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How does this work for people at all?

by NoMoreWords
5 replies
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So hey everyone, I'm researching some products to dropship and I'm doing the reverse image search to see what competition is using the exact same photos as the ones that the supplier has provided. Of course I get results - most often of around 2 Google pages, which I don't think is that much.

However most of the websites feel kind of generic. I find the seals of approval and guarantees really dodgy. Also a lot of the websites have real bad layout. Like I literally scrolled a couple of websites which had an image slideshow for the product, and then below the product they also had single photos. And there were 20 additional photos, the product description (if you could call it one) has already ended and now I'm scrolling a page which has huge blank spaces on both the left and the right side. How does this not look really suspicious to clients?

I'm not even talking about the descriptions and the generic titles. How are there such bad sites? I guess they don't make much money and that these die off really quick. But they are still able to convince at least some people to buy from them?

I feel like having a good website with coherent product descriptions and well thought-out design that doesn't look like every other dropship website puts you in the 10%.

I guess my question is: why does it feel like most of the websites have the same layout and same structure? Is this something that seems to work best, but these copycats are just executing it bad? Or are these default templates that they don't even take the time to edit and make customized. If I'm visiting 3-4-5 websites and they all have the same structure with the same seals of approval I'm going to get suspicious?
#people #work
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  • Profile picture of the author NoMoreWords
    Also, imagine you start out by doing some Facebook ads or even Google ads. Don't people get suspicious if every ad they click on leads to a page with 50% or more in discounts? What are the chances that there are always discounts on these websites?

    In the past couple of years a lot of marketers seem to be against the single product countdown timer for the deals and prefer site-wide one. But when your website is on a constant discount, how does that breathe confidence in your clients?

    For instance, one of the local big ecommerce stores has promotions / discounts every day. But they seem to be focused on some categories some days and on other categories on other days. So even though they have constant promotions, they have them on different categories. And they have another excuse to send a mail to their list and keep their brand name in people's minds.

    Is this strategy not good for dropshipping since it doesn't provide that 'trigger' of a really good deal? If I'm trying to build a long-term business, won't the strategy of the big brand be better since it appears a bit more sincere?
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  • Profile picture of the author NoMoreWords
    I was thinking, is there a reason that most of the websites feel the same? Has anyone here observed that dropshipping sites that try to emulate the look and feel of traditional ecommerce websites perform poorly due to brand recognition or something else?

    I also think that these websites are not getting many sales. But looking at the statistics on flippa and the shopify marketplace, it seems like they can get through anything with a big enough budget for ads. I don't think they have returning customers though.

    Has anyone here tried giving discounts for specific categories only or sending regular discount codes if one is a member of the mailing list / Instagram follower. To me it seems like such moves will give you good reputation and not the feel of these scammy websites where everything is 51% off and yo only have 12 minutes until the deal expires.
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  • Profile picture of the author WF-Cody
    Giving discounts would definitely work especially on popular categories. Effective discount strategies would help drive sales volume up. You'll also bring in more traffic from interested buyers to your website. And yes, those scammy 12 minute deals is pretty much ineffective.
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    • Profile picture of the author NoMoreWords
      Originally Posted by WF- Mark View Post

      Giving discounts would definitely work especially on popular categories. Effective discount strategies would help drive sales volume up. You'll also bring in more traffic from interested buyers to your website. And yes, those scammy 12 minute deals is pretty much ineffective.
      Yeah I get that discounts are the impulse that drives you to think it's a good bargain and worth it. But aren't 50% discounts on almost every item suspicious? I realize that you need to find the middle ground between "this is a good deal" and "this isn't a scam website that offers 99% off items".

      Has anyone tested 33% discounts vs 50% discounts, for instance. Is there any difference in conversion rates based on this alone?
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    This thread is kind of all over the place. In the end, the customer cares what the price is - not what the "normal price" is. In some niches, people fall for the countdown timers and in others they do not.

    Go ahead and split test it yourself to see if setting a "suggested price" higher or lower makes any difference in conversion rates. Same thing goes for things like countdown timers, category-specific limited time sales, etc. Nobody here is going to be able to give you a definitive answer because every single product niche is different (although some people here will certainly claim to know the answer based upon the one whole site they tried something with).

    Also, if poor layout was a deal breaker, CraigsList would have been out of business many, many years ago. That said, of course it is better to have a nice layout and a more professional looking website. In the end, that nice layout may not mean squat if you aren't ranking well and cannot drive people to the site affordably by other means (like PPC).
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