Help with my products...

[Cherrelle Camish]

Hi there! I am looking for some people who wouldn't mind taking a few minutes to look at my items on my website and Facebook page and tell me what they think. I am not really selling and am not sure if it's because of the items or the way they are advertised.

 

If anyone is willing to take part I will give the following questions as a basis for your reply:

Which item(s) do you particularly like?

Which item(s) do you particularly dislike?

Is there enough information about the items?

Are the photographs clear?

Do you have any questions which immediately come to mind?

 

I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to do this for me, and I am more than happy to return the favour if you need it :) My website is http://deajewellerydesigns.moonfruit.com and you can get to my Facebook page via my site.

 

Many Thanks

Cherrelle xx

[Kirsty Devine]

Hi hun, I don't think it is your products as such be cause they are lovely but more of the fact that your items are sold by millions of others creating a hell of a lot of well established competition, so unless you really get a niche product potential buyers won't find you. Even if they could I found that my first sale from my site came months after setting it up and I sell extremely niche items. You may also find that.using a free or very cheap website does you no favours in the search engines. It is worth paying for when you can be helped along with SEO. I wouldn't worry too much unless you have been trading for going on a year with only a handful of sales. If you have not had shops set up then it purely patience and marketing, then more patience and marketing, and more again. I'm finding my business growing but it has not happened within a couple of months.
Hope that helps x

[Caroline Nash]

As Kirsty has said not the products but there is so much jewellery out there you do have to make something that is unique and optimise the search engines. I also noticed that I could not find your address or a telephone number on the site, apologies if I missed it but you will find that customers will not buy if they do not see this info as required by the DSR's. I always look for these details when landing on a site if not there leave as you could be buying for anyone.

Selling is very hard atm and can take months to get your first one, it is just a matter of perservering. 

[Cherrelle Camish]

Thanks for the replies. I was wary of putting my address on my site as I am only trading online and was worried people would think my home address was a shop!! As long as the products do not look rubbish I'm happy. I know it's not easy as, like you say, there are thousands of jewellery makers out there!! I tend to lack confidence so do not want to throw lots of money into it (which I really don't have, who does nowadays?!) and have it go belly-up. Silly I know because I'm forever saying "Well you have to spend money to make money!".

 

I appreciate the advice. I will continue networking and advertising and will look into having the ".moonfruit" part removed from my webpage :)

 

Warm regards to all,

Cherrelle x

[Kirsty Devine]

I have spent £5.50 on advertising over 5 years, so not a lot has to be spent at all as there are plenty of free places to advertise. You must believe in yourself and products because if you don't believe they are fantastic who else will? It shows in your descriptions your confidence as there isn't really a description as such on the items I've looked at. As a buyer I wouldn't be sure what I was getting.

Don't worry about your address, I've had mine all over the internet for years and I have never had anyone turn up on my doorstep. If your address isn't up you are breaking the law. This will put people off. The same as a phone number. I have a second very cheap mobile for business use and I actually received a large order this week because someone wanted to ask questions that they didn't have time to waste waiting for answers. A phone number makes a huge difference to customers as they want to know someone is there if something goes wrong.

Your terms and conditions aren't very clear. As it stands your returns process doesn't mean much. Legally someone can return an item 12 months after buying it as you have no time limit. You also have to offer refunds and a customers right to cancel their order on earrings according to the Distance Selling regs. You need to state where customers stand with faulty items and missing items too. To be honest, in the 8 years I have had some form of online business, I have only ever had one return and two items go missing in the post, so they are few and far between.

I'm not sure you can remove the moonfruit part, but even if you can, unless you fork out £22.50 a month with them you are limited with what you can do. Even on their biggest package you have a lot of limits and that isn't including a domain name like www.website.co.uk. Imagine that your business grows and grows (we wouldn't do it otherwise!). Do you want to be changing your website every time it gets bigger? I use EKM Powershop. It costs me £23.99 a month. I have unlimited everything. I'm not restricted to how many customers can visit (like a lot of the Moonfruit packages), I can have as many products, categories and photos as I like (handy for when I become a multi-million pound company!!), the templates are fantastic and I can choose to have a website customised for my business at a later date if I want. Their customer services are in the UK and are open 7 days a week. They answer even the stupidest questions (I asked a lot of those!) and ring me to check I'm doing ok and don't need any help. So far it's been faultless. Obviously they may be out of your budget, but I looked around for ages at different companies to see who gave me what I wanted and had good reviews. Price became irrelevant as I quickly realised you get what you pay for and I didn't want a site that looked like everyone else's. If you needed a new washing machine and your budget was £400, would you buy a cheap one for £50 that will break in six months or would you get the best you can within your budget? It is important you get the best you can afford so carefully consider if you can afford an outlay.

While your site is growing it is worth setting up shop on Facebook if you haven't already. It's free and there are so many different pages to network on. I've found some fantastic presents on Facebook!

Keep going and maybe look at other websites of bigger companies to get ideas for colour schemes, descriptions, terms and conditions etc. Obviously you can't copy them but it may help get some ideas going if you get a pen and paper and write down everything that you like/don't like. You will succeed if you want to, and just by asking on here shows that you do want to.

Kirsty xx

[Cherrelle Camish]

Thanks Kirsty,

 

Lots of good pointers and ideas here! I am updating the site as we speak!!

 

Cherrelle x

[Kirsty Devine]

I'm glad I have helped. Always good from one crafter to another :-) x

[Anna Weller of BBLB]

Hello Cherrelle  - within the confines of an 'off the shelf' website I think your site looks pretty darn good - a strong contemporary feel to match the jewellery you are selling. I particularly like the font selection and your pictures are really strong.

My suggestions would be:

1) To increase the number of designs you have so that at least all the categories you have links for are covered

2) Ensure that one of your images shows the item in its entirety. Love the graphic nature of the close up shots and I would lead with these . . . but I personally wouldn't buy without seeing the whole piece

2) Have a message displayed when there are no items under a particular category. Likewise with events. Not only does it make you wonder whether the page simply isn't loading but it is also a missed opportunity for site optimisation as these are pages where Google etc could be finding rich content which in turn will help others find you via the search engines.

3) Personally I wouldn't add Handmade Cards into the mix as you are billing yourself as a jewellery designer and this sends mixed messages as to your focus

4) It is all a bit matter of fact in terms of text. Make it a bit more personal by adding something of yourself to the site - who you are, how you got into jewellery so that when I buy from you I am buying from someone rather than just another site. This ties in with the address and telephone info that others have picked up on. Also you offer bespoke pieces but make so little of the fact.

5) I wouldn't have gone for centred text on the product descriptions as it doesn't scan particularly well and I don't think it sits well with the structured nature of the rest of the site. But this is a personal taste item!

6) Technically you are rather restricted in what you can do with site optimisation as I doubt you have full access to the website code - at the very least make sure any text you add to Home and Products is keyword rich (whilst still reading naturally). Ensure that Google and Bing know about you - submit your URL to them (google this term and follow the guidelines but do not pay somebody to do this as a service!) In the past I wrote rather a lengthy response on this forum about SEO so will not attempt it again . . . but I expect it is possible to find it if you have a look.

7) I would also look at http://www.smushit.com as some of your images take a little while to load and this tool shrinks them down as low as they will go so that they load faster.

Hope this adds to the good advice you have already received

Anna

www.BigBeadLittleBead.com

[Cherrelle Camish]

I appreciate all the advice given here. I will try my best to work out all the little kinks with my website and products. I am updating the website a lot at the moment so be sure to pop back and check out the changes I've made.

 

Thanks again and warm wishes,

Cherrelle x

[Erika Davis]

On top of what has already been said you really need to work on the meta information. You need to create individual title tags  and metatag descriptions for each of your products. This will help in terms of google search queries.

Jewellery is a very competative market so getting out and about to promote your website will help to get you known.

 

Erika x