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Question on scaling my new website

ADayattheRoxbury

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Hey guys, so I decided to take the plunge and quit working for others and go out on my own. I set up the website and it's half-way live, currently only have women's clothing in stock but I'm going to start putting men's clothes up soon. I have the profit margins very slim, because I figured that would allow me to get more sales and more word of mouth but thus far, things have been very slow. I've only gotten 2 sales, and that with the aforementioned slim margins, definitely won't be keeping the lights on. I have started A/B testing Facebook Ads, and looking into marketing on google as well. I have gotten a few organic search clicks as well which has been a surprise to say the least.

The things I know:
I picked a really short domain name.
The things I don't know:
EVERYTHING ELSE!

If you guys want to check out the site and give me some feedback it's www.suutd.com . Needless to say, I am definitely scared shitless right now but I am going to keep pushing! I have saved a good amount for at least the next 24 months, and I'm hoping by then I get some traction. Anyways. Let me have it guys. :O
 
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Mass

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Have you leveraged your personal network and had friends like and share your Facebook pages? I'm not a expert but that would be my first port of call. Build up a email list through a free giveaway or competition and then market to the email list aswell.
 

ADayattheRoxbury

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Yeah, I’m going to do a giveaway for the people that share of a $1000 to $1500 shopping spree. Do you think that amount would be enough to motivate people to like/share on social?

Best,
A


Have you leveraged your personal network and had friends like and share your Facebook pages? I'm not a expert but that would be my first port of call. Build up a email list through a free giveaway or competition and then market to the email list aswell.
 

kristkaa

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Hi

Its really great that you are taking action!
Who is your target market? Who are those "sophisticated"?

You told you have women's clothing and are going to add men's clothing soon. Right now you have few blouses and leggings and it appears you are going to add whatever is easy to find from some drop shipping sites.

Maybe you can earn something with it, I'm from small country and maybe its different in US. But can't people buy the same kind of ordinary stuff from local supermarkets for the same cheap prices at the same time while buying bread?

I recommend you should niche out right now. Research & find your target market and solve some problem for them (read Unscripted and especially the part about value skewing). When you have niche products, then concentrate all your efforts on your target market.

You can learn a lot from Lex DeVilles posts about copy writing. Right now, you're page seems like a good example on how to not write a copy.

Good luck.
 

ADayattheRoxbury

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good example for how not to write a copy. And here I was thinking I was speaking the average American millenials lingo! Haha. I’ll work on it. Do you have a link to that post you’re referring to by lex? I think my target niche is millennials, to concentrate on a single niche and fix their problem would be my initial idea of luxury suits that are handmade on a subscription model. No you can’t buy yoga pants for 8.99 in America shipped, whether they’re off brand or not to be honest.
 

kristkaa

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This is one for example.
GOLD! - Lex DeVille's: 15 Days to Freedom - Make Money Copywriting in 15 Days or Less

Ok, i don't know if it was that bad :), the first paragraph actually has some points in it that you could use on your front page and advertisements. But other paragraphs, so many sentences started with "We". "We have", "We want", "We hope" and so on. So much text but only value proposition is better price.

Do US millennial's really care if the yoga pants are 8.99 or 15? Ok, US is so big market that probably there is enough of those who do. Then your target market actually is most price sensitive US millennials? I still recommend narrowing it down and finding something that you can build your product range and USP on, not just price.
 

JB92

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In terms of the website itself, I don't really feel as if you have any branding.

What is the message you are trying to get across for your business? Why should people choose you?

Within your 'mission statement' you are talking about small margins & profits, no one cares about your profits. It feels more of a sales pitch to an investor than a mission statement for customers honestly.
 

RazorCut

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What do you think about the site itself?

For starters your static splash image is way too big. It is taking up a huge amount of prime selling real-estate. Get your most converting offers up there instead.

Also if your margins are razor thin how are you going to afford to run paid advertising in order to scale? It is always a mistake to rely on low pricing to drive sales. It's the biggest mistake I see with people new to eCommerce.
 
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ADayattheRoxbury

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For starters your static splash image is way too big. It is taking up a huge amount of prime selling real-estate. Get your most converting offers up there instead.

Also if your margins are razor thin how are you going to afford to run paid advertising in order to scale? It is always a mistake to rely on low pricing to drive sales. It's the biggest mistake I see with people new to eCommerce.

So like I said earlier I saved up a lot to do this but I completely agree with you on the real estate of the site. I’ll get on that. Thanks man.
 

ADayattheRoxbury

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In terms of the website itself, I don't really feel as if you have any branding.

What is the message you are trying to get across for your business? Why should people choose you?

Within your 'mission statement' you are talking about small margins & profits, no one cares about your profits. It feels more of a sales pitch to an investor than a mission statement for customers honestly.


Gotcha. I just didn’t know how to craft the message I want to get across. Curated clothing. Low margins. Great prices. To the guy that said it’s Aliexpress, some of the items are from there but I haven’t had any luck finding us dropshippers on aliexpress so I found that by googling Los Angeles Dropshipping
 

Xeon

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good example for how not to write a copy. And here I was thinking I was speaking the average American millenials lingo! I think my target niche is millennials, to concentrate on a single niche and fix their problem would be my initial idea of luxury suits that are handmade on a subscription model.

The way I see the site......you're on a path to crashing and burning......
Not with the site design but how you're executing the whole thing.
Random thoughts.....

1) Biggest issue is you actually do not have a specific target market/audience in mind. Even "American millennials" is way too broad. If you target this group, you're essentially competing with all the major fashion brands out there : Zara, Forever 21, J Crew, Urban Outfitters, Free People......You're basically competing directly with these leviathans with billions to burn, and add to that, they are already well-known with established customer bases.....
You need to really niche down a lot more to build a small, devoted audience over time and then scale from there. All that exists now is just a Shopify website with some clothing products on it.

2) There's no story, no aspirations, no inspirations. You're selling these clothing as commodity products, with a race to the bottom.

3) With fashion, there isn't really a "problem" to fix, since fashion (or clothing) is a product that leans on the far end of the "Want" spectrum. Personally, I don't see copywriting as the antidote for your case. Maybe catchy slogans or headlines yes, but definitely not paragraph-long wall of texts with sales pitches telling people why they should buy those clothes. Which fashion brand does that? It's all about the images and lifestyle they're selling.

4) I would say forget about putting up men's clothes. Just focus on the women category first, niche down a lot more and sell to that specific audience.

5) I used to think Free Shipping is the answer to all online shops' woes, but after studying some brands that didn't offer any sort of free shipping regardless of how much the customer spends (and these folks are still doing so well), I realize free shipping actually burns into your margins.
Currently, it seems you're using free shipping as your unique selling point. That should never be your main selling point especially in "fashion".

6) The "Our Mission" page needs to be redone. After you've nailed down your very specific target customer. Then write that page for that customer. Don't talk about "razor thin margins", "tiny profits" and "branding". That page currently looks like it's written for entrepreneurs starting a clothing business, not for young women buying those clothes.

7) Personally, I'm not a big fan of the dropshipping model. Waiting 2 - 3 weeks for the clothes to arrive? You better have some ultra unique selling point (not price) to overcome that.
On your Mission page, you wrote :

We will match anyone else's prices if there's ever a chance theirs is better.

NO. PLEASE DON'T. JUST NO. You're not running a bargain stall. Please sir, please......
 
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ADayattheRoxbury

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Jeez. So basically I have done nothing well. God. Makes me feel like I just wasted the last x hundred hours of my life. Guess I should have stayed in that dead end job...
 

ADayattheRoxbury

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Looks like I’ll have to reformulate. The products marked [USA] reach domestic people in only 3 days dropshipped.
 

ADayattheRoxbury

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So I’m going to go at this from a totally different way now. I think I’m going to go with the unique angle and push it hard. Increase pricing. And manufacture my own clothing instead so I can affect shipping times. Basically, you’re unique. So why do you buy clothing made for someone else? Buy clothing made for you, and only you. Suutd.com. Relaunch will end up tasking a couple months bc the websites coding sadly :/
 
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ADayattheRoxbury

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Like. There’s this company that will get you a persons measurements with just their height and shoe size, and is only slightly off from a tailor. Using that, and having people click through a look book then using their selections, we curate clothing for them. How does that sound Xeon?
 

Xeon

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I think I’m going to go with the unique angle and push it hard. Increase pricing. And manufacture my own clothing instead so I can affect shipping times. Basically, you’re unique. So why do you buy clothing made for someone else? Buy clothing made for you, and only you.

Be careful about pushing the "unique angle". All clothing are unique and different from the competition (unless you're going into some tailoring designed-and-measured-to-fit business). Just like how a lot of companies say they're the "original", "unique", "one and only", "one of a kind" etc....but are they really?

You need to get this sorted out clearly before doing anything else or finding a manufacturer.

And what and who will your target audience be?
Age group, ethnicity, country to focus on, any subcultures or movement they're into etc...
 

RazorCut

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So like I said earlier I saved up a lot to do this but I completely agree with you on the real estate of the site. I’ll get on that. Thanks man.

No problem. What I meant however was how are you going to fund your advertising budget on your razor margins? You need to allow enough profit per sale to cover all your costs including advertising. Having an initial budget is great but you need to build in a margin for continued advertising otherwise once your savings are used up you won't have anything left to bring in new custom.

I see you are rethinking things so I thought I'd just drop that into the melting pot. Good luck. :smile2:
 
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PizzaOnTheRoof

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Hey guys, so I decided to take the plunge and quit working for others and go out on my own. I set up the website and it's half-way live, currently only have women's clothing in stock but I'm going to start putting men's clothes up soon. I have the profit margins very slim, because I figured that would allow me to get more sales and more word of mouth but thus far, things have been very slow. I've only gotten 2 sales, and that with the aforementioned slim margins, definitely won't be keeping the lights on. I have started A/B testing Facebook Ads, and looking into marketing on google as well. I have gotten a few organic search clicks as well which has been a surprise to say the least.

The things I know:
I picked a really short domain name.
The things I don't know:
EVERYTHING ELSE!

If you guys want to check out the site and give me some feedback it's www.suutd.com . Needless to say, I am definitely scared shitless right now but I am going to keep pushing! I have saved a good amount for at least the next 24 months, and I'm hoping by then I get some traction. Anyways. Let me have it guys. :O
When everything is on sale, nothing is.
 

Jim Gregory

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Hey guys, so I decided to take the plunge and quit working for others and go out on my own. I set up the website and it's half-way live, currently only have women's clothing in stock but I'm going to start putting men's clothes up soon. I have the profit margins very slim, because I figured that would allow me to get more sales and more word of mouth but thus far, things have been very slow. I've only gotten 2 sales, and that with the aforementioned slim margins, definitely won't be keeping the lights on. I have started A/B testing Facebook Ads, and looking into marketing on google as well. I have gotten a few organic search clicks as well which has been a surprise to say the least.

The things I know:
I picked a really short domain name.
The things I don't know:
EVERYTHING ELSE!

If you guys want to check out the site and give me some feedback it's www.suutd.com . Needless to say, I am definitely scared shitless right now but I am going to keep pushing! I have saved a good amount for at least the next 24 months, and I'm hoping by then I get some traction. Anyways. Let me have it guys. :O
Your web site has a very nice image at first glance - elegant, great pics, clean lay out. My first impression is the pricing of the clothing is way too low since you're targeting "Fashions for the Sophisticated" My gut reaction is to add a zero to your sell price (so its $180 instead of $18) if the "sophisticated" high end market is what you're targeting - just make sure your packing and the clothing itself is of super high quality. OR change your target audience to something like the "sophisticated fashionista clothing without breaking the bank" i.e. people who want to look like million bucks while being smart with their money. HTH
 

Danczyk

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Honestly you are basically wasting your time with this. Unless you get the bad experience you will have and use it as a lesson next time.

  • You say you saved a lot for this I wonder where you spend the money. I can see that you use Shopify and their free debut theme. How many sites there are which look like yours? Hundreds? Thousands?
  • I can see that you haven't done your homework. If I ask you who exactly is YOUR customer can you tell me in the next 5 seconds? Study your competitors man, check their numbers. Pay for ahrefs, 7 days for 7 bucks. Go check their visits, PPC costs traffic sources and backlinks. Understand how they get the people to click on their site before clicking buy.
  • How come everything is on sale?
  • You don't have favicon
  • I check a product of yours, let's see denim short sleeve blouse. As soon as I click all I see is the picture of the product and product description.
Gender: Women
Silhouette: A-Line
Waistline: Natural
Sleeve Style: REGULAR
Dresses Length: Above Knee, Mini
Neckline: O-Neck
Material: Polyester,Cotton
Season: Summer
Sleeve Length(cm): Short
Brand Name: hirigin
Decoration: None
Pattern Type: Solid
Style: Casual

I was sure as **** you copied and pasted it from somewhere. All I had to do was search the picture in google and here I found it on aliexpress. US $6.38 29% OFF|2019 Summer Women Casual Button Short Sleeve Denim Vintage Dresses Chest Button V neck Shirt Dress Straight Asymmetrical Vestido-in Dresses from Women's Clothing on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group 4$ cheaper and guess what? The same shipping time.
  • No shame on selling aliexpress products but not even trying to write a copy for the product? Lame lame lame!!! You said you spent x amount of hundred hours on it.

I had a post before for someone elses site where I said I was ready to pull a tooth for every sale he/she makes. For your site I am ready to give my life if you "ever" make a sale (no friends ofc) It's a very bad example of taking action. Please don't judge me, you should thank me that I am so harsh and not sugar coating it for you. Otherwise you will just mentally masturbate on the idea and end up frustrated.

After all those words here are my actionable advice for you.

  1. Look at at least 50 successful e-commerce(although I wouldn't recommend a beginner) and study them. Study their copy, site structure, use ahrefs/spyfu/similarweb, identify their traffic, ads, newsletters
  2. Find a small niche, then make it smaller. For example dog loving single girls between 18-25. Know your audience, optimize everything from color to copy for them. If you sell to women use emotions and manipulate them with words. If it's men use insecurities.
  3. When you know your niche and audience find where they hang out. Use social media to reach them. Be your audience. Google elephant pants. Those girls are making millions in revenue. Again study.
  4. Be financially stable for the beginning because you will have many returns, Fashion stuff tends to refund at least 20% so be ready. Customer satisfaction is everything.
  5. If you made it this far you probably made a couple of dollars congrats you have thousands more to go. Hard? Maybe you should have stayed at your job then.
Good luck. I hope it saves you or another poor soul.
 
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