Looking for feedback - new member

[njooshka]

Hello,

I am seeking some feedback on my muse and website.

I found a double niche product in brightly colored, organic bamboo/cotton baby clothes. When my daughter was little, I was so tired of drawers full of pink bunny and princess clothes. I did a small online test of the product and got a decent number of positive test results so I took the next steps:

- found a custom manufacturer with low minimum orders and great pricing and developed designs. Small focus groups of parents in my area gave rave reviews on the prototypes.
- used elance for logo design and copy
- set up a website - www.BamboWear.com (http://www.bambowear.com)
- after about 3 months of solid work on design, manufacturing and website, I launched the above website

Now the reality sets in - I have gotten about 500 visitors to the site. My site ranks fairly well in the target keywords for natural search. I have very high click-through rates on my very specific ads. However, 0 sales. Seems people are very interested in the concept, but not so much in the reality.

Everything on my site seems to be in order, but I must be missing something. Any criticisms or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Jon

[dking]

I asked a sighted friend who has kids about this site and this is basically what he and his wife said:

"I wouldn't use that site. Its selling the same thing I could get at WalMart for double the price, plus I have to wait to get it. I also have no guarantee that its really natural; It looks like the same thing I can get from Kmart in he pictures."

I'm paraphrasing of course, but that does make sense to me.

[Sven]

Don't sell the wine, sell the smell.

People will not be buying stuff to wrap their baby in, they do that at Wall mart as mentioned. They would want to buy in to a life style. Your website should reflect that life style: Happy babies, happy mom in a green environment.

Good luck!
Sven

p.s. Very good reading: Made to stick

[njooshka]

The clear message that I got was that my website does not clearly communicate the value to the customer. I suppose that I "fell in love" with my own product and assumed that the value would be clear.

I have made another run at redesigning the website - http://www.bambowear.com. My new design focuses more on my customer and how they identify themselves in the product "I care about the planet and I want the best for my baby". I am going to take better photographs this weekend. I am accepting the fact that this is going to take several rounds of retooling until I figure out what works.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[nghs22]

I think you should change to "our price" and "sales price" to "retail or their price" and then "our price"

hope that makes sense

[Sven]

It is definetely better than it was, but it is still the same as every other organic piece of clothing... Have al look at "made to stick" in your local bookstore if only to get a general idea.

I think that made to stick is manditory reading for 4hww-ers.

Keep up the good work!
Sven

[olson_mation]

Yar, like they said I'd change "Our Price" to... "Retail Price" / "Sales Price".

Might offer free shipping for a week.

I'd definitely change the black O at the end of Bambo to off-yellow, or maybe move the colors around in the logo, but I'd take the black out for sure.

I'd try one with Blue B, red A, yellow M, green B, blue O.


I'd ask myself...

Who buys organic baby clothes?

Then I'd ask myself...

What do they read?

What websites do they visit?

Where do they have lunch?

ect.

...then target those areas

[olson_mation]

...also might try advertising it as a solution to babies with skin allergies?

There's probably a lot of search words there that could run some tests with.

[ChiTowner]

hi njooshka

all of the great information in the welcome section needs to be proper text - not part of an image. Search engines can't read text that's part of an image and so will have a harder time in working out what your site is about. Give yourself a better chance of targeted search engine traffic and take the information out of the image and into proper html text

Your site look good, though

hope that helps
Debbie

[gigi]

First of all, it looks like you are further along than many of us, including myself, on this site. I have some questions and suggestions.

You said that found a manufacturer for something that you created; can you give me more detail on how you did that?

Are you shipping the items yourself or are you using a drop shipper? In doing some research it seems that the dropshippers on line make their money by you signing up to find out what you can ship along with the millions of the rest of us then trying to sell the same exact stuff. There appears to be 20 drop shippers with hundreds of different URL's back to the same site to spend $300... a vicious cycle after being amped up from reading this book.

I don't know what kind of marketing you have done but I think your focus needs to be on what kind of people are going to either spend more $ or time for baby clothes, i.e. new parents that shop at Whole Foods or other organic markets, social cause organizations that focus on impact on the enviro, and or baby's sensitive skin. I have some other ideas for you if you could help me with some additional information.

gigi

[Marcie]

I asked a sighted friend who has kids about this site and this is basically what he and his wife said:

"I wouldn't use that site. Its selling the same thing I could get at WalMart for double the price, plus I have to wait to get it. I also have no guarantee that its really natural; It looks like the same thing I can get from Kmart in he pictures."

I'm paraphrasing of course, but that does make sense to me.

Sure, but Jon is targeting people who want to buy organic and environmentally clothing - which makes me think you might try to find a way to target the more upscale baby boutique types of places and give them a way to buy in bulk - a lot of these types of consumers prefer to buy local (and shy away from places like K mart and Wal-Mart) - Good luck!

[njooshka]

A quick update on my saga...

Since my updates, I have gotten a few inquiries from online retailers about wholesale purchases. I think that my items might do well if they are placed among other childrens' items which are in the same (high) price range. I am going to try and focus my advertising dollars in this direction and see if I can attract buyers who are interested in wholesale purchases.

As for the manufacturing questions, I did a lot of research on the internet and found manufacturers in China and India. After I found about 5, I simply submitted requests for proposal to each one and compared the response. The one that I chose was not the cheapest, but seemed to be the most responsive and had the lowest min. order. Most contract manufacturers will only custom manufacture a line with a large min. order (1,500 items or so). I found that you can forget about trying to get net 30 terms for your first order, so you do have to have a fairly significant amount of cash upfront. If you go this route, be prepared to do a lot of research on presenting specs, customs, importing goods, etc., but it can be done.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

[webgal]

Good move.