HELP! I need some advice on my Webstore

[gailofmaine]

Hi, I built a webstore on Wix.com (first site) and am not getting any sales. I have spent about $300-$400 on advertising on Facebook & Google Ads but have only had 1 sale. I have also posted on Facebook & Twitter on my own. I need to know if there is something wrong with my site or what I can do to improve sales. I think my items are well priced but... All help wil be greatly appreciated as I have a limited budget and have gone into debt to stock my store. gailsboutique.com
Thanks to all!
Merry Christmas & Happy Hanukka
Gail

[Harold Mansfield]

Gail,
This won't go down easy. Your store is horrible. Not sure if it's a Wix thing, or just not understanding basic design principles, but as it stands it will never make any sales.
My suggestion is to stop your ads because it's wasting money, and get serious about putting some money into your website. You will never make any money in eCommerce by using all free tools and doing the absolute least.

[gailofmaine]

I spent a lot of time creating this horrible store so what can I do to fix it. What alternatives to the Wix Editor are available.

[Harold Mansfield]

I spent a lot of time creating this horrible store so what can I do to fix it. What alternatives to the Wix Editor are available.
It's not often that I tell anyone to scrap what they have and start over, but you need a better eCommerce solution and a much better website.

I'm not sure if Wix is the best option for you. Even if someone was to go in and help you with a more functional layout and better design, it still may not be enough to save this shopping season.
Overall, I'd scrap it and start from scratch. Building an eCommerce site takes a lot of thought and effort. It's not as easy as just finding a free solution, throwing some products in it and running some ads...at least not if you've never done it before.

You basically have 3 options.

1. Have a website built.
2. Use a hosted solution.
3. Learn website design and do it yourself.

You'll have to put more thought into which is best by investigating the different options. If you're looking for quick and easy, that doesn't really exist. If you're looking for easy enough for someone with no skills, I'd recommend using a platform specifically for eCommerce or at least one that does a better job than what you have.

I'm sure you've seen other eCommerce sites. Pick a few, look at them, and get an idea of what you want, and then go from there to find the solutions which give you that.

Whether or not you want full control, or just want to grab whatever template they offer with whatever options is also a factor.

Basically, you need to put more thought into it. Obviously your website is your bread and butter and it should be treated like the most important thing, not an after thought.

[Chris0]

I would really recommend you hire a professional designer to design your site. Online website makers are terrible and even the goods ones can make bad sites if the person using it doesn't know design.[removed]

If you don't wanna hire a professional then you should definitely pick up a book on web design. You could also look at examples of good websites and bad websites. Hope that helps.

[billbenson]

Sorry Gail, but I agree with Harold. He is a website designer, I have run an online business for 10 years or so.

My suggestion would be to look at profitable websites that sell the same products as yours. See how they are laid out, how they pitch their products, what products they sell. Don't use free website builders as Harold mentioned.

Web sales can be analogous with a real brick and mortar store. It can cost money to set up, take a lot of time, location i.e. search engine position is important, and proper advertising is important.

Tell us more about what you are trying to do and we can help you out.

[Harold Mansfield]

You can either: Shop hosting companies that offer eCommerce solutions like Bluehost, Hostgator, (ugh) Go Daddy, and others and see what they have and if it fits your needs. Most offer at the very least Magento and others like ShopSite, Open Cart, Zen Cart, OS Commerce and many others. I'd also look for hosting companies that have 24/7 phone support so that they can help you.

Or shop web designers that build eCommerce sites until you find one that does the kind of work that you need and like.

If you are intent with going with the site builder kind of service, maybe look at Squarespace. Not sure how robust their eCommerce is, but their sites look much better than what you have now.

Another popular option is Woo Commerce for WordPress. There's also Big Commerce and many other stand alone, hosted solutions ( hosted, meaning they host the website and provide support).

There's also Joomla, and Drupal platforms...basically there's a crap load of things out there. You need to get familiar with what's going on and investigate a few to get a feel for what direction you should go to fit your particular needs.

[LarsJ]

Your site isn't horrible! But it does need a lot of work. That carrousel that loads on the for page and the large image behind it is hard on the eyes and slow to load... It's a busy background and just hard to read. I know you worked on your site for many hours and it's hard to have people tell you it's just not a good looking site and I have to agree. That doesn't mean you can't improve it as every site online, no matter how "ready" it is should always be making adjustments and improvements somewhere. That image carrousel is taking too darn long to load... Black font on blue, not easy to read. I think you are trying to present too much at once.

Things I like; FYI Blogs and order process. At least you have PayPal going on there. Blog has information and simple layout with a few faster loading images. That's how most of the site should look. Less busy.
Take a look here for ideas and info: eCommerce WordPress Themes by Elegant Themes (http://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/category/ecommerce/) AND Elegant Themes Blog (http://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/?s=ecommerce&x=0&y=0)

Hope this helps.

[gailofmaine]

I hope to establish a store where customers feel they can come right to me for the best prices and know the quality will be honestly described. I hope to market to woman of all ages from teens to young mothers to professional women. I try to market to women as they are the major buyers for the family. I really want to get a designer/marketing pro but they cost so much.

[Harold Mansfield]

Hi, I built a webstore on Wix.com (first site) and am not getting any sales. I have spent about $300-$400 on advertising on Facebook & Google Ads but have only had 1 sale. I have also posted on Facebook & Twitter on my own.

You put the cart before the horse. With $300-$400 you could have gotten a year of hosting, installed WordPress, purchased an eCommerce theme and spent the time learning how to use and set it up. It would have taken longer than just going to Wix, but you would have something much better that you could continue to improve upon.


I hope to establish a store where customers feel they can come right to me for the best prices and know the quality will be honestly described. I hope to market to woman of all ages from teens to young mothers to professional women. I try to market to women as they are the major buyers for the family. I really want to get a designer/marketing pro but they cost so much.
Seems like this is step one. You know what you want to do, but didn't think through or learn more about how to do that.
Now on to step 2 and build the kind of site will help you attract and target that market and actually gives them the confidence to purchase from you.


I really want to get a designer/marketing pro but they cost so much.
Prices vary depending on what you want and need and you should shop around, but how much time and money are you wasting by not consulting with someone who knows what they are doing and can help you, or not learning it for yourself?

[billbenson]

I hope to establish a store where customers feel they can come right to me for the best prices and know the quality will be honestly described. I hope to market to woman of all ages from teens to young mothers to professional women. I try to market to women as they are the major buyers for the family. I really want to get a designer/marketing pro but they cost so much.

In the consumer market, women may buy the most, but they may also do the most price shopping. My wife is a shopaholic. Both online and in stores. Perhaps because we went through some bad financial times, she also is an incredible price shopper. In a physical store, she googles the best price for everything she is considering purchasing.

What I am suggesting here is have you really looked at the profit you will make from your target market. You can sell stuff at higher profit margins in fewer numbers and make money or you can sell a lot of stuff at lower margins and make money. Starting out, the first option will be a much easier and less expensive website to build. It will take a lot less management from you. You can grow from there to the low margin high volume model you seem to have selected.

I would guess that many womens products cost pennies to make and sell for outrageous markups. Lipsticks, perfumes etc. Of course the manufacturers spend outrageous amounts of money on marketing.

What I am suggesting here is not only do you need to redo your website, but do a lot of research on your products, competitors, and come up with a profitable business plan.

[Brian Altenhofel]

I really want to get a designer/marketing pro but they cost so much.

A "cost" has little to no return.

Hiring a pro is an investment.

Most of the folks I've worked with that used the free tools like Wix lost more in trust and reputation than they "saved" in money.

[WebEminence]

Hey Gail,

I have to agree with others that your site is not ready to advertise. I'm actually surprised you got one sale, but that may be a good sign. You would improve your site by 1000% if you just change some of the contrast issues that make text very difficult to read. Change the font or at least the contrast between the font color and background color so the font stands out more.

I've reviewed many of these website builders and they are decent options for people creating sites on a budget.

Here are two videos I made on Weebly eCommerce and Shopify, two ecommerce solutions that I like very much.

Weebly eCommerce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgr2sq07k5Y

Shopify: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5pm3iajEgI

and a comparison between the two: Shopify vs Weebly eCommerce - 2 Options for Selling Online (http://webeminence.com/shopify-vs-weebly-ecommerce)

From reading this discussion, it sounds like Weebly eCommerce would be a good fit for you. It has tighter design so you won't create basic design issues that are problems on your current site. The checkout process is more user friendly and clean compared to Wix. You can always upgrade to Shopify or a self-hosted option like Wordpress in the future if your sales increase.

Wix is a great website builder, but it includes so much flexibility in design that it is easy to make things look "off" if you aren't a designer yourself. It's also not very strong in the e-commerce department.

You're competing in a tough space. I think it's hard to compete with a store that offers items in many categories. Usually specializing in one will make it easier for you to gain popularity in that category. Something to think about.

Hope that helps.

[billbenson]

@WebEminence - have you seen website builder sites rank well in Google?

[gailofmaine]

I have a wix website for at least 8 more months, can I get someone that will do a makeover on my site? Can anyone recommend someone that can do it affordably. I don't need big & fancy yet but I would like a good internal search and be able to manipulate my images to different order, page for sales. Do I need someone to manage my marketing?

[Harold Mansfield]

I have a wix website for at least 8 more months, can I get someone that will do a makeover on my site? Can anyone recommend someone that can do it affordably. I don't need big & fancy yet but I would like a good internal search and be able to manipulate my images to different order, page for sales. Do I need someone to manage my marketing?
Gail, Unfortunately we don't allow business dealings on the forum so I'd have to delete anyone who posted publicly for you to contact them.
But there are quite a few web designers, developers and support people on the forum and you are welcome to contact any of them via PM or directly.

[GaWebDev]

As has be iterated but it may be worth emphasizing again. Get off the wix. That's about 1/2 the problem. Find a good, experienced, & reasonably priced eCommerce developer to build your shop on something else (preferably open source) wordpress/woocommerce or even Magento CE if your going big 500+ SKU. The limitations inherent in using many DIY (do it yourself) shop products are tremendous although not easily discernible to anyone not well versed in eCommerce development.

Even great shops built the right way on the right platform take a considerable amount of time and money to generate revenue (especially if they are new or the market is somewhat saturated). The old assumption that "if you build it they will come" is so NOT true nowadays with web. Maybe in the 90"s but the online scene particularly eCommerce is saturated these days and actually takes time, good marketing, and $ to make it happen.

[will.i.earn]

The site looks like one of those archived sites from the 90's. Nothing personal. I really feel sorry that you ended up wasting paying for that much ads. But that's what's great about communities like these. In the future, I'm sure you'll first consider to ask for people's opinion in this forum, which are always gold!

[Georgias Gifts]

The posts here are a little harsh and hard to take, but I have to agree your site is not very appealing. Two things I noticed are the hard to read type face and the stock photos. You are also in a crowded category of women's apparel which makes it hard for you.

I have to admit that I use a hosted site builder type company with ecommerce because of the high cost of a web designer. The one I use offers a huge variety of templates and you can add html to improve the design if you have the experience to do so.

It does not happen overnight! It takes time to build trust and an email list so you can market to your customers. Starting out you must constantly study and learn how to improve all aspects of your site.

[twoodal]

Possibly go with someone like shopify, or even a wordpress theme. These themes are pre made by designers and you just plug in your products and information. I would be happy to talk more and help you any way that I can!

[Kneequepes]

I had installed magento but had some issues with the host not having something in php enabled that it needed.

I think the client will deal with little. it seems setting up payment gateways can be even more of a challenge than the actual script.

data entry also is concern. you need to work that out.