Slogan/Brand Positioning for My Shopping Site

[accelerator]

Im starting to think you make these posts to simply get a backlink to your site or somehow enjoy people telling you the same things over and over.

Please don't take offence to what i've said, because i certainly didn't intend any

None taken. I think the main problem is when you ask of a site visitor "What's in it for them?" visiting the site, there isn't a clear answer yet.

I understand it's not easy for people to see what progress I'm making but I go at my own pace on a number of projects.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

Is this a ShopWindow clone? Doesn't this limit you to just AW or are you using more than one agency?

What is the difference between this :

http://www.shopwindow.com/product.php?p=752484850

AND

http://www.lowprices.co.uk/product.php?p=93366510

The duplicate content will be being used all over the place so you will struggle to get the inner pages ranking well.

Are you caching all of the products locally on your server or relying on the API? You will find that you will start to get a bottleneck and everything will slow down once you get traffic, if you have all of the data on your server in a database you can manipulate it a lot easier.

I am biased because I have a site a bit like this with a new version being released within the next couple of weeks but I have been in your position where I just installed Shop Window and expected to get shed loads of long tails, it didn't work Even with a sitemap, decent on page you are never going to rank well on one of the product pages.

Yes, ShopWindow clone limited to Awin.

Not much difference at all.

Relying on the API.

I know it won't rank longtail.

Thanks and rgds

 

[nick-harper]

Yes, ShopWindow clone limited to Awin.

Not much difference at all.

Relying on the API.

I know it won't rank longtail.

Thanks and rgds

I wasn't being off, just trying to help from experience. Not sure it warranted the shirty reply.

How do you plan to generate traffic?

 

[eddieb]

You're in a hugely competitive area with lots of long established competition with deep pockets. Without a great usp or a massive social network following you will really struggle.
At this stage your domain name and slogan don't matter at all.

 

[WalkinDude]

Average e commerce customer expects and wants top notch online customer service for each individual product.

It's pragmatically infeasible for a start up or one man band to offer this.

If for instance I want a printer. More than likely i'll buy off a website that comes across as if the page describing that particular individual product is in fact a top class website in itself. The software that creates this environment simply can't be bought off the shelf or we'd all have an amazon shop wouldn't we?

It's not just an abundance of data... specs, reviews etc but the way it's laid out, quality of the images, search, filtering and comparison system and so on, branding, cross-branding and so on. On top of this they have staff making real time tweaks according to the state of play and coming back from their analytics. All this stuff is considered bog standard now.

On your own you may be able to match such quality for one product line, but if you attempt it for thousands of product lines from the off your basically [and this is no exaggeration] attempting to literally walk to Mars.

You then go on to say it's just one of the projects you are working on so you are in fact attempting to walk to all the planets in the solar system simultaneously.

This is just concern on my part and your decision is your own. But to see so much work going into something when if that work was more focused, precise given you clearly have the work ethic, you'd be so much further down the path.

Now the domain LowPrices.co.uk is no great shakes imho. But it has potential. Meaning is perfectly clear. Easy to remember. Suffers from too much clonability imho [lowerprices, lowestprices etc], but it is the best of that little group. Other downside is sounds a bit 'cheap and cheerful' and that's the hardest game to get in cos you need volume. When what you really want is 100 sales a month at £30 commission a sale rather than 4000 sales a month at 30p a time commission. Yet not an insurmountable problem.

To me it inspires the expectation of a product or service that is often brought but tends to have a fluctuating price. Petrol, flight tickets, etc all fit the bill.

Given it doesn't denote which particular product or service this is, you get to pick. Something with high margins and that don't need a lot of sales to get the ball rolling and make all seem worthwhile.

But the entire project has a consistent theme. And that's the new problem round the corner. Every time you get one issue out the way there's going to be another one that either needs to be ignored or sorted as you valiantly press on. And personally I'm trying to avoid projects like that.

You see the pattern in this thread. Every new person turning up is pointing out a new problem, that's the clue right there. If it was in fact a dozen people turning focusing on the SAME problem [cos none of us can see any other problems], then it might be the right idea to go with.

When you look at successful start up webs the consistent theme you'll see is they had a relatively fixed number of problems to solve and once solved they're basically in business.

 

[accelerator]

I wasn't being off, just trying to help from experience. Not sure it warranted the shirty reply.

How do you plan to generate traffic?

Please be advised I wasn't being shirty, just trying to type quickly.

I'll try and generate some traffic from social media. This site is being updated but is one of a few and I agree with all the points on how difficult it will be to make successful.

Thanks for the reply

 

[accelerator]

On the traffic generation, really thinking of upping the social media, in what I term "immersive" marketing, where you take an interest in a lot of things, e.g. use TV show hashtags to build exposure.

Also thinking of making videos.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

On your own you may be able to match such quality for one product line, but if you attempt it for thousands of product lines from the off your basically [and this is no exaggeration] attempting to literally walk to Mars.

I know, I know ... lol

 

[accelerator]

You then go on to say it's just one of the projects you are working on so you are in fact attempting to walk to all the planets in the solar system simultaneously.

Just keeping LowPrices.co.uk ticking over in the background really. That doesn't take that much effort on my part. Using social media more and that's no sweat for me.

Rgds

 

[accelerator]

Now the domain LowPrices.co.uk is no great shakes imho. But it has potential. Meaning is perfectly clear. Easy to remember. Suffers from too much clonability imho [lowerprices, lowestprices etc], but it is the best of that little group. Other downside is sounds a bit 'cheap and cheerful' and that's the hardest game to get in cos you need volume. When what you really want is 100 sales a month at £30 commission a sale rather than 4000 sales a month at 30p a time commission. Yet not an insurmountable problem.

I think that is the key question. Is the LowPrices.co.uk term as a brand worth the effort. I think maybe if I started a YouTube channel focusing on cool things to buy online and where to buy them, it might help "brand" the term better and start getting some traction.

It is memorable and the whole point is that you can often buy stuff cheaper online. I haven't given up on it yet.

Thanks

 

[mojoco]

Just keeping LowPrices.co.uk ticking over in the background really. That doesn't take that much effort on my part. Using social media more and that's no sweat for me.

Rgds

If you bring thousands of visitors via social media and they do not buy anything because the site does not convert, what is the point of the exercise ?

 

[accelerator]

If you bring thousands of visitors via social media and they do not buy anything because the site does not convert, what is the point of the exercise ?

Most of the time from social media I send them direct to the merchant.

Rgds

 

[mojoco]

Most of the time from social media I send them direct to the merchant.

Rgds

The social media element has nothing to do with your website in that case.