Episode 168 – Why Nobody Is Visiting Your Online Store

Custom Apparel Startups

Episode 168 – Why Nobody Is Visiting Your Online Store

https://customapparelstartups.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/CAS-Episode-168-Why-Nobody-Is-Visiting-Your-Online-Store.mp3

This Episode



Mark Stephenson & Marc Vila



customapparelstartups.com



CAS Podcast



ColDesi

You Will Learn

• How to get people to come to your e-commerce store
• How to get them to buy when they visit your online store
• Marketing tips for your online store

Resources & Links

• Colman and Company Blog
• ColDesi Learning Center
• Leasing Equipment

Episode 168 – Why Nobody Is Visiting Your Online Store

Show Notes

We got this question in the Group a few weeks ago and again just yesterday. It was some variation of: “What’s wrong with my website?” and then it’s either

• How can I get people to visit the site?
• Why isn’t anyone buying anything on the site?

Since almost all of these businesses are in the custom t-shirt, embroidery or customized items business and are trying to sell directly to consumers online – who better to answer those questions than Marc Vila – the brains behind ColmanandCompany.com

There are two things to consider when asking about your online store:

• Why isn’t anyone coming to it?
• Why aren’t the people who visit buying?

This means we can break down the episode into 2 sections

• How to get people to come to your online store
• How to encourage people to purchase when they visit

How to get people to come to your online store:

• Do the basics
  • Listen to our episode on how to get found online
  • Google my business
  • Bing places
  • Social profiles / link to site
• Share your content (Links should be easy to view and share)
  • Social Media (Link in profile / comments if needed)
  • Emails
  • Previous customers
  • In-person
  • Text Message
  • YouTube videos
  • Blogs, forums, groups, etc
• Create search engine friendly content
  • Write up articles about what you sell
  • Set up a google product feed
  • YouTube videos (with a great description)
  • Answer blog posts or create blog posts
• Pay for clicks
  • Google search
  • Social media ads
  • Ads on niche websites

NOTE: it won’t happen FAST unless

• you are super lucky
• you spend a lot of $$

How to get people to buy when on your store

• Basics
  • Make sure products are good
  • Make sure pricing is within reason (too cheap or too expensive is bad)
  • also don’t be afraid of being a bit higher on the price, just watch out for extremes
  • Clear images
  • Clear descriptions
  • Make sure everything works (links, checkout, etc)
  • Build trust (logos, designs, connect with trusted brands, reviews, testimonials)
• Optimize shopping experience
  • Do your categories make sense?
  • Is it easy to find what you offer?
  • Show customers popular and related items
  • Reduce friction in buying process
  • Don’t over sell
  • Make checkout easy
  • Offer free shipping when possible
  • Raise price of shirt / lower shipping costs
  • Be clear when item will ship and be delivered
  • You will lose sales if someone doesn’t have at least a rough idea when they will get the product
• Test Test Test
  • Try different images
  • Try different prices
  • Feature different items
• Create a journey
  • You post content to a shirt on social
  • Have that shirt featured in the link you share
  • Show related shirts to that in the link
  • Have a featured price / discount / bogo (if needed – test test test)
  • Let them checkout easy (paypal, apple pay, amazon pay, visa checkout, etc)
    • If someone has to type in a credit card, you will lose some sales (harder to impulse buy or just dont trust your site yet)
• Follow up
  • Email them
  • Mail them
  • Call them
  • social link them
  • ask them to social link you

Here’s some episodes we mention in this show:

Episode 91 – Steps to Getting More Customers by Networking

Episode 101 – Marketing Plan: Picking Your Niche

Episode 102 – Advertising and Marketing To Your Niche

Episode 131 – 5 Cheap Marketing Options

Episode 136 – Building a Winning Ad Strategy for Your Business

Episode 141 – How To Get Found on Google Maps

Episode 166 – Your Marketing Checkup

Transcript

Mark Stephenson:

Hey everyone, and welcome to a very special episode of the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast. This is Mark Stephenson.

Marc Vila:

And this is Mark Vila. Is this special? Is it like a Christmas episode?

Mark Stephenson:

It’s special because today we’re actually going to kind of do an interview with Mark Vila, not wearing his hat as my co-host here on the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast, but wearing his lord of the universe and all he surveys for the colmanandcompany.com online store, which if you don’t know, is not only ColDesi’s supply site, it is arguably the most successful supply site in the custom apparel industry.

Mark Stephenson:

I don’t know of any that is more financially successful, laid out better, gets more positive reviews. I mean, we looked at our review software for the store just the other day, and there were something like over 32,000 reviews that were four and five stars for Colman and Company.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, I was just going to pull that out.

Mark Stephenson:

A lot of that is kind of usability.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, there’s 4.7 out of five stars right now and over 30,000 reviews. And yeah, almost all of those are four and five stars and there’s a handful of threes and twos and ones, which I’ve got some gripes about some of those folks and what they’ve complained about, honestly.

Mark Stephenson:

People just don’t understand.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, well, I’ll just call those the unreasonable folks. Since you own a business out there, you recognize that a potential of them are unreasonable and we get them too. But nope, thanks for all those compliments, Marc and all that good stuff. I mean, we will maybe start off by really just… I was going to say a bunch of things that we’ve done and a bunch of reasons why I am an expert or not, or we’re both experts.

Marc Vila:

And I just decided that you’re either going to think I’m an expert now or not, and I could list off a bunch of technical and hard things that we’ve done here or not. And it doesn’t really matter at this point. There’s like 200 episodes of this podcast.

Mark Stephenson:

Most of those things you would say even I don’t really understand, but the motivation here behind doing this episode and why I suggested that we just kind of interview Marc is because we get comments once or twice a month at least in the Custom Apparel Startups Facebook group, somebody has just started their web store, or maybe their online store has been open for a month or six months or even a year.

Mark Stephenson:

And they’ve got still the basic questions and those questions are, how can I get people to visit the site? And then when they do visit, why aren’t people buying anything? And those are two questions that I think Marc Vila and the e-comm team spend most of their lives answering for themselves. So, are there any unique position to answer it for all the rest of us too?

Marc Vila:

Yeah. Well, then let’s start. We’ll dive right into that stuff then and we’ll get into the meat of the podcast here. So there’s really two things that we’re talking about when somebody asks why their online store is not going well. And most of the times we’re talking to folks online that are, either it’s a t-shirt business or some sort of other customization business. So they might do mugs and-

Mark Stephenson:

Could be an online store or…

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And they might do mugs, they might do posters. They might do custom license plates, t-shirts, hoodies, all that stuff, whatever you customize. And you’re probably in some sort of a, hopefully in some sort of a niche market, or you have a type of a customer that you appeal to. And the online store just feels kind of just empty, dead.

Marc Vila:

People aren’t really going there, people aren’t really buying things and it’s two things to address. Why isn’t anyone coming to my online store? And then why aren’t the people who are coming… Because there probably are some people coming, 30 people a month.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah, 20 people a month…

Marc Vila:

Yeah, I mean that’s by accident, you can get 20 people accidentally coming to your store a month. But why aren’t they buying, right?

Mark Stephenson:

And in the marketing vernacular here, we’re talking about traffic and conversions.

Marc Vila:

Traffic and conversions, if we’re talking about marketing, great. I love that you leveled up this conversation with some sweet-

Mark Stephenson:

There you go, because there are some people that are doing pretty well.

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

And they may have listened to the podcast before. This is episode 168.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, is it? Well, I couldn’t even… Wow, it’s remarkable. Well, so two sections, how to get more people to come to your store. So how do you increase your online traffic, right? How do you get people to come? And then once people are there, what do you do to help them make a purchase when they visit?

Marc Vila:

Or how do you get them to convert? And these things are really just, there’s just series of steps to move forward on this stuff. And if I would say it’s going to be hard. It’s not going to be super easy and it’s not going to happen right away.

Marc Vila:

But if you do all these steps, you are definitely going to get traffic and you’ll definitely going to get conversion and you’ll figure it out. So why don’t we start with how to get people to come?

Mark Stephenson:

So I just want to one thing out and that is there are a lot of people that I want to disavow, that disavow this idea that you’re all alone. I mean, bunch of people will start a website and they’ll focus on actually creating a site that they’ll do themselves and they’ll put up the pictures and then when they finish the site, they just naturally expect people will find it on the internet and buy things.

Mark Stephenson:

So I just want to address the idea that it shouldn’t be a surprise, and you’re not alone if you’re out there and you’ve created a store that nobody goes to. And you’ve created a store that few people go to and nobody buys. So you’re not by yourself. Break out a notepad, take notes on what we’re about to talk about with everybody else on the internet. And get some help figuring this out.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And anyone who has an online store, that they’re selling custom apparel, anything that, that we’re talking about today, that’s successful they did one or all of these things, okay? And if it seemed to be very easy or very fast for them, then I think I made a note somewhere in the notes, but one, they just got super lucky because there’s a percentage of people who get lucky with anything, right?

Marc Vila:

I mean, there’s somebody out there who has found $10,000 in a paper bag. That has happened, right? So you can just get 10 grand by luck, right? So there’s some people who got super lucky. There’s some people who maybe they have got connections.

Marc Vila:

They have a handful of friends that have a ton of social media followers or they’re in a group with some people of influence and they just got a bunch of followers and traffic dumped into their store. And there’s some people who spent a ton of money to get people to come.

Marc Vila:

They’ve invested $100,000 or $1 million or multi millions of dollars because they have investors. But the folks that are listening here today, you’re trying to beat luck. You are regularly connected, you’re just like everybody else.

Mark Stephenson:

Normal.

Marc Vila:

Normal, you don’t have best friends that have millions of followers on social media or something like that. And you’re not dumping millions of dollars into this. Now, a lot of this stuff can still apply to those, but this is just for the folks who are asking that question that we’re starting with. How do I get people to come to my online store? And how do I get people to purchase? How do I get traffic and how do I get conversions?

Mark Stephenson:

Yep.

Marc Vila:

So let’s start with how to get traffic, okay? Do you want to start with some basics, Mark?

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah, sure. So we’ve got an episode or two or seven about how to get found online and you should listen to all those. I’ll try to find some of those and link to it on the bottom, but basically you should be filling out the free things on the internet that Google, especially Google and Bing, both make available to you, just for the asking.

Mark Stephenson:

If you’ve ever filled anything, if you’ve ever searched for something online, one of the first things that’s comes up is probably a map. And it’s got a business featured on the map and then it’s got more businesses that are listed on the map and you can get there. And all you have to do is go to Google, is to fill out a Google profile on Google My Business and that’s free.

Mark Stephenson:

And you’ll fill out all the information about you and your store and what you do. And then you’ll go over and search for Bing places, which is Microsoft’s equivalent of Google My Business. And you’ll hit a couple of buttons to import those over. Everything you just did on Google will import automatically into Bing places if you do it right.

Mark Stephenson:

And then it’s just going through the rest of all the social profiles that you can possibly pay attention to and fill those out. Like you’ve got a Facebook business page and you fill out your Instagram page to the best of your abilities.

Mark Stephenson:

You’re on LinkedIn, you’re wherever you care to participate. You’re on TikTok, just fill in all of those things with all the information that you can and all the links then that will give you a leg up.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. I mean, this is just the simple stuff to do that oftentimes gets missed where somebody will fill out their Facebook profile or their Google business profile and they didn’t put their website there. Oftentimes it’s because you made the social profile first.

Mark Stephenson:

Yes.

Marc Vila:

And then you you didn’t add the website later after you made your website because it’s easy to make a Facebook page, a lot easier than it is to make a website. So it’s important that if you’ve done all this stuff and we’ve said this and every time we’ve mentioned this, go back and look again, make sure double check. We did a marketing checkup a few episodes ago.

Marc Vila:

So go through that and make sure that all your basics are set out. So that’s going to make sure-

Mark Stephenson:

That’s for two reasons, by the way. It’s not just so that people can find your website inside those platforms. It’s also because those links actually add value to the website.

Marc Vila:

Yes, great point. So linking to that, in so many words, I mean there’s a lot of debate on how much it means and what it’s really worth. But in a nutshell, it does help Google’s AI to recognize that this is a business and here’s the little network of this business. Here’s the Facebook page, here’s the Twitter, here’s whatever you have, okay.

Marc Vila:

The next step to getting people found online this one is it’s a slow grower, but it works. And it just depends on what you share and a little bit of luck and all that involved, but you have to share what you sell, share your website. So this means not only sharing the main URL of the website, like your homepage, theshirtsthatisell.com, but also sharing individual products.

Marc Vila:

So pictures of custom shirts that you’ve made, pictures of things that you sell, mugs, whatever it is. You need to specifically share all that stuff, right. And-

Mark Stephenson:

Could you do a quick example of the kind of things that you would say when you share that kind of thing?

Marc Vila:

Well, obviously it’s going to depend on the platform individually, right? So I think that maybe we could talk about some platforms individually and how we might share those, okay? So starting off with social media, which is one that is typically what people would ask when I share it, how do I share it, okay?

Marc Vila:

That’s the most common one. So if it’s going to be… If it’s somewhere where you can write text and provide a link directly like Facebook or Twitter and an image, it’s pretty easy. Check out this cool, patriotic t-shirt. Check out this cool t-shirt that shows bass fishing. Here’s a link to the t-shirt, share it with your friends.

Marc Vila:

You kind of want to have some check boxes when you’re sharing, but describing what it is so people know what it is, providing a link to what it is, maybe even asking people to share or comment. And there’s a ton, there’s a whole podcast on social media sharing. And there’s a lot on how to share and tips and tricks to share.

Marc Vila:

But I would say if you can write a description and a link, you write a description and a link. If you can put a picture, you put a picture too. That’s what’s going to get the attention. So if you have a really interesting t-shirt design, you share the t-shirt design, you maybe write a short description of what it is, and then you let people know where to get it.

Marc Vila:

There’s a balance between being too salesy on sharing stuff, because people aren’t going to want to share it if it’s too salesy, and there’s a balance between not being salesy at all and people don’t even know it’s for sale.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah, true.

Marc Vila:

And there is no true secret formula of that, because it depends. It depends on what you’re selling, who your audience is. Some people are going to be very receptive to hearing the words buy this now and like it and other people are going to say, you’re a shill if you’re on there trying to sell something in their forum.

Mark Stephenson:

And you maybe do both.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And so this is just, all of this stuff is just stuff you’re going to have to do and see how it performs. And you’re going to have to do it a lot over time. But also on social media, some places like Instagram you’re not going to be able to post a link right with the image. You’re just going to be able to post an image and you can put a little bit of text.

Marc Vila:

So any of these are where you put links in your profile. So if somebody does see your picture and they find it interesting, or they see your TikTok video and they find it interesting, then they’ll click on your profile because they’re going to want to see more stuff you make.

Marc Vila:

And right in your profile, you can put a link to your website or link directly to a certain product page for stuff that you feature on social media. Any other comments on social media sharing or questions?

Mark Stephenson:

No, just that the image is really important, I think. And sometimes when you put a link in LinkedIn or in Facebook in particular it will suggest an image. There’s a share image that’s part of your website and that may or may not be a good image. So if it’s not, maybe that’s something that you can work on. In the meantime, you can delete the image and put up a different one if you want to.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, you can manually put an image on any of those.

Mark Stephenson:

Manually put up a picture.

Marc Vila:

Yep, absolutely. So social sharing is important. Another thing with that is you probably don’t have a lot of people following you right now more than likely, especially if this is all new. So just a thing you can do with that is for one you still post and share and ask people to share.

Marc Vila:

Ask your friends and family and customers, if they will share and comment, because that will just kind of help the juice get going. The more people that comment on a post, the more people that share it. That means that social media is working. The social companies, their money is in eyes and time. If you create a piece of content that gets people’s eyes and time, they will show it to more people.

Marc Vila:

So that’s pretty simple on that. The next in regards to sharing your con… Oh, by the way, last bit on social media, pictures or video, be creative. Be as creative as you want. The more creative and interesting you get, that fits your brand.

Marc Vila:

You could show the design actually being printed. You could wear a shirt while getting mud thrown in your face. I mean, whatever kind of fits your brand, wear it while you’re fishing if it’s fishing shirts.

Mark Stephenson:

It might work. I don’t know.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, I mean you do something that fits your brand. If it’s baby clothes, have a cute baby, right? Animal clothes, get your shirts on pets.

Mark Stephenson:

Well, let’s say get a picture of a cute baby.

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

Because if you have to start to… If you have a cute baby, then it may take at least nine or 10 months before you-

Marc Vila:

I got you. So it’s got to be a baby you can get a picture of with your stuff on. So next is going to be sharing your content in email. If you have an email list, if you have current customers, previous customers, definitely you email them links to your products. This is just standard email marketing stuff.

Marc Vila:

We’ve got podcasts on that. But email marketing is another way to get people to visit your website. Same rules apply for social media as… be creative, share things that are interesting. Let people know it’s for sale. When emails relate to previous customers as well… So you can, what we would say batch and blast all your customers.

Marc Vila:

If you have individual customers you’d like to email or your business is still pretty small where you’ve only got maybe dozens of customers, you can just email them individually. Hey, here’s my online store. You’ve bought from me offline. I want to show you my store. If you want anything, great. Maybe even you can say here’s a coupon.

Marc Vila:

By the way, it’d be a huge help if you would forward this to some friends or share a link on your social media for me or text it to somebody. I’m just trying to grow the store and I’m trying to get the word out. If you share it to one person, it’s huge for me. So email previous customers. I mean, this one’s almost silly, but just in-person…

Mark Stephenson:

Okay, yeah. I like that. Like, hey, by the way, Mark Vila, did you know that I’ve got my own store?

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

I’ve got an online store. Why don’t you come over on Friday? You can shop and I can watch you.

Marc Vila:

Yep.

Mark Stephenson:

You’re literally just like, tell everyone that you know.

Marc Vila:

Tell everyone you know, yeah. You go to a party, tell some folks. I mean, I’m a big fan of not being annoying about it, but there’s also nothing wrong with saying what you do. And we also have some podcasts on networking and meeting people and sharing and this is a great way.

Marc Vila:

The same rules apply for your online store. Here’s a little side thing you could do for in-person, all right. So Google search how to generate a QR code, okay? It’s free. Do not…

Mark Stephenson:

Don’t pay for it.

Marc Vila:

Don’t pay for it. If the site asks you to pay, read in the little areas, there’s fine print, there’s trickery in the QR world, okay. A QR code is a language just like English or sign language. It’s a language that a phone can read. It’s free. So you can get one generated for free online. I don’t have a good website to recommend.

Marc Vila:

I didn’t come prepared for that, but there’s a lot out there and they’ll generate it for free. Take a picture of it or download it if you can, save it into your phone, put the little heart on it so it’s in your favorites or put it in folder you can pull up easily and fast. Nobody wants to watch you scroll through your phone, looking for pictures. Favorite it, get it in-

Mark Stephenson:

And it might be dangerous if they do.

Marc Vila:

Yes, very. So have it in your favorites, pull it up. And if conversation does come up and somebody does seem interested, you pull it up and say, hey, if you scan it, it’ll go to my website. And that prevents having to spell things and D, not E, D.

Mark Stephenson:

I love that. That’s a great idea.

Marc Vila:

So text message is another way to share your products online. Just going down the list. This could be texting existing customers, texting friends, texting groups, and also just asking a text. There’s also text messaging marketing platforms, just there’s email platforms where people can subscribe to a list.

Mark Stephenson:

Yep. Maybe if you and your family are on WhatsApp or telegram, or if you’ve got any other chat apps think about those in relation to text messaging as well.

Marc Vila:

Yep, that’s great. And text messaging is another way of asking to share. So you could, hey, so and so. We did some business before. I’m just showing you a quick text because I opened up an online store. It’s brand new. I’m just trying to get some people to go and check it out. And maybe if there’s something in there they’d like to buy, here’s the link.

Marc Vila:

By the way, if anybody who might be interested, I’d appreciate if you forward this text to somebody else, even if it’s just one person. It’s huge to me. Something that.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah.

Marc Vila:

Next down there, we’ve got YouTube, which-

Mark Stephenson:

Very ambitious. I saw that on there, like, that’s very ambitious.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And that’s different than social media, and it requires a degree of creativity, but it is a way to get people to your online store. You can show pictures of what you sell. You can show pictures of the process. You can make it more of like a video blog where you talk about building at your online store and show what you sell.

Marc Vila:

If you sell puppy and baby clothes, then those are pretty darn easy to get cute and shareable footage of. And then of course, if you make a video, whatever you decide your creativity for the video it is, in the description you’ve got to have write-up – what it is, and have a link to what you’re selling to your online store.

Mark Stephenson:

Agreed. And I’ll say this is the first one on the list that’s useful in more than one way.

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

So, when you’re dealing with social, generally you are kind of confined to the social platform. Like LinkedIn, if you post something on LinkedIn and you want to share that with somebody else, it’s very annoying because you have to sign into LinkedIn. The same with Facebook, the same with Twitter.

Mark Stephenson:

Somebody forwards me an email link for Twitter and I don’t have anything to open it with. So YouTube is pretty universal and you can not only share it with anybody and they can consume that content, but you can use it in a bunch of ways. You put it on your website, you can use it as a product description. It’s super useful if you can bring yourself to get on video.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, and it can be in your Facebook post and it can be in your email and it can be in your text message and it can be in the in-person meeting. So the YouTube does, and there’s each one of these individually requires some thought and some ideas and some creativity, but you’re also in a creative business and I’ve seen a ton of amazing things that people do.

Marc Vila:

You can also watch some competition and see what they’re doing, get some inspiration from them. The last bit about sharing your content, blogs, forums, groups, Reddit, Facebook groups, any type of niche blogs you’re in. If they allow you to share links to products you sell or post about them, then you should do that. You should do that.

Marc Vila:

Don’t do it too much that you upset the admins. Ask permission if you’re unsure, if it’s not in the… If you don’t see anything in the rules, you can ask permission or you can just try it and then apologize if they say don’t do that. But definitely check the rules. I would do that first, and try to share in any of those places.

Marc Vila:

Make sure it’s relevant, make sure it makes sense. If you’re allowed to sell, sell and say here’s something I make online, you can buy it here. If you’re not allowed to sell, oftentimes you can just share a picture of the shirt maybe, and that’s enough to share. And then let people figure out how to get there from the rest. They maybe-

Mark Stephenson:

We can definitely expand a little bit on the idea behind blogs because like YouTube videos, you can also be found on search organically if you create a YouTube video with a good description, but creating blogs, doing blog posts is still definitely a viable way, not just to help Google find your site which we spent a considerable amount of time at ColDesi and Colman and Company doing that, creating articles and blogs.

Mark Stephenson:

But it also great to share in those circumstances that Marc Vila was just talking about. So oftentimes what we’ll do is if you’ve seen any of the videos like the differences in embroidery backings, we do mention that you can buy those embroidery backings at Colman and Company, but the video and the article that goes with it exist independently of that.

Mark Stephenson:

So, very comfortable to share that on any of the Facebook forums, Facebook groups, or if you’re in Reddit and somebody asks a question and you’ve got a piece, good piece of content that answers that question, you can build up some good responses and some fans and get links back to your website as well.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. I mean, that’s good. So this kind of falls into then the next one, maybe you can even chat about it, because we’ve talked all about sharing, all the ways you can share. The next way to get people to your website is to create search engine friendly content, right? So SEO, SEM type of stuff. Why don’t you tell us a couple of ways that you can do that since you kind of were getting into it?

Mark Stephenson:

I’d say just what I said, Google, their job is to match what their customers are looking for with the best results that they can find, okay? So that’s what they’re trying to do all the time. So you’ve got to take a look at your e-commerce store and figure out what about that, what on there is going to answer one of those questions?

Mark Stephenson:

So for example, if I’m looking for a custom hockey jersey for an eight year old, then if I type that in, how can I make sure that my results show up, that my website shows up in some kind of a way? And that is if you have a YouTube video that is on hockey jerseys for youth or for eight year olds or eight to 10 year olds, and you have that, that’s the topic and you’ve got pictures of it in the video and you’ve got a description that mentions it, Google may show people your results.

Mark Stephenson:

And it’s the same way with a blog post. You just have a better opportunity because there’s more words. If you look for direct to garment printers or direct to film printers right now, if you type that in, what’s the best direct to film printer? You’re very likely going to find content on the ColDesi site because we wrote an article about, what’s the best direct to film printer on the market? So you find that.

Mark Stephenson:

So you’ll think about that as you’re writing content with making words or you’re videoing content and describing it, think about the questions that people ask that you want them to find your site as an answer.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, that’s great. That put it in a great way. And so essentially there’s two ways to create search engine and friendly content, maybe three. And there’s a lot. There’s really two or three that I think are very worthy unless you’re really getting into the guts of things or you’re trying to find some interesting ways to do it.

Marc Vila:

But the simple standard ways would be you write article/blog post/descriptions of your products that really just define what it is and also address questions people may ask whether they’re looking to buy that product or they have a question about that product, okay?

Mark Stephenson:

So can I stop you here and kind of narrow in on the online store thing and description?

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

Because to me that’s tough is to have a product show up if somebody’s searching on Google to have like a product page. So are there things that you would do, I’m going to use a marketing word, to optimize a product listing on an eCommerce store? If somebody was asking you Marc Vila, here’s my store and everything else looks good, what can I do to make people find this product?

Marc Vila:

Yeah. So finding a specific product online nowadays with Google’s current algorithm, which they’re going to be changing so soon and I don’t know if it’s going to affect it or not, but having a product, what’s the best knife? What’s the best mug?

Marc Vila:

It’s almost impossible nowadays. All you’re going to get is articles on top. You’re not really going to get a product to show up, okay? And the reason is because Google has a way for you to upload a feed of your products and pay for your products to be shown.

Mark Stephenson:

That’s great. Before you talk about that, I just want to restate what you just said. If you have just started, because you said that it’s very unlikely that you’re going to get a product page to show up on Google.

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

That means that definitively if you just sign up for a Shopify store and load it up with all your products in the most basic templates, and just say custom t-shirt about pickles and that’s your description, then Google will not show that to anyone and that’ll-

Marc Vila:

Slim.

Mark Stephenson:

It’s very, very unlikely. And that’s why people aren’t finding your website. So we’re talking about how to help people find your website. If you had thought that you could put a picture in a few words about a product, and even if it’s a cool design that people would just organically find it, Marc Vila just said that’s pretty much not going to happen.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, it’s hard. It’s much harder to do, but it’s an aggregate, okay? So if you have a lot of products in a niche market that people would search for it, like pickle shirts, sure, that’s a good example Mark.

Mark Stephenson:

Okay, I like that one.

Marc Vila:

So there are some people searching for pickle shirts because there’s some people searching for everything on the internet, period, no matter what it is. And if you have a bunch of shirts about pickles and you write good descriptions for each product, a nice paragraph, this is a pickle riding a bike, this is a pickle flying a plane.

Marc Vila:

Overall that does increase your chances of being found, right? So words like never, and things like that are just too absolute, right? So it’s an aggregate. So you do that. Then what you also do is you would write an article about pickle shirts, right? How to find the best shirts with pickles on them, pickle designs.

Marc Vila:

And then you would write a little article, what are the different types of designs you can? You can get pickles playing sports, you can get pickles eating food, you can get pickles going places. And then you give examples and you link to those.

Marc Vila:

And then that piece of content’s probably more likely for Google to show someone because it’s showing somebody not just one product that might be the wrong one, but it will show a list of a bunch of different products and a description of them. And maybe it is a better answer.

Marc Vila:

Further, when we talk about your products and your lists you can look into getting your products listed on a Google feed which is kind of part of this search engine friendly content. That’s much harder than writing an article and making a video. There’s going to be some things you have to learn, and there’s maybe some software you have to purchase to make things easier for you or you may have to hire somebody.

Marc Vila:

It really just depends on how good you are with this stuff, but you can provide Google a feed of all of your products. If you have an online store through one of the common places Shopify or Wix or something like that, they’re going to have Google feed plugin type of stuff to help you get your stuff on Google. It will increase the likelihood of them showing that product. And Google will also tell you that you can give them money to show it more often.

Mark Stephenson:

Right.

Marc Vila:

Okay? But we’re not at paying for clicks just yet. We’re almost there though. The next is just we described the YouTube videos with a great description. You’ve already said that, but that is the second way, writing articles. The feed is the second way, I guess. The YouTube videos would be a third. Those same things you would write an article about, you would make a video about.

Mark Stephenson:

And I think it’s important to bring everything that we’re talking about together, because you made a great point and that’s what we tell people all the time is, if your site doesn’t have a theme or a niche market or some kind of a common thread that holds all the pages and product and articles and videos, social media profiles together, then it just makes it harder for Google to send people to you.

Mark Stephenson:

So like Marc said, if you’ve got 50 pickle shirt designs and you’ve got two great articles on different pickle stuff and you’ve got a video on it and your social media platforms links back to it with comments and posts about that same topic, then Google will look at people searching for pickle related items and they’re much more likely to add up everything that you’ve done and send them to somewhere on your website.

Mark Stephenson:

Versus if you’ve only got one product that shows this and one product that shows that and one product that shows the other thing and there’s no theme to it. So I think that thematic idea is another way to say, it’ll be a lot easier if you have a niche market.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, because a lot of folks want to make funny shirts or shirts with their art on it, which are my favorite shirts. I love funny shirts and I love shirts with cool art on it, right? And when I wear shirts, t-shirts in public, those funny shirts or shirts with really interesting and cool art are the ones that get the most comments from people. They’re also, it’s… if you think you’re going to be Google search found for funny t-shirt.

Mark Stephenson:

Not happening.

Marc Vila:

Or shirt with good art, the competition is so hard and so stiff. I mean, you’re running a marathon against people who’ve been practicing for marathons for a decade and this is your first pair of running shoes, okay? So you’re probably not going to win unless you’re really lucky or you’ve got steroids, AKA money.

Mark Stephenson:

No, you’re probably not going to win if you’re relying on people to find you.

Marc Vila:

Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:

If you’re out looking for people like in those proactive social posts, inside groups and things that, that Marc Vila talked about, we’ve done a dozen podcasts on, if you’re proactively marketing people to come to your website, then if you’ve got funny fishing shirts and you post a couple of pictures in a fishing forum, anywhere on the internet, you’re going to get some traffic.

Mark Stephenson:

But those same people are going to leave Facebook and they’re going to type in funny fishing shirts. They’re not going to find you.

Marc Vila:

Yes, exactly. And specifically in that context, it’s under the creating search engine friendly content. So if you just sell funny shirts or shirts with your art, it’s going to be really hard to create content that’s found on Google easily or in a search engine.

Marc Vila:

And also it’ll be challenging on social media too, but it is going to be more likely that because people do it everyday, they see something funny, they forward it to a group chat they’re in, they forward it to their friends. And if you write good stuff and it’s funny stuff and it is legitimately funny, you will have people share it.

Marc Vila:

It will happen. And it’s not necessarily going to be easy, and sometimes people laugh at their own jokes more than other people actually laugh at them. So having self-awareness is really good with this or having a trusted group of people you can ping ideas off of.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah, that’ll tell you you’re not funny. So, we’ve got a limited time here and a big topic. So let’s talk about paid, what it’s like to write a check and then we can move on to the questions that people have about how to get people to buy.

Mark Stephenson:

So we’ll go from developing eyeballs and traffic, getting people to find your site to once they’re there, how to get people to buy. So why don’t you talk for a few minutes about early strategies or paying for eyeballs for a shopping site?

Marc Vila:

Yeah, sure. So there’s Google search ads, social media ads, and then like a paid for ad through a niche website where your niche will advertise for you. I think those are the three things. In and of themselves, they’re very complex things to discuss. We’ve got content on all of this stuff in previous podcasts, but this is a way to do it.

Marc Vila:

The big thing I would just say here is, more than likely it’s not that you’re going to throw a couple hundred bucks into a Google ad and you’re going to make more than a couple $100 in sales, okay? Now, if you have… We know customers who have done that and we’ve seen customers do it online.

Marc Vila:

If you’ve got everything lined up, a good idea, a legit good idea, and you advertise it and all the things that we’re going to talk about next are all lined up. Then yes, you could do that. And plenty of people will tell you their success stories. They oftentimes won’t tell you about the 80% of the other ones that didn’t work.

Marc Vila:

But that is something that you develop a formula for, on paying for, to sell your t-shirts online. So just a couple of things. If you’ve got some money to experiment with that’s more than a couple hundred bucks, then I say go for it. Because that’s how you’re going to grow fast. You’re going to the most amount of eyes quick and you could pay for likes and you could pay… Not paying people to like it, but you pay for an ad.

Marc Vila:

People will see the ad. People will then go to your page and people will like you because they saw something you created, right? It’s legitimate. And then ads on niche websites are another thing too. But all of this, before you pay, we need to get into the next section. You’ve got to do all this other stuff first, or at least be prepared for all that stuff.

Marc Vila:

But that’s the next way you get traffic, is you pay for it. You pay for Google search, you pay for social ads, you pay for ads on other websites. And all of those are a way to get a ton of traffic to your website. It’s just a matter of making sure that when people come, they buy.

Mark Stephenson:

Agreed. Okay, so we’ve managed to… We’ve got a strategy for getting people to the website. We’re going to do blog posts. We’re going to make sure that our product descriptions are great. We’re going to do a video. We are going to make sure there’s some kind of a theme or word set or idea that ties everything together to make sure that Google finds us.

Mark Stephenson:

We’re going to share it on social media. We’re going to do all those proactive things, not just the passive ones. And now people are coming to the website. What are the best ways to ensure that they actually click the buy button?

Mark Stephenson:

Because people shop all the time. I shop on websites all the time and I don’t buy anything. That happens. How do you keep that from happening? How do you motivate people-

Marc Vila:

Sure.

Mark Stephenson:

… To write you a check?

Marc Vila:

Well, nobody writes check online, but fair.

Mark Stephenson:

That’s a good point. I mean, I do, maybe that’s why it’s not working for me.

Marc Vila:

That’s why it doesn’t work. All right, so basics again, right? Basics just like we said before. Hardest one, make sure your products are good. That’s hard, but they have to actually be something that somebody would want to buy. And that’s why I said, have good self awareness, talk to other people, share it in groups.

Marc Vila:

You’ll get feedback. If you share something and a lot of people like it, that’s probably a good product. If you share something and it’s crickets, doesn’t mean it’s a bad product, but look for ones that get attention and see why and think about that.

Marc Vila:

Bounce the ideas off customers, bounce it off friends and bounce it off any groups you might be a part of, anything like that. So have good products that people would want to buy. And that’s probably the hardest one right there. Make sure your pricing is just within reason, okay.

Marc Vila:

So if it’s way too cheap for one, you’re not going to make any money and people are going to trust it’s too good to be true. And if it’s way too expensive, it’s just, why would they buy it? Because they can buy something similar for a better price.

Mark Stephenson:

And I’ll just add that you should make sure that you’re pricing for your audience.

Marc Vila:

Yes.

Mark Stephenson:

So if you like… The other day I was just looking on Facebook and this guy does custom denim jackets that probably he spends 40 hours on. They’re going to be 1500, $2,000. People buy them.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, okay.

Mark Stephenson:

Not me. I’m not his audience, but there are people that buy them. That’s his market. He’s marketing to celebrities and very wealthy people that like denim. If that’s your niche, if you are going after those people then charging a lot of money might be a good thing. They’ll think it’s more valuable. If you’re targeting teenagers, then maybe not so much.

Marc Vila:

Teenagers are-

Mark Stephenson:

So you’ve got to make sure your pricing is reasonable for the people that you’re trying to appeal to.

Marc Vila:

Yes, exactly. So you’ll have to figure that out. It’s got to be profitable. It’s got to be reasonable. It’s got to be kind of just right. Clear images is something, clear, nice, crisp, not sloppy. If your images are skewed or fuzzy or they don’t look like they belong together when you look at a grid of products, then people are just going to be a little bit less trustworthy of the site or not know what they’re buying.

Mark Stephenson:

And you should compare the pictures to other e-commerce stores as well. I mean, you don’t have to be compared well to the Gap and their photography, but just because it’s the best picture that you were able to get doesn’t mean the picture is good enough, you know what I mean? You need to have a good picture. Doesn’t have to be studio quality, but it’s got to be good. And you can ask people.

Marc Vila:

And there’s so many ways to do it. There’s not one right or wrong way. And we’ll get into testing things later, but if you haven’t printed every single shirt and put it on a model and taken a picture, well, then you can’t do that. Just show a picture of the art.

Marc Vila:

If you’ve printed the shirts but you don’t have anybody modeling them well, you put the shirt on a table and take a picture. You can Photoshop some of that stuff too, if it’s good. If it looks fake people aren’t going to like it. So authentic, clear, good images. Same thing with the description of the product, make sure people understand what it is.

Marc Vila:

It’s great to be clever and funny and interesting in your descriptions. But if it’s not very, very clear on what it is, then some people will be mistaken and some of those people would’ve bought.

Mark Stephenson:

Right.

Marc Vila:

Right? So if you have all clever, funny stuff, do that, but then make sure you put, this is a printed t-shirt with a pickle design. It comes in sizes this to this. It’s printed on this type of material, et cetera. Just describe it so nobody is mistaken in what they’re looking at.

Mark Stephenson:

Yep, I like that.

Marc Vila:

Next basic is just make sure everything works. When they click on an image, make sure the page opens. If they go to add it to cart, just make sure the process works. That’s just part to the marketing checkup, what we described the other day. That’s a challenge.

Marc Vila:

That’s hard. We’ve got, I don’t even remember the number now, 80,000 something SKUs on Colman and Company. I mean, we find broken stuff all the time now, and not all. I mean, it’s just the way it is.

Mark Stephenson:

It’s a lot, I found something-

Marc Vila:

It’s a huge website.

Mark Stephenson:

I found something on just one of our information sites today. It’s a broken video. It’s 50% of the page was this video and it wasn’t working.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. So it’s just make sure everything works and it’s continuous check and you’re never going to be 100% perfect 100%of the time, but it’s an important step. The last one I have is just building trust. When somebody comes to your website, they don’t want to be scammed. Nowadays, it’s probably likely that they have been scammed online at least once.

Marc Vila:

So you want to make sure that your website looks and feels trustworthy. That means you can have reviews, testimonials, links out to social media, trusted brands. If you sell Haynes t-shirts, Vapor Apparel t-shirts, American Apparel. If you sell shirts that are known brands, you put the logo on there. Show them things that they trust and know.

Marc Vila:

Your Visa, MasterCard logos. If you have something like Shopper approved or Trust Guard, or Norton web security, all of these things, put those logos on the website. Let people see things that are familiar and they trust.

Mark Stephenson:

That’s a great idea.

Marc Vila:

PayPal, all that stuff.

Mark Stephenson:

I like that.

Marc Vila:

Also, if you happen to have any customer accolades like a really big customer that people might know in your area or in your niche, get them up there too.

Mark Stephenson:

And I was thinking about reviews the other day. If you’re just starting out, I mean, maybe you can just get some people that say how awesome you are.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, there you go.

Mark Stephenson:

I’ve known Marc Vila for 10 years now. Great guy, very honest, I really love the t-shirts. Support the business.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, there you go. It doesn’t mean that they have to… And that is not a lie.

Mark Stephenson:

No, yeah, they don’t-

Marc Vila:

I mean, I am great and honest is one of them.

Mark Stephenson:

They just have to know you.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, no, that’s true. And I left a review that for a friend of mine who started a business. Known him a long time, he’s great. He’s put his heart and soul into this. And I think if you buy from him, you’ll be super happy, five stars.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah, great.

Marc Vila:

So the next is just what we’ll say is optimizing the shopping experience, okay? What that means is, does it make sense? Is it easy to do, right? And to put it simply when you go into a store like Target, they’ve optimized their shopping experience. You know the entrance-

Mark Stephenson:

Great example.

Marc Vila:

There’s signs everywhere with categories. They put the most kind of popular common stuff in a spot that’s easy to get to. They have a checkout area that’s very clear. And then when you check out, the exit door is right there, okay. That’s what you want to do with your online store. Do your categories make sense? Is it easy to find your products? Show customers popular items, related items.

Mark Stephenson:

Let me just specify. Is it easy for people that you don’t know, who have never seen your site before to find all that stuff?

Marc Vila:

Yes, exactly.

Mark Stephenson:

Because you’ll fool yourself into thinking that it’s organized well because where everything is. It’s kind of like somebody else walking into your kitchen and starting to open up cabinet doors to figure out where the glasses are. You don’t because you know right where… Because you put them there.

Mark Stephenson:

But somebody coming in doesn’t intuitively know which one of those brown cabinet doors have glasses behind it. You’ve got to put the sign on the door, and this is where the glasses are, man. Opens on the left, that kind of thing.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And you can get people to go to your store and watch them, if you’d like to. If you’re in a business group or you have friends, ask them to go and say, just shop around, watch what they click on. You don’t need that many people to do it to realize that the most popular item you want to sell nobody’s even looking at.

Marc Vila:

So that means you need to maybe change the image, change where it’s located. It’s a moving process. If you go to your local grocery store or Target or Walmart, nothing in the same spot where it was from five years ago. If you go back that far, nothing is in the same spot.

Marc Vila:

It’s always going to change. And so should your online store should just change a little bit over time slowly and you’ll figure it out.

Mark Stephenson:

So reducing friction in the buying process is next.

Marc Vila:

Yes. So reducing friction in the buying process is for one, the pricing is part of it. Not over selling too much, let people click and buy and buy it. Not everything needs to be upgrade this, upgrade this, upgrade this. You don’t need to have 40 options for a t-shirt. So it’s just so hard to buy, somebody gives up.

Marc Vila:

Here’s your shirt. Pick a size, pick the color. Maybe don’t even pick the color. Here’s the shirt. The design looks good on this color, that’s it. And then later on you can try a different color and see if people like that better, or maybe try two colors, right?

Mark Stephenson:

That’s a great point.

Marc Vila:

Make the checkout easy. It should be easy on desktop and mobile. It should just be easy to fill out and do. It shouldn’t be a pain in the butt. If it is, if it’s clunky and weird, people-

Mark Stephenson:

People are just going to leave.

Marc Vila:

Offer free shipping when possible. It’s a point of friction that is reality in this world that nobody is willing to accept, but it’s really expensive to ship stuff in this world. And you have to charge for it one way or another, right? It’s not free to you as a business owner.

Marc Vila:

So you either can try to, if you can raise the price of your shirts to offer shipping for free, great. If you can maybe just make shipping a nice simple number 3.99, great. Just whenever you can, or offer them free shipping at $50, because then you can afford it.

Mark Stephenson:

Just don’t make it a surprise.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, not a surprise. It shouldn’t be a surprise. And we do the best that we can at Colman and Company, but it’s one of our number one complaints because somebody doesn’t want to pay shipping. But the problem is they order a material that’s two feet wide and it doesn’t weigh… but it’s a big box. And it does cost UPS wants 20 bucks to ship that thing. The product only costs 16.99. What are we going to do? So it’s a challenge.

Mark Stephenson:

You can come get it.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. I mean, it’s a challenge, but it’s something that you should just consider all time and you’re not going to win a 100% of the time. And the last point of the shopping experience is just be clear when the item will ship and when it will be delivered as best as you can. Right there, obvious.

Marc Vila:

Items ship within 24 hours, items ship same day, items ship within four days. It doesn’t matter what it is. I mean, sooner is always better, but if it takes you three days, because it takes you three days, it does. Just say it.

Mark Stephenson:

Yeah. And I would say under promise and over deliver.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, for sure.

Mark Stephenson:

Because people are always excited to get a package before they were expecting it, and never excited if it’s a day late.

Marc Vila:

Well, I would say this, I would say find a nice clean spot you think you can live with, because the goal here now is to sell. And then if you have to move it because of customer service issues later, move it. So just find a balance. Don’t go too crazy in under promising, don’t go too crazy in over promising.

Marc Vila:

Find a nice safe spot. But if somebody doesn’t know when they’re going to get it, you’re going to lose some sales, period. If they know it’s going to take a week, you will lose some sales compared to next day. But you will have some… But you will make more sales than letting people guess.

Mark Stephenson:

Well, let’s talk about testing.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, so this one is actually the most complicated, but the simplest to explain. You try different images, see how they do. Try different prices, see how they do. Feature different products, see how they do. You test it and you continue to try different things and see how it performs.

Marc Vila:

Don’t take any results that you get, that they’re written in stone, because the world changes. So you try one thing and it’s working, try to duplicate it into the different product and see if it works there. If it doesn’t and that one product is still winning, just let it go and…

Mark Stephenson:

Try something else on the other one.

Marc Vila:

… Try something else. It’s just, you’ve got to test different things. If one product is failing, even though you think it should do really well, try it again, change the price. Try it again with a different image. Try it again with offering free shipping on it. Try it again.

Mark Stephenson:

That could be the most important thing that we’ve said about conversion strategy.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, and it’s not easy and it’s hard to do. And really all tests should follow a very strict scientific method when possible. And that’s a podcast in and of itself.

Mark Stephenson:

We should do that. So now let’s talk about, you’ve got a great kind of sentence here that I really like and that’s create a journey. And then we’ll move on to what to do to follow-up to increase conversions. So what do you mean by that journey? What are you talking about?

Marc Vila:

Sure. You post an image of a shirt. We’ll just use one example and it goes for all of them. Let’s use Instagram. Post an image of a shirt on Instagram. On Instagram we’ve already said you can’t put the link on the picture. So you put the link in your profile. On that link you should be able to see that shirt that you posted.

Mark Stephenson:

When somebody clicks it, they see the same shirt that they saw on the app.

Marc Vila:

Yeah, and maybe it’s not just that shirt, but maybe you’re going to post 12 shirts over 12 days. All 12 of those shirts need to be visible in that link because someone’s going to to see it and they’re going to click it and you want them to find it. If they have to search your website, gone, right?

Marc Vila:

So you post a shirt, you post a link to where they can see that shirt for sale. You maybe show some related products to that shirt as I mentioned, just in case they might like something else. You can maybe feature a price or a product or a coupon or whatever you might need to do on that to help facilitate the sale.

Marc Vila:

And then you let them check out easy, right? So PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Visa checkout. You make the checkout super easy. If someone has to type in a credit card, you’re going to lose some sales, because it takes too long and it’s less impulsive. I’ve got to get my credit card in my wallet, never mind.

Mark Stephenson:

I hate that.

Marc Vila:

So if you post a picture of a shirt online, the most optimal way to do it, is the most amount of work, but the most optimal way to do it would be you post it on Instagram, you change the link in your profile to that product. They get there, they see that product.

Marc Vila:

If it happens to not be available in their size or something they need, you maybe have a couple of related options to it. When they click add to cart, they also know if it’s a deal or something like that. If you’re trying to test deals, test them. Test, test, test on deals. They add it to their cart.

Marc Vila:

They see they can pay with Apple Pay, they click Apple Pay. They’re done. They see they can pay with PayPal, they click PayPal. They’re done. And then they get it. They know when they’re going to get it and all of that stuff.

Mark Stephenson:

I like both that journey and the idea that you need to think about it while you’re working on your website and producing your content. Because that’s starting from an Instagram post, you can start from an imagined search on the internet for a specific pickle shirt. Somebody’s looking for pickle shirts.

Mark Stephenson:

What do they find? Next thing they do is they find the blog post all about the varieties that are available. What’s next after that? They’re going to click on a link for one of the products that they find really cool. They’re going to go to that page. What are they going to do?

Mark Stephenson:

They’re going to see a description that matches what they were looking for and a picture of the shirt that they were looking for. And then they’re going to see a price that they like and then they are going to click the button. And so regardless, I like this idea of setting up the customer journey from any place that you start.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. And it’s just… the most important is that it’s easy to do. If it’s a challenge to do, if there’s not an easy way for them to check out, or if they’re concerned in any way, they don’t know when they’re going to get it, they don’t know if they trust you, then that will chip away, right?

Marc Vila:

Amazon does so well with their stuff because you have a credit card stored there. They send you a text message or an email with a product you’re going to like, you co-click buy now, done. They’ve got it down to two things.

Mark Stephenson:

That’s the journey.

Marc Vila:

Right? Now, that’s hard for a small business to get click buy now, but you can get click, add to cart, check out with PayPal or check out with Apple Pay or Amazon Pay where a credit card’s already stored somewhere else. And then just make sure they know when they’re going to get it.

Mark Stephenson:

I love that.

Marc Vila:

All right. And then to wrap it up, you’ve got traffic and you’ve got some customers, follow-up, email those people again. Mail them a thank you card with… Call them if it’s appropriate to call, link to them on social.

Mark Stephenson:

You worked hard to get them there, don’t let it be the last time that you interact with them.

Marc Vila:

Yeah. Ask them to share, ask them to link to you on social media wearing the shirt. You can put a card in the shirt that says, take a picture of this shirt and post it on social media at so and so and we’ll give you this for free.

Mark Stephenson:

Okay. So we’re going to list to a bunch of different podcasts after this, a bunch of different resources in the notes, but I really think that everyone listening should bookmark this and listen to it every 90 days. Because if you’ve got an online store, wherever it is, then you’ve learned a lot here about getting people, getting eyeballs on your website and then converting them into sales.

Marc Vila:

And once you kind of figure it out and you’ve got a little bit of a thing going on, then you can spend some more money on ads and stuff like that. There’s a lots of little things you could do to experiment with paying to get more people to see your website and stuff like that. And you can go for that.

Marc Vila:

And if you’re willing to invest a little bit of money to try to get it going, just make sure you thought about this whole thing first before you start spending money. Because I definitely know people who spend money on ads, and then they’ve asked me to look at it. And I go to their checkout page and I’m like, what am I buying?

Marc Vila:

Oh, you’re buying this course. What’s it for? And I’m just like, I’m actually legitimately confused. Oh no, well you need to buy… You’re picking one of these. I was like okay, it doesn’t say that, right? And then, oh, and then you see the light bulbs go on. So well, that’s good. I think that there’s a lot to learn here.

Marc Vila:

There’s a lot of podcasts that each of these topics can be. But if you do all this stuff, you will sell online. It’s not going to be a fast journey unless you’re lucky, connected or you spend a bunch of money and that’s okay. You just keep on going at it and eventually you will start to see that grow.

Marc Vila:

And it’s like a snowball because you’re doing all the right things. One customer turns to two, four, eight, 16. Next thing you know you can have 1000 customers in a month.

Mark Stephenson:

That’s great. Thanks Marc Vila. This has been Mark Stephenson from the Custom Apparel Startups Podcast.

Marc Vila:

And this is Marc Vila from many different things, but today I’ll say ColDesi and colmanandcompany.com.

Mark Stephenson:

I like that. You guys have a great business.

The post Episode 168 – Why Nobody Is Visiting Your Online Store appeared first on Custom Apparel Startups.