Okay sites up...now how to sell?

[timinark]

Hello Everybody,

 

Ok, lets see I have my site up. Not perfect, but best I could do right now. I have jacked with so many contributions that I had to rest and see where I went.

 

My problem is that I am not selling anything. I am getting indexed by Google, et al. and getting traffic. But that conversion is not taking place. I am getting 100 + real visits per day. What should I be doing to get people to buy? Or at least gripe why they aren't.

 

Is offering that 10% discount so important? Is it free shipping? More and better pictures? OsCommerce is great and I cleared many a technical hurdle, but it's not happening sales wise to even encourage me.

 

Must I generate 1000's of visits to make a sale? Is there some crucial secret I have missed? Is there some generally accepted metrics available so that I can compare my performance?

 

I apologize for all the whine and appreciate any suggestions and comments.

 

Tim

[FalseDawn]

No, you don't need 1000s of visits to get a sale. I would suggest you need better targetted marketing.

It has nothing to do with how many visitors you get, but how motivated the visitors you do get are to buy your products, which incidentally are a little dull.

You don't appear to be offering anything particularly exciting, to be blunt. Why should I buy something from you rather than the local k-mart or wherever?

What is your "catch"? How are you enticing me to buy?

 

Unfortunately, far too many people get into this business without any prior research and think it's just a matter of knocking up a site selling any old stuff and they can sit back and make their fortunes. It simply doesn't work like that!

[GraphicsGuy]

FalseDawn is right about the need to refine your marketing to better target it. For the record though, FalseDawn, KMART doesn't do custom emroidery. :P :D But an online store does need something that makes it special. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sites on the web selling logo'd uniform shirts. One thing that is a good sign is that you evidently have achieved a good page rank to be getting a hundred daily visits with just standard search engine activity. But you need to study what keywords are bringing them to your site. At first guess, it is drawing from too general of a term such as "shirts" or "embroidery".

 

Your service is mainly targeted at small businesses that want embroidered logo uniform shirts. Here are some thoughts:

• A direct mail (post cards) campaign in your local city (or nearest large city).
  
• Run a newspaper ad in the business section.
  
• Run a magazine ad in a trade journal that targets a service industry that uses logo'd uniform shirts.
  
• Many local papers publish a list once each week of new business licenses issued. Contact each of those new businesses (in person, by phone or mail).
  
• A highly targeted PPC campaign. For example Google AdWords or Yahoo (formerly Overture).
  
• Use the Yellow Pages as a source list and make calls to target businesses.