Is this a good website?

[Star Tup]

For my project, something like wickeduncle.co.uk would do nicely. What should I expect to pay a designer? Can anyone spot any flaws or ways to improve it? I'm new to this, so forgive any ignorance here, but are there any ongoing expenses to run the site and appear on search engines? Do you think he gets much traffic through the door without having to pay for expensive ways to get noticed? Lastly, what cut of sales would the payment processor take? Many thanks.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

What should I expect to pay a designer?
(you have said 'designer', but I am taking that to mean designer and developer) That is a .NET site, it is a good few grand I would say, exp[ect to be paying 5 figures for that sort of functionality.


Can anyone spot any flaws or ways to improve it?
Without doubt it can be improved on, but without knowing the outcomes needed, how do we know what we are improving?

I'm new to this, so forgive any ignorance here, but are there any ongoing expenses to run the site
You will need to pay hosting and probably some regular update costs. Budget £50 a month if you are just thinking of adding all the content yourself

and appear on search engines?
THIS is the big one, gifts are one of THE most competitive areas on the web, so you can expect to pay a lot of money to get rankings, although there are other avenues, such as social media etc (which you need to encompass) but expect to be paying a minimum of £500 a month, and a maximum of £1500 a month.

Do you think he gets much traffic through the door without having to pay for expensive ways to get noticed?
This is a piece of string question, but the old adage of 'if you build it they will come' is false. The internet is full of dead gifts sites built by people who didn't realise how competitive a market they were entering, spent months nit pickign on design and layout of their site (as well as a fortune in money) then signed up on forums with the usual 'I paid £10,000 for my site but I am not getting sales, and have no money left for marketing'

Lastly, what cut of sales would the payment processor take? Many thanks.
budget 5% ish

 

[fisicx]

Good post from OWG. Whatever you spend developing the site will be a lot less that you will spend on marketing. And you probably won't see a return on your investment for about 5 years.

 

[Star Tup]

Is the simple entry on Google free? I guess those are the sums to get up the ranking. Searching "children's gifts" doesn't bring Wicked Uncle up on the first page, so I wonder if he is ticking along without forking out on marketing every month. I don't mind growing very slowly and I wouldn't start out if I didn't feel the site had a good theme, something a little different. There would be repeat business, some word of mouth and other ideas to get noticed. £500 is a hell of an overhead and 5 years to turn a profit may be pessimistic or a good warning, one of the two. Thanks OWG and for the advice on your website, Fisicx, which I looked at after my last post. Off to Tenerife in the morning so I may not post a thank you for a while. Yes, my last holiday for a while if I take the plunge, I know!

 

[Star Tup]

Sorry, should read £500 per month is a hell of an overhead.

 

[fisicx]

It's a perfectly reasonable overhead. It's probably at the low end of the marketing spend for this sort of website. That's why it will take a good few years to get a return. The first two years will be the main expense, the next two will build up the business and pay back the investment costs which means you will be in profit in year 5.

If you want something that grows slowly and doesn't cost a huge amount, chose something other than toys, perfume, gifts, electronic goods and everything competitive.

Have fun in Tenerife.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Is the simple entry on Google free? I guess those are the sums to get up the ranking. Searching "children's gifts" doesn't bring Wicked Uncle up on the first page, so I wonder if he is ticking along without forking out on marketing every month. I don't mind growing very slowly and I wouldn't start out if I didn't feel the site had a good theme, something a little different. There would be repeat business, some word of mouth and other ideas to get noticed. £500 is a hell of an overhead and 5 years to turn a profit may be pessimistic or a good warning, one of the two. Thanks OWG and for the advice on your website, Fisicx, which I looked at after my last post. Off to Tenerife in the morning so I may not post a thank you for a while. Yes, my last holiday for a while if I take the plunge, I know!

You need to step back and read a fair bit, ask a lot more questions otherwise you are going to fall into a bear trap. SEO isn't about single phrases, you optimise every single page on your site for different phrases, if you have 500 products you are probably looking at 2000 key terms. 'childrens gifts' is such a vague search term, yet many seem to think it is the holy grail

 

[OldWelshGuy]

@Star Tup I hate to shatter your dreams, but uncle is relying on Adwords for traffic. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=+...=RnbiVLSHC8fwaIy3goAI#q=Gifts+for+3+Year-Olds he was showing top of the page so that £500 is probably closer to £5000 a month if he is chasing terms such as that. He does rank for a lot of longer tail terms that would bring in traffic and sales however.

 

[StevePoster]

Sorry, should read £500 per month is a hell of an overhead.

It's a perfectly reasonable overhead. It's probably at the low end of the marketing spend for this sort of website. That's why it will take a good few years to get a return. The first two years will be the main expense, the next two will build up the business and pay back the investment costs which means you will be in profit in year 5.
If you want something that grows slowly and doesn't cost a huge amount, chose something other than toys, perfume, gifts, electronic goods and everything competitive.

Its good to see this kind of post from fisicx because its shows the reality in the field of business, and it takes time to be establish but it will provide long term duration of results. A well experienced guy to learn of.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Using adwords turnover will be fine, the problem will come with profit. The OP seems to think that people are magically 'ticking along without forking out on marketing every month' when the reality is often different.

Customer acquisition is just the first step, if you are paying for that acquisition then you need to ensure you are maximising it.

 

[Star Tup]

Let's row back and see if I still have a business.
SET-UP. I'm happy to write off 10k in return for an income. All the better if I can offset some against profit, perhaps by way of a Director's loan.
MARKETING. I don't want to spend £500 + on SEO.
ASPIRATION. I don't need to aim high. Minimum profit £150PW after 2 years from perhaps 10-15 sales a day. Keep my p/t PAYE job, don't have big mortgage, work from home.
COMPETE. I won't on price (who can with Amazon?). Some toys won't make a profit, other, more unusual gifts might do well. And, there will be other smaller reasons, like a theme, convenience and service, why I may be able to take a very tiny slice of a big cake.

Or am I on Cloud 9?

 

[fisicx]

Sorry dude, it's Cloud 9. You will be spending £500+ per month on marketing. Site can be set up for very little but it's the marketing costs that will eat up your budget.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Yep you have a business there.

I would budget some for marketing though otherwise chances are you won't sell much if anything. you need to use social media perhaps.

 

[Studio Eighty7]

Sorry dude, it's Cloud 9. You will be spending £500+ per month on marketing. Site can be set up for very little but it's the marketing costs that will eat up your budget.

Break that down for him.. I agree a marketing budget will be needed, but £500 a month based on the sales he's forecasted?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I would just build loyalty on Facebook then boost adverts.

 

[fisicx]

Break that down for him.. I agree a marketing budget will be needed, but £500 a month based on the sales he's forecasted?

£10/day on PPC is £300/month. Add £200 for SEO and that's your £500 gone.

If you just want to pay for PPC that going to be cheaper but you will be paying that forever. Doing SEO work will eventually mean better ranking and PPC costs can reduce. But you will still need to pay for SEO or ranking may well drop again.

Selling 15 items a day means 500 visitors a day. That's 15000 visitors a month. They don't come out of nowhere - you have to work hard and invest a lot of time and effort getting them. And it's not even the same 15000 per month, that a new set of 15000 each month you need to find.

 

[Tech4Homes]

You sound like me when I started my site 2 years ago.. "build it and they will come" and "just want it to tick over making a few hundred a week/month whilst I sit on a beach somewhere"

Won't happen!!

The site I created didn't do that great, but my niche sites are where it's at. Now my main site is relatively niche as well and I'm starting to focus on content and good product info/description and on SEO/optimizing PPC. Sales are going quite steady now and in the past few weeks of niching down further and improving the site design/features/products etc sales appear to be increasing already, still tonnes of work to do, and that's on a narrow niche, I can't imagine trying to do the same for a broad website.

Gifts are much like electronics, COMPETITIVE. If you want a sideline project then I'd really recommend finding a niche and focusing on that. If I stuck with the broad electronics website then I'd be out of business by now.

I gave up on the idea of being a relatively generic electronics store because I'd need to be doing it full time, with a marketing guy and probably a 6 figure marketing budget to get anywhere with it. Pretty sure you'll be in the same boat with the gifts market.........

Find a niche, become an authority with great content, back it up with "niche" advertising and you'll make that £150 a week. It won't be easy though.

 

[ChrisSCPMI]

I agree with Tech4Homes, being a small online trader you definitely need to find a niche to sit in otherwise you won't get noticed. Social media can be an effective marketing tool if you target the right demographics. I've had a little experience at marketing on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn and I've found FB by far and away has had the most positive impact. In terms of numbers I think over about a 6 month period I spent approx. £600 and have generated 5000 page likes. That didn't all turn into site traffic but it definitely helped.

 

[fisicx]

That didn't all turn into site traffic but it definitely helped.

Helped what?

 

[ChrisSCPMI]

I meant that I didn't get 5000 hits on my website from 5000 page likes but an increase volume of traffic did arrive via facebook.

 

[fisicx]

Did this traffic convert?

Just about all of the marketing reports indicate that likes generally don't result in conversions. FB adverts convert and some shares convert but likes add little value.

 

[ParcelBright]

Personally, I'd start with Shopify. You can get a store online in a couple of hours for about 20 quid a month.

When you start hiring people to build you a custom site, you end up spending more time dealing with tech than growing your business.

I made this mistake... spent a year working on getting a Magento site working (personal project) before I abandoned it for a Shopify site.

 

[Star Tup]

I guess £500pm is not that bad, compared to the rent on a shop unit. But I'd need to scale up all round to make that investment justified.
Tech4Homes - it's not laziness or lack of ambition, more so practicalities - PAYE 4am to 9am, business 9-3, and the children to juggle from 3pm. Besides, it's probably sensible not to aim too high. I feel your advice about niche is wise. There are niche elements in the concept and stock selection. I realise you have to be different to succeed.
I'll read up, and wait on my part time hours at work.
Thanks to all.

 

[Tech4Homes]

That was kind of my point though Star Tup. I've a PAYE job running the family business 7:30am to 5pm, 5 days a week, a 5 month old baby and a house renovation on the go. Anything other than a niche business would be too much to try and build. Trying to be generic would need full time hours + the part time hours and then a load of money on top to make it all work.