ANSWERED on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 9:07 pm UTC by eiffel
Question: Review my online business?
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Asked by spax on Mon 10 Nov 2008 - 6:25 pm UTC:
Hi, I'm not really sure what I am asking for but I'll make an attempt to describe what I'd like to know below. I'm not even sure this is the right place to put this kind of question or if the price is appropriate. I currently run an online business with a presence on both the web and ebay. I was wondering if anyone would like to give me a review of my business model and possibly offer some suggestions and constructive criticism. I do everything myself, the web design, the sales, the images, etc so improving my business can be very time consuming and I'd just like to know that I'm at least heading in the right direction. I'm a powerseller on ebay (spaxshop*com) My website: www.spaxshop.com I sell light up shirts If you need any more clarification, please ask. Thanks!
Comment by User probo on Tue 11 Nov 2008 - 9:41 am UTC:
Hi Mike Like the Mighty Myoarin (or Myo for short), I am just a humble Commentator, so this Comment - whether you like it or not - is absolutely FREE! Before I saw your question I had no idea that products such as 'Light Up Shirts' existed and I am afraid that your ebay listings and website still left me in the dark (a bad pun intended). However, I did a Google Search for: sound activated shirts And got 155,000 Hits which included some youtube links - so I am now no longer in the dark. Unfortunately, your Site didn't appear on the first page so your chances of getting any business from The Web is small. (Of course, you may know better.) As you will also know, several suppliers offer a wider range of shirts but mostly at somewhat higher prices than yours. At this stage, perhaps I should explain that both Myo and I are on the right side of 30 which will explain why he and I are so badly informed about such groovy gear. I also did the same Search on ebay and got 267 Results which included two suppliers from Hong Kong who, like a Dusty Carpet, will take a lot of beating. Not knowing the costs of your products, it is not possible to determine a Business Model but my gut feeling is that the ebay route remains your best option. But please hang around, a Real Researcher may soon appear who will light up your Question with an Amazing Answer. All the Best Probo
Comment by User joeyz on Wed 19 Nov 2008 - 1:17 am UTC:
Another frebee for you Spax. I looked at your website after doing the google search myself. I noted in your back end coding that you have no meta tags, keywords, or header tags. Even in a smaller search result, (sorry used to dealing with tens if not hundreds of millions of results), your ranking lacks. Plug this into your source coding and it should help. <title>Light Up Shirts, Battery Powered T-Shirts, Spax </title> <meta name="keywords" content="Light Up Shirts, Battery Powered T-Shirts, Illuminated Clothing, TQualizers, Electrical Tshirts" /> <meta name="description" content="Illuminated Batter Powered Shirts for an Eye Catching Look." /> <META name="robots" CONTENT="ALL,INDEX,FOLLOW" /> <META name="Reply-to" CONTENT="mikespax@gmail.com" /> <META name="rating" CONTENT="general" /> <META name="distribution" CONTENT="global" /> <META name="resource-type" CONTENT="document" /> <META name="Owner" CONTENT="SpaxShop" /> <meta name="copyright" content="2008-2009 SpaxShop" /> <META name="Author" CONTENT="SpaxShop" /> <META name="rights" CONTENT="Copyright SpaxShop. All material contained herein is owned by SpaxShop or its respective clients. Any attempts to reproduce this information without the express written consent from the owner will be prosecuted." /> <META name="revisit-after" CONTENT="7 days" /> This alone should help your website rank better than it does now. As for your product line itself, consider getting in contact with some smaller vendors and increasing your product line to match. As a marketer, I would look heavy at the tourist and travel trade. For example, a Golden Gate Bridge, the Empire States Building, those would all take interest in the little price gouging retail shops. Probably fair much better than ThinkGeek because of the already disposable income going through that groups hands. You may think this as a small run compared to just selling 10k of a single shirt. You would be mistaken. Alaska alone, one the cruise basis, sells well over seventy thousand shirts and hats every season, living on nothing more than the tourist trade. If you can't tell, I'm a marketer and I love little things like this. I always see the gleam in the creators eyes and those who want to make thier business run. If you don't create these shirts yourself, I would suggest getting some Non Disclosure and Intellectual Property Rights forms and sit in front of those who do create these shirts and approach them for exclusivity, or royalties for these shirt ideas. I'm always happy to lend my services and this really is just the tip of the iceburg on what you can do.
Comment by User hardheadhayley on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 8:09 am UTC:
Hello, The price is really good actually spax.I took a look at your site and I think that you are definatly headed in the correct direction. I liked the design that you have going on there. The mixture of the blue and the gray just really set it off for me. I know you probably aren't finished with the site but I would like to see some more information about what you do. Have you ever thought about putting a guarantee on your site? Telling your customers that you have a guarentee policy would definatly make me want to shop there. That way if I wasn't happy with my product I could return it and get a full refund.I saw you have a guaranteed low price but what about a refund policy? I wanted to also tell you about the sizing chart. You may want to look back over that. It has what seems to be a embeded code on it. Well atleast in the first square. Also is there anyway you can get the whole picture of the shirts on the designs page? I want to see what the whole shirt would look like not only the designs! Thats about it for now I would really like to see the site when finished. This was not a freebie.. lol
Answer by Researcher Roger B (eiffel) on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 9:07 pm UTC:
Hi spax, That's a great product line you're selling. I thought the WiFi detector shirt was a particularly cool idea. Like others said, your business has great potential, but it's going to be hard to get customers to your current website. You need to address this in two ways: (1) rank higher in the search engines so that more people find you, and (2) improve your website so that it inspires enough confidence in people that they will buy. There are a lot of unfinished items on the front page. Can the four instances of "Another Link" at the top be replaced by one or more proper links? You could link to an FAQ page where you answer people's questions, such as "do the shirts need batteries", "are they washable", "how long will they last", etc. The welcome paragraph is nice and friendly, but it maybe needs an extra sentence to connect it to the purpose of the website. Something like "For six months I've been selling these fabulous TQualizers on eBay, and now I'm also bringing them to people via this website." The front page photo is a good one. Is that one of your shirts? If so, say so! Something like "This is me with my girlfriend, who is wearing 'Heart', one of our latest designs." If that isn't one of the shirts that you sell, you surely need to add a photo to the front page of someone wearing one of your shirts. Better still, take a video, upload it to YouTube, and embed that video on your front page. The links to XHTML, CSS and Firefox need to be replaced by links that are more suited to a shop. How about a "Photo Gallery" link, going to a page showing people wearing the shirts. How about a "Testimonials" link, to quotes from people about how much they like your shirts. How about changing the text of the "ebay" link to "My eBay shop" so that people know what the link is for. And you definitely need some more positive news than "I start working on this website", because that makes it sound like you might not yet be "open for business". I didn't realise that you were really selling these shirts until I clicked through to your eBay store and saw your excellent feedback rating - 466 and 100% positive. So you could add some more news items: "SpaxShop open for business!" and "466 happy customers already!". The "contact" page is good. It's friendly and confidence-inspiring. The "info" page is an important one and it needs a rewrite as it's currently designed for eBay. Take out the stuff about "bidding" and "winning". Make it clear that the feedback score is for your eBay store. Make it clear whether or not batteries are included for sales from SpaxShop. The "shop" link leads to five photos. Each one of them needs a caption such as "Style: Equalizer". Can you add a logo under the "View Cart" button to show how people will pay (i.e. is it PayPal?). To help the search engines, you absolutely need to change your page title. People won't often be searching for "mike" or "aim". Instead, the title should be something like "SpaxShop: for TQualizers sound activated illuminating shirts". This gives the search engines a good idea what the page is about. It really would be good to have a few more paragraphs about the shirt somewhere on this page, to include a few more phrases that people might be searching for (such as "light-up shirts" in addition to "illuminating shirts"). If you want to take it further, have a read of Google's PDF booklet: "Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf Regarding your business, the prices actually seem quite low to me for what you get. Once you get a sale, are you making enough profit? I realise that young people won't always buy higher-priced items, but a good approach is to have multiple price points. Have a few low-priced shirts for people on a budget, but also have a few high-priced premium ones which give you a bigger profit. Some people will buy those, and you won't lose the people with less money because they can choose one of the budget shirts. OK, that's about it. Like hardheadhayley, I like your blue/gray color scheme. Good luck with your studies! I studied Electrical Engineering starting in 1976, but then I switched to Computer Science because motors and generators didn't interest me so much. But nowadays even motors and generators have interesting electronic switching and control circuits, so I'm sure it's a very different subject from when I was learning it. Regards, eiffel
Comment by spax on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 11:16 pm UTC:
thanks everyone, this is really helpful stuff. i know my site needs a lot of work, but with school and everything, I lack time and motivation to put in the work. All your comments will help lead me in the right direction once I do decide to start some work on it. My website skills aren't that great so I really don't know much of what I'm doing. I downloaded dreamweaver and started teaching myself some things from scratch, and as you can probably see, the website is just a template I downloaded from a different website. I'll try and let everyone know once I put in some work, I'd love to have more designs and I'm kind of working with a friend to make some cool unique ones, I just hate having 10 different styles and attempting to organize them in my small dorm lol..
Accepted and rated by spax on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 11:18 pm UTC:
yay? I will come back for more advice later once I make a revision
Accepted and rated by spax on Mon 24 Nov 2008 - 11:26 pm UTC:
yay. i'll come back for another opinion once i revise it
Comment by Researcher Roger B (eiffel) on Tue 25 Nov 2008 - 11:23 am UTC:
Thanks for the tip, spax! I can't wait to see someone walking down the street in one of your WiFi shirts. Regards, eiffel
Comment by spax on Mon 15 Dec 2008 - 11:36 pm UTC:
Hey! So I've finally found some free time, and I just wanted to update everyone on what I've done so far as in improving my online presence. What's Done: -Changed titles and added source code for SEO on all my pages per joeyz -Finished up a lot of the unfinished links and took your suggestions -Edited the beginning paragraph -Captioned the images under shop -Added a paypal logo under the order area What Needs to be Done: -Get immediate representation of product on front page -Create some videos of the shirt to put on youtube and embed -Guarantee policy -Picture of actual shirt, not just the panel -Captions on photos -Edit the info page -major SEO Design isn't really my forte, so although I'm sure some more unique designs would do great I don't have the thought or the time to figure that kind of thing out. I already spend so much time thinking about the other aspects of my business, so I just choose to pick whatever predesigned styles that my supplier has. Check out the new ones I've just recently stocked up btw. I discontinued the WiFi shirts = (, Just wanted to simplify things up a bit even though I could sell those for more. Maybe once I get a little bigger I'll start stocking those again. In the future I will try to stock different items at differing price points, but I am limited by the very small amount of space in my college dorm. future shirts could include: -Clock Shirt -Wifi Shirt -Shirt you can draw on and erase, whatever u draw lights up -non sound activated, flashing shirts -advanced shirt technology that does away with the plastic panel and creates an ultimately flexible illuminating design My ebay is doing great, and I forgot to mention that I basically dominate the US market for these shirts on ebay. Type tqualizer into ebay, and I'm always the first result. I recently got into some advertising and decided to go with bidvertisers free $20 of clicks for now. Heres an image of that ad that will go up in a few days http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5107768&l=7b6e4&id=605350360 any more comments would be well appreciated, thanks for all the ideas i've already gotten so far!
Comment by User probo on Tue 16 Dec 2008 - 6:04 am UTC:
Great news, Mike Very many thanks for bringing us up-to-date. May your success continue! Bryan
Comment by spax on Fri 28 Aug 2009 - 2:35 am UTC:
My rank has now jumped up to 2Million! And my 7 day avg s 600k! I'm pumped! http://spaxshop.com
Comment by Researcher davidsarokin on Fri 28 Aug 2009 - 2:51 am UTC:
All right, man, you convinced me. I just ordered a shirt! (My son's birthday is coming up). Site looks great (though I couldn't see the main image on your home page in my IE...don't know why). All the best with your shop. David
Comment by User myoarin on Fri 28 Aug 2009 - 10:41 am UTC:
Congratulations! Apparently, you did come to the right place - and made the most of the information. Myo
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Comment by User myoarin on Mon 10 Nov 2008 - 10:16 pm UTC: