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What do you guys think.....

by Kerri88
8 replies
Hi,

I started an online baby store 1 year ago and it isn't doing as well as I had hoped. At the time of start up I had very little to invest, and I was a complete beginner to SEO and marketing.

My baby stores main product is car seats (which was chosen by a 'guru' that we had hired to help us choose a niche and start up a business). Now that I know more about marketing, I know that car seats are not the easiest thing to sell online as most parents like to see and try the car seat before buying. This is because car seats are extremely important for keeping their babies safe. I also feel that because it is such an important product for their baby's safety, they would rather buy this from a store that is well known and they feel they can trust.

I do have other smaller items on my site, and I am thinking of selling off all of the car seats and not order any more in. Instead I could bring in more of the smaller items, but have a much wider product range than I do just now. This way I could also send to Europe (as it would be so much cheaper to send small items than big items). I would like to stick with baby products as I enjoy doing what I am doing, and it would be a shame to give it up and start something else. I have put so much work into this site.

If you could let me know what your opinions on this are, I would really appreciate it. I do have more money to invest now than I did to begin with.

Thanks
#guys
  • Profile picture of the author kiopa
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    I think you're headed in the right direction. If you begin offering many products, just make sure your site is nicely organized / categorized. It shouldn't take people more than two clicks to find what they're looking for.

    Oh, and other suggestion would be a comments section for each product. That's a huge marketing bonus for you (assuming your products & service are good).
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  • Profile picture of the author Webvisionz
    Hi Kerri,

    I think giving up is not the option instead, you should expand you niches from car seat to many more baby products like baby extension gates, baby monitor kits, Baby Stairway Gates, & many more to go. If i was you then I would have occupied these products long time ago.

    One more thing kerri rather than spending so much time on internet marketing strategies, you must focus on your main business area & for marketing issues look for a cheap resources for web marketing needs.

    Hope I was helpful

    Joys to You
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    • Profile picture of the author Kieron
      Hi Kerri,

      You would appear to making some wise decisions and you should follow the plan you have outlined. Try your best to off-load the car seats even at cost if to just raise money to broaden your product portfolio. Not much point keeping car seats that are unlikely to sell.

      Kieron
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      • Profile picture of the author Kerri88
        Thanks for your opinions. Good to hear most of you agree with what I plan on doing. The main reason I asked this question was that some other people were saying to me that maybe I should start again with a different niche. I just feel that I wouldn't want to waste the site I have worked on for the past year and wouldn't want to start again from scratch.

        Webvisionz - The reason I didn't bring on any other big items are because of shipping costs and storage space. Thanks.
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        • Profile picture of the author Kieron
          Kerri, just because a single product line fails to perform is not a reason to throw away a years work. If the business has performed within a +/- range of the business plan then it would not be a sufficient reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater sorry had to say it...lol Keep focused and go for your revised plan. Kieron
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  • Profile picture of the author markament
    You could also go to a place like Commission Junction and see what baby products are on offer. This has inspired me a few times when I was stuck in a niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author theemperor
    I would say that is a good lesson in business - the core stuff like market research has to be carried out by the business owner - it can't be trusted to a 'guru' because it is in their interests only to sell their wonderful guru service to you, not to get you good results.

    There are dozens of options for you now and I would say just try something else - it could be in the baby niches using your existing website.

    A lesson I have learned (am learning still) is the importance of market research and finding out what people want, how much they have to spend, where they like to buy, what they are buying etc. etc. is very important.

    Building a list is a nice way of doing this because you are building a potential client base, but not only that you can send them surveys to get free market research, and the success of the list building exercise is itself a test of how easy the market is to reach.

    Put some decent effort into building a list and if it succeeds well done. If it fails and you've tried everything to build it, then you have an early warning that you may not be able to sell in that niche, because either you can't get the traffic or you can't get people to even give away their email address let alone pay for a product.
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  • Profile picture of the author marica theuma
    Hi first of congratulations on having kept on at your business and not quit...means you have what it takes! Next I would add more products, as you have been advised, you should keep your site navigation clear using categories, etc. I especially liked the comment about the feedback! That's a great idea! Well done!

    marica
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