Hello Everyone

[TssullyTackleBox]

Hi guys, just set up my first shop, and first attempt at any website/storefront.
I found ecrater to be easy to work with, but wanted some reviews and suggestions from some of you experienced sellers. Before I take it "live" on social media, I have to set up a Facebook business page. Once that is done, I plan on buying a promotional ad from Facebook to announce the site. For this promotion, anyone that "likes and shares" my ecrater store will have their name tossed into a hat, bucket, 55gal drum..lol to be picked at random for the winner by the Secretary of the St. Clair, Detroit River Sturgeon For Tomorrow group, for a free Sturgeon fishing trip for two (travel expenses not included) with my wife and I on the opening night of Sturgeon Fishing on the St. Clair River. We will make a U-Tube video of the drawing. My biggest concern for the store is the shipping. Most of the items are light enough to put in an envelope with a stamp on it, but will use Pay Pal's labels for the tracking, and will probably be shipped in a padded envelope or small box. Please take a minute to give it a look over and comment, Thanks....Todd and Sheryl

[SammysSupplies]

Hi and welcome to eCrater.Looks like you are off to a good start. Just a couple of suggestions, some of your titles are the same, "5 pack Custom Made Crawler Harness". Google will see this as the same item being listed over and over, and will punish you. (eCrater doesn't like this as well) Is there a way to tell them apart?

Also, most people are used to receiving tracking numbers. Of course you can mail however you want, but it would make buyers more comfortable to see where their package is. With no tracking.... there is no proof of sending or receiving. I hope you have many sales!

[MoonwishesStore]

Hello you two. Wave at me when you are out on Lake Erie near Long Point, ONT. I live right across the Lake from there and on a clear day we can see it from up on I90.

I would suggest some terms having to do with refunds. Some buyers hate PP so you might want to consider using Stripe as well and it costs the same as PP's fees for using it and is easy to get set up.

From what I hear PP tends to be a bit 'glitchy' at times when printing labels, well actually I feel like I hear it a lot. I use an independent e/postage service, there are several and tracking is included in the postage price.

I'm not exactly sure what a 1 pound cannon ball weighs, but from it's name I would assume one actual pound? If so shipping anything by USPS that weighs one pound/16 oz+ is going to run you (with packaging) almost $8 either via Priority or Parcel, so the shipping you have listed isn't going to cut it. Also 1-3 ounces of a first class package (bubble envelope) is $2.54 not $2.50. That includes tracking so I'm not sure where you are getting your postage prices.

Maybe this is sexist, but I have never seen a guy that is into hunting and fishing care how much something costs or what the shipping is. So charge what you have to and set up your shipping with the Matrix so that if they order a bunch of those lightweight items, you can ship them all together without an added cost. Not the cannon ball though.

Okay, I know nothing about fishing except for I like lobster and shrimp and I won't eat of the rest, but with your titles and descriptions you might want to add on the type of fish the equipment is for and not just depend on the category name. So you can have Walleye in the title and also Walleye in the description and just how big do Lake Erie Walleye females get too?

Hope some of this helps.

[TssullyTackleBox]

Thanks guys! Sammy....I struggled with the titles of the two bundled items, the 5 packs and 12 packs. The only identifier is the picture and MPNs are different for each. Color will not work as they all have different variations. Short of putting the MPN in the title, I am not sure how to separate them.

Moon...Hi neighbor...refunds...forgot to put in...will fix. Stipe....will add...postage was my weak spot...I just guessed....thanks for the heads up on the cannon balls...will put them on hold, might just have to sell them out of the back of the car at the boat ramps during Sturgeon season...the rest I think I will go with the Matrix. I started to add species in the descriptions of some of the spoons, and will go back and add to all items.

The big Lake Erie females run 30 inches and weight up to 12 pounds...the spawning run is about a week away and they are all staged in the lake at the mouths of the rivers and near shore reefs. They will return to these spots after they are done with their chores to feed and recharge before heading out to the deeper waters, sometime around the middle to end of May. Most fishermen, unless they want one to hang on a wall, will release the females to continue to propagate the species.

I have some more work to do on the site before I launch it...thank you for your help, and if anyone can come up with a suggestion on how to separate the titles for the bundled items please chime in.

Just so you know...we are kind of a weird boat...I drive the boat and Sheryl catches all the fish...I always get a kick out of saying that....lol

[SammysSupplies]

Because the sets really are different, you might drop eCrater a line and see what they suggest.

[SammysSupplies]

Because the sets really are different, you might drop eCrater a line and see what they suggest. Using the matrix would be ideal for you. Just make the numbers mean number of items and raise the postage as number of items increase. That could even cover the cannonball, just use a high number and use a flat rate box. Do people buy several of those at a time?

[MoonwishesStore]

Actually, your store is launched. If it wasn't live, your listings would show as on hold and I just checked one and since it says Add to Cart that means someone can buy it.

I was thinking about your items. Is the only difference in them is the amount of pieces and what they look like? They all do the same thing right? In this case, something I would rarely say, is I would batch them all under one listing for sets of 12, 5, etc. I would say that each set is uses different colored pieces (sorry I don't have a clue what they are called) but they all do the same job. Generally you want as many listings as possible at your on line store so that there is more chance of buyers seeing it. I don't know if you have more items to sell, but the more you have the better.

For your titles, include any of these words, tackle, fishing, fish, walleye, catfish, Lake Erie fishing, lake fishing, boat fishing and keep on going. You want fishing words in your titles and descriptions, since having a listing with the word 'spoon' in and not modified by the words fish or fishing, you are bound to get viewers looking for eating spoons not fish spoons.

I do believe at this point I might be out of fish ideas. If your wife catches it, then are you the one that cooks it? You need recipes on your blog if you have one that talks more about fishing and this tackle you have for sale and how to use it. I would even say you need more of that in your descriptions, but then maybe everyone knows how to use these riggings and tackle.

By the way are you going to have a UK and Aust store open. If you don't turn them off, I believe they also automatically turn on with your US store and that means you really have to have your shipping figured out!

[TssullyTackleBox]

Thanks again for your suggestions guys. Sammy, I may just have to drop ecrater a line and ask for their help with this. I have been racking my brain all day for a solution, and the only thing I came up with is putting "variation #1" and so on.

Moon...by launched I meant actively advertising on social media. I know that the bots and people doing searches have found the site because the popular colors of the spoons have unusually high hits. I think at this point, I should put the site on hold until I can get on top of things.

As for the bundled items, my first thought when setting them up was the same as you are suggesting.....until I got to the point when the customer would ask the question...are the colors that I get the same as depicted in the picture? The answer would be no. The customer should receive exactly what they see on the site, and that forced the multiple bundled listings. Another possible solution would be to remove the bundled listings and just list 100 different "crawler harness'. But would that not give me the same problem just 100 times over? Unlike the spoons, crawler harnesses do not get "named", and the only difference is the paint on the blade. Given that they are custom painted they are basically one of a kind. There are some exceptions to that, as I have some individual ones that I have 10 available.

As for titles and descriptions, I will put your suggestions to work. And take Sammy's suggestion to shoot ecrater a query. Meanwhile, the site is going on hold til I get this sorted out. Oh yes, to your point about AUS and the UK, I was under the impression that had to be elected. My intent was to keep it simple at first with just the USA. I will include that question in my query to ecrater. As far at the number of items listed, my expectations of selling product on the internet are zero. (until proven otherwise) Therefore I am starting the store with just enough inventory that we could use up ourselves in due course. Once that number moves to something other than zero, then I can better determine how much of what I need to list. Baby steps at first, as we are in it for the long haul. We are also writing a book about our fishing adventures as well as setting up a charter fishing boat service. Slow and methodical I am. (wait...did Yoda say that?) All three things will be connected by Tssully...kind of a "branded image".

Sheryl catches the fish, she fillets the fish, she cooks the fish, I just drive the boat and eat the fish....not a bad gig if you can get it....lol. The blog idea is a good one....it would work on all three fronts....will probably wait until next winter for that one as I will have more time....just finished a 15 hour day at work and not going to get much done except for on the weekends.

Thanks again for your suggestions, I will put the site on hold, get caught up with all of your suggestions and then give you guys another shout when I am back up and running.

Todd

[MoonwishesStore]

It is so nice to know that a 'newbie' is taking our suggestions to heart. At times it is disheartening to offer suggestions and have people basically tell us we don't know what we are talking about and are going to do things their own way. Even stuff as stupid as not writing everything all in caps, which equates shouting on line.

Shout out any time with questions.

[TssullyTackleBox]

Sammy and Moon, I just can't say how much you guys have helped with my store. Sammy, I emailed ecrater with our questions and Tracy responded with the affirmation that google would not like the multiple bundled listings. She suggested using the mpn at the end of each listing. Also thank you for leading me to the shipping Matrix. It took a while for it to settle in my head but I think I finally got the hang of it. Moon, the Uk and AUS stores have to be elected. I incorporated both of your suggestions into the titles and descriptions, as well as FAQs and category headings.

It seems to me that the product titles now look more like an ebay listing, but I do understand that is the way that the google programing works and this should provide more on target hits. Both of you are right about the number of products we have in the store. It does look a bit anemic. We will simply keep adding products, although I am glad you guys helped before we had a couple hundred to have to change....lol.

Please take another look at our store and give us any feedback....we may have missed something. Our FAQs may need to be shored up a bit....Moon, it looks like you have changed yours over the years as a result of the various experiences that have occurred.

Again, thank you two for your help
Todd and Sheryl

[SammysSupplies]

Looks good to me! So many sellers get upset when suggestions are offered. But all we want is to help people have the best shop they can here while following eCrater and Google's rules.

Now you need to start promoting and reeling customers in.

[MoonwishesStore]

Yes, MUCH better and I agree that it is good to get it sorted out prior to listing hundreds of items. Wishing you much success on the lake and on eCRATER. Sammy is right, some newbies don't want any advice or they ask for it and then don't do a thing, or we have even had some that expected us to spoon feed them everything since they are 'too busy' with their lives to study and do the research to set up their store correctly! I guess they figure we are bored silly. HA!

I love helping people get going and making money. The more good sellers here, the more ALL eCRATER sellers get noticed.

Don't forget to get a Pinterest page going as well as a blog. Most blogs I believe, will let you write a post and delay posting it, so if you are home for awhile you can write several posts that will post while you are good, and of course if you have the ability to post from the boat, when the Mrs. catches something you can post it immediately to your blog and Facebook and show how you caught it with you special rigging things. It is all intertwined together and the more you can juggle all that, the better you do. I'm not sure how many of my FB friends are fisherman, but I'll post one of your items to my FB page since I'm close to the lake so perhaps others will see it.

[TssullyTackleBox]

If it wasn't for the two of you, I suspect that the store would have just died a slow death. Now we have a chance to get some of our products to other people so they can enjoy the benefit of them. Moon, the social marketing will be next, Pinterest will be one of them, but I am dumping that in Sheryl's lap. She is much better at that stuff than I am. The blog thing I will do, but may hold off until winter. Our season will be adding the grist for the mill to finish our book, and I fear the blog will essentially be the same as what we will be writing in the book.

Looks like the weather is finally changing for the better so I better get to work on the boat. We will give you guys a link to our Facebook page after we make it so you can follow our antics on the Lake and Rivers.

Todd and Sheryl

[tmyusuf]

Very much welcome to the forum.

[A-Better-Way]

It's worse than that, all those same duplicate words, google will shove in the , "omitted from search" thing they do.

Search for something all the way to the end at google, and click the , show omitted , you then will find your other items.

I thought the same just to be uniform and organized for the same type of items, google just thinks it duplicate web pages.

Just think of things to have different words for each thing and mix up the word order.