Need some advice on validating my business idea

  • 16 January 2014
  • 6 replies
  • 1 view
M

Need some advice…

I have an idea for selling cotton soccer jerseys online. I had a sample made of a FC Barcelona jersey in a cotton polyester blend by a supplier in China, only problem was that they couldn’t make it with the exact fabric colors that are in the design since they would need to order 200 kgs, so it doesn’t look like the teams shirt only due to the unavailability of the required colors.

Anyways, before I actually ordered 1000s of shirts, I set up 2 landing pages , an AdWords campaign and a Facebook campaign just to see if people would be interested in a FC Barcelona jersey that’s made of cotton. The address for the landing page is http://unbouncepages.com/elclassicokits/. One has a picture of a regular polyester original jersey and the other landing page is just a simple coming soon page. On both I’m asking for people’s email if they want further info before we launch and a 20% pre launch discount.

My dilemma: On the first day, I had 380 visitors and only 2 conversions. What I am not sure of is if :

  1. My ads are slightly misleading ? Since when they land on the page they can’t actually click to buy this cotton jersey, they are asked for their email and they will get updates on the product instead. My ad copies are attached to the email.

  2. Are people that are clicking these ads doing it since they believe that on the page they get to there will be pictures of what this shirt looks like in cotton and from there they would decide if its impressive enough for them to buy? Since I don’t have an actual picture of the finished product and can’t get the product made since the cost for even a sample would be around $500, is that impacting the conversion ? Or is my idea just not that interesting to people.

Also to note: On adwords, I’ve targeted keywords Fc Barcelona Jersey , Fc Barcelona t shirt and some variations of those words.

For facebook, I’ve targeted people who are fans of the FC Barcelona page and some online soccer shops that are quite popular so the overall potential reach for facebook is around 6 million users.

What do you guys think ?

6 replies

O

Rights to use the FC Barcelona and Nike logos aside.

The landing page design and layout looks pretty good and shouldn’t put too many off with conversions. In my opinion the main reason for a low conversion rate would be that (as you said above) the advert suggests being able to buy one, but it doesn’t give any time frames for production or delivery. You have to consider how many people would really pre-order a t-shirt. A wild guess would suggest that most would see it’s not actually for sale and head to eBay to find one to buy instantly.

I’m all for light hearted quotes, but your customer quote name at the bottom of the page does not give me confidence in your brand.

“Or is my idea just not that interesting to people.”

I wouldn’t be discouraged into thinking that, the ad clicks/visitors shows there is interest in your product, your conversion rate shows your page didn’t offer what the advert suggested. Adwords is probably also a difficult place to pitch a product that doesn’t yet exist.

M

Thank you for the response it really helpful. I am not actually going to use Nike branding anywhere on the shirt, the rest of the branding I will use though. I will simply remove the quote on the bottom , I don’t think a quote for such a product is needed really.

My problem is that in order to produce the shirts I need to make an order for 200 pcs. Do you suggest that I pay 2-300 $ to make a sample and then post detailed pictures of the sample on the landing page and have the CTA go direct to a checkout page and then order pieces once I have actual sales ?

O

I think at this stage spending $300 is a risk that won’t get you much further. Even once they’ve seen the high resolution samples, you won’t be able to provide them with their own t-shirt until you’ve seen enough interest/registrations to make it viable.

Your idea sounds like something that would be more effective on a platform such as Kickstarter (www.kickstarter.com). Keeping in mind people currently registering on your landing page may never end up buying your product. They have no idea about deadlines or pricing, both of which may put them off paying for the eventual product. If you post it on Kickstarter, you get to see if the idea is popular, and if you reach your target goal, you instantly have the capital available to start production which is much better for both you and your customers. Good luck!

M

I actually did post the price, but its only on the landing pages with the pictures, not the simple coming soon page.

Thanks for the kickstarter idea, I’ll give that a go. Appreciate it.

M

Oh by the way, for future reference is there a service out there I can use for merchant checkout to send the CTA straight to a payment page ? Or is it just easier to use paypal?

O

If you want to accept payments via a landing page/form, you could embed a Wufoo form, Wufoo can also be used as a landing page, but you won’t get a design anywhere near as nice as in Unbounce. So you’re probably best keeping your unbounce page and embedding the payment form from Wufoo. Or making your ‘buy now’ button in Unbounce link directly to the Wufoo form.

Wufoo can be found here: http://www.wufoo.com/features/#feature7

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