First day live 2.5 months in the making

Discussion in 'Starting & Running a Business' started by leon brown, 9th Nov, 2015.

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  1. leon brown

    leon brown Well-Known Member

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    Hi everyone

    My first web biz went live today!

    The Nodule Shoe Company
    The Nodule Shoe Company

    I am mainly using FB for marketing as I have had great success in the past building up a business that way and because I have some people on board who have a lot of FB and social media business experience in Campaign Funnels .

    Any Questions I would love to help just like the people from PC helped me and answered my questions about the process when i was starting .

    thanks
     
    Last edited by a moderator: 19th Aug, 2016
  2. D.T.

    D.T. Specialist Property Manager Business Member

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    Interesting, well done.

    Are you keeping inventory somewhere and if so have you factored in the cost of that?
    Or do you drop ship directly?
     
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  3. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

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    Good stuff for having a go. My feedback. Prices are good.
    I personally like to try shoes on before buying so I may not buy from you. Sometimes 7 fits me, sometimes 8.

    I like to know what the insole is.... Leather? Need photos of it. If it's cheap plastic insoles/shoe linings I stay away from them.

    I am on a slow iPad and the website didn't seem to be too responsive. :(

    I had trouble working out where to find the actual shoes on the website. I think I had to click buy or something.... That does not appeal to me. I like to see the shoes without having to click into something resembling "buy".

    On the iPad the selection criteria section takes up too much room and the shoes are underneath - I needed to scroll to see the shoes.

    The shoes themselves.... Look fairly comfortable, but mostly too much colour for work (office) purposes. I think inoffensive neutral and black options are the go, something that works with black pants or shoes that go with a dress you wear all day for work and then into the evening for example. Though I have a pretty colourful canvas pair of slip ons which I enjoy wearing. And check your spelling of beige..... It's spelt "biege" on a shoe description.
    And this "them on today because you have nothing to loose with our 30 day money back GUARANTEE "

    Take an "o" out of loose.

    Good luck.
     
    Last edited: 9th Nov, 2015
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  4. Bran

    Bran Well-Known Member

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    I'm an annoying stickler for these things. You spelt 'lose', as 'loose'. Easy fix ;)
     
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  5. Westminster

    Westminster Tigress at Tiger Developments Business Member

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    yeah like the others have said instead of Buy Now, I'd use something that says Our Range or something like that.

    In terms of range, I'd like to see something with a black sole and black upper.
     
    Last edited: 10th Nov, 2015
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  6. Terry_w

    Terry_w Lawyer, Tax Adviser and Mortgage broker in Sydney Business Member

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    Looks great - don't like the hotmail address. Better to have one with your domain name in it.
     
  7. D.T.

    D.T. Specialist Property Manager Business Member

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    This is a pet peeve for me.
    If your business has hotmail, gmail, bigpond, iinet, etc, then I'm not going to use you
     
  8. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

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    Leon. Just a little thing. Please put your full stops, commas, exclamation marks and question marks immediately after the words they follow. And with all this punctuation, put a space after the punctuation mark. This is all especially noticeable on your FAQ page.

    Also even if none of your testimonial people have ever claimed on your 30 day returns policy... I'd remove mentioning that nobody has claimed.
    Also with your filtering section, you might as well start each new option with capitals. One section has all the words starting in lowercase.
    At the moment your range isn't so large to require filters... And it's more of an obstruction to be honest for me as a user on an iPad. I guess you are thinking forward though.... And if so.... It's ok.

    Critical feedback.... It might seem petty but since you asked.... :)
     
    Last edited: 10th Nov, 2015
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  9. Mumbai

    Mumbai Well-Known Member

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    Being a QA in past life, I would not let this website go live with the issues I noticed.
    Too many grammatical mistakes, typos, etc. Especially in the FAQs.
    Footer items are misaligned, at least on my Android phone. About me section is empty. Home and nodule shoes navigation items take me to the same page.
    Let someone professional to do a proper QA on it. These things, I mentioned, are all cosmetic, but last thing you want is some functional issues that is a show stopper.
    Ta
     
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  10. Biz

    Biz Well-Known Member

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    Good on you for having a go. I've been in the space too for the past 5 years.

    It's good that you're products are unique. I know nothing about shoes, I have never heard of a "nodule shoe". If it catches on you could be onto a winner.

    The hard part is going to be your price point. I have noticed in Australia that most small online business that tend to do well and last target more expensive products. Price points $300 and up. We're only a small market here in Australia so you need to kind of go after price rather than volume to survive. I'm assuming you have virtually no overhead and are just working out of home at the moment. If you make $20 from a pair of shoes after all costs you need to sell 5000 pairs or about 13x a day to clear 100k a year. How do you plan to scale it from here?

    As I said though I know nothing about shoes, I just tend to think clothing/shoes online is a really really market because of the margins. Have you considered going directly to retail stores instead to stock your products? Even a casual lease at a shopping mall?
     
    Last edited: 10th Nov, 2015
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  11. Aaron Sice

    Aaron Sice Well-Known Member

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    good punctuation and grammar.

    mobile functionality.

    domain email.

    other than that - great work
     
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  12. hobo

    hobo Well-Known Member

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    Size Guide page needs some editing, too - spaces, new paragraphs, etc.

    Good on you for giving it a red hot go, though. :)
     
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  13. Vultures

    Vultures Well-Known Member

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    Good for you for giving it a go. Website looks good, but I agree with the other comments about the punctuation etc. Also I find the statement "displaces the weight of the user" to be a bit vague. What does that mean exactly? Displaces the weight where?
    Other than that, it's good!
     
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  14. Ace in the Hole

    Ace in the Hole Well-Known Member

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    Good on you man for giving it a go.

    I signed up for the 10% subscription offer and got the discount code in my email.
    However, the banner keeps popping up as I navigate around the site which is a bit irritating, as it should only offer once.
    Also, one of the banners on the home page has text cut off the bottom of the banner, the one which says they displace the weight of the user.
    I think "wearer" would be a more appropriate term too.

    Anyway, I put a pair of white flower thongs into the cart and was gonna check out, but then realised there was no size requested.
    The size option needs to be on the product page - Flower Thong but it doesn't give me an option to choose the size.
    You really have to have the size options on the specific product pages.
     
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  15. leon brown

    leon brown Well-Known Member

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    Hi Everyone
    The Nodule Shoe Company

    So sorry for the extremely late reply, I have started a new job as well as learning to use wordpress pretty much all night as my developer in india has become pretty unreliable lately and I came unstuck when when the developer left EWAY in sandbox and heaps of other issues :(

    Thanks to everyones comments and feedback it has been such a great help and I have incorporated alot of it and have really tried to iron out some issues with the mobile view.
    I know that the grammar etc was terrible and a lot of people wouldn't have went live, but for me I just cant wait to get going and progress impatiently.
    I have since fixed the spelling (i think) and also some buttons that were not working e.g. the shopping cart and sizes .

    Not a lot of women are familiar with the shoes and the design, but without spruiking they are a must for certain women with in specific industries, age, weight, activities, conditions etc
    I dont really think that products need to be at a certain price range in any industry for online sales in AUS to be successful, but rather that the product you are selling is what the people in that space want and it will naturally turn over at a higher volume.

    I have been involved in selling these shoes with another company from a shop front and have had extremely good success but now I have tried to automate and systemize the same biz model online and so far i have smashed my initial 1 month turn over goal in less then 3 days so I know what I have been thinking and planning about constantly is coming to fruition .

    The next goal is to SMASH FB adds with my landing page which is a giveaway of shoes every month for 2 years and then continue to work FB through my funnel .
    The product sells at good margins as is but I have a lot of opportunities to do business with new clients as well for ALOT better prices in the future.
     
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  16. aussieB

    aussieB Well-Known Member

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    The website loads very slowly. For eg., look at this site : Halikos Group | Leading Development and Contruction Group in Darwin NT
    The moment the browser opens this link, the page displays. My guess is you developer isn't using an accelerator. But then, you get what you pay for.

    I would get in more content in the About us, design and proof columns.
    IANAL but are you sure you want 2014 in the copyright declaration ?

    Good luck. The site looks good. I wouldn't just rely on FB. Worth paying for ad-words (google).
     
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  17. Biz

    Biz Well-Known Member

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    Going to have to disagree with you there. I think Facebook will work better...And I hate facebook.

    Adwords works better for more broader niches. For example if it was a store selling lots of different shoes you might snag something. For adwords to be effective people have to already be searching for what it is you are selling. With facebook you can introduce people to the idea, get them to follow it etc. You could still set up a few exact match keywords for nodule shoes or whatever but within a month or two you will probably rank highly for those anyway without doing anything...Actually, I just checked and you are already there at #1 Mr Nodule man.
     
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  18. leon brown

    leon brown Well-Known Member

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    Biz I completely agree with what your saying and thinking on that
     
  19. Lizzie

    Lizzie Well-Known Member

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    As an online business person - I would get everything regarding the website ironed out "before" you started "smashing" publicity ... I admire you enthusiasm, but you only get once chance for a first impression ... and first impression count just as much in the online world as they do in bricks and mortar. Rein in that enthusiasm and put on your stable business head until you get it sorted.

    Perhaps spend a little more money (a few thou) and get someone local to look at it with a fresh and knowledgeable eye.
     
  20. leon brown

    leon brown Well-Known Member

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    Hi
    Hi Lizzie

    Thanks a lot for your feedback especially coming from someone with online experience.

    In your opinion what would you iron out and improve ? Maybe a testimonial video on home page auto playing or functionality wise ? I aim to get the site to load a lot faster tonight when I speak with freelancer .

    I also have had a lot of relevant opinions from the market age group and they all say good things about the pricing product and delivery but have trouble on mobile so I completely get where you are coming from .