help

george02086 · Posts: 67

need help have not sold anything i have only been selling for about 3 to 4 weeks ,but would like to have someone give me an idea of why people are viewing allot but not liking some thing about store could it be high prices no free shipping bad pictures just need some constructive criticism i lowered my prices for shirts 6 dollars already i cannot give them away for free thanks George02086@verizon.net

SammysSupplies · Posts: 1631

First off, what are you doing to bring customers to your store? A lot of views are probably members here trying to help you. 10 items is just a part of a drop in the whole web. I would take out the references to what age person you think the shirts are for. How would you feel if you were a older (or even younger) then what you say the shirts fit? It is up to the customer to decided if it is right for the person they are buying it for. Most people would like to know what the fabric is.

I would get rid of this sentence in your terms, "I have read and agree to the terms and conditions". It just seems out of place. Some customers will read terms, some won't, you can't make them read it.

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

I don't know why the first thing a seller will do if things aren't selling is lower prices as if that is what the problem might be. The first problem I see is you have 10 products listed which are miniscule in the huge world of internet selling (millions of items for sale). For many new sellers it can take a month or more before a sale happens. Much depends on what you are selling and how much inventory you have. Also for about the last year or so internet sales have been down both site-wide here and on other venues. What does that mean for a seller? You have to be completely on top of your game with the best written description, the best titles, the best pictures, and all text needs to look professional whether you are selling as a hobby or as a full fledged business. On ecrater too you have to do your own promoting and marketing. Ecrater will send our items to the Google shopping feed, but only if we have attributes on all listings.

When someone asks for help as you have done, I systematically go through their store looking at specific things and please note that you asked for help and that is what I'm trying to do so don't get mad at me or any others who may try to help.

On your Home Page: The only text you have is the name of your store. The 'logo' doesn't contain your store name, so it isn't that helpful for people to remember your store nor would your url remind them as georgexxxx isn't the name of your store. Not sure why you picked a user name that didn't have anything to do with your store name. You could choose to pay to change it, or open a new store with a new user name and close the old store, or you can choose to ignore the name.

Back to the home page. With just your store name as the only text and the store name only repeated once on the about you page, it isn't going to do you much good for search engines. You should probably want to write a little about what you sell at your store using keywords that the search engines will pick up on.

Your About page text is suffering from lack of grammar. Your store name should be capitalized at the beginning of each word. Your About page reads as if you have a store brimming with product, currently only 10 pieces of inventory. Are you planning to have much more listed over the next while?

Your Terms Page tells me you don’t understand how the process works – “payment- all payments are due upon receipt. If a payment is not received or payment method is declined,the buyer forfeits the ownership of any items purchased. If no payment is received no items will be shipped.” Payment is expected upon order; receipt implies that payment is due when they (the buyer) receive the item. The buyer never ‘owns’ the product until it is paid for so nothing is forfeited. If something isn’t paid for it isn’t paid for and you don’t ship. The only thing to write regarding payment is that payment is expected at the time of order and what ways they can pay.

“Shipping will be paid for by the buyer in the amount agreed upon by the seller at the time of purchase.” This doesn’t need to be written at all. It is an unwritten agreement that the buyer pays what is charged for shipping. “Shipping cost may double if shipping internationally.” Are you actually aware of what it costs to ship internationally? Shipping can be double triple or whatever. You have to be sure that you are charging the correct amount so that the international buyer pays the correct amount when paying as you CAN NOT charge a buyer MORE after they have paid, even if you goof and they get charged zero for shipping. This is an ecrater rule.

“An item may be cancelled up until payment has been processed. Once payment has been processed, the buyer is responsible for payment.” This makes no sense. Once a payment has processed, how can the buyer be more responsible for payment? I would not even bother having anything to do about cancellations. They are fairly rare here and need to be dealt with on a one on one basis.

“I have read and agree to the terms and conditions” I’m not sure why you have this in your Terms page. Shopping on line is not a binding agreement; there is nothing for a buyer to sign to make them agree to your terms before shopping on ecrater. Also many buyers never see the Terms page at all when shopping, so they certainly haven’t agreed to anything.

On another thread you mentioned that you had just copied someone else’s Terms page. Obviously you copied from someone that doesn’t know what they are doing or talking about. You need to personalize your Terms for you and your store. They need to be set up with proper grammar and spelling so as to look professional. If you want to see what other sellers have done, then go look at a variety of stores to see what other are doing. You can see any sellers’ that post frequently on the forum by clicking on the www button under their post.

Now to the nitty gritty: Assuming that you plan on listing a whole lot more inventory you need to break things down NOW by categories before you have a couple hundred things listed and then try to do it.

Your first listing that pops up for me has some obvious errors “us polo association light greene shirt for 10 to 12 year old” US should be capitalized always when referring to the United States. I don’t know much about polo but if the US polo association is a proper name, then it should also be capitalized like this: US Polo Association. Green is spelled wrong, and it should say child’s size 10-12, also you can mention long or short sleeves, fabric like whether cotton, polyester or a blend. You have up to 100 characters you can use in that line, make them pay for themselves!

Then this is the description of the above shirt: “light green us polo association shirt for a 10 to 12 year old kid sleeves 8 and 1/2 inches long from top to bottom of shirt is 29 and 1/2 inches long width is 17 and 1/2 inches long” Yet again you need capital letters in the brand. ALL brands need to be capitalized in any listing! Do not call children a kid. Some parents would take offense at that, refer to them as a child or as a boy or girl and yet again the size is 10-12 and not necessarily the child’s age (my son at age 12 was wearing a men’s medium!). Most of the time you can refer to sleeves as either long or short and in this case they look short. Measuring the width and then calling it long is wrong. You have no mention of the fabric or fabric care/washing instructions. You do not describe the shirt at all, such as a black ribbed collar, three buttons, polo machine embroidery on left chest, #3 appliqué or machine embroidery I can’t tell which on right sleeve, ribbed band on hem of sleeves. Just because you have a picture, don’t think customer can see everything, and a computer search engine can’t describe a shirt from the picture so you don’t have any keywords helping people find your shirt. Even though it is listed as brand new, you should still put in the description that the shirt is brand new with tags if it has the tags still on. Or you can say, brand new without tags if they came that way. If this shirt was bought new and then washed and now you want to sell it, it can’t be sold as new but as used. Pay close attention to grammar and spelling. You also have four nearly identical photos of the shirt.

Yet one more thing to mention. I noted your shipping prices and for a pair of shoes, one of the shipping options was a flat Priority envelope. I defy you to be able to ship a pair of shoes, any size in a flat rate envelope! And referring to shoes, you need to mention in the listing whether they are child’s size shoes or adult sizes as there is a big difference.

Okay I have spouted for long enough, but to get your store to the point that I think you might be able to make sales, you have a lot of work to do. Hope this helps!

george02086 · Posts: 67

Ouch only kidding wow you are really great. I appreciate all your help i will slowly make the changes you suggested. Hopefully i can keep in contact with you as i slowly get some experience. thanks George

george02086 · Posts: 67

I am trying to add my store name by my logo but don't have a clue how to do that it just says add logo then browse for a picture how do i actually write anything on their Thanks George

SammysSupplies · Posts: 1631

You have to construct a logo and save it on your computer, then you can go in and upload in the right place

george02086 · Posts: 67

ok thanks

thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat · Posts: 10159

George you are opening yourself up to fraud with your terms.

By stating that you will give a complete refund if the item is not received, scammers will claim they didn't get the item and get their money back even if they did get it. Tracking is not enough proof that an item was received. Postmen leave packages with neighbors, on porches, etc. You would have to insure each package to cover the loss.

Also returns accepted no questions asked means I can wear one of your shirts while I paint the house and return the paint stained shirt and get my money back.

These very generous terms make you sound desperate for sales and cause honest people to question your authenticity. No one expects terms like that because they aren't real. Savvy buyers would assume you are there to take their money and may or may not send the shirt and probably would never respond to them if anything was wrong with the order.

In reading your sentences and word usage I'm guessing English is not your first language. If it isn't I suggest you ask a friend or relative proficient in English to check your prose. Spell checkers won't pick up homonym errors or wrong word usage.

I suggest you look at stores selling similar goods for how they write their titles and descriptions. Not all will be good because a lot of sellers just dump inventory and then wait for sales. Most never come near the forum for advice. If you find one with similar inventory that has a lot of sales, study the store to see what they are doing right.

As soon as you get your current store in good shape, I strongly urge you to add more inventory.

As for how long it takes for an item to sell, I recently sold a vintage handbag that has been listed somewhere on line for at least 9 years. It was a highly sought after designer bag in mint condition and authentic. At the time it sold it was on 3 major sites. As Google search deteriorates the length of time it takes for an item to be found increases. Not anything we can do about that but hope Google gets its head out of its a$$ soon.

george02086 · Posts: 67

wow didn't think of that does sound desperate ok i will change that thanks for the suggestions anything else you see let me know thanks George

thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat · Posts: 10159

George you should practice grammer, punctuation and spelling on the forum posts. I'm showing in red all the errors you made in this one sentence.

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

Going along with Maggie on this. Whether English is your first or tenth language, you are butchering it in every possible way so that any potential customer might be skittish thinking they are buying from a 'foreigner' who might be trying to scam them. Many sellers thinks it makes no difference how they write things in their store, but it makes a huge difference in my humble opinion. It makes you look so much more professional and trustworthy if you write correctly. I have problems with this myself and I thank God that he got someone to invent spellcheck and grammar-check! It pays to proof read what you write.

george02086 · Posts: 67

i put my user name and password and its not letting me in did ecrater remove my account i dont know whats going on can someone help me thanks i asked a few questions on here is that enough to get taken out or not setting my store up right thanks George

george02086 · Posts: 67

don't really matter now i guess my inexperience has made ecrater remove my account i should have taken a grammar class before joining ecrater. i did not know it was this difficult to sell an item. If people are more worried about grammar then the item itself maybe i should sell dictionaries. English is not my first language im from Kazakhstan i came here to USDA after my uncle Borat . I don't know these stupid Americans. OK all kidding aside i am an american i was born in Long Island maybe that's the problem or maybe i was raised in NJ that could definitely be the problem. Just please help me to try to sell items not teach me how to spell are their regular people here or all Harvard graduates Thanks George

george02086 · Posts: 67

OK i got into my ecrater store cool i thought i was shut down due to my inexperience of setting up the store. Its hard to here criticism, but if that's the only way i can learn so its fine its just frustrating to know that all this stuff really matters so much. I thought that a picture and a description was enough to sell an item. I guess on eBay because its not the same as setting up your own store. Thank you guys for all your help let the constructive criticism continue i need all the help i can get thanks George

MoonwishesStore · moderator Posts: 17389

George, just so you don't feel completely picked on, none of us could get into our stores this morning. I just finally got in myself.

The problem with a photo and a lousy description whether from poor spelling and grammar or not enough thought going into what is written or a combination of those things, is a buyer can't be sure of what they are getting, just like I mentioned with shoe sizes. A customer comes along and is looking for size 8 shoes. They think, "finally, that is what I want!", so they order them and get to them and find that they are size 8 shoes for boys not adults. So then they are mad and want their money back and leave bad feedback and that is one small example.