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No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

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17 May 2007, 11:03 AM
#1
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No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

I have 2 questions, could someone please look at my site I have had it up for 1 week now and listed in froogle for about 4 days and I haven't had one sale!! I know that my site does not have much on it, which leads me to my next question....
Can anyone suggest any dropshipper? Or at least say who the bads ones are. I am looking into world wide brands...any suggestions, good or bad?
Thanks for your help, I despritely need to get this site going!!

17 May 2007, 12:28 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Have you done any advertising? Unfortunately, many people thinhk in regards to online stores that "If I build it, they will come". It won't work that way, and one week being online really isn't a long time. You may be on froogle, but can people find your site on the first page through google?

Building a profitable online business takes a lot of time, and it also takes some form of advertising.

What's the link to your site, by the way?

17 May 2007, 12:46 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

OH, I can't believe I forgot that!!! What a way to start the day!!!

www.mommyandbabyessentials.com

I actually have 1 customer but they didn't buy anything. Out of curiousity, how long can I expect? I am on google but my closest item is on page 11:no: But I have been moving up.

Any suggestions on advertising? I have submited to open directory, and started working on my links.

Thanks for your help.

17 May 2007, 12:56 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

helpme:

OH, I can't believe I forgot that!!! What a way to start the day!!!

www.mommyandbabyessentials.com

I actually have 1 customer but they didn't buy anything. Out of curiousity, how long can I expect? I am on google but my closest item is on page 11:no: But I have been moving up.

Any suggestions on advertising? I have submited to open directory, and started working on my links.

Thanks for your help.

I don't know how much business submitting to free links will get you... I'd fine websites for expecting mothers, and buy some ad space. Find a mom's forum (assuming that you're also a mom, and would like to chat about mom things), and join in, with a link in your sig, etc. I couldn't possibly give you a set date, however remember there a TONS of websites selling the things that you are selling... so expecting to stand out from the rest in a week is unrealistic. :hug:

The best of luck to you!

17 May 2007, 1:01 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

I have starting chatting in the mommy forums...but thanks for the tip! Do you have any suggestions for my site, how does it look? I love your contributions by the way (as you can see!)

17 May 2007, 1:04 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Often times having good character in a related forum, with your link as a signature, will be good advertising. Also, I would probably connect even more with the, "Hey, we're selling the same products that made our pregnancy a joy."

This line sort of bothered me in your About Us page...

"We are firm believers in all of the products we sell as they have been used in our households."

I'd probably reword that just to be safe.

Brad Smith, Serigraph Printer
https://www.RickRushArt.com

17 May 2007, 2:55 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Building a business isn't about the construction of the business itself, it's about building a foundation over time. I don't want to discourage you but everyone and their brother has an online store now-a-days. If I were you I wouldn't focus on when I was going to get my first sale but what you can do today to increase the likelihood of sales in the future.
First, there are a few things that need attention on your site. There are no FAQ's in the FAQ's. The AMeda Hospital breast pump text is whacked.
http://www.mommyandbabyessentials.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=189&zenid=11q8nqsb3j37pbcjds9rqnipj7
And you need to spellcheck your product pages. example:
http://www.mommyandbabyessentials.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=188
There are at least 3 misspelled words on that page.
And those are just a few things I came across in a few minutes. Listen, no offense but you are not ready to open. Take a look at your site through the customers eyes. Do some fine-tuning and change your focus from making money to creating an environment in which customers Would spend money.

Tim

17 May 2007, 3:02 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Thank you for your advice, no offense taken, I actually just put the faqs page on the site about 10 minutes ago, so I haven't got the text added yet.... But thank you I have been selling online for a couple of years just never on my own website, and I am open to an suggestions, comments (good or bad) and any helpful hints.
Again Thank You!:smile:

26 May 2007, 7:44 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Helpme,

There isn't anything special on your site that would attract customers.
Expecting and new mothers are hungry for information.
You may want to include informational pages about baby care, about new mother issues, how to bath a baby, how to feed a baby, skin care for babies, instruction on how to use that breast pump your selling. You may even want to create a forum on your site where mothers can share their experiences and ask questions of each other.
You may want to discuss how to deal with post partum depression, offer links to sites of interest.

Even if noone buys anything, at first, you want to at least create traffic.

Just my opinion, of course, you do whatever you want.

Elliot

The loves of my life are a good white zinfandel and my dog Homer.

27 May 2007, 5:05 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Having been in business for 20 years the main thing I have learned is that in the beginning advertising is a MUST. Later on word of mouth will run your shop (as mine does). So might I suggest you advertise in MOTHERING Magazine as that seems to be the best place for your products. They have a section for cottage industries (which I am assuming you are) or home based businesses which is very effective in gathering customers. One thing I have learned is that ladies are always looking for things to make their lives easier. You just might end up being unidated with orders once the word gets out about your product.

Oh and people tend to trust printed advertising rather than online advertising, though when I started my online shop I hunted down every place that allowed me to link to my site, links which are still bringing in customers.

Trust is the issue at the beginning and then word of mouth runs the shop.

Just my suggestion,
Beth-Katherine:yes:

27 May 2007, 7:11 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Thank you ll for your advice! I really appreciate it. Does anyone see anything wrong with the site? Any suggestions on what I could do to improve it? I am still working on adding more products and adding my facts pages. I have thought about a forum but need to look into how to do that. Again, Thank you all, I really appreciate the good and bad coments!
I did get one sale and I was ticked pink, but that was a while ago and nothing since. Anything else anyone wants to say is welcome.

8 Jun 2007, 3:07 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

I can't access your site at all. I get this:

Sorry!
There seems to be a problem connecting to our database. Please give us a few minutes to remedy the problem. Thank you.

To verify the site status ... Click here

but I can access some of the product links that were linked in this forum.


Cheryl Childers

[hand-made-hugs.com](http://hand-made-hugs.com)
[hand-made-hugs-store.com](http://hand-made-hugs-store.com)
8 Jun 2007, 3:49 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

helpme:

I have 2 questions, could someone please look at my site I have had it up for 1 week now and listed in froogle for about 4 days and I haven't had one sale!! I know that my site does not have much on it, which leads me to my next question....
Can anyone suggest any dropshipper? Or at least say who the bads ones are. I am looking into world wide brands...any suggestions, good or bad?
Thanks for your help, I despritely need to get this site going!!

Ok, I have between 300-600 unique visitors to my website per day.
My other website has had over 12000 (12 thousand hits)

If I take more than 5 orders per day, I have had a good day.

Suggestions for visitors. Google adsence, its not that expensive, set a realistic budget ($100) per month? make your adverts keyword rich (but not spamed) and the value for money is better.

Link.Link.Link you will be suprised at how many visitors you get from exchanging links with your website.

Add an affiliate program, and advertise that on affiliate type websites...let other people advertise your site for you (and build page rank)

Patience. Allow about a year for an earning from your website.

Quicker than this is a bonus.

Type Wholesale into google. Dont pay for information, there are plenty of free wholesale information websites out there, pay for is mostly a rip off.

Regards, mark
Hope this helps, good luck.

8 Jun 2007, 8:53 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

In my 2 cents opinion, the site is too busy. Way too much to read. I don't like to have to scroll down more than once with my mouse wheel on an ecommerce web page on the main page. It gets annoying to me fast! I'd categorize your items more to reduce the size of your main page. Check out my site at https://www.hardwoodcanes.com I try to limit how long my main page is as much as possible.

Either reduce the blur on the purple item images on the main page and either remove the duplicate names below them, or delete the purple text images and replace them with actual product photos. Also, you have your categories listed 4 times on the main page. Once below the header, twice in the body (the image and the text below) and again on the sidebar on the right. Too much information!!! argh!!! :shocking:

Oh yeah, maybe a different header as well. I'd include at least some of my categories in my headers like I do on my website. Make an image map and when the customer hovers over the header and clicks, it will take them there.

Good luck! Your site is off to a good start. Just needs some refining.

Pm me if you need some header design help.

(I don't know everything, I just like to pretend I do!)

Canemasters
www.canemasters.com

8 Jun 2007, 10:15 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Thank you so much! I need to hear all of it, as I am VERY new to this. I will definitly be making many changes after hearing all of this. I like to hear the good and the bad, I know I need to make changes.

9 Jun 2007, 5:36 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

You say you have 200 to 300 visitors a day but you probably have 200 to 300 hits a day and this is not visits.

One of the terms frequently thrown around regarding website traffic is "hits." What most people mean by "hits" is the number of visits the site gets. But technically, the word "hits" actually refers to the total number of files that are requested from the server. Therefore the number of hits to a site is always going to be significantly higher than the actual number of visits to the site. This is because a typical visit to a website will include "hits" on a number of pages. Not only is each page counted as a hit, but all the graphics on every page requested also register as uniquely requested files, a.k.a. "hits." Given the number of graphics on a typical webpage (including the navigation bar, highlight states of graphic menus and so forth), the difference between hits and visits is substantial. It would not be uncommon for a traffic report to show ten or even twenty times as many hits as actual visits.

Look at sessions, page views and average length of visit.

When analyzing your traffic report you can, for the most part, ignore hits and bytes (bytes being the total amount of data sent out from your site). Instead, it's much more helpful to review the trends in sessions, pageviews, and length of stay. Urchin provides both totals and averages for these traffic stats.

Tracking your overall website sessions is the best and most accurate way to determine your site's performance. A session is a unique visit by a singe individual. One session is recorded for each unique site visit whether the visitor looks at one page or every page on the site.

Because every site is different, comparing your site's performance to another's is not very useful. Some sites are designed to attract daily readers. Some are simply used to support other marketing materials. Therefore, comparing overall traffic volume is not a useful effort. Rather than worrying about how many sessions your site receives compared to other sites, it's better to understand how your site adjustments and marketing efforts impact your site's overall traffic patterns. Therefore, tracking session data from month to month is the most fundamental aspect of analyzing your website traffic reports. Hopefully, you will see growth in your overall session traffic over time.

Now about the looks of your site.

Agreed it is busy. Too many blue and grey lines going every where. You don't have any identifiable images in the upper part of your site which make your visitors read and read and read to come to the conclusion as to whether they want to go or stay........ Most will go if you don't have interesting content off the bat.

Do a search around the net at sites selling the same products that you sell and see what their sites look like.

http://www.babycity.co.uk/default.aspx

http://www.babybox.com/index.html

Just for a few. You will see interesting images of babies and accessories.

If you go to morguefile.com they have free images for your use. A great place to start!

http://morguefile.com/archive/index.php?MORGUEFILE=30e2ef4997pha52ho7hdjvq207&search_log=true&terms=baby


Play with it long enough and you will break it.
11 Jun 2007, 2:42 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

hi
sorry mate do not take any offense but i can share with u my experience. I got first sale after 2 months after putting my site online and i used to get just 3-4 sales for 3 months but now yes i get nearly 8-9 sales a week. I hadn;t done anything just sticked to basics.
Look at your site from customer prospective not from ur eyes.
I hadn;t put any affilate program of adsense just listed my site on two shopping comparison search engines that also free one.

Now ur site i still believe that people navigate from left to right when scanning the website try to reduce ur page length no one wants to scroll so much when they want to purchase then third you are using black with blue background for your links and putting strain on eyes then in mkain page i cud not understand what is all those links like baby cloths and all that stuff ur repeating these links 3 times (right hand, top and in center) if u want to write text use another page for big description bring ur products so that when people access ur site the first thing they should see is ur products and what is that blue strip bars in side of ur page ur logo has white back ground and u r using blue background

some suggestions

  1. Look out for your competitors and see how they have designed there site ( Very important)
  2. Ask somebody who can tell u that how they will like to navigate.
  3. Design by keeping customer in mind not You.
  4. Create feed and put on shopping search engine sites.
  5. Reduce page length
  6. Shift navigation links from right to left.

Do these things and u will be able to start making sales

look around for sites designed by people here also

read the faq and tutorials and they will help u solve little problems
www.goshoppinglive.com

11 Jun 2007, 10:48 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

Again, thank you for the suggestions and ideas. I will definitly be making major adjustments to my main page. I would like to switch my sideboxes to the left, however I am using apple zen and that is not possible ( I don't know how much trouble it would be to switch templetes?)
I am listing on Froogle (it will also be froogle to me :smile:, googlebase), what other search engine sites are there?

Any other comments or suggestions, I'll take them all!

11 Jun 2007, 11:28 AM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

hi
for shopping search engines u need to google it as i live in australia so here different and i don;t know where u are based.
Then according to me the best template is default one I had not changed it except just one or two modifications now im looking for somebody as that template has been more than 6 months
lot of guys have said abt google placement well sorry i cannot guide u on this as my site does not appear in first two pages lol and neither i have any affiliate program yet but i will implement it but not yet as my all sales as i told u before from comparison sites

and have patience because people think twice before purchasing online
Best of Luck

read the faq and tutorials and they will help u solve little problems
www.goshoppinglive.com

11 Jun 2007, 12:18 PM
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Re: No sales--please advice... PLEASE!!/Drop shipping also?

shop2buy can I see your site?