Expanding To The Internet

Hello, 1st post here.

It's funny, I have always avoided Salehoo thinking it was not worth the money. After all, I had sources for my products and thought it to be unnecessary.

I am glad I joined, it's well worth the cost. I found some great new suppliers.

Anyhow, I have a small specialty pet product business and only sold at shows and fairs. I have website building experience and decided to build a store on Shopify and expand online. My store is live and I have began adding some of the 500 products I sell.

Any pointers would be nice from those who have their own online stores.
www.thepamperedparrot.com

Regards,

Joe

Hi Joe,

Welcome to SaleHoo! I'm glad you are finding your membership so useful :)

Your store looks fantastic!

2 things I will point out:

1. I think it's always good to be upfront with prices and show buyers product prices without them having to click on 'more information'

2. What kind of advertising/marketing are you doing? Getting traffic to your store is an ongoing key task for all ecommerce store owners.

I see you have a newsletter opt-in form. It's in a good prominent place, but perhaps you should make it clear to potential subscribers what the benefit of signing up will be. Will they be notified of sales? Get access to newsletter subscriber discounts? Will you regularly email them tips and advice on bird care?

Oh and one more thing, your header links are just slightly to the left, and overlapping onto the background ;)

All the best, Joe!

Hey. it's ask Alice!

I have watched a lot of your videos and really like them.

Thanks for the reply, that's exactly the kind of criticism I needed. It's hard when your designing your own site, after a while it all blends together and I tend to miss things like you mentioned.

I hope the links on top are fixed now, designing for so many browsers is a pain.

I'll need to write some code to add prices but it can be done.

I did a lot of research and optimized my store for Google shopping search. I plan to do PPC Adwords and YPN once all of my invetory is added. I am starting to get real great organic traffic thanks to custom permalinks.

I have ads coming up in specialty magazines and websites just for parrots, hopefully that and email marketing with lots of coupons will sweeten things a bit.

Nice site, Joe! :)

Looks well put together and very neat. I specially like how you described your products - not forgetting to mention each products' specific use, shows you really took the time make sure buyers know what they're getting into.

Traffic?! I'd like to suggest this forum thread that has tips on FREE and cheap advertising options:

Link hidden: Login to view

By the way, it'd would be really nice if you could add a pic to your profile:)

All the best!

Well it certainly sounds like you are well on your way to getting some highly targeted leads coming your way with all the marketing you are doing.

Good on you for diversifying where you advertise (print magazines, PPC), it's a great way to appeal to a broader audience.

I'm really excited to hear about how you are doing in a few months from now, looks like you are well on your way to creating a successful site!

Hmmm, that link is still not quite right on my end, if it helps, I am using FireFox version 3.6.3.

I know what you mean about getting your site to work across many different browsers. My fiance is a web developer, and he often comes home cursing about compatibility issues!

Good luck :)

Thanks for your help.

One marketing method I am trying is giving away a free gift. In exchange for an email list sign up I am sending a free gift to their home postage paid. My goal is to get 500 subscribers by the end of July. My only dilemma is do I tell them what I am sending or keep it a secret. See image below, it's a funny bumper sticker with my stores web address on it.

Generally I think it works better to tell people what they are going to get, as a 'free gift' sounds a bit wishy-washy to some people and isn't enough incentive.

I like your bumper sticker, but another thing to consider would be writing a short ebook PDF on parrot care to give away. This is something that a lot of people would find really valuable I feel.

Love the name of your website, although I noticed when visiting that it doesn't really say what your site is about very obviously when you first visit. I think it would be good to add some text at the top (and also in your page titles) saying something like: The Pampered Parrot is your online store to find parrot accessories, harnesses and toys.

The first thing on your About Us page should be explanation of what your store is all about too :)

Hope that helps! I think this is a great idea - I've heard bird care niches can be very profitable.

Hi Joe, and welcome to the site. Really glad you made the decision to join us all : )

I can see that you've already had lot's of good advice, so from a visual marketing perspective I would suggest going with a richer green on your header. I think that shade you currently have washes out quite badly and looses impact, which you are looking to make as much impact when you get a hit on you site as possible.

It also seems quite space with just the two birds there, I think you could definitely add more grunt with better graphics. Perhaps a sound file on the home page, some muted parrot calls from the dense green jungle would then tie in with a deeper more vivid green header?

Hopefully you can see where I'm going with that : )

Don't capture a potential customers attention quickly, and they can be gone before you know it!

In regards to marketing, I like hat you are doing, but also look at specialty pet forums to get into, that's your primary market so you would be preaching to the converted!

Always nice to see members chasing selling avenues outside of eBay as well, so kudos to you for that, but don't over look eBay as a traffic generating opportunity for your site.

Cheers

Hope you don't mind me chiming in. Three things I noticed right away. Though not a deal breaker, well one might be.

1. The categories at the top of the page leave the black bar when one takes your site to full page. Not a deal breaker.

2. Your Home page would look neater IMO if the email join box was inside
the border. It looks a little out of place. Not a deal breaker.

3. Maybe a deal breaker. I tend to leave a site out of frustration if I can't find the shipping cost before filling out a payment form. Its a pain to go through the trouble if one isnt happy with the shipping and I tend to not return.
If you look at most if not all big retailers, one can easily get the shipping costs by a simple zip code entry.

Other opinions. I agree with Fudjj about colors. Maybe some deeper greens.

AS far as music or sounds goes, they are fine if they are not intrusive. A constant noise is very annoying and many people surf while watching tv or listening to music. I immediately leave a site if there is constant noise.
But a couple of chirps on landing could be nice especially if they are funny.

Also, I wanted to add that under contact there should be an address.