Getting that first sale. . . .

Always100FC

no offence but....
the kirsty allsopp range is terrible, and hugely overpriced. i'd be surprised if you get a sale here
you've 2 aprons - hardly a big range and people buy these on the high street not websites (esp at that price)
a £25 cleaning bucket???? i'm not sure who's more stupid - the person who'd fork out £25 for this or the person who thinks someone will fork out £25!
the indespensible despenser looks decent, but i'd bet it's in kleenze for half the price.

best of luck...
you'll need it

Debt_Free_Chick

I've just had a look.

To be honest, it's not obvious that you have anything to sell. Some people will think it's a blog about cleaning the house and will probably hit the "back button" as soon as they land on the Home Page :rotfl: I didn't realise that each of the links on the right takes you to a range of products.

You need a "Buy Online" or a "Products" button - make either of these stand out from everthing else. Have that link to an online store with the different product ranges listed on the store page. Perhaps a few words about the type of products to be found under each heading too.

Are you planning on extending the range? I have huge respect for Kirsty Allsop's knowledge on house buying & selling, but anything carrying her name suggests "unnecessary extra expense as this is a celebrity endorsement" to me. Sorry to be so blunt, but I feel the same way about Jamie Oliver labelled saucepans, Nigella labelled mixing bowls etc etc I wonder if some similar products without the celebrity label are needed

Debt_Free_Chick

sickofhavingnomoney wrote: »

I have my website up and running now and am getting about 10 - 15 hits a day at the moment

What other statistics/information do you get?

Can you tell which pages they're visiting?

Can you tell if it's the same person visiting a number of times or if these are 10-15 different people?

domestic_goddess

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

I've just had a look.

To be honest, it's not obvious that you have anything to sell. Some people will think it's a blog about cleaning the house and will probably hit the "back button" as soon as they land on the Home Page :rotfl: I didn't realise that each of the links on the right takes you to a range of products.

I have added a message at the top of the home page that will hopefully let people know that if they click on the links then they can buy

You need a "Buy Online" or a "Products" button - make either of these stand out from everthing else. Have that link to an online store with the different product ranges listed on the store page. Perhaps a few words about the type of products to be found under each heading too.

Are you planning on extending the range? I have huge respect for Kirsty Allsop's knowledge on house buying & selling, but anything carrying her name suggests "unnecessary extra expense as this is a celebrity endorsement" to me. Sorry to be so blunt, but I feel the same way about Jamie Oliver labelled saucepans, Nigella labelled mixing bowls etc etc I wonder if some similar products without the celebrity label are needed

I tend to agree now, my thinking was that by selling Kirstie Allsopps products I would get more people looking at the site, I am selling the things at about 10 - 20% under the rrp but the feedback is that they are still too expensive! Oh well you learn by mistakes I suppose.:eek:

I am planning to extend the range and have lots of things due to be added over the next few weeks but I wanted to go live with the website asap so it starts to get picked up by the search engines.

Thanks for your feedback I really appreciate it, :beer:

domestic_goddess

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

What other statistics/information do you get?

Can you tell which pages they're visiting?

Can you tell if it's the same person visiting a number of times or if these are 10-15 different people?

Hi, the only stats I get are the number of unique visitors which averages around 10 - 15 although in the last couple of days that is going up to about 20 a day now.

I can see from my adwords account that the things that are brining people to the site are mostly searches for aprons and housework tips so I plan to extend the range of aprons a bit and I have added the housework diary to try and get people coming back.... Thanks for your feedback:beer:

competitionscafe

Make sure you set a daily maximum budget for your adwords spend, split your keywords into seperate groups, use your keywords in your ad headline and description and split test your adwords ads to raise your CTR and lower your cost per click. Also use negative keywords, as well as exact, phrase and broad matching to ensure targetted traffic. There is a free ebook guide to adwords here which can be saved to your desktop and which explains all of this a bit better than I do: http://www.affiliatemax.com/aw.pdf

However if your site is not converting traffic into buyers you will need to sort out that aspect before paying for more traffic which does not convert. Most sites selling a product will convert at around 2% (very roughly) so anything you can do to increase your conversion ratio will have a big impact on your profitability. Ensure that clicks from adwords arrive at a targetted landing page for the product and not just a home page. Google adwords has free conversion tracking which you can use to check your statistics and see which visitors and keywords are converting into sales (just a snippet of code to add to your pages).

The UK Business forums is another good place to find some free advice:
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk

In particular see this post which has some good suggestions:
101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence:
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=32162

Looks like Google has at least indexed your pages:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&q=rosy+glow+bathpod&btnG=Google+Search

P.S. I hope Nigella Lawson does not have any objections to your website name?

WhiteLily_2

Hi
Sorry for my post being negative but please be aware that retail is very depressing at the moment (unless you are into food or heavy discounting - which affects your net profit!!!). I have a great deal of retail experience and even the big companys are struggling - with a lot of companies going under......... Good luck and all the best.

rizla01

Hi sick off.

Nice looking site.

Just a small point but your links don't work.

Not good having to copy into address bar IMHO.

domestic_goddess

rizla01 wrote: »

Just a small point but your links don't work.

Not good having to copy into address bar IMHO.

Thats def not good, I wasn't aware of that but I will sort it asap, Thanks

richt71

sickofhavingnomoney wrote: »

I have my website up and running now and am getting about 10 - 15 hits a day at the moment but still haven't had a sale and am getting a bit worried. I have reduced my postage from £3.50 to £2.50 yesterday but am worried as I am still awaiting that first sale!!!!

My business is purely internet based so I just wanted to ask anyone how long it took to get your first sale....

I have a few clickbank affliate sites I promote and after much reading the rate I work on is 1 conversion in 50 to 65 anything better and it's great but I work all my promotional costs on this basis as this seems true of my websites. Now obviously it may vary dependant on what you're selling and how you're getting your leads - ie general traffic will require huge number to convert to sales my traffic is for people looking for what I promote. Hope that helps.