No sales since business started (1 month). Want opinions of my site. Thank you.

[TMW]

Hi, I've started a online shop a month ago, got 800 times site visits. I'm posting 2-3 posts a day on facebook, instagram, twitter and pinterest. I did try the facebook ads but still no sale.... <deleted by mod - site reviews are for full members only >

 

[Free.stockphoto.com]

Ecommerce is hard, isn't it? Depending on where your target customers are located, keep in mind that June to August are the slowest months of the year due to summer holidays (US and Europe). Lots of people still on the web but not buying.

 

[fisicx]

I'm posting 2-3 posts a day on facebook, instagram, twitter and pinterest.

And why do you think this is going to help? Social media works best when other people share and recommend your products. It doesn't work so well when you promote yourself.

800 visitors means you should have got 20-30 sales. If you haven't then you need to change the site.

 

[altonroot]

Don't you think there are other things also matters when it comes to ecommerce? Visitors make a purchase decision only after considering many things. First is obviously the price. When one can get same product at same price from amazon, they will order there not on your website. There are other trust related factors you should work on to make sales on ecommerce I think.

 

[Nochexman]

Have you set up Google Analytics on your website?

 

[Scottishgifts4u]

A month is really nothing when you are starting from scratch.
I started my site up 14 years ago as a hobby basically without a clue, stuck it on the net and sat back waiting for orders.
A YEAR later i got my first order (I blush even typing that).
You at least are working at promoting your site which is something I never did.
As stated above, if you are getting visits then you should be getting at least a couple of orders unless something is drastically wrong.
I assume you have done test ordering etc?

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

As is so often the case in life, the more time and money you can invest in anything the more successful it will be. Do a full onsite audit for the following:

• Test page load speed for key pages using Gtmetrix or similar.
• Do an SEO audit to make sure your site is at least doing the basics right.
• Make a number of test orders across different OS, browsers and devices to make sure the "purchase funnel" is working correctly.
• Look at ways to increase the number of visitors (i'll leave this open to discussion on how to do this), the average ecommerce conversion rate is between 2 - 3.5% so attract more visitors.
• Do some A/B split testing to try and improve your conversion rate. This is a project rather than a quick fix.
• Check your prices against competitors.

New Relic offer a free service for 1 domain, it is a technical plugin but can give some great insights into errors, slow page load speeds or other issues that can be hard to spot.

 

[Ameen]

Hi, You are getting site visits but those are just users that's the reason you are not getting any sales. First, identify the targeted audience and then shoot the adds or social media postings then only you can grab the sales, still confused hire a professional will help you to reach the target.

 

[fisicx]

Hi, You are getting site visits but those are just users that's the reason you are not getting any sales. First, identify the targeted audience and then shoot the adds or social media postings then only you can grab the sales, still confused hire a professional will help you to reach the target.

Everything about your post is wrong.

 

[TMW]

Thank you all for the reply! I appreciate the points you all mentioned. I'm new to business and trying to learn as much as I can everyday. I started it with my brother, we've done everything all by ourselves to keep the cost low but we don't have any experience of selling, marketing, build a site, etc... We didn't even have twitter Instagram account before the business start so everything is very new for us!

 

[TMW]

UK customer is our target, would be nice if we could get customers outside the UK too as we offer international delivery. I don't know what's the low season here so thanks "FREE STOCK PHOTO" to point that out, I sell children's clothes so I thought It should be no low season as child grows everyday... "Ecommerce is hard, isn't it?" I don't know it is hard or not, things are not going well for me doesn't mean it doesn't goes well for others... It could be something I haven't do it right or good enough thats why I hope to get more opinions/ advices now...

 

[fisicx]

Right, so your first job is to chuck the wix site in the bin and get a proper ecommerce site sorted.

Then re-evaluate your whole marketing strategy. Children's clothes is very competitive and you can't ever hope to compete by posting on facebook and Instagram or wherever. You need to spend money if you want any hope of surviving

 

[TMW]

Reply to fisicx: why do you think posting on social media is not going to help? I do get some people liked my pages but not many sharing or comment at the moment... Its free so its good for small business like mine...

 

[TMW]

Reply to altonroot: That's why I'm posting here and hope to get some feedback of my website including my products, price, etc as you said... Customers wouldn't keep me any feedback if they found something negative they'd just gone and never come back.... family and friends are all trying to be polite so they won't give any negative feedback... thats why I hope people here can go take a look of my site/social media pages but I'm not allow to post the link here yet...

 

[TMW]

Reply to Nochex: How to set up Google Analytics on my website?

 

[TMW]

Reply to Scottishgifts4u: I'm sorry to hear you had to waited a year for the first order and I hope your business goes well now! I've done some tests and had a few orders from family so I think it should be fine.... I have one trouble at the PayPal check out that it changed to Chinese language instead of English because the account is opened in Hong Kong, been contacted PayPal they said nothing they can do for me and ask me to tell WIX to change some code for me.... WIX said the same thing said its palpal's problem....

 

[fisicx]

Reply to fisicx: why do you think posting on social media is not going to help? I do get some people liked my pages but not many sharing or comment at the moment... Its free so its good for small business like mine...

It's free but it doesn't work. Likes mean nothing - more bots like posts than real people do. And some people just like anything.

If you want to add google analytics (or any other analytics package) you need to stop using wix.

I'll say this again - wix is bad juju. The longer you stay worse it will become.

...been contacted PayPal they said nothing they can do for me and ask me to tell WIX to change some code for me.... WIX said the same thing said its palpal's problem....

Close the account and open a new account in the UK. It's the only way you can fix this.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Yeah wix sites are poorly optimised and not fit for purpose for an online business.

RE: analytics, Just login into google account and search for google analytics integration you need to create a unique QA account for your domain and then copy paste the code you get from Google into your site (on all pages) so header or footer is usually the way to go.

This will give you the basic integration, then you could always try and add some advanced tracking such as ecommerce, set goals etc.

 

[TMW]

Mark_Taylor_ : Thank you for the advice! I just test the speed of my site using Gtmetrix and the result doesn't look good! PageSpeed: E (59%), YSlow: D (61%)........ Page fully loaded time: 22.5s, TOTAL PAGE SIZE: 4.19MB, Requests: 347...... Honestly I can't understand what exactly it means but the speed is low.....

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

And i'll repeat the above advice, sack Wix off and get a proper website / host.. something cheap and cheerful on a wordpress / woocommerce platform works well for small shops on tight budgets.

Also look at adding google webmaster tools, this should help pinpoint any crawl issues or other things that may be causing issues.

Typical ecommerce conversions rates in retail is between 2 - 3%, i know this can vary but all info i've seen point to this being the average.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

I'd guess that if you compress and optimise your images then this will probably help page speed a lot.
As its a wix site you won't have many options to improve things that much.

 

[TMW]

Mark_Taylor_ :

• Do an SEO audit to make sure your site is at least doing the basics right.
• Look at ways to increase the number of visitors (i'll leave this open to discussion on how to do this), the average ecommerce conversion rate is between 2 - 3.5% so attract more visitors.
• Do some A/B split testing to try and improve your conversion rate. This is a project rather than a quick fix.

Can you please teach how to do that?

 

[TMW]

Ameen: What do you mean they are all users?

 

[fisicx]

RE: analytics, Just login into google account and search for google analytics integration you need to create a unique QA account for your domain and then copy paste the code you get from Google into your site (on all pages) so header or footer is usually the way to go.

Not on a wix site. You need a premium account to do this - which means more expense for stuff that's free everywhere else in the world.

 

[fisicx]

Mark_Taylor_ :

• Do an SEO audit to make sure your site is at least doing the basics right.
• Look at ways to increase the number of visitors (i'll leave this open to discussion on how to do this), the average ecommerce conversion rate is between 2 - 3.5% so attract more visitors.
• Do some A/B split testing to try and improve your conversion rate. This is a project rather than a quick fix.

Can you please teach how to do that?

You can't not with a wix site.

Seriously, every single thing you need to do to improve your business needs you to stop using wix.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Yeah a FREE wix website haha, great aren't they

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

If you weren't on a Wix website, then you could use Googles own free A/B testing service called optimize (just google it). But this requires simple code integration as it injects code changes into the DOM using javascript... I doubt wix allows that ;-)

 

[TMW]

WIX is not Free... monthly payment is required

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Even worse!!, I've never used them but have only heard of them by reputation, They used to offer a free website builder service years ago I think. These types of hosts / websites aren't on my radar to be honest.

 

[Marketing Man]

Richard,

There a loads of valid points here so let me add something to provide a more systematic approach.

The previous posts are 'Correct' - Free websites to sell products online will quite often fail unless you have the most immaculate social media backing you could possible dream of.

Each Marketing element needs to be carefully considered from top to bottom so your window to the world needs to be the best you can budget for. So 3 steps...

1. Pre-Marketing - The Brand, I am not just talking about the site, we are talking about a 'naming convention' with special reference to the opposition and your potential customers, where you could potentially sit in the market and what your business goals and objectives are? How the site functions, taking into consideration all of this hard initial work to make these decisions. Once you are certain you are ready then you need to 'save up' some cool hard cash to have the site scoped, framed and produced using a large part of your budget to complete it. Remember this is your biggest marketing tool and requires a good proportion of your budget and the right environment so that people wont be tempted to get something cheaper elsewhere, why are you so different? Challenge yourself.

2. Marketing - Then comes the hard work from launch to inbound marketing, social media campaigns and paid listings. Keep the continuity and consistency, be relentless in this pursuit.

3. Re-Marketing - look after your databases, capture your data, continue the conversation with your customers.

 

[Nochexman]

Reply to Nochex: How to set up Google Analytics on my website?

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en

Whichever website software you use - set up Google Analytics ASAP, so you can at least see what your existing customers are doing on your website.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

Maybe signup for a free trial of crazyegg or hotjar, they give you a more visual set of analytics like heatmaps etc which the lay person may find useful.

 

[Rhameel]

Congratulations for bringing visitors, reverse engineer the entire process. Please assess your customer avatar and their behavior carefully, identify why they arent purchasing from your site. Carry out the relevant market research at first, randomly ask 10 people why they wouldnt purchase from your site. You'll gather an idea why theres no purchases on your site. Once this process is carried out, this will provide a better direction and clarity which parts of your business or site require work.

Few elements which can avoid a sale.

• Pictures
• Pricing points and quality of product
• Description
• Branding
• Market Positioning
• Design Pages (How well is your product positioned in front of the eyes of your visitors, is it well presented).

Please avoid keeping the whole process complicated, research and implement.

 

[TMW]

Nochexma: Thank you! I've set up Google Analytics and google+ followed to your link!

 

[TMW]

Rhameel: Thank you very much for the advice! I'll try my best to do what you've told me~

 

[altonroot]

All those monthly services are just bad. I know one more which takes monthly subscription charges and they are using old ga.js library which means they have not updated anything for years now. You can buy only paid visitors for such websites. SEO is not possible. Go and get a proper website is the only way. Either way its one time investment while you will anyways give that amount over the period of time. The first one will give you proper website while later one nothing.

 

[Paul Norman]

I am just going to repeat the advice from Fisicx, which is entirely correct.

If you are serious about ecommerce, you need to invest in the site, and in marketing the site.

And wix is definitely ducking investment. It is the opposite of investment. It is like hot air ballooning with a house tethered to the basket.

Ditch it. Get a proper website. Come back to us with the new stats and we will help you with the next step.

A proper website, obviously, is slightly subjective. But talk to a business that is experienced in ecommerce - that has lived and died by it for years - because that is what you are hoping to do.

 

[fisicx]

Nochexma: Thank you! I've set up Google Analytics and google+ followed to your link!

Rhameel: Thank you very much for the advice! I'll try my best to do what you've told me~

All pointless while you still have a Wix site.

 

[TMW]

Hi everyone, can you please suggest me where I should rebuild my site and how much it would cost?

 

[TMW]

Fisicx: After your opinions I've compare my website to others and noticed mine take ages to load... I do agree WIX is not very good and they never really try to help when I face problems of the site, only give me some official answer, but we don't have any budget at the moment as we spend most of it to start up the business and its not selling any at all...