Are my products too cheap?

I am wondering whether my coversion rate is low because my kanji name translations are too cheap. At the moment, you can download your name in Japanese kanji for a tattoo or whatever for $5, but I wonder if my potential customers may be thinking that this is suspiciously cheap.

I wonder if I could increase my conversion rate and my profits by increasing my prices.

My site is www.japanese-name-translation.com and is aimed at people with an interest in Japan or people thinking of getting a kanji tattoo.

What do people here think?

Thanks in advance for your ideas.

Stephen

 

I'm not into Japanese culture or tatoos, but I think your site is really nice and very cool concept. Raise your prices and see if it works. Sounds good to me.

 

Thanks for the compliments about my site and your feedback about prices.

Unfortunately it seems that a lot of people think the site is cool (so I get good, quality traffic and referrals) but not many of those people buy. In other words I have a lot of enthusiastic browsers, but not a lot of purchasers.

My goal is to keep the numbers of enthusiastic browsers high whilst converting more of them into purchasers.

 

A little off topic but if I put an apostrophe in the last name field (as found in my last name) I get a "page cannot be displayed error".

I'd try to help you with pricing but I have no idea on this kind of thing.

*edit*

one more thing, the reason you might get a lot of traffic and not a lot of buyers is because of people like me. They don't really have an interest in this kind of thing but see a link and think "oh that looks cool I'll try my name"... But never real have an intent to pay for anything.

 

Thanks! Didn't know about the apostrophe error.

I'll check it out.

 

No problem, having a last name with an apostophe has helped me catch that error many times on my sites

You'd be suprised how many e-commerce sites just error out with that, with no explanation.

 

I know what you mean about people who are just curious. I guess I probably get a lot like that. On the other hand, I know from my stats that I do get a lot of very good pre-qualified traffic simply because of where they are coming from.

For example, they may have come from a tattoo website through a link in a footer of an article I wrote about kanji tattoos. Of course, some of these people are just curious, but many will be people wanting to get their name or some phrase translated into Japanese for a tattoo.

My current conversion rate is pretty pathetic especially considering that I actually don't have a lot of random drive-by traffic.

I am trying a bunch to things to improve that, and I am wondering whether my current pricing could be an obstacle because it is too low.

 

A few years ago I was visiting a lot of scientific groups and industries in Japan, and I had the back of my business card in kanji. It was fun and made a good impression, with a little phrase about what my company did and the logo.

So you might think about this part of the market, and not just a tattoos.

Now I need the same thing in Chinese!

 

Maybe change the business model.. offer the translations FREE.

Rely on the advertising, cross product promotion + custom works..
You wil get a massive increase in visitors + users.

From this you can glean demograhic information, mailing lists, increased serps, donations, content contributers, forums etc..

The value of your links, adsense, amazon, merchandise, custom products + ebay should be able to give a good return. People sell PR6, 7 and 8 links for a nice monthly fee alone.

Even people that write excellent software or many other products usually end up using some kind of free/ very cheap business model - shareware, freeware etc..

The main reason are:
1. It also means no competitor can outprice you
2. What's to stop me now making a kanji translation site, adding cantonese, mandarin and any other languages I am capable of, offering it for free, beating down all the competition and when they are done and I have a big enough base then starting to charge ?

Let me know if you make it free... Ill get all my friends to get their name done for sure - see the pattern already ?

 

I like Rounde's ideas - have you had any experience in this kind of thing before Rounde?

 

..no no, I've never turned a paid japanese kanji name translation site into a free one !

As far as doing this.. it is pretty much standard practice..you see it online everywhere. Especially where SERPS are required, rather than advertising as such
Someone searching for "Kanji Translation" could want info, jobs, translators, that service.. one of a hundred things..

Any site I am involved with that sells products has this same issue: 100 visitors, 1 actually buys the product.. the other 99 ? Try and give them something else.

Even Amazon in my experience - only a minority of their affiliate sales are 'theirs' - most are 3rd party.

 

I have thought of the advertising idea and making all the translations free.

At the moment you get katakana translation for free but have to pay for the kanji.

I have actually increased the price to $10 for a few days to see what will happen to conversions. THis is still a lot less than some of my competitors. At the moment (it is still pretty early but anyway) it looks like I am getting a similar or better conversion rate, so that's great.

The main products I would like to sell would be the calligraphies as the level of profit is much higher. Getting people to the site and getting links is made easier by having the free katakana translation.

 

well as you can see from the poll 2/3rd say NO cost.. listen to the public... infact just post a poll on your home page.. and ask whether peope would prefer free with ad sponsorship or a paid service.. it will cost you a bit of profit now, but worthwhile long term..

 

I did a little test over the weekend putting the prices up to $10. The result is conversions are higher and (obviously) my profits are also benefitting from the doubling in sale price, so I am going to stick with my current model.

I think the reason this happened is probably that I have two kinds of visitors: One kind is like most people who answered this poll - they don't really have a great interest in getting their name in kanji but find the site fun. The other kind are those who specifically want something for a kanji tattoo, t-shirt or jewelry and come to the site looking for that.

I think what was happening before was that most people were in the former group. Then people from the latter group would come along, see the price and actually wonder whether the translation could be any good at that price. Doubling the price reassured them and didn't put off the casual user as they didn't want to pay anything anyway.

Thanks for all the ideas, though. I will definitely bear them in mind when I am considering additional ways to monetize the site.