Promoting a retail site online

[TheChangingMan]

Hi,

Just looking for some quick advice please, I have gone through several channels to promote my site (changingman . co . uk) online but still believe I am missing a trick!

If anyone could point me in the right direction as to what the cheapest (value for money)way is to promote such a site then it would be very much appreciated.

many thanks in advance

 

[trev82]

What have you tried so far ?? ebay/adword

 

[Partnership Telecom]

What sort of budget are you considering ? This will give a better idea on the approach you can take. It is possible to build up traffic and interest for next to nothing these days (social media, forums, blogging, etc....), but this takes time and effort. You seem to be promoting a niche market so that goes in your favour.

 

[TheChangingMan]

I have/am using ebay, all google tools and twitter, however have not yet gone down the blogging route or forums, have reservations on using forums as they are not keen for URL's to be shown, budget wise (not much!) around £30 a month!

 

[arcon5]

I have/am using ebay, all google tools and twitter, however have not yet gone down the blogging route or forums, have reservations on using forums as they are not keen for URL's to be shown, budget wise (not much!) around £30 a month!

Wouldn't even cover eBay fees i'm afraid, let alond adwords, sponsored ads ect.

What sort of items are you selling?

You may be better of developing a presence on eBay & Amazon first as in my experience its much much harder & takes alot more money to develop consistent sales from your own website.

Maybe post a link to your website so everybody can review that.
EDIT: thinking about it, this is only something paid members are allowed to do. Maybe somebody else can clarify this.

 

[TheChangingMan]

Wouldn't even cover eBay fees i'm afraid, let alond adwords, sponsored ads ect.

What sort of items are you selling?

You may be better of developing a presence on eBay & Amazon first as in my experience its much much harder & takes alot more money to develop consistent sales from your own website.

Maybe post a link to your website so everybody can review that.
EDIT: thinking about it, this is only something paid members are allowed to do. Maybe somebody else can clarify this.

Thanks, I think the ebay advice is good as I'm thinking that creating a customer base there can then eventually spill onto the website,

website is changingman .co .uk (hope I'm not breaking any rules)

 

[Giggleberries]

What is your organic search engine traffic like?

Driving organic traffic can be one of the least expensive approaches, but it is hard work.

 

[TheChangingMan]

What is your organic search engine traffic like?

Driving organic traffic can be one of the least expensive approaches, but it is hard work.

Yes heard that it can be quite a challenge! in your opinion what would be the most effective way to get organic traffic?

cheers

 

[arcon5]

Search engine traffic is obviously always going to be the cheapest - since its free!

But don't by any means think that is the answer. It will take a long long time before you will draw significant, relevant traffic naturally from search results that will convert to customers. There will be millions of similar websites to yours, websites that have not just been optimised, but have been around for years with hundreds of reviews and thousands of quality, inbound links recommendations.

Online, free ways would be to contribute regularly (not spam) forums relating to your sector (via signature links) - but again, the no.of visitors will be small with little or no conversions.

With regards to your website, the first category I clicked has 0 products, the next category had 1 product. I couldn't find a category with more than 2 products. Thats something you need to work on first.
Also, no delivery information - thats one of the most important things to me when buying online - how long turnaround will be & who will be the carrier..
Go easy on the adverts aswell.

 

[TheChangingMan]

Search engine traffic is obviously always going to be the cheapest - since its free!

But don't by any means think that is the answer. It will take a long long time before you will draw significant, relevant traffic naturally from search results that will convert to customers. There will be millions of similar websites to yours, websites that have not just been optimised, but have been around for years with hundreds of reviews and thousands of quality, inbound links recommendations.

Online, free ways would be to contribute regularly (not spam) forums relating to your sector (via signature links) - but again, the no.of visitors will be small with little or no conversions.

With regards to your website, the first category I clicked has 0 products, the next category had 1 product. I couldn't find a category with more than 2 products. Thats something you need to work on first.
Also, no delivery information - thats one of the most important things to me when buying online - how long turnaround will be & who will be the carrier..
Go easy on the adverts aswell.

Great advice, thankyou, the stock issue is something that will soon be addressed as orders are coming iin etc, will definately check out the delivery info and get sorted, thanks for pointing out.

with regards to traffic do you think adwords have any value?

cheers

 

[arcon5]

with regards to traffic do you think adwords have any value?

I have spent a few hundred with them over the last few months and didn't really get any value from it - that may well have been down to badly designed ads though.
I'm sure there will be many around here that would vouch for it though.

I use Bing engine and find a good conversion.


A £30 budget would be eaten up in days (or day).

Clothes isn't really an impulse purchase though so you need to find a way of getting your visitor to return

 

[sysops]

I have/am using ebay, all google tools and twitter, however have not yet gone down the blogging route or forums, have reservations on using forums as they are not keen for URL's to be shown, budget wise (not much!) around £30 a month!

I do find it bizarre when people declare that they have an advertising budget of £30 a month.

Are you from the 1880s?

In the real world, £30 doesn't buy you a tank of petrol. It doesn't buy you a meal out for two. Why do you think it would be sufficient as an advertising budget?

 

[TheChangingMan]

have had a dabble with adwords and it does seem quite expensive will check out bing aswell,

getting visitors to return will be an issue however I think that with the items being or will be rarer to find items/vintage/end of line at prices a lot less than major chains then maybe impulse buying could come into it.

I think £30 will have to be increased though!!

 

[TheChangingMan]

I do find it bizarre when people declare that they have an advertising budget of £30 a month.

Are you from the 1880s?

In the real world, £30 doesn't buy you a tank of petrol. It doesn't buy you a meal out for two. Why do you think it would be sufficient as an advertising budget?

I can advertise (at present) in local magazines for £15 a month and get some posters/leaflets for £25 so I suppose it can be done offline although I appreciate that targeting millions on the internet will cost a little extra!!

 

[sysops]

I can advertise (at present) in local magazines for £15 a month and get some posters/leaflets for £25

Getting many sales from these channels?

 

[TheChangingMan]

Getting many sales from these channels?

havent taken the plunge into advertising this way yet only checked out prices, would get some presumably decent local sales but from ebay experience the biggest market is in mainland europe and asia so need to target overseas.

 

[arcon5]

£30 is nearly as much as I spend on coffee each week

I remember a thread on the UKBF a while back which looked at whether advertising offline using flyers would be a successfuly strategy for an online business - might be interesting to do a search for.

 

[TheChangingMan]

ah right will have a look for that, imagine there are good arguments for and against

 

[TheChangingMan]

I do find it bizarre when people declare that they have an advertising budget of £30 a month.

Are you from the 1880s?

In the real world, £30 doesn't buy you a tank of petrol. It doesn't buy you a meal out for two. Why do you think it would be sufficient as an advertising budget?

On average what would you say is a minimum amount that you should spend to get any sort of reasonable results?

 

[sysops]

On average what would you say is a minimum amount that you should spend to get any sort of reasonable results?

To launch a new site, in a competitive market like men's clothes? To achieve a sensible level of sales within 12 months, I'd budget on an advertising spend of £2k a month minimum. If you can increase this to about £5k a month, you can end up with a decent business by the end of the first 12 months.

 

[TheChangingMan]

To launch a new site, in a competitive market like men's clothes? To achieve a sensible level of sales within 12 months, I'd budget on an advertising spend of £2k a month minimum. If you can increase this to about £5k a month, you can end up with a decent business by the end of the first 12 months.

really!! ok that's an eye opener

Would need a lot of sales to make 2k money well spent, the market probably isnt as competitive as men's clothes as it is vintage/secondhand menswear that the market so in effect a "micro niche" within men's clothes.

cheers

 

[sysops]

really!! ok that's an eye opener

Would need a lot of sales to make 2k money well spent/quote]

You won't recoup that in the first year, that's to get started and get the site doing some turnover.

 

[TheChangingMan]

really!! ok that's an eye opener

Would need a lot of sales to make 2k money well spent/quote]

You won't recoup that in the first year, that's to get started and get the site doing some turnover.

ok, understood, if thats what it takes

 

[grabbitmagazine]

I could offer you some magazine advertising at a competitive rate?

 

[TheChangingMan]

I could offer you some magazine advertising at a competitive rate?

would be open to the idea, do you have a copy of magazine and rates for me to look at and what is your sector?

thanks

 

[ComJan]

work on Organic ranking first, buy directory listings. Thats a long term investment

 

[TheChangingMan]

I could offer you some magazine advertising at a competitive rate?

got the pm, will take a look and get back to you,

cheers

 

[grabbitmagazine]

got the pm, will take a look and get back to you,

cheers

Great stuff, thanks!

 

[movietub]

really!! ok that's an eye opener

Would need a lot of sales to make 2k money well spent, the market probably isnt as competitive as men's clothes as it is vintage/secondhand menswear that the market so in effect a "micro niche" within men's clothes.

cheers

Even by traditional bricks and mortar retail recouping 2k of marketting would not take a lot. At 10% margin its only 20k sales per month. And what succesful physical shops do you know that don't take at least 20k a month??

A succesful online shop, not burdoned by geography, should be many times that. To be honest, we spend less than 2k per month on advertising and we do see many times that sort of monthly sales. But we do it by concentrating on low price and excellent service. That would not work so well for unbranded items, where you need to draw a customer in before they know exactly what they want. But the figures people often see as shocking, are in fact pretty casual sums for a busy ecommerce operation run as seriously as any bricks and mortar business would be.

This is a frequent problem on these forums, the most experienced and succesful online retailers on here can offer little advice to people that just want to setup an online shop as a pocket money extra income. It's a different world. £30 may be a relative spend % wise for a very new, very low turnover retail site. But it's still just £30, which is about as much use as spending £0.00

The OP needs to make sure that people actually want what they are trying to sell, and that their price is competitive (i.e. within 10% of the cheapest comparable items they can find online) before proceeding at all. You have to have a product and price that works, that has to be the core of any retail start up. Assuming that can be proven, then it's just a case of finding a few ways the OP can promote the site with hard work rather than advertising initially. For example, building up unique quality content for each product page.

If you can get a decent level of sales through the serps & Google base, then you are in a much safer position to pay for a seriously well thought out ppc campaign etc. A rubbish ppc campaign will eat £30 in minutes if you let it, and half the homemade campaigns out there are so broad they attract clicks that will never convert to sales anyway. Amazingly many people choose their domain name as a keyword for ppc campaigns - if you don't know why thats stupid, slap yourself until you figure it out

 

[TheChangingMan]

Even by traditional bricks and mortar retail recouping 2k of marketting would not take a lot. At 10% margin its only 20k sales per month. And what succesful physical shops do you know that don't take at least 20k a month??

A succesful online shop, not burdoned by geography, should be many times that. To be honest, we spend less than 2k per month on advertising and we do see many times that sort of monthly sales. But we do it by concentrating on low price and excellent service. That would not work so well for unbranded items, where you need to draw a customer in before they know exactly what they want. But the figures people often see as shocking, are in fact pretty casual sums for a busy ecommerce operation run as seriously as any bricks and mortar business would be.

This is a frequent problem on these forums, the most experienced and succesful online retailers on here can offer little advice to people that just want to setup an online shop as a pocket money extra income. It's a different world. £30 may be a relative spend % wise for a very new, very low turnover retail site. But it's still just £30, which is about as much use as spending £0.00

The OP needs to make sure that people actually want what they are trying to sell, and that their price is competitive (i.e. within 10% of the cheapest comparable items they can find online) before proceeding at all. You have to have a product and price that works, that has to be the core of any retail start up. Assuming that can be proven, then it's just a case of finding a few ways the OP can promote the site with hard work rather than advertising initially. For example, building up unique quality content for each product page.

If you can get a decent level of sales through the serps & Google base, then you are in a much safer position to pay for a seriously well thought out ppc campaign etc. A rubbish ppc campaign will eat £30 in minutes if you let it, and half the homemade campaigns out there are so broad they attract clicks that will never convert to sales anyway. Amazingly many people choose their domain name as a keyword for ppc campaigns - if you don't know why thats stupid, slap yourself until you figure it out

Many thanks for what is a very constructive and helpfull post, the store is slowly building up a higher stock level, if anyone has a spare couple of mins any comments on what the store is still lacking or any improvements would be much appreciated.

cheers

 

[mud-stx]

With regards to your website, invest some serious money in seo - because ultimately THAT is an investment in your website.

IF you are serious about online marketing, speak to a professional...

 

[Allan123]

I think the problem more than any of the above is it doesn;t matter if you had 10,000 people coming to your site everyday, there is no stock?

Jeans, Shorts and Trousers.. I expected 3/4/5/6 pages of products 20/30 products per page.

Items in that section.. 0.

Another thing I noticed is items for £0.00?

 

[TheChangingMan]

Thanks for the feedback, obviousely stock is an ongoing thing so slowly thier are now products being added, just takes time unfortunately!

 

[Allan123]

Sorry didn't mean to sound blunt, but it is a case of no stock, no sales.

If it was me I'd get in touch with somebody to do some SEO. Any results will take 2-3 months to start coming through anyway, which will give you plenty of time to get your stock online, ready for when the traffic increases.

In the meantime, eBay shop should be your fastest route to sales. Smaller profit but atleast you will be turning stock over and things will seem like they are moving until the website picks up.

 

[movietub]

Sorry didn't mean to sound blunt, but it is a case of no stock, no sales.

If it was me I'd get in touch with somebody to do some SEO. Any results will take 2-3 months to start coming through anyway, which will give you plenty of time to get your stock online, ready for when the traffic increases.

In the meantime, eBay shop should be your fastest route to sales. Smaller profit but atleast you will be turning stock over and things will seem like they are moving until the website picks up.

You're right that no stock = no sales, or rather very few sales. But there is a huge difference between having no stock, and advertising the fact that you have no stock. The reality is that most sites still don't display stock. This is largely because most hosted solution still don't have an adaquate stock control system.

As a result the OP will be going into battle against people that also have sod all stock, but simply don't mention the fact on their site at all. Probably because it's not possible to in many cases.

Showing stock levels is a surefire way to multiply sales for any online seller that actually has a stock to boast about. But if you don't, then it can only be a negative function.

Regards SEO taking 2-3 months to come through, I would say more like 2-3 weeks nowadays for 90% of the effect to be felt. Search engines are locked in a battle desperate to list the newest content first, if the site is bot friendly, your pages will be scanned and re-evaluated withing a few weeks no problem.

So my advice would be to disable the stock level function and just give an average time for dispatch for all items. Also invest in SEO if the money is available, otherwise invest time in re-writing product descriptions and as much additional content for the site as is possible. SEO is often seen as a boffins job, all technical and secretive. The truth is, that most positive SEO has always come from unique and relevant content, not techie tweaks. Content is king.

Once the site is selling, then the OP can invest in stock/SEO/marketing and turn the stock level display back on. Buying stock actually carries very little risk, as it's always floggable at cost price if all else fails. So long as the site/product proves it can sell, then the money to buy stock can be begged/borrowed without guilt or worry from friends, relatives etc.

Just don't spend any real money until you can prove the stuff you sell, sells.

 

[TheChangingMan]

Some very helpfull posts been made so thankyou very much for that,

I have been selling stock on ebay and found that it is selling to countries all over the world
So this is obviously a source of great encouragement and the reason for trading on the web

I have started a store because as everyone knows with ebay you pay quite high fees and have to constantly drive prices down to be competitive in the ebay marketplace thus resulting in much lower profits.

My aim is to create a loyal following and supplier list then promote to countries from other continents and come up with a small niche that will standout above the many menswear, mens vintage clothing sites on the net, to rank higher than these may take some doing although the point about providing as much detail in content is very noteworthy.

Are there any other auction sites that could be recommended? I am giving Etsy a go as they seem quite niche and aiming at the right market.

If you were a marketing agency how would you promote such a site? (without giving away any trade secrets for free!)

Thanks again for all the help it is much appreciated