Hello STM Pros, we've finally decided to venture into drop shipping and considering my wife and I have an established apparel business already with solid client base, going into a similar direction was a no-brainer for us.
All the items in the store are drop shipped from Aliexpress and we felt that launching this type of store would be a perfect compliment to our existing ecommerce apparel site since we don't offer this type of product yet the customer profile is a perfect fit.
So lets begin with the site - I'd love to get your feedback, comment, suggestions on the newly created store - https://.com I tried to use a lot of the apps, features and functions based on suggestions found in other threads. Our designer is still working on home page banners and those will be added in next day so ignore the placeholders. Social media pages have been registered by have virtually no followers yet (advise whether it may make sense to remove)
Would love to hear your thoughts on the following:
- Design (desktop, mobile, tablet)
- Loading times
- Product copy, policies, etc
- Ease of use, placing items in checkout, etc
- Use of marketing apps (entry pops, exit pops, FOMO) - what can we do to improve here, what to add, what to remove
- Anything that is missing or overkill.
Thank you!
Next step: Marketing
As mentioned in previous threads, we have a customer email list of around 1.5M customers that we've put together over course of past 4 years from our core apparel business. The customer profile (females 18-34yrs old) fits perfect with someone who may be interested in purchasing these items.
I'm planning to use load this list into fb & create Lookalike Audience. The way I'm planning to do it (I'm probably 99% wrong on this set up, so please provide some guidance if possible)
In addition of fb, I'm planning to use google/bing shopping to drive traffic from search engines.
Per sapven's thread I'm planning to test 3 products per week on fb until i find something that sticks with the customer.
Initial set up will look something like this:
Product 1 Campaign
5 - 6 Ad sets (US geo) $10/day per adset - each adset will be LAA + 1 interest/behavior (engaged shopper | plus size | mid ticket apparel | luxury apparel, etc.
1 Ad per adset (same copy across all) - Static image of creative banner with promoted product.
Destination URL = selected product #1 page.
Product 2 Campaign
5 - 6 Ad sets (US geo) $10/day per adset - each adset will be LAA + 1 interest/behavior (engaged shopper | plus size | mid ticket apparel | luxury apparel, etc.
1 Ad per adset (same copy across all) - Static image of creative banner with promoted product.
Destination URL = selected product #2 page.
Product 3 Campaign
5 - 6 Ad sets (US geo) $10/day per adset - each adset will be LAA + 1 interest/behavior (engaged shopper | plus size | mid ticket apparel | luxury apparel, etc.
1 Ad per adset (same copy across all) - Static image of creative banner with promoted product.
Destination URL = selected product #3 page.
Question: If my customer list is mostly based in US, how am I able to expand to other countries, and which countries would you recommend to target with current site?
We appreciate all of your feedback and some initial guidance in helping to get this project going!
Cheers!
Just a quick one - why go and set up Facebook campaigs if you have such a massive list.
I'd work that list first, before doing anything on Facebook.
The more you learn & sell via your list, the better you can target on Facebook.
For starters:
I'd rather build a lookalike audience with people from your list that are proven buyers of the new products than the list in general.
You have such an asset with the mail list - use that first before you start paying Facebook.
I agree, the list is for sure an asset and we're def planning to use it in order to co-promote our apparel websites + the dropship site.
However, few things:
1. I have multiple projects in the pipeline with another beauty brand where fb can be a killer so I want to use ezshapers to properly learn how to market on fb (tired of outsourcing fb marketing to someone who half asses it while charging ridiculous retiners).
2. Our current email provider is pricey so marketing individual email promos to 1.5M users multiple times per month can cost us additional 2-2.5k per month which I'd rather invest into fb and learn the ropes there.
I completely agree with your suggestion and thank you. We are planning on using our list first to get the initial push but I want to use this project to really learn fb as well.
any feedback on the new store would be appreciated :-)
For the email marketing, I would just send to segments and test. It'll still give you a better LLA on Facebook.
As for the store, nothing major at the moment.
I would get traffic in and see what happens-> where do people stop? Do they add something to their carts, if so what is doing well. What isn't?
Add chat to the site, even if it's not live at any point. It will lower the barrier for people to contact you. And they'll tell you what missing, what they're looking for, what's not working.
Right now, without any traffic, you can't know what you need to be optimising for. So get people to the site and focus on what gets traction and build from there.