Is This Business Doomed?

Question

OK, maybe that's a bit dramatic but I have just gone live with my new site www.iconkids.co.uk (plug!!), a children's boutique.

I am using Adwords and have had about 30 visitors so far but no orders. The site has now been live for 2 days and I'm already a bit worried that no one is buying.

I am a newbie in online business and I need to know if this is normal.

Maybe check out my site and give me some suggestions as to what I can do to improve it. The site i quite basic but I am on a tight budget and everyone has to start somewhere.

Any other helpful advice would also be appreciated.

Answer 1

Adwords never helped me any.. all it did was cost me a lot of money and no real interested clients. It is very normal to start out slow with business websites.. in fact you'd be considered very lucky and fortunate if you DID make some sales already.

Have you ever tried selling on ebay?  What about article writing?  Sign up for an account at ezinearticles.com and goarticles.com and type you up some articles on children's boutiques.. and then in the "resource box", link to your site.  It's for free and it's very popular.. anybody interested in children's boutiques will read it and maybe click on your site.  The articles will also be picked up by google and other search engines.  

Even if you've never written anything, it'll only take a few minutes to put together a few paragraphs.. it's easier than you think.

I get a lot of hits that way to my site.

Answer 2

A return policy would be a good idea

Answer 3

Take this from a third party view. Imagine I'm a potential buyer, with all the usual faults: I'm selfish, impatient, suspicious of everything, and the smartest person on the Internet, just ask me and I'll tell ya. Ready? Here we go.

Who are you? I don't see an address, phone number, company name or presence . . . . you could be anyone, how do I know you're not just another scammer on the Internet?

Your company presence should be on EVERY page. Otherwise, you're just another work-at-home-mom hoping to get rich on the Internet. (You want to build trust, stand behind your products with a solid business presence.)

Your privacy policy shows a lack of dedication and interest. Read a few P.P's of larger companies. There is more to it than that.  For one, see point #1. Suspicion kicks up another notch . . .

Wait a second. I see something I like, how do I buy it? No add to cart anywhere . . . . What the heck, is this a joke? After poking at the page with my mouse out of anger, I figure out I can't order until I hit "more info." (This part is bad, I mean REALLY bad. The idea is to sell, you want them to be able to buy from ANYWHERE, not two clicks deep.)

When I click "more info," I'm expecting to see MORE info. More description, how many you have in stock, a bigger or multiple pictures - and in this respect I am disappointed and annoyed. I'm not impressed by the "lightbox" effect when this larger pic (which REALLY isn't much larger than the small ones) could have easily been on the "more info" page. How dare you control my actions by making the rest of the page inaccessible! I know what's best for me!

As I browse through, I keep clicking the pictures for more info. Nothin' happens. Why do I keep clicking then? Now I'm feeling dumb for trying, and it makes me feel even more annoyed. (The reason I'm clicking, by the way, is conditioned in my behavior even though I don't know it. This is an expectation trained into Internet shoppers; they expect a shopping cart image thumb to be a CLICKABLE link, equivalent to "more details." OR at the very least, a picture enlargement in a pop-up.)

Product titles should stand out, much in the way your prices do. What's more important here, that my eye catches the word "Elvis" (I may be a big Elvis fan for all you know) or £14.00 ?

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Also, have you read through the adWords recommendations? Are your landing pages relevant to the ads you're running? That is, if I want an Elvis playsuit does clicking the ad bring me RIGHT to the page to buy?

My advice is this: pause your ad campaign right now, you are wasting money. Address these issues. Dig around on other e-commerce sites, see what they are doing right that you're not doing at all.

READ the adWords help files and take their recommendations - that alone will help you get the pages right on your site. Register for Google's webmaster tools and use them, this will help. Read, read, read . . . . it's dry and painstaking but if you don't, yeah, you're doomed to fail.

But it's not too late.

Then when you feel it's right, turn the adWords back on.

Answer 4

Open an ebay store.

Answer 5

your expectations abound you...allow yourself a window of at least 90 days to evaluate...

in the mean time go about your business/

goodluck