Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Hi all,

My name is Yasmine and I just relaunched www.yourwinebag.com with my partners. We revamped the whole site to get more conversion friendly. It`s been a week since the new design has launched but the website is still not converting. Any tips?

When you check out the site, you`ll see it`s one page connected to an eBay store instead of installing a shopping cart. That`s because I wanted to get something up quickly and cost-effectively. What do you think of this approach? Could that be what`s turning visitors away?

Thanks in advance for your help. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Best,

Yasmine

Hi Yasmine :-)

I took a look at the site, although I don`t drink wine. A couple of things come to mind. The first is that the autoscrolling testimonials was highly annoying. I kept thinking I missed something, but then couldn`t go back and didn`t want to wait. I think a manual scroll option would work better.

The second is that your sound volume on the video is way low. I couldn`t hear much of anything you were saying.

But more importantly, I think my main question has to do with the market for these items. How many people need a special-order, online purchase of a bag to hold a bottle of wine? Do you have some numbers, perhaps from your initial market research?

On the eBay connection, I`m wondering if you`ll be allowed to go this route. From what we`ve read out of eBay, they`re disallowing all external links from personal sites back into their network. They`re not very specific about exactly what you`re not allowed to do, but be sure to check the "rules," so to speak.

The video is also about one and a-half minutes too long.  The low volume (and room echo) is because the shooter used the on-camera microphone.


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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

Craig L - Thanks for the feedback. I`m with you on the video but there isn`t much we can do now besides retaping the whole thing. Re: marketing research, we held an informal one with family/friends/friends of friends and received a good response. I think this is a product that would be easier to sell in stores instead of online and that`s what we`re testing out with the site.

Steve - Thanks for the feedback as well. I`ll relay it to my team members.

As Craig touched on, the online interest and demand for this type of product is what you need to think about. So in reality, how many people will search online for wine bags? Among millions of sites, what are the chances your site will be found by someone with an interest in them?

To me, this would be more of an impulse buy. One suggestion is to see if liquor stores would carry them as retail items, available only through you, and use your site as an information/ordering tool for those stores that carry them, or would be interested in doing so.

Also, as far as I can tell, there is really no information about your company to build a trust level for visitors, an FAQ area on the product, or a quick visual of the product being used.


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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

Yasmine,

I think there are two concepts here for you to ponder. The first is that whenever you ask family and friends about something, you`ll either get total support, or serious disagreement. Families will either tell you an idea is fabulous, or they`ll think you`re nuts for trying to invent something on your own.

The likelihood of having unbiased, objective feedback is pretty small.

The other concept is to test whether the idea will work in a brick-and-mortar store by offering it as a single item on a Web site. Another example is to put up a quality product on eBay to see if there`s a market. With eBay mostly a flea-market and people looking for ultra-cheap items, the sales results are highly biased.

I think Webline has a solid idea. Why not go around to some physical liquor and wine stores, show them your product, and see if they`ll carry it? Develop a wholesale pricing structure, and demonstrate how much the store owner would earn on sales.

But I don`t think you can get legitimate results either in sales or in research from the Web site as it stands. There are too many other factors that bias the situation.

That`s not to say you can`t make a business online of selling the product. It`s only to say that having few conversions will be the result of many factors other than whether or not it`s a viable product. See?