Please grill my store... (29)
Hey everyone, looking for some heavy critiques on my store.
Some initial things I'm working on:
- I'm going to import more products that solves pain point problems (pee pads, urine lights, chew sprays etc) and try to find a way to sort them into dog and cat categories for a better UX (believe it or not I'm having a hard time with this part).
- I'm using amazon best sellers to do some product search (suggestion on other ways to research are welcomed).
- My email sequences has been completed: welcome email flow, purchase flow, order tracking flow, promotion opt in flow. One problem that I'm having is that the people who opt into the email list via the website form (footer) doesn't automatically get added into my "newsletter" list, so those people don't automatically receive the welcome email series (such a headache figuring this out on how to connect that form to that particular list).
- I'm working on the product pages (better images, reviews, social proof, scarcity, credibility).
- Trying to increase my website speed, I've compressed my images and downsized them and I'm not super good with code (just know basic html, css) so I don't want to condense or mess with the code. Any other ideas on how to increase speed is welcomed.
FB ads:
My question: I'm doing blog posts for engagement and pixeling them to build my custom audiences. So far my audiences are pretty low but I'm going to keep pushing out content and value items to get more people liking and engaging with my posts/page. Also I'm pixeling people who go to my free+ship page as well. What is the optimal audience size to start running ads to them?
Q2: Anyone know of any resources to get videos or create videos for fb ads? I know this probably some of your guy's secret sauce to campaigns but if you could help a brother out with a PM or something that'll be super awesome ..
Lastly, after I set the foundation right for this site (social proof, timer, lookng credible etc etc etc) then I'm going to shift my focus more on running traffic to my funnels.
Any critiques and thoughts are appreciated. Thanks all! And if I get no responses back then thanks anyways! Haha
I'm not experienced in ecommerce - but want to at least help by bumping your post to get more exposure and hopefully replies! 
Nice looking site! Will you be including automatic litter boxes in your list of products? I used to have small niche SEO sites that would make steady sales. I was using amazon aff links so profits were low, but if you could source them for cheaper there may be major profits there. The Litter Robot for example sells for $600 CDN each. Nobody likes to deal with smelly cat poop, so there's definitely a market demand there.
Amy
I will let the real pros answer some of the questions but give my 2 cents on a few things.
1. You don't have a good copy for the products. It's a pain to create a good one for each such product of course but it's something that will pay dividends over the long term. Treat each product page like an affiliate offer page, because for all intent and purpose, it is!
2. This niche could use, and maybe even needs, a pet lovers' story behind it in an About Us page.
3. Testimonials/reviews. You need to add fake ones, otherwise people will have trust issues.
Aside from that I have the very subjective opinion that the branding might be off when it comes to the niche. Black, red and white, with that font makes me think of strong, serious, maybe even aggressive. Certainly doesn't make me thing fluffy puppies and kitties.
Not gonna edit, even though I noticed things after writing - video is too low, found it only after I wrote all the above. Think video has to be way higher. Cannot say if it's good or not, but I know you want it to be way up there, not last on the page almost, haha. Testimonials should also be per product, not for the store only.
Hope it helps, and I hope a true cook like Caurmen hops in with his recipe to grill your store better than I can.
@Amy thank you very much for the feedback and help. For the auto cat litter machine, that's a great idea. I'll probably have to wait till I build a loyal customer base before pushing a high priced product out.
@manu you're absolutely right about the copy. i really need to get on that. awesome feedback about the branding too, perhaps i could've chosen blue instead of red as the main color. haha man you really threw me in a loop with this and i'm considering a quick rebrand. i guess one of my action items is to survey a lot of people and get their thoughts of new possible color schemes and the logo. big thanks for opening my eyes up to this
as for the testimonials, im currently only putting some fakes ones on the free+ship page until i get a customer base, personally i think it's bad practice for the long term so im gonna try to limit how many fake reviews i put lol
thanks for your help!
1. You need a better contact us page with physical address present. As Dan Kennedy has said - "a customer needs to know that if something bad happens he at least has a chance to knock on your door and kick your ....".
2. It's a bit too confusing. Free shipping/sale ends in 12/get 20% by joining a community (what community? Is it a sect or something?).
3. Every product needs a good description that does a lot of selling.
4. Your above the fold area (the most important area of the website) is taken by a photo that does not tell anything. Yes, it's cute and you like dogs but what's in there for me?
5. If I were you I would find best e-com dog stores and copy as much as possible from them. They have probably did all the A/B tests just for you...
Btw, where did you get that fortune wheel popup on close?
thanks for your feedback madskills! the app is called wheelio, you can find it in the
Check out this above the fold area - https://barkbox.com - it greets you in a fun way and asks you to choose between two actions that get you into their funnel asap.
Remember I told you I had niche SEO sites on automatic litter boxes? They were pretty thin sites - basically contained no more than 10 pages with reviews on various brands of automatic litter boxes. People would do a google search on "automatic litter boxes", find my site, read my review (without even knowing who the heck I was), click to Amazon or another seller website, and make a purchase.
Of course you have an entirely different setup from mine. And you'd need to experiment with this in order to find out whether the financials will back out for you. Just saying it would be worth a shot to promote them directly on FB (in addition to selling via email in the back end). If your ad text and copy are good in 1)your ads, and 2)your product descriptions, and you're targeting the right demographic, then there's a chance you could turn a profit.
It may be true that for more expensive products, your conversion rates may not be as high as for cheaper items, but like I've mentioned before, if you could source these things for cheap such that profit margins are healthy, then you could still turn a profit.
Here's an article on how to sell high-ticket items on FB:
http://loganchierotti.com/how-to-use...-ticket-sales/
Just providing some food for thought! You never know unless you try.
Amy
To add a bit more to the article @Amy highlighted
The article talks about the mechanics - set up a lead magnet and make the sale a 2 step process.
That's the execution of the idea behind it - which is that you need more trust from you customers for a high ticket item sale.
You don't get that on a first visit to your site.
You need to build that trust, which is easier when:
- you talk to them (auto responder sequence)
- they see you as an expert (read your ultimate guide to cat litter processing)
- feel like they know you (seen you in one of your Youtube videos)
So set up whatever works for you and these things are not difficult to sell (we see purchases up to €1500 on our site, with an average order value of €150)
Yup, echoing other peoples' comments here: copy on the products is definitely something I'd work on ASAP, along with more/better images. Your images are very, very small - if you're getting these products from AliExpress you can usually download significantly larger versions. I'd prioritise the ones that have actual pets using the products in them.
In terms of testimonials - you can use quotes from the original AliExpress page about the product. I'd probably recommend doing that along with some careful wording - "What people say about this product", etc.
Lead magnets and email sequences are always a good idea, particularly on more expensive items!
Overall, the store just feels a bit impersonal at the moment: why should I buy from you rather than Amazon? Demonstrate you care and you have expertise, and that'll go a long way.
What are you doing in terms of Facebook ads, targeting, copy, etc? That's as important as what's on your store.
P.S. - I strongly agree with Manu about the colour choices. Currently your reds, in particular, scream "DANGER!" - not really the first thing you want people to be thinking whilst buying a new lead for their dog
awesome feedback guys, i really appreciate it!
as for the high ticket priced items, i think i would have to take it one step at time for now and put the consumer through the customer value journey.
high ticket items approach:
lead magnet: free+shipping / coupon / value items (maybe a 10-page cat write up on the litter box or something?) in exchange to opt into my email list.
upon customer opting in from lead magnet ->
email sequence:
->indoctrinate phase: "hi my name is so and so, this is my story and why you will get value from us etc etc etc .."
-> engagement (nurture phase): "thanks for sticking around, here's some more value items etc etc ..."
-> ascensions (brand advocate): "here's some more value content/items, exclusive promos. oh btw here's higher ticket priced items and please tell your friends about us.."
is this approach viable for the high ticket items?
I would have to test out the FB ads to the high ticket items too and that'll require a lot testing and data gathering. you're definitely right though, I'll never know until i try. thanks for that heads up, im going to put it down on the agenda!
in terms of FB ads:
I'm doing a few tests at the moment, im testing each campaign and split testing objectives/target metric/ads:
item 1 free+ship:
campaign 1 - conversions -> 2 ad sets (targeting: associations and magazines) -> 2 different ads per ad set (4 total)
campaign 2 - link clicks -> 2 ad sets (targeting associations and magazines) -> 2 different ads per ad set (4 total)
budget: $10/day for 7 days then optimize
item 2 free+ship (i have data from a previous campaign):
campaign 1 - link clicks -> 2 ad sets (targeting associations and magazines) -> 4 different ads in the set (8 total)
budget: $10/day for 7 days then optimize
post engagement campaigns (budget $20 per post):
post 1 - boosted post: pixeled into a custom audience
post 2 - boosted post: pixeled into a custom audience
total of 5 different posts - 3 different custom audience for posts and 1 free+ship audience
all low audience sizes so far
As for the color, I've thought about it all day yesterday and maybe a blue might be better.
like this site: https://www.petco.com/shop/en/petcostore
(Petco is a major retailer in the US)
am i kinda on the right path with everything so far?
lastly, thanks again for the feedback all! 
Originally Posted by madskills
Looks solid!
What's your thinking behind the engagement campaigns? Using them to build up audiences or something else? They're the only thing on this list I'd go "hmm" about, but it depends what you're doing with them.
Copying the colour thinking of a major retailer: good idea. They'll have done more testing than you have the budget to do (probably) so you're unlikely to go too far wrong there.
thank you caurmen!
for the post engagement campaigns i wanted to test out a long-term play for my store. not sure if im right about this either.
the initial thought was to try and build 2 separate assets with the engagement posts: my fb custom audience and email list.
the plan was to consistently push out content that would lead into two actions:
- they enjoy my content so much that they opt into my email list. then i can get them nurtured via that email sequence mentioned above so i can eventually lead them into buying.
- second is to create a custom audience based on people who've engaged with my posts and page so i can target them later with more content / ads about my products because at that point i can safely assume there is at least some trust built in the relationship if they've made some initial engagements with me.
i did a quick google search about colors:
"Red. Red is the color of fire and blood, so it is associated with energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination as well as passion, desire, and love.Red is a very emotionally intense color. It enhances human metabolism, increases respiration rate, and raises blood pressure."
"Blue is the color of the sky and sea. It is often associated with depth and stability. It symbolizes trust, loyalty, wisdom, confidence, intelligence, faith, truth, and heaven. Blue is considered beneficial to the mind and body."
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/psychol...d-conversions/
you and manu are both correct about the colors. im definitely gonna have changing the color schemes as one of my action items very soon.
lead magnet: free+shipping / coupon / value items (maybe a 10-page cat write up on the litter box or something?) in exchange to opt into my email list.
upon customer opting in from lead magnet ->
email sequence:
->indoctrinate phase: "hi my name is so and so, this is my story and why you will get value from us etc etc etc .."
-> engagement (nurture phase): "thanks for sticking around, here's some more value items etc etc ..."
-> ascensions (brand advocate): "here's some more value content/items, exclusive promos. oh btw here's higher ticket priced items and please tell your friends about us.."
A google search will uncover a ton:
https://www.google.com/search?q=cat+...hrome&ie=UTF-8
An example:
http://digesale.com/jobs/animals-pet...resale-rights/
As for the email sequence - everybody likes stories. So perhaps you could start each email with a very short story that's related to the product, that pet owners can relate to, and then describe how the product has solved your problem.
For example, "One day there was an emergency at work, and we were required to pull an all-nighter at the office. I couldn't get home until noon the next day. When I arrived home exhausted, the first thing that greeted me was a very pungent but familiar smell. I proceeded to change into my house shoes so I could look for the source of the smell - and stepped into a pile of cat poop. Apparently, because the litter box was full, my cat decided to find somewhere else to relieve herself, and doing her business in my shoe was her way of voicing her complaint...[etc. etc.]"
"I had already heard of automatic little boxes before that, but thought they were a bit expensive. That incident was the last straw. I then did some research to see which one was the most economical but still had good quality. In the end I decided on [brand] due to [reasons]. It was easy to set up, and I never looked back. No more having to clean smelling litter boxes every day. No more having to put up with the smell of cat poop in my small apartment every time my cat's pooping...."
Don't worry about introducing yourself too much to establish trust. You're not selling stuff like make money online products where there are tons of scams and people need to idolize you before they'd listen to what you have to say. "From one cat servant to another" to get people to relate to "your experiences" would be the way to go. If you don't have a cat yourself, create a cat character and describe all sorts of mischief that his cat would get into, in your newsletter. Your readers will grow to love him/her - once you have their heart, their wallet will open.
Eager to see some stats soon!
Amy
@amy great advice! i see only one potential problem ... im not a great story teller haha. something i need to work on that's for sure. ill have to see what course of actions i would take for that part of email marketing.
should i just find a guy on fiverr to write the copy, or do you think it's a pretty crucial to do it myself since i'll essentially be building the foundation for the sequences? I'm a fairly decent copywriting but not great. the only element i could rely on is authenticity in my emails.
as for the color, the quick rebrand has been made. i think it may perform better with blue, but this is just an assumption. i've been noticing a lot of large companies use blue as well.
my data looks just okay for now, im going to continue launching more campaigns while my free+ship ones warm up a little more and let fb optimize them. good news is that there has been a few people initiating checkouts and a purchase so far, also my email list is growing little by little because of two blog posts that are performing fairly well. main focus for email is keeping a clean and healthy list, quality not quantity for now.
I'll show some screenshots of my fb data perhaps next week or something
i've taken a lot of advice from this thread and took action. i cannot thank you all enough!
also just throwing this out there for anyone that might be reading. if you're looking for something that's a little better than mailchimp then check out klaviyo, integration and setting up email flows are so simple and effective. the platform also does cart abandonment sequences for you too.
https://www.klaviyo.com/
Originally Posted by lem915
You can for sure try Fiverr if you absolutely don't want to write your own email sequence - here are a few:
https://www.fiverr.com/search/gigs?u...pywriter+email
I've never hired anyone to write my email sequence though - so don't have anyone to recommend.
Another good idea would be to surf forums in your niche to look for material you can use. This is a must-do anyways each time you want to enter a new vertical.
For example, for cats, google "cat forum":
https://www.google.ca/search?q=cat+f...hrome&ie=UTF-8
So for example if you need to write about automatic litter boxes, go to every forum and do a search on "automatic litter box":
https://thecatsite.com/search/253660...ox&o=relevance
As you can see from the search results, owners that mention "automatic litter box" in their posts, are concerned about having to leave their cats alone for extended periods of time, and/or are concerned about odor control - so there you go - 2 pain points that can be resolved by the product.
So then you'd just need to craft a really short story around the 2 pain points - about how you have an apartment and have cats, and need to leave them for extended periods of time for some reason (like having to work overtime in my example above, or that you've switched jobs recently and your new job requires frequent travel), and your apartment is small so odor has always been an issue.
Another thing you can do if you don't want to write and don't want to hire someone to write it for you, would be to rip other people's sequences. DISCLAIMER: I won't be held responsible for any legal hotwater you could get yourself into as a result! Try not to use what you rip as-is - at least rewrite them.
Register for a new email, then use it to sign up to every cat-related mailing list you can find. Wait a few weeks and your inbox will be filled with materials you can repurpose. This is also a great way to see what products other people are pushing. You can sign up to the same affiliate programs as them to push the same products.
Exciting progress! Eager to see some stats soon!
Amy
awesome insight amy, thank you.
I think I'm going to write a total of 9 emails sequences. 3 for the welcome 3 for the engagement (push out valuable content) and 3 to push them products so they could buy by then im sure they'll be hot leads.
Doing research is great as well, im going to go full white hat with this one and repurpose other people's emails sequences lol. nothing illegal about that and the worst that i think could happen is possible plagiarism, which is hard to detect if i combine a bunch of content together and just add in a few of my own words 
i have two last questions if anyone could help me out with this: im trying to determine my price metrics for each product. is a 200% mark up good enough? also how do i figure out how much i am able to pay to acquire each customer, would i have to continue buying data to figure this out or is there a benchmark i should be striving for?
quick update on the data, 2 sales came in so far. not impressive but it's progress
Here are some of my personal opinions on the site
- You need to find the biggest players of your niche FIRST, then model after them. Aka look at these guys: https://iheartdogs.com/ - Killing it completely. Your look and feel of your site needs to model theirs.
What is their biggest thing they got going for them????? Its the fact that they donate a portion of the proceeds to animal shelters or feeding dogs. This is a MUST if you run any sort of animal niche store. You can decide how much you give and what you disclose yourself, but doing even a little bit will take you over the edge over other shops like Amazon, which is exactly what the other posters above mention.
- Second, I would definitely get rid of the light blue and match more of the theme of the iheartdogs. Maybe a different tone or hues, but I would make it closer. There is a big reason why red goes well with animals and thats because animals are close to the heart or because we love them. You should plaster hearts all over your site to be honest.
- Third, add more personality and cute dog / cat things to your site. Its very basic and plain for a animal lover site. Have pictures of people who donated, who have happy animals etc plastered across your site.
- Fourth, your main header is very basic and boring. There is no copy either, you need to either get rid of it or come up with better angles to get people excited.
- Fifth, your photos for your products, especially on the home page are very confusing. You use different backgrounds, one has a wooden background, the other has a greyish, and the other is white. Then you add more than one product in each photo, for example there is a plush toy featuring three animals, then theres a harness featuring both the yellow and orange version. This is overkill and wayyyy to confusing. Stick with your hottest products and make them take up the entire photo picture slot and keep it simple. If someone wants a harness, offer one harness, not two or three or different kinds etc. its too confusing and leads the customer to mis represent your store.
Your store should feature only the best products, not every single product in the world. If i want the very best harness, I got to your store to get the ONE, not to be presented with 10's of other harnesses. Leave that for amazon and walmart.
- Your reviews need to have a pic of a happy dog / cat or something at the very least.
For the positives the domain and overall structure / theme is good. Also logo works too. Hope that helps!
Wow thanks for the feedback man! Really, that's some good stuff and definitely helps a lot.
I think that's the angle I'm going to take is to donate a portion of the profits to an animal shelter, brilliant stuff and that should be enticing enough. I agree with you too with the homepage richness factor. It looks like a completely new site revamp may be necessary.
As for the header photo, that's currently being worked on by the designer, and also the product photos are being worked on as well.
With the products, I was thinking on having more novelty pet items for pet owners. More along the lines of like the LED collars, lion manes, and those sorts of cool/must haves pet items.
Thank you for the feedback and I'm gonna do some serious changes very soon! The tip about donating a portion of the proceeds to animal shelters or feeding dogs was complete gold. It's sort of like a mission statement for the store.
I have been through selling this stuff. However i would advice to jump into pod or higher priced items for dogs. What you are selling is failing already for all.
@neerajmahajan - when you say "pod" do you mean Print-On-Demand?
Site is looking great! And yeah it could probably do with more products.
Real nice to hear that you'll be updating this thread to turn it into a follow-along (it already is actually!) Action plan looks good as well.
(Again - mainly just wanting to bump the thread to get more eyeballs and feedback from the experienced ecommerce people.)
Amy
OK Amy, I'll bite ;-)
The site looks good, although I would change this:
- all the benefits can be summarised in a bullit point list, that includes: free shipping, donations and the money back guarantee.
You might even want to make that a list that comes under the category navigation and is visbile site wide (this is an ecommerce best practice that works more often than not)
- Your top bar displaying the amount of people that bought a box is good social proof, but it blocks the search bar, which is better left as visible as possible
Most important is to further narrow down your audience and get profitable. Make sure your campaigns are bringing in results.
on another note, I would think a channel like Instagram would work well for a lot of products. That's because this stuff is so shareable.
So I would go gorilla marketing on this one and get some products in stock. Now, take your phone or camera and hit the streets.
Find people with dogs and tell them how awesome, cute etc their dog is. Tell them what you do and would love to see what their dog looks like and if you could try the socks / wig or whatever on their dog.
"Wouldn;t you love to see how cute your dog looks with this" - show a few pics on your camera / phone as social proof.
Take pictures and tell them you'll put them on Instagram. "Your dog is going to be famous after this" "Would you be alright with me posting it there?" Set up a dedicated facebook page as well, share it there, ask for their Facebook and tag them once their pic is up "Hey X, look how awesome your dog looks"
They'll want to share this and you;ll get more exposure to your site Post shoud say, look at this cool dog, called X, proudly wearing Y / Looking like Z / etc
Anyway, you get the idea.
In short, hustle. Make it work. Be creative.
It's a little tricky to use the site on mobile due to the amount of pop ups and overlays. Header bar, email optin, m security seal, recent sale pop up, then the exit intent over the top eventually. Not much space left for browsing!
I'm not a pet owner, and I know absolutely nothing about caring for dogs or cats so I'm just throwing this out there.
Looking at your site, I see that you're selling dog products aimed at dog owners looking to buy shit for their dog - dog clothes, dog costumes, and dog collars. Which I think is cool however a bit too general as there are hundreds of different types of dogs out there like poodles, german sheppards, pitbulls and so on.
So If I was dog owner arriving on your website, the first thing I'd want to know is if you sell merchandise specific to my dog, for example, dog costumes for German Sheppards.
So I recommend if possible, on the homepage, add an additional menu that will allow dog owners to drill down to a specific dog type they are shopping for.
If I could give you one cheap and easy suggestion. Go grab Bulk Image Edit by Hextom (it's Free) then go bulk edit all your image alt tags, with product name, vendor, type and then do the same for image name. Should help your search and SEO considerably.
How do you go about finding the top players in your niche? Are you using a Facebook ads spy tool?
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