[2wowu]

Ok I've had 2wowu up for some time now and had very little sale on it... Basically I want to sell anything to do with Photoshop. Mainly templates. I've got a few on there and a hell of alot of gradients and a couple of actions. I'm also offering the option for people to sell their own work on my site too.
I've advertised on Twitter and paid over £250 for advertising on buysellads.com and yet nobody seems interested. I'vs also done very little seo but I'm not an expert.

Can anyone help me get customers? I'd like to have long term relationships with all my customers if possible.

Thanks.

[empek]

Ever heard of Graphic River?

[2wowu]

Yeah I'd love to have something like them! They have tons of interest on their site too. I don't want to sell my own templates though I want to sell other peoples work on my site. Everything is set up to do so such as comission payments.

[empek]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 04:03 AM, said:

Yeah I'd love to have something like them! They have tons of interest on their site too. I don't want to sell my own templates though I want to sell other peoples work on my site. Everything is set up to do so such as comission payments.

That's exactly what they have. No offense, but that's gonna be a hell of a competitor to run up against.

[2wowu]

And there's nothing stopping me from trying, it's not as if they patented the way they do things. Besides your not really giving what I asked for so could you please either give some advice on gaining customers or stop spamming my topic. Thank you.

[Dizi]

What are you unique selling points to the site? Why would people want to go to your site instead of an alternative? Why would people want to buy from you rather than going to a free template site?

At the minute you aren't actually selling why you think you are better on your site...also looking at your store there isn't actually any direction to it, you say you want to sell all things photoshop on it and yet on your site you are selling DVDs, music, games and hosting. If you want to target one area then do so rather than diluting it with items that have nothing to do with your market. It sends a mixed message to people, as here you are saying you are dedicated to all things photoshop yet clearly you aren't.


Look back at your business concept and think about all the things that makes your site unique and concentrate on selling that idea to the potential customer. As at the minute I go on your site and I think...well here is a guy just trying to make money by selling anything he can get his hands on, I could pick these type of templates up for free elsewhere, get the plugins cheaper somewhere else and buy the dvds cheaper from amazon/ebay/my local super market. So while advertising is all well and good to get people to your site, you need to think of ways to make them stay, make them want to come back and make them see that you are the best person to buy these things from.

[DaveyL]

Yeah I too would echo Dizi's comments.

From a marketing point of view I would also identify how many visitors I am actually getting to the site, this will help determine if it needs further promotion of its existence.

Secondly and just as important, if you are getting decent traffic but no sales you need to try and understand why? are people are not buying because my prices are too high, can they not find what they want, is the home page too clutered / confusing? Also be aware if they leave your site within 5-10 seconds it's usually coz it's not what they thought the site would be about (ie advertsised as a Photoshop store but the fuirst thing they see are DVD offers for example)

Identify and target your market should always be the first part of planning a website, retaining the customer is the next step. As you have found out there is no magic wand on the web to sell stuff, the market is huge and I have seen alot of businesses splash cash out for ads etc when the problem was with their website, their content or their prices. You can open the door but you need something special to invite them in!

Getting back your actual site, (time to take a deep beath - you did ask!)

I can not find any reference to Photoshop, The Brands link takes me to 'Manufacturers' page. When I do move around there is no breadcrumb or title saying where I am on the site and the top of the page, infact down to the fold all looks the same! I personally find it off-putting to see the same image appear and fill the page to the fold everytime I navigate the site. It make me think I am on the same page, it's fine for the home page but your actuall content needs to move up so we can see it once we get there. In otherwords you have far too much focus on the banner image / advert and not enough on the content. The Featured products promotes 2 DVDs as the first two items? Finally whilst I have no reason to doubt your figures I would question them based on your products online (over a 1000 members and over 250 products sold this week)

If you paid money to advertise the site and as you say you want to focus on Photoshop then at least put it on the home page in a prominent place and update the "300+ Free Photoshop Gradients" which is hidden away under the store, I mean 'no image available' will not get me back to the site!

[2wowu]

Thanks. All advice taken.

Problem is my dad helps with the site too and he wants to get viewers/customers/whoever the hell he can grab! onto the affiliate program. Most people don't know what an affiliate program is and won't read up on it just to join us. Also the DVD's where there to try get rid of some junk in the house. Off topic I know but we are kind of desperate at the moment.
I'll take the DVD's off and some other things. Need to add some more images aswell to products (The gradients don't have any!)
Probably drop the prices of everything.

Will get back to you guys once done. In the mean time, would you be interested in selling some of your own work on there?
And posting on the forums once I set it up

[DaveyL]

Ha ha nice try pal.

By the way and V Bad idea to remove the 'prices' my observation was to review the cost of items. If you visit a store you expect to see the prices.

And trust me, anyone interested in affiliation will know what it is, I would always suggest adding a sentance about affilitaion in the welcome / registration emails as an option to members. Or even make it an advert in the members screen when they sign in.

Good luck

[2wowu]

DaveyL, on 03 March 2010 - 11:48 AM, said:

Ha ha nice try pal.

By the way and V Bad idea to remove the 'prices' my observation was to review the cost of items. If you visit a store you expect to see the prices.

And trust me, anyone interested in affiliation will know what it is, I would always suggest adding a sentance about affilitaion in the welcome / registration emails as an option to members. Or even make it an advert in the members screen when they sign in.

Good luck

Excuse me? Sorry I said LOWER the prices. Not to get rid of them completely, although one of my ideas was to start offering more free things for now.

[Dizi]

Actually you said 'drop' not lower, which depending on where you are from drop could mean lower, but it can also mean get rid of...so they did read what you wrote, they must of thought you meant get rid of rather than lower. Its an easy mistake to make and no need to get all aggressive over it

[2wowu]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 11:31 AM, said:

Probably drop the prices of everything.

See there where it says "drop the prices of everything."

It doesn't say "drop the prices OFF everything" does it?

[2wowu]

Anyway, reguardless. Made most of the changes now. Still need to add most of the images to gradients and some of the stuff on there belongs to my dad so can't get "Rid" of it just yet. Lol.

Any chance anyone has some stuff they would like to add?

[Dizi]

you know what people are trying to help you out so that you could make more money on your site and now you are just being aggressive towards me for pointing out that drop could have two or more meanings in that sentence.

I wish you well with your business idea, but don't expect people to keep helping you if you are going to turn around and attack them.

[2wowu]

Dizi, on 03 March 2010 - 12:39 PM, said:

you know what people are trying to help you out so that you could make more money on your site and now you are just being aggressive towards me for pointing out that drop could have two or more meanings in that sentence.

I wish you well with your business idea, but don't expect people to keep helping you if you are going to turn around and attack them.

I never attacked you OR turned round on you. You read what I wrote in a different way than how I was trying to get accross and I was simply trying to recorrect you. If I offended you sorry but I honestly don't see where the offence is in trying to recorrect you for the better of your understanding.

[notbanksy]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 12:43 PM, said:

I never attacked you OR turned round on you. You read what I wrote in a different way than how I was trying to get accross and I was simply trying to recorrect you. If I offended you sorry but I honestly don't see where the offence is in trying to recorrect you for the better of your understanding.

Sorry, but I'm going to have to agree with Dizi on this one. The tone of your posts was very aggressive/ defensive. You may want to consider that people are helping you and trying to answer you honestly out of good will. For the main part they expect that good will to be extended back to them.

You have said sorry in your reply and I believe that you mean it - but if you re-read your post, can you see how it sounds a bit unfriendly?

[2wowu]

Ok sorry. I've been awake 18 hours and done an 8 hour shift during the night. I apologize to all.

I'm just desperate to get out of my dead end job and start making a living from the internet. Doesn't even have to be much, I'd be happy with £150.00 a week doing 15 hour days and thats less than minimum wage.
I love the internet, designing and building bigger and better things but sometimes it can be hard, esspecially when you have to work somewhere you don't want to.

[Dizi]

They don't seem so aggressive now that they have edited their posts to sound less attacking. Just because someone misreads what you have written doesn't give you the right to then tell them they should of read what you had written, just be careful of your tone, as we are trying to help you make some money from your site, and we are doing this for free. So even if you don't agree or someone misunderstands what you have written you should still play nice.


Anyway apology accepted as you have edited your posts I will take that as acceptance that you were a little attacking in your previous posts, even if you didn't mean to be

[Dizi]

actually rather than having that posit with user stats and how much they made on it, maybe use it for promoting the site to the customer, as after all it is all well and good that users have made £36 a day from it, but really they could make more if you have something catchy there that encourages people to buy things from you.

[2wowu]

Thanks.
Will be going to bed now as it seems I'm becoming a little rough with my words and will come back when I have had some sleep.

Please post more suggestions and take another look at the site if you will. I'm also trying to get the settings onto grid view rather than list. (Doesn't seem to be working)
Will check back here later in the afternoon.

Thanks all.

Edit: Dizi, what would you suggest? By the way I don't actually have 1,000 members We put that there in the hope that people would think "Oh, wonder what the interest is all about" (General idea anyway)

[DaveyL]

Blimey, go away for half n hour and ww3 breaks out

I admit I did think you meant remove the prices 2wowu, so comment was obviously in error.

Hopefully what I am trying to get across is that buying online is all about trust, once you start misleading anyone, (even if you think it is for the right reasons) you are only doing yourself an injustice and savvy people will always find out.

My advice for what it's worth, push all the 'other stuff' into a 'Bargain corner' or something and set up the home page to promote your idea of Photoshop and all things related. Focus on getting that content right and then when you promote the site for Photoshop items it's there in their face when they arrive on the site.

Move your own in-house adverts, ie the post it note etc to the side so the main reason I am visiting can move up and be visable. Not sure what others think but I would also do the same on the other page layouts so after the main navigation at the top you actually see the content.

[2wowu]

DaveyL, on 03 March 2010 - 03:08 PM, said:

Blimey, go away for half n hour and ww3 breaks out

I admit I did think you meant remove the prices 2wowu, so comment was obviously in error.

Hopefully what I am trying to get across is that buying online is all about trust, once you start misleading anyone, (even if you think it is for the right reasons) you are only doing yourself an injustice and savvy people will always find out.

My advice for what it's worth, push all the 'other stuff' into a 'Bargain corner' or something and set up the home page to promote your idea of Photoshop and all things related. Focus on getting that content right and then when you promote the site for Photoshop items it's there in their face when they arrive on the site.

Move your own in-house adverts, ie the post it note etc to the side so the main reason I am visiting can move up and be visable. Not sure what others think but I would also do the same on the other page layouts so after the main navigation at the top you actually see the content.

Its actually a JROX.com template with some of my graphics added. The ecommerce system is built on it and they code it with a 256k incryption including a ton of css. (I'm clueless with coding)

I can always try changing the template?

[empek]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 06:23 AM, said:

And there's nothing stopping me from trying, it's not as if they patented the way they do things. Besides your not really giving what I asked for so could you please either give some advice on gaining customers or stop spamming my topic. Thank you.

How is anything I've told you so far spam? I pointed out that you're not the first one doing this. You have some pretty big competition. If you are to be successful, you need to either beat their prices, or offer better products. At the moment, you have neither.

You website is the first thing to be addressed at the moment. It needs to look clean and professional, which it doesn't now, especially with all the Google Adsense ads stuffed in there.

Once you've got the website, you need to address the content. Make sure you have previews on all items, and the prices need a good revision.

Hope that's a little less spammy.

[2wowu]

Google? They are my dads ads and will be removed once we can get round to it... There's actually not that many ads on there.

[empek]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 11:10 PM, said:

Google? They are my dads ads and will be removed once we can get round to it... There's actually not that many ads on there.

Sorry, some of them looked like it at first glance. Anyways, I still stand by what I've said earlier, that you need to focus on the site design. You should categorize the products. When I look at the home page, it's hard to say what's what, especially given the size of the images.

[2wowu]

Lol they are categorized, click the categories link on any page to view categories the home page is set to view 18 random prducts on the site.

[empek]

2wowu, on 04 March 2010 - 02:50 AM, said:

Lol they are categorized, click the categories link on any page to view categories the home page is set to view 18 random prducts on the site.

No, that's not what I mean. I mean it's not obvious enough. You should have like a ribbon, or say under the thumbnail what it is.

[2wowu]

empek, on 04 March 2010 - 04:01 AM, said:

No, that's not what I mean. I mean it's not obvious enough. You should have like a ribbon, or say under the thumbnail what it is.

Ribbon?
I take it your reffering to the items? I would have to go into the back office and change the title of the item for something like that. No problem really, but I'm thinking of adding something better to the home page. Something I'm not quite sure of yet lol.
I think I will change the top banner something like GraphicRiver.net have. I really like how they have done it.

[empek]

2wowu, on 04 March 2010 - 06:37 AM, said:

Ribbon?
I take it your reffering to the items? I would have to go into the back office and change the title of the item for something like that. No problem really, but I'm thinking of adding something better to the home page. Something I'm not quite sure of yet lol.
I think I will change the top banner something like GraphicRiver.net have. I really like how they have done it.

Yea, a ribbon like it says "NEW" in this picture:



Be careful how much you "borrow". I wouldn't trust a site with my money, if it looked like a knock-off or a well established one, offering the same services.

[2wowu]

Adding a "NEW" ribbon to every new product would be awkward (And honestly I don't know how! Lol)
I could probably ask the techies at JROX to show me how to do that but manually updating them myself would be a task and a half.

As for the banner I will be using my own design just with the inspiration from the banner. I would never copy it completely. Plus I really do need to get the point accross that I'm offering Photoshop "Stuff"

[empek]

2wowu, on 04 March 2010 - 06:49 AM, said:

Adding a "NEW" ribbon to every new product would be awkward (And honestly I don't know how! Lol)
I could probably ask the techies at JROX to show me how to do that but manually updating them myself would be a task and a half.

As for the banner I will be using my own design just with the inspiration from the banner. I would never copy it completely. Plus I really do need to get the point accross that I'm offering Photoshop "Stuff"

I didn't mean for the ribbon literally be saying "NEW". I meant for it to say what it is, like "WEB LAYOUT", "GRADIENT", "LOGO", "BACKGROUND". Stuff like that.

Anyways, good luck. My work is done here.

[2wowu]

empek, on 04 March 2010 - 09:04 AM, said:

I didn't mean for the ribbon literally be saying "NEW". I meant for it to say what it is, like "WEB LAYOUT", "GRADIENT", "LOGO", "BACKGROUND". Stuff like that.

Anyways, good luck. My work is done here.

Could of said that lol. Thanks.

[2wowu]

Ok made most of the changes, can someone take a look now and let me know if theres any more I could be doing. Thanks.

[2wowu]

No more suggestions?

2wowu.com

[Devilson]

The background takes too long to load.

[rallport]

Site loads pretty slowly for me - am on normal 8 meg adsl. Just had a look at your header image - 180KB !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Clicked on about us page, no content

Someone above touched on the main area you should be focusing - your unique selling point. Have had a bit of nosey through your site and honestly can't see anything unique to your site. E.g. the web is flooded with free 'photoshop stuff' that is totally free.

You have some seriously huge, more well known and respected competitors that a lot of people would buy from

Just had a look at http://www.2wowu.com...oshop-gradients - not meaning to sound harsh here, but how do you expect to sell something like a photoshop gradient with placeholder images for the majority of your gradients?

The blog area on your site - a huge missed opprtunity for SEO here. All you have a single spammy post with an affiliate link to an external website (I'm assuming you make money from this?). Posts like this are a sure fire way to turn people away and discourage them from reading your blog. The blog also seems to be totally dead, with the last post added in 2009.

Again, not meaning to be harsh here and I'm aware they are very cheap, but some of the web templates look very dated. I can find stuff like this free on Google.

As for SEO, well this is yet another missed opportunity. E.g. poor title tags, page strcuture and keyword choice. There is also little in the way of actual content - another reason why a good quality blog is so important.

Another point slightly inrelated about your overall design. I'm viewing your site on my works 15" laptop and can only get to the page content via scroll the whole screen height. This is because your header is absolutely huge

[rallport]

2wowu, on 04 March 2010 - 06:49 AM, said:

Adding a "NEW" ribbon to every new product would be awkward (And honestly I don't know how! Lol)
I could probably ask the techies at JROX to show me how to do that but manually updating them myself would be a task and a half.

As for the banner I will be using my own design just with the inspiration from the banner. I would never copy it completely. Plus I really do need to get the point accross that I'm offering Photoshop "Stuff"

Surely you generating product lists from a database and not manually adding each product? Adding a 'new' tag would take a few seconds to update site wide.

[ezytunes]

2wowu, on 03 March 2010 - 03:14 AM, said:

Ok I've had 2wowu up for some time now and had very little sale on it... Basically I want to sell anything to do with Photoshop. Mainly templates. I've got a few on there and a hell of alot of gradients and a couple of actions. I'm also offering the option for people to sell their own work on my site too.
I've advertised on Twitter and paid over £250 for advertising on buysellads.com and yet nobody seems interested. I'vs also done very little seo but I'm not an expert.

Can anyone help me get customers? I'd like to have long term relationships with all my customers if possible.

Thanks.

If you want help getting customers, then what you need are affiliates or maybe resellers. With an affiliate system, people will sell for you in return for commission. So lets say your product sells for $10, affiliates can get $1 commission for the sale (you can choose commission rate).

If you dont know much about affiliate systems, you can try using click2sell.eu.

If you need help finding affiliates, you can try directmatches.com. There are tonnes there, although you need to be referred to join. If you want to join, pm me and I'll refer you. As an affiliate, I had no luck selling. Affiliates arent for everyone.