Hello from Mary

[HawaiianStylin]

I have just completed my store (hawaiianstylin). I'm a senior citizen (well past the age requirements for AARP membership) and am looking forward to supplementing my income and enjoying these waning years. I'm kind of sure I did things right, and would appreciate any comments. Thanks a bunch.

[thelivesandlovesofmaggiethecat]

Welcome. Great shirts.

I have one comment. I had to read your about and terms pages to know for sure that your shirts were for men. Your titles and descriptions do not mention that. Few buyers read the terms pages. I would still put a chest measurement and length in the descriptions as shirt manufacturers vary so much in what they call small, medium and large. Otherwise I think you will have a lot of returns.

Suggestion: Great Hawaiian print shirts are hard to find in mainland NA. I'd start a Pinterest page with your shirts. More people have heard of Pinterest than eCRATER, probably.

[tigercreekgifts]

Some of your images look fine as thumbnails but when you click on the listing and see a bigger version of the photo, the images are real blurry. I can see what looks like a source of light coming from the right of your pictures. Are you taking these in the evening with a lamp turned on? Soft yellow light from a lamp or overhead light can not only produce that yellowish tint in your photos but it can result in a blurry image because the bright colors from your shirts start competing with the yellow color of your home lighting for the camera's attention and when you use soft indoor lighting, the lighting almost always wins the color battle which causes the actual image to blur while the camera focuses on capturing the soft yellowish white light from your home instead.

My suggestion to you, do you have a decent size window in your home where you can open the curtains (or just one side of the curtains) and let some light in, maybe set a small table close to that window or hang your shirts on a wall/door that's close to that window? The more natural light you can have, the better the photos will be. Natural light reduces blur, yellowish tints, colors shades showing up wrong, and also reduces the amount of light streaks and shadows because the light is coming from the sun and not from a lamp. Cameras can detect where an artificial light source is coming from which is why using a lamp or indoor overhead light results in streaks of light from one direction and shadows in the other direction.

Try it out some time, take some photos using natural light. The images may seem a bit bright at first but you can always adjust the clarity and shadows manually with a free online photo editing program.

[MoonwishesStore]

Hello and welcome Mary. Don't worry about the age thing, lots of us are old folks.

[HawaiianStylin]

I was so intent in making sure I had all the background stuff (FAQ, meta tags, contact, etc.) that I missed these great (and needed) suggestions. I'll work on all of them today. I surely do appreciate the kindness of the ecrater community.

[lastade-designs]

Welcome to Ecrater! I like your store!

[MoonwishesStore]

You will find that if you are not insulted by helpful advice and actually use it, most folks here are more than happy to help with questions, etc. The more successful stores here the better for all of us.

[Shaelily]

Welcome to eCRATER! Very nice shirts!!

[SheilaDeesPostcards]

Welcome to eCrater! You have a nice start for your store. I just took time to review your store and I've bookmarked it to return. My hubby loves this type shirt and has some favorite brands. Since you said you would appreciate any comments, I made note of some things.

Titles: ... Your titles really need to contain more keywords to bring customers to your items. On eCrater we are allowed up to 100 characters, so make sure you make use of that space. One quick way to check your titles is to go to preview to see your store as a buyer. Click on any item, then click on the "View all products" link that is just above the gallery of 10 of your products. Just above the photos look for a link that says "view: gallery | list" and click on list. Now, put your hand over the photos and see if your title describes the item or do you need more info. You have "Hawaiian Shirt" in every title which is Great. You have brand for buyers seeking more shirts by brand name. What seems to be missing? Size and gender is really important, something as simple as Mens L would work and still save space. If something is marked L but measures like a M, put Mens M L (with a space between M and L). This way if the person searched for Mens M or Mens L they would see the listing. What about color and pattern? "Black with large white tropical leaves" is a bit wordy at 39 characters, but that title currently is only using 50 characters. How about "Hawaiian Reserve Collection Hawaiian Shirt Mens XL Black with large white tropical leaves" which is only 89 characters. You would still have 11 characters left, so maybe add Rayon.

If you use MS Word, it has a character count feature. Personally, I use http://www.lettercount.com/ which I have bookmarked. I keep it open when I'm listing so I can check the title.

Photos: ... On eCrater it is recommended that your photos be at least 800 px on one side. If your photos are smaller, your items will appear after the items with the larger photos on the marketplace search. All of our items are submitted to Google Shopping (GS) which is a really big help to most of the sellers. GS recommends your photos be larger than 800px on both sides. This is critical for the first photo in each listing.

Photos are extremely important in online sales since the customer can't handle the item. We are allowed to add up to 10 photos per listing. As a customer, I want to see the back of the shirt. There are some styles of Hawaiian Shirts the Mr. just won't wear. A close-up of the label and the buttons would also be appreciated.

Payment methods: ... You are currently offering Cash on Delivery which is a very expensive service offered by the post office. It is the default option in all new stores, but I would strongly suggest deleting the service. With PayPal, a customer can use their credit card without having a PayPal account. On your home page, you mention Google Checkout which is no longer available on eCrater.

Text pages: ... Well done. It's great to see all the pages completed. The search engines check the text pages, so it's a good place to add keywords. On your Terms page you make the statement, "DAMAGE CLAIMS: Single items sold are packaged in padded poly envelopes. I cannot be held responsible if a package is damaged in shipping." Actually, you are responsible for "damaged in shipping". This is why most sellers either self-insure or pay for insurance. If the customer files a claim with PayPal or their credit card company, you will lose.

Descriptions: ... Information is well organized and is a good start. Having your words in all caps make them really hard to read. If you are trying to make your information stand out, add dots. The spacing is always going to be 1 space no matter how many spaces you add.

I had a few questions. Your shirts seem really short; most of Mr.'s shirts are 30 to 32". The standard way of measuring a shirt is the center back from the seam where the collar attaches to the shirt to the bottom of the shirt. Is this the length you are measuring when you say "Length Measurement From Collar"?

Are the bottoms of your shirts square or curved? Some of your photos don't show the bottom of the shirts. Do they have side vents?

Hawaiian Stylin', I hope you don't take offense at my comments. I look at these shirts almost every day and I know what's on my check list when shopping for them.

I had to laugh at your comment about being past the age requirement for AARP. There are lots of boomers selling here and lots of millennials to help keep us in touch.

[tigercreekgifts]

Actually if your photos are too small they will appear at the very end of the category and very end of the search results. So if your photos are under 800px in size and you list in a huge category your items will literally be on page 21 behind the items that were listed 6 years ago, and nobody is going to search back that far if they are browsing a category with no particular product in mind.

I found that out a few times when I accidentally uploaded some under sized pics. I forgot to resize them when I had my old camera that uploaded very small photo sizes because I was used to cameras that uploaded very large file sizes and my photos never needed to be resized so I am frantic one day when I realize that all 31 of the items I listed were not showing in the marketplace at all and also realized that many of my previous listings were also suddenly gone, and I emailed and ecrater and they said, they're there just check the very end of each category you listed in. Sure enough, my newly listed items were on page 17, page 21, and so on back behind items that had probably been on ecrater since 2006.

When they made the 800px size mandatory I had to go thru and edit 582 photos manually to get my items to appear on the first page of the categories again. Now, when I buy a new camera, the first thing I do is check the file size settings and make sure they don't need to be resized before I do all that work listing away and find out they were too small. That last camera I had was really generic and you couldn't change the upload size of the photos and all of my pics uploaded at 550 to 710 px so I had to redo all those when the 800px requirement was established.

[adrienneszat]

Welcome to eCRATER!
I'm on the new-side myself!
These good people helped me so much, and we all pass on our levels of knowledge to help each other!
Best to you!

[tmyusuf]

Welcome to the forum ..