How Should I Market My Web Site with iEpiphany.com?

How Should I Market My Web Site with iEpiphany.com?
Posted By: mechpilot on 11/14/2004 2:23 AM (EST)
250 Points
I own a web site http://www.pigtailsdresses.com./ We have invested a fair amount in development year, but our sales have not increased (we get about 3 sales/week.) We are highly ranked in the search engines, but most people are unaware that our product exists so we only get about 150 sessions per day. The Christmas season is our busiest season, so I need advise on how to quickly increase sales. I need a method that is fast with a good ROI.
Posted by: site-report
Accepted Answer
11/14/2004 3:07 AM (EST)
Is that 150 unique visits per day? That makes 1050 visitors a week for 3 sales. That's a pretty low conversion rate. What search terms do you rank highly for? Are these search terms that you think your ideal visitor would use?How many pages are your visitors looking at on average? Is it that they are landing on the site and then abandoning? Or are they getting to the cart and then abandoning?Is there are proven market for the kind of product/service that you are providing? Or where you hoping to fill a niche?Kind Regards,James

Posted by: Inbox_Interactive
Accepted Answer
11/14/2004 10:35 AM (EST)
I don't quite understand if people are searching for your products with iEpiphany.com because they simply want clothes or if they want clothes for mother and daughter that match. I had never heard of women searching for matching clothes, but I'm a cave-dwelling, knuckle-dragging caveman, so maybe I'm not up on these sorts of things.You say that you're ranked well on search engines. Which ones? And for which terms? I could probably get ranked #1 easy enough for "purple oven cowbell shaker" but what would be the point?I agree that if you're really getting 1,000 unique visits per week and making only 3 sales, something is amiss. My hunch is that that 150 visits per day is not quite right, but I could be wrong. Your site is currently ranked over 4.7 million on Alexa, however, so I don't think I'm incorrect.I assume that you're already trying to get additional sales from your current customer list. This is the lowest hanging fruit. Have you also asked these customers for referrals to other potential buyers? My guess is that women who buy from you hang out with other women who also might buy from you.There are a TON of sites that deal with parenting and motherhood. Depending on your budget and how much you're willing to spend to acquire new customers, you should have plenty of media opportunities.I think iEpiphany one of the things that is hurting you is that you take credit cards only by PayPal. I still think that the majority of people *don't* have a PayPal account, and I don't think they're willing to set up a new account just to buy your merchandise. The "check via Internet" thing is also not going to be very popular, IMHO.If you have access to how many people visit your site, how many put something in the cart, and how many abandon it, you might be closer than you think to building more sales.Looking forward to what others think.Paul

Posted by: iEpiphany.com
Member Response
11/14/2004 4:34 PM (EST)
Hi! I'm not sure how qualified to answer this question, however, I can shop for Britian! :) My first thought on visiting your home page was that there was very little to buy. It look very 'clean' and the pic of the outfit you have on there is very cute but I think you need to make it more like a shop window. Just like a high street store, this is your selling place. Make people feel that they are welcome to browse.I hope this is helpful and good luck.

Posted by: jcrooks
Accepted Answer
11/14/2004 8:00 PM (EST)
When I checked Overture keyword search, the strongest term was mother daughter matching dress (361 searches in Oct). Second was dress matching (133). Christmas dress matching was third at 65, so you may have an opportunity there if you optimize for it.I agree that right now I don't have a sense of your product line from your home page. Instead of the large image of the brown jumper, put in several smaller images of the product line, with idea captions - Just for Fun, On the Town, Dressing Up, Play Time, etc. Right now, the text on the home page is buried unless someone really wants to scroll down. You need to liven things up on top to sell with the first view.Based on your product line, you should pursue the church market and the home-school market. Right now you have no link exchanges, so look at places where those buyers might visit, i.e. Christian Book sites, for link exchanges.Consider new photographs of your clothing. I can't see as much detail as I would like, and some of the angles are not flattering for the outfits, especially the black velvet ones. I'd also like to see some better locations for the shots, or else closer images of the clothes with less background.Are you offering your current customers an incentive to tell a friend? Something like "Receive a $5 coupon when your friend places their first order?" Give something special to the friend too. Are you giving your current customers gift ideas - "Perfect for Christmas", "For the New Mom", etc.Just some thoughts.

Posted by: mgoodman
Accepted Answer
11/14/2004 11:55 PM (EST)
Getting people to your site between now and Christmas is a very tall order. If you can get them there for NEXT Christmas (2005) that would be pretty good. Of course, the advice others have given is operative: you have to find out where the problem begins.Is it just that people can't find the site? Or is it that they don't click past the first/home page? Or is it that they're turned off when they get to the shopping cart? It's hard to know where to start if we don't understand the problem fully.One thing you might want to do is ask a few customers if they would be willing to spend a few minutes on the phone with you to give you some information about their shopping habits and experience with your site and your products. Get a professional market researcher to help you structure the questionnaire, and perhaps even conduct the interviews. (When people know they're talking to a principal they tend to accommodate -- say what they think you would want to hear. When it's a professional market researcher -- an objective third party -- they'll be more likely to tell you the unvarnished truth.)The fastest way to get people to the site is probably with paid advertising in magazines or newsletters that reach your target audience -- parenting magazines, for example. Those have a leadtime of 3-4 months, and they will require you to have some professional advertising prepared. You can also hire a publicist to get you featured in newspapers around the country, get you interviewed on the morning talk shows, and even get you featured on talk radio shows throughout the country (by phone, of course).All of these will help. But don't expect ANYTHING to happen in the next 6 weeks. Just start now for NEXT Christmas. And don't spend any time or money on promoting the site until you know that the site is working, that you're getting a decent conversion rate, and that your shopping cart is not getting in your way.Hope this helps.

Posted by: amandavega
Accepted Answer
11/15/2004 0:37 AM (EST)
All great advice above! I'd suggest changing the picture on the homepage to reflect the item that most appeals to a larger mass and falls in line with the popular styles - that being your matching red velour jumpsuits. The one on the homepage made me think that the other items would be too "country" for any urbanites that found you.Are you tracking which items are converting in sales the most? Those should be showcased...on the site, and in any releases you send out. Are there any partners in the pseduo-space that you could contact to set up some "packages" for the holidays? Have you contacted the right press, with private releases, not just the blanket one? That gets you a lot more bang. I know that right now I am working some PR leads that are on the editorial calendars of the parenting/child magazines that you could be appropriately tuned in for - are you working them that way - with an PR agency? If not, that may be a great next valuable investment on your part.

Posted by: savialeigh
Accepted Answer
11/15/2004 7:39 PM (EST)
You only have nine outfits, so getting three sales a week is pretty good. It's hard to compete with Storybook.com(who listed 2 above you when I searched on google) when they have a vast array of outfits and much better layout. You need better photographs, and you need to market the styles together - sell both the mother and the daughter sizes on one page. You make your client work much too hard. Since you have so few styles, use more space for the photographs so that each page gives a clear view without an enlargement required.

Posted by: mechpilot
Author Response
11/16/2004 9:51 AM (EST)
I appreciate all the suggestions so far. To answer the first two comments I have researched extensively my keywords through wordtracker.com and a year of hits on the internet. I have an average ranking of 2 or 3 on Google, MSN, AOl and Yahoo for the most searched terms which are mother d@ughter dr_sses cl_thes dr_ss outf_ts and m@tching. I beleive we are filling a niche, but there are women specifically looking for our product. I also agree that I need to diagnose specifically why we do not have a higher conversion rate before I invest in marketing. The problem I am having is I do not have a program that allows me to see the exact path of each visitor nor to check on cart abandonement. We have basic urchin 5 stats provided by my host, but there is no e-commerce modual attached. That is the way of getting an economical analytics with iEpiphany.com. That is the way I should market my web site, using iEpiphany.com.