Needed some encouragement
This week or even the past month has been tough and I needed something positive to think about besides Liverpool winning 3-0. Yesterday 765 people visited my site which is the most ever in a day. No sales from it as they were there for the feeds. Today whenever I have looked there have usually been 3-5 people online at a time. Some checking out the feeds and others were actually looking at the coffees. And got an email order from someone who didn't know how to checkout and a phone order he wants to pick-up. Two orders today totalling 15 lbs. :)
Yahoo feed spider hit my site 1200 times yesterday. The news feeds are going to generate traffic if yesterday was any indication. I will keep you posted on how the progress is.
I still have some work to finish on them and also going to add another 500 feeds next week for 1,000 in total (3,000 is my target).
I "think" I have enough to say about my site/coffee for the daily sales pitch when they are displayed in the RSS readers but still working on catchy phrases for when they are displayed on other web sites. Right now at the bottom of those feeds it says "Courtesy of Java Roasters". I was thinking about changing this weekly and have come up with "Powered by Coffee" as a second slogan. I still need 2 more ideas....that is a hint to all the creative people out there. ;)
posted by JavaRoasters at 4:09 p.m.
4 Comments:
Peter,
I am afraid I cannot help with the creative thinking - I am all thunk out creatively trying to design a newsletter for my site!
Just a quick thought/observation though:-
I love your site, leagues ahead of mine in design and technology but do you think increasing your product range would increase sales. I appreciate you are a coffee wholesaler as well as internet sales but with regards to the internet, there is nothing stopping you from vastly increasing the product range available on your site. Starting with coffe, maybe coffee hardware, ie, coffee machines, percolators, filters, grinders, etc. Maybe other similar/related beverages or foods. Quality teas or biscuits, I am guessing these would not be too hard for you to source.
I am finding that the only thing holding me back at present with regards to increasing the product range is cash. I have plenty of ideas..... Also, I believe the more you offer, the more chance you have of sales. (Maybe this sounds a little obvious!) What I mean is that on the internet, I am finding so many people are just searching for exactly what they want and are buying from whoever is offering it at the right price. In my case, after 18 months of being online, it is not so much the repeat customers that are important, although I hope to work on that, but it is the people who are searching for a specific item, maybe a "cream colored kettle" - they find me listed and just go ahead an buy - It surprises me that they buy with no idea who I am or what the company is about but... buy they do.
Anyhow, DO NOT get disheartened - You have a great site and obvioulsy a very good understanding of e-commerce - sales will come. And, if all else fails, start designing for others. I may well be in touch next year for assistance on setting up an rss feed. :)
Cheers,
Rich
8:27 p.m.
Hi Rich,
I want to get version 2 of the site up and work on sales. When the sales are there tea will probably be next and then small food related items. We are getting repeat business for the site which is very good, just not enough repeats and new customers yet. It will come.
9:26 a.m.
Hi Gary, thanks for the comments about the site but I didn't design it. The Version #2 of my site will keep the same look and feel. The code is cleaner and XHTML validated, with some new features added and a few taken out. The main progress is on SEO where every page will be optimized and with more relevent page names all to maximize the number of targeted searches that I receive on my site. Such as http://www.javaroasters.com/brazilian-santos-p-40.html might not be the best name, maybe instead of brazilian santos as the name of the page it should be;
brazil coffee
brazilian coffee
brazil santos
santos coffee
etc.
Every page will be searched to find the best possible keywords to maximize traffic to the site while also keeping in mind that customers have to know what the page is about and that it has to be relevent to what they are looking for.
4:46 p.m.
In that case, you have my permission to proceed :D ;)
Thanks Gary :) Version 2 I test at www.javaroasters.net. I will put up a better skinned version today. Still a few code functions to add and a few XHTML things to work out but it is progressing. I am not going to be able to use my header with it as this site is 95% width and the old one is 760px. I have left both columns up there for now as they are easily taken out, just want to make sure I have everything I want in there before removing the left one. With the .com site it was images that set the background, this one is set using CSS for the colours. I still have to work on the stylesheet and go through each page and make sure the fonts, etc. are what I want.
It is progressing and I am learning a lot about osC also.
7:27 a.m.
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