business Ecommerce software that I liked...but then, there were some great features on the Titanic but this didn't make it a great ship!

Actinic basically generates a complete static site and then uploads this to the internet. You then sign on whenever you like and download your orders from the site. If you want to make any updates - you have to republish the whole site. This, frankly, was cumbersome and annoying. Fair play to actinic though as at the time, we were on dial up which didn't add to an enjoyable experience.

I want a website that I can change easily and see real time information on without the need to republish or download chunks of data. This is why a "dynamic" website or one that it database driven is vastly superior to something like Actinic.

The changing of the templates wasn't easy at all (and we knew what we were doing) and there are only so many ways you can get the software to display the products.

What Actinic did do well was get you on the search engines, which is half the battle of having a successful ecommerce website, and if this is important to you and you don't care about the way the software works - it could be a great option for you.

Who would I recommend Actinic to? Probably no one. You can download and install something like oscommerce which is much better and cheaper than Actinic. Both, in my opinion require some web knowledge - but not much.

Also - if you think, like I did, "we'll try it and if it doesn't work - I will sell it" - then think again. You cannot resell the software once it has been used. So avoid the copies on eBay.

You would, in my opinion, be better off learning how to do your own database sites (trust me - this is much easier than it sounds, and will post some stuff soon on how to do that) or contact a professional company (like us for example) and have a proper database site with a good content management system. In the long run - you will be much much better off.