Finally started, looking for input/critique

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Decided to break the endless research addiction and got something started, went with a Shopify store with AliExpress dropshipping (Not ideal I know, but have zero investment to use). I'm not looking for a quick buck I'm looking to really put the effort in and quit a 9-5 I hate, ultimately looking to build a real business with Amazon Fba but using this to gain funds and experience.

Website is www.browseunique.com niche (if it's even a viable one) is selling love and romance related home decor, clothing, jewellery etc. Has been running for about a week, no sales thus far. Working on building a twitter following and running some cheap Facebook ads and playing with those but struggling to find good targets for something as broad as love.

Really could do with some critique on the site/niche/method. Any and all advice I can get would be hugely appreciated.
#ecommerce sites, wholesaling & drop shipping #finally #input or critique #started
  • Cool thing that you decided to get started!

    Your store is a typical kind of "hybrid" wanting to please several store categories and consumer types. By offering multiple categories but only a few products per category, I won't consider you a typical niche store, nor a general store. However, this makes it hard for your customers to put you in a specific category. If they want a big selection of products, they simply might go to big retailers, but if they want something really special, you are not the right shop either (because you sell a few items in different categories).

    My advice would be to think how you might restructure your store to maybe focus on one category (for example "love home decor") and excel in that. Instead of 10 products in 3 categories, what about 50 in just that one? People might say at some point "hey, you know Browse Unique? They have a pretty nice selection of lovely home decor stuff". Of course thats far in the future, but this is what I mean in pursuing a focused differentiation strategy.

    Of course it doesn't mean that your approach can't work as well. If you manage to drive a lot of (targeted) traffic and monitor and improve your conversions, it can also become a success. I just personally found it easier to either please the one end or the other of the equation.

    PS: When it comes to ads, you should be confident enough to at least spend several hundreds $. That why I recommend to start with $500 minimum if you are doing E-Commerce. There is a critical point which needs to be reached for your marketing budget to make sense. For example if you only have $50 in total (!), you might as well focus on organic traffic completely, because 50 is far from enough to run a successful campaign with testing, optimization and splittests.
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    • Hi splatterfox, yeah I agree with what your saying, tried to go general to give me more options to play with but still kind of a niche with everything being love/romance related. But as dave said below I think i need to start learning to keyword research and get a hold of who my buyers are first. I think I'm going to relook at who my target buyers are then restructure the site more focused. Thanks for taking the time to look at site and reply, very helpful comments.
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  • Congrats and good luck to you. Your store looks good. I like the products you are offering. You mention that you plan to sell you products on Amazon via FBA which I strongly suggest you do, sooner rather than later if possible. Think about this - about 45% of all online buyers go directly to Amazon when they want to make a purchase. How many of them will be going to your site?

    Amazon has huge amounts of buyer traffic and takes care of all customer service. That is a great benefit. Start small with just a small amount of inventory on Amazon and build up from there. Research on Amazon to find which of your products should sell the best. I use camelcamelcamel to research sales history using the specific Amazon number of an item.

    Also you may want to search this forum for posts by ImportExort / Walter Hay who can provide some useful insight about sourcing from overseas. Having Alibaba drop ship items may create some issues for you.
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    • Yeah ultimately, not sure on minimum requirements for Fba, I could get together some funds but not grands. Might look into if I can start a small cheaper order to get going if that's worth doing? Like £500 total investment? Thanks for taking time to reply
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  • It's like I always say. A website begins with keyword research and not products. If you don't know what search phrases people are typing in, how can you create a website that sells what they are searching for? The website is nice enough looking but what searches are people doing to find this wide array of products? Figure that out and how competitive those phrases are, and you'll have an idea of what direction to take this site and what groups of people you should be targeting on faceboook, twitter, etc.
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    • I'd say that is about as general as it gets - maybe not as general as Walmart or Amazon - but clothing and accessories is pretty darned general. Less general is just shoes, but even that is pretty general. You start getting nichey when it is nothing but sandals, nothing but purses, nothing but belts, etc. Micro-nichey would be red sandals only, clutch purses only, brown belts only.
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    • Definetly a general store.

      There is a pretty easy way to identify a niche: in a niche you have just a few (or in some rare occasions zero) DIRECT competition. Maybe you know these wooden sunglasses that flooded the market some time ago. It started as a true niche product (before there were no sunglasses made out of wood). At some point in time, if the niche is successful, chances are that it will become a mass market. Nobody would call "computers" a niche nowadays, while in the beginning they were just for highly tech-savvy people and there was not much competition.

      Thats why its funny how people tend to call for example electronics, fashion and food "niches", while there are probably millions of companies operating in these industries making hundreds billions of dollars.

      //

      Absolutely!
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  • I just tried to click on your link and see your site. The page said this site is not available. I know others saw it. So see if you are paid up or if the site is for a reason down .
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    Finally started, looking for input/critique

    Decided to break the endless research addiction and got something started, went with a Shopify store with AliExpress dropshipping (Not ideal I know, but have zero investment to use). I'm not looking for a quick buck I'm looking to really put the effort in and quit a 9-5 I hate, ultimately looking to build a real business with Amazon Fba but using this to gain funds and experience. Website is www.browseunique.com niche (if it's even a viable one) is selling love and romance related home decor, clothing, jewellery etc. Has been running for about a week, no sales thus far. Working on building a twitter following and running some cheap Facebook ads and playing with those but struggling to find good targets for something as broad as love.