Critique my site?
 

I have recently started a new site that is basically an amazon affiliate store and after having it for a month, I'm already getting discouraged as I am finding it more difficult to get traffic than I though it would be. The site is to basically feature the best products of every class of products out there. The idea is to basically be just like amazon except to weed out all of the junk. If you go on amazon and search for something simple like a cell phone charger and start reading reviews, you'll find that 90% of the cell phone chargers don't work for longer than a week. The whole idea stemmed from me buying said cell phone charger that had mostly good reviews and it didn't even charge my phone. So my site would be a simple and easy site that only featured stuff that was guaranteed to work and last for a long time.

It will take me awhile to build the store to the amount of products I want on it. I also was going to sprinkle in a lot of unique products(still of the high quality type, no junk allowed) to make the site more interesting and fun(similar to thisiswhyimbroke)

I was planning on getting most of my traffic from pinterest through the unique products but pinterest seems to be giving me no traffic and I am finding it very hard to even attract followers on there but that is for another thread. I honestly cannot think of any other ways to generate traffic, I will eventually make a twitter and facebook but I currently suck at those as well.

Here is the site so far: The Best ________ . The design is definitely a work in progress and it is in the most infant of stages. I will also run a blog along side of it talking about the products featured on the site. Like I said I am getting discouraged already so I am just hoping for a critique from fellow warriors to see what you guys think of the site and the idea.

Thanks

Re: Critique my site?
 

This still looks to be very broad, narrow it down and make "best of some vertical", say "best body care products" otherwise this won't create any differentiator. Do note that getting visibility online is not an easy thing for eCommerce sites.

Re: Critique my site?
 

Your idea requires several million dollars as seed capital if you want to target all product categories. You are essentially talking of an idea that will make 1b+ if done well or 1000s in losses if it fails before starting off.

Re: Critique my site?
 

Yeah, I still have some work to do on the design, I just recently changed my logo and realized that I left out the text on my old logo had that actually explains what the site is about. I also still need to write descriptions for all of the product categories talking about how the products are the best of that category. Right now the site is really in testing mode to see if its worth it. I haven't even received 1 commission from amazon yet on the site.

Well as you can probably guess, I don't have several million or even several thousand to work with. Why is several million needed for a site like this? Advertising? I don't think I understand where your coming from but I'll go day dream a little about your billion dollar idea comment, lol.

Thanks for the replies.

Re: Critique my site?
 

I think you're totally missing the point of what Pushkar was talking about. His comments have nothing to do with design, but about the concept of your site.

Who is your target audience? If your answer is 'everybody' then you're going to succeed in attracting nobody.

Re: Critique my site?
 

I think this comment hits the nail on the head.

You have a nice idea that I like...find the top items in a particular niche & toss away the other 90% of junk that shoppers normally have to weed through.

But your site as a whole is too broad. You're not amazon (none of us are). You should break this out into individual subsites and market it as such. Start with one of your categories (Computers, for example). Build a "Best of" site specifically for computer stuff. Best PC stuff. Best Mac stuff. Best external hard drives, jump drives, etc. Make it well known on your site how you've removed the 90% of poor quality items. Then market this specific category. Once one site is up and running, start on a 2nd "Best of" site for another one of your categories. Then market that one accordingly.

Just my 2 cents.

Best of luck

Re: Critique my site?
 

You're right, I completely missed what he was saying. My target audience would be people that are conscious of quality when shopping for stuff online. So not everyone, just 90%. I'm coming from a blog in a niche that is so small that I was extremely limited in what I could sell, so the idea of being able to market to everyone seemed like a good way to go. I guess traffic is going to be my limitation though. It was hard enough to link a helpful blog to people without people calling me out on spam. Trying to link an e-commerce store will be near impossible.

Yeah, I guess I was doing some wishful thinking with my site when I had the idea. My idea worked in my head because the site would eventually be a household name. Getting to that status might be impossible though. I'll put some more time into it and see what happens, if not, I will strongly consider your idea.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Re: Critique my site?
 

Are you sure about this? Because what I can see when browsing your site for the first time is:

100 Water Ballooons in Less than 1 Minute
$15.00

Oreo Dunking Spoon – The Dipr
$4.99

Tesla Model S
$106,570.00

Re: Critique my site?
 

I think you need to be more specific about your audience. Your audience is still too wide. Narrow it down even further.
When you say people that are conscious of quality when shopping for stuff online, you need to think about age, lifestyle, their hang outs and focus on presenting products that are in the same line of their needs and/or wants. If you know where they hang out, you know where to market your website and THAT will give you the traffic you need.

Also, it may be that when focussing on quality products only, your audience turns out to be quite a small group of people. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as long as they buy the products on your site. The general price per item is relatively high, so a decent amount of highly targeted leads will still make you money. Good luck!!!

Re: Critique my site?
 

Basically you are trying to create another amazon.
Try target on a smaller niche build up a user base then expand.

If you make a website with "everything" most likely someone will not find what they want on your website and leave.

If I was a dog lover, and I want pet gifts or food, why should I go to your website and not just find a site that focuses on dogs?

Re: Critique my site?
 

Like I said, the plan is to sprinkle in unique products to keep the site interesting. I have been putting a bigger emphasis on the unique products since I am trying to get traffic from pinterest and that is the type of stuff people would click on. The unique products will die down and I will focus heavily on adding normal products. Regardless, event though they are odd products, they are still all highly-rated products.

I understand what you are saying, but the original idea was to be the go-to site for everyone. Obviously, I have thousands and thousands of products to add still to even be a viable e-commerce site (which it's technically not even an e-commerce site considering its all affiliate links to other sites). I will of course take your advice into consideration if and when my idea fails.

There are thousands of dog product sites on the internet, I wouldn't have any idea how to differentiate myself from them. Same with every other niche. You can go to those dog sites if you want to see a full line of every dog product in existence, you would go to my site if you want the best ones.



I see that everyone is swaying me away from the original idea, so it was probably a bad idea to ask you guys to critique the site. I have more of an urge to make it succeed now that everyone says it won't work. I appreciate all the advice though, really. I'm going to keep at it for awhile and see what happens. At least today, I woke up and finally had 2 orders from the site. I'll keep this thread updated with what's happening though and you guys can say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.