I have been running this audio store for a few months now. Our sales are pretty low, as in maybe 1 sale a week. I'm not sure what the heck Im doing wrong. I have froogle setup, Yahoo shopping paid for and have paid for adwords on and off throughout the past few months. The prices are competitive and the shipping is cheap. I'm not sure what else to do. I don't have the money to spend 100's on google adwords either. Could someone give me a few ideas if you don't mind? The site is: http://shop.massdriven.com
Car audio is a bottom line cut throat business. I gave it a shot back in 2001 and it was tough as could be. Most of the "wholesale dealers" I found offered prices a few dollars above what I could get on ebay. Visit car related forums and find those with a lot of posts and offer to buy a spot in their signature links. I say this, not from the perspective that these links will necessarily help with ranking, but from a pure visibility perspective. $10 for a signature link from an active poster on a forum where potential buyers exist is money well spent. 5-10 top posters per forum on ten forums will give you daily marketing to a target audience. And you can add more as your budget expands. Another thing you can do is offer group purchases for a hot/new item. Or even get one of the people you buy a link from to start a group purchase. Take the hit on it and make pennies off the group purchase. People will remember where they got a good deal the next time then need more equipment. Hope that helps.
Well, for starters, when I go to your page it's like I'm looking around trying to find a place where I can begin "surfing" your site but I can't find it. So Tip number 1: Bigger text. Also, I'm looking at your site but I just can't tell if your products are easy to install, if they'll work with my car, do I need any technical knowledge or can I just follow the manual. So my Tip number 2: add a small intro that describes all your products in a few lines (Easy to install, Work with all makes and models, Come with phone assistance, Come with 1-year warranty). And my last complaint, the top banner steals all my attention. My tip: you should not have to put your logo twice so close to each other (massdriven.com and shop.massdriven.com) so remove one of them. Also increase the contrast between the category titles (Category, Manufacturers, Search, User Auth.) and their background by using attention grabbing colors (Orange for example) for text and placing them on a clearer background.
I would like to thank both of you for your suggestions. They were very well thought out and explained thoroughly. I am beginning to realize how cut throat this business is. Gtech you are correct on getting the products wholesale just over ebay BIN's. These people on ebay must just buy a pallet of something cheap of a dock in CA and go to town. I really can't compete with ebay at this point. I will follow your suggestions and look into some forums for advertising. I have looked into some recently but the ones I have seen so far do not allow advertising and won't even let you pay for it. Not sure why. I will keep looking. Daniel, Thank you for your tips. Its nice to get an outside opinion on things because I see the same page everyday and get used to its look and inteface. A fresh set of eyes does wonders for me. I will run through your tips to see if I can improve my site. Thanks again!