Store Titles vs. Sales

[lvnvcheryl]

Does anyone have information regarding the success of sales of products based on the name of the Store?

For example, if I was selling a variety of things on a regular basis (e.g., used books, used jewelry, new jewelry, new books, ponies) would I be more successful naming my store USED.ecrater.com or having multiple stores named NewJewelry.ecrater.com, UsedBooks.ecrater.com, Ponies.ecrater.com?

I hate to complicate things with multiple stores before I even open my first one. But I also don't want to waste my time setting up multiple stores if it is not any more profitable than selling from one store with multiple categories.

LVNVCHERYL

[zickit]

It all depends on which webmaster you want to believe really.

It's a fact that you will rank better placement on search engines the more your keywords are relevant to your product. That saif a store named UsedBooks that sellers used books and the words used books is in every item title and every item description is going to appear higher on a search engine that a store called EveryThingYouCanImagine that sells 5 used books.
Read more about this top of stuff in SEO information. There is a bunch of it in this forum and all over the internet.

IF the items you sell are all related - jewelry (new or used don't matter) then I say one store. IF the items you sell are like Books, Jewelry, Ponies - there is no relation between the items so it's to your benefit as far as SEO goes to have different stores.

I sell clothing. I could toss everything into one store BUT to maxium my SEO benefit I sell Formal Dresses in my www.FormalLongDresses.com store, clothing for females at my www.FashionsForHer.ecrater.com store and big and tall mens clothing at www.BigNTallMensClothing.com
It's all clothing and is all related BUT there is no way to get the META TAGS to work for everything and gain high enough page ranking to be found if they are all in one store. Every store I have is a very small niche therefore the keywords can be narrowed in alot better.

One other thing to think about is how much product you have. Do you have enough product to support a store? A store with 10 items isn't going to get the ranking a store with 1000 item does.
All my clothing stores have enough product to stand on their own.

[lvnvcheryl]

Thanks for the speedy reply. I kinda knew the answer, but your last tip was very meaningful. Have lots of stuff, but I'm not sure each category is in enough supply to warrant different stores.

I think I'll just start out with a generic store, determine the response and profits, and then decide from that if I should "expand" into more stores. c:}

[thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat]

lvnvcheryl

I have a strong feeling that store names influence return buyers. I doubt there are any statistics to back this up. If the name is something catchy or a play or words, or state specifically the gist of a store, their chances of repeat visits or buyers is better than having a string of letters that mean nothing or Johns Store.

For instance say I saw something in lvnvcheryl and wanted to come back to it later. I might remember Cheryl but I doubt I would ever get the string of letters that precede it correctly.

There are a ton of sellers here using total giberish as store names. Maybe those names are the initials of their children or yours might mean Las Vegas Nevada Cheryl but most people don't take the time to figure that out when they are shopping. They can't remember and you lose their return visit.

There are some really novel store names on ecrater as elsewhere on the web. My suggestion is that you spend some time creating a name that people will remember without having to be a master decoder.

As for stores selling concentrations of one kind of merchandise, I started out with this store and then broke it down and moved items to now 5 stores. All my items were used, vintage or antique but across a broad spectrum. I thought it was too huge to be managable or that it would be daunting for shoppers. This store continues to do well and another pretty well but the last three (all over a year old now) do very poorly.

Sounds like you plan on selling used items. Not many sellers here do a great job of combining used and new because they aren't clear enough in titles and descriptions if an item is new or used and they leave the buyer confused. Also at least 50% of sellers forget to click the used box when listing so it shows as brand new product and then the description says it was only used a few times or shows wear on the corners. What is a buyer to think?

Some items naturally go together such as clothing and jewelry or children's clothing and toys. Others do not such as technology and vintage linens. You are the best determiner of how your inventory will be best grouped.

I'm an antique collector and when I go in a shop that mixes antiques, reproductions and obviously new items, I'm not going to pay very much for their "antique" items because their inventory creates questions in my mind as to the authenticity of the antique item. I'm not an expert, nor are they for the most part.

Don't know if this has helped you or not.

[acread]

Remember there is no easy way to move items from one store to another. Will need to relist with a lot of copy and paste. Might want to take that into consideration too.

[zickit]

[lvnvcheryl]

Thanks everyone for all your sage advice!

I setup my first store as lvnvcheryl, but haven't put anything out there, yet. Soooo, I think I'm going to shut it down (or cancel it. Does anyone know how to do this?) and start over with a better store name. c:}

[acread]

left bottom of your admin page

[SheilaDeesPostcards]

One more thing that hasn't been mentioned is shipping. I have one store that has shipping based on the number of items purchased. Using the shipping matrix made this very easy. Another store sells only items that can be shipped via media mail. The next store on my list will be retro, vintage and antique things. Everything in that store will be shipped based on weight via First Class, Priority or Parcel.

[lvnvcheryl]

Thanks, again. I'll look at the bottom of the admin page to "start over" with a new store. The shipping info is very useful. c:}

[acread]