Testing using Yahoo E-Commerce

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

Hey guys, new here. Nice forum :)

I have a question.

My goal is to run a short Adwords campaign targetting specific keywords relating to my niche. I'm just wondering if Yahoo E-Commerce on a .com domain would help me test the market a bit. I don't want to purchase stock yet - so therefore I would use Google Analytics so when they go to pay, the next page would say "Out of Stock" or something like that.

Something else of note, I won't be using my actual domain name, will just use a similar .com domain. Basically, I want as much research as I can for my business plan so to convince the bank bla bla bla that my idea is worthy by showing accurate data of people who WANT to buy my product.

Would this be worthwhile ? Or any alternatives ?

Cheers

[Danny@BFC]

Hi, Im far from an expert just offering my thoughts.

Can you afford to buy a small quantity of stock and sell that? the way I see it is you are losing customers by going about it the way you described. whats the point in having 50 people try to buy from you only to be told "out of stock", they are unlikely to ever come back to your site, not likely to ever recommend your site / products and would only need to tell 2 people each that you are always out of stock and thats potentially 150 customers lost.

I know you say it wouldnt be your domain name so maybe it wouldnt have this effect as its not linked to you, however....if its just to go to the bank to say "look at these people who wanted to buy" (which to be fair anyone / friends / family could have done as no risk to them) wouldnt you be better going to the bank say "look at all these people who HAVE bought"?

just my thoughts

Danny

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

You know what Danny, that's an excellent point and It's what I was originally planning on doing. I've become obsessed with the idea of doing it because it seems like a "smart" way of doing something. I suppose I would have liked to get experience running adword campaigns etc. I think I'm pretty good at understanding all about keywords and researching keywords and long tail keywords etc, I just never have done it in practice. I've read tons on the stuff and would consider myself quite proficient from the reading I've done, I mean it's not that hard to run adwords campaigns if you have the right keywords.

I know for a fact that my product is totally unique and innovative to the Uk and Irish market and there are few direct competitors and I'd be differentiating from them yet again, I just wanted to throw some stats into the business plan for the bank and mentors etc. Maybe I should just start small.

Thanks for the thoughts, anyone have anything else to add ?

[shopintegrator]

Hi,

I definately agree with the others above that if you go to all the effort of getting people to buy something, you should make the sale and not tell them it is out of stock.

From what I see, you need to run at as low a cost operating model until you get on your feet?

You said you were looking to use Yahoo ecommerce for your solution. This will give you an instant monthly fee to pay even if you don't make any sales? You could be looking to save some money and set the whole thing up at no cost and no monthly fee. If you don't sell anything, all you have paid for is a domain name, below is how you can get started with a free payment gateway (no monthly charges, only per transaction charges), free ecommerce shopping basket service, free web hosting and free website templates.

You could use Pay Pal instead of Yahoo ecommerce to accept debit/credit card payments and Pay Pal payments from your customers.



Accepting Payments - Why Pay Pal?

Free to set up an account
No monthly subscription charge
A low percentage fee rate per customer order (3.4% lowering as you sell more)
A quick and easy set up process to allow you to start collecting money straight away
Processes your customers debit & credit card transactions
Allow your customers without a Pay Pal account to pay you for their order
Allow your customers to pay with their Pay Pal account
A trusted global brand making your customers feel safe when entering their payment details online with Pay Pal
A huge range of other great features!
Shopping Basket Solution
In conjunction with Pay Pal, you could use our Shop Integrator ecommerce toolkit (http://www.shopintegrator.com/) to add a feature rich shopping basket service to your website, which takes care of connecting to Pay Pal at the final checkout stage to allow you to receive the customer payment in to your Pay Pal account.

Better still, as you are a UKBF member and are just trying to get started we won't even charge you any money to use the Shop Integrator ecommerce service until you have taken order payments for twice as much as your Shop Integrator ecommerce service subscription fee would normally be (our prices start from £39.99 per year). This gives you a no risk, free ecommerce solution until your product actually starts selling and you are making enough money to cover your costs.


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http://www.templatesbox.com/

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Combine this with some free hosting from:
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http://www.50megs.com/

[NewKidOnTheBlock]

No, I have capital to invest for my enterprise and wouldn't dream of selling through a template site or free hosting etc.

I just wanted to test the market on a domain that is not important but still similar to my business and get some traffic and "Google Analytics" conversions at the checkout just so I'll have figures to work with before I launch.

The more I think about doing this (testing etc), the more it makes sense. A barrier to entry in my industry is the ordering of stock as it takes between 1 - 3 months to order so this needs to be nailed 100% and having figures to test would give me some scope as to how quick things will get moving etc as e-commerce in general can be quite slow to get going.

[ll1008]

How is results for you use google adwords? I didn't get good result.

[Ash77]

I think there is a little issue with a spambot :D call in the mods!