Attracting customers Options

[StevenBarkess]

Hi

I have an online record store selling vinyl to the UK bedroom dj market. I have been live since the start of May but am not attracting that many visitors (and hence customers!!).

I have been running a 1/4 page ad in a dj magazine since May, and am thinking that this is not worth the money. I am also using Google Adwords. The most success seems to come from people doing keyword searches (pages load as html which is good).

So, the million dollar questions, how to attract customers.

I am thinking of doing some targeted flyering in places like London, Brigton where there are physical record stores, stand out side them and give them to people that come out (until i get moved on!!).

I would be grateful for advice on how I can move forward.

I wont write my web address as it is since google listed me from a webdesign forum that took ages to get removed but if you remove the space, it is www.fidelity dj.co.uk

Many thanks

Steven

[Gidz]

hey,
just a few thoughts, firstly FORUMS!
find forums representing the genre of music you pedal, and hit em hard, its free advertising, or you could pay for banners etc, think of it as highly targeted, because there are sites out there dedicated to all manner of huse, DnB, breaks, trance, tech etc etc.

In the UK (and being from Australia i don't know the UK sites so well), you've got the global underground forums, does fabric have a forum?
something to consider etc.

Could also try some of the foreign forums, maybe the US, which is a bit all over the place with record store (some areas have brilliant stores, some have next to none).
http://nwtekno.org/

Australia has tons of dance music forums.
www.inthemix.com.au
www.thescene.com.au
www.residentadvisor.com.au
www.melbournejungle.com.au


Also, I guess you could try to get your flyer in those packs they hand out at clubs, nothing big or fancy, small black and white, just a way of letting people know your site exits and what its about.
Not sure hows its done, as in Australi they are more likely to either car bomb (flyers on windscreens), or leave flyers in clothing/music stores (real youth culture focused places).


maybe also focus on something different, ask yourself... "what can i get at this online store that i cannot go into a physical store and get anywhere else?"
think you have to remember that part of the vinyl collector/wannabe dj process is the physical act of rummaging through a pile of records, putting it on the decks, and listening.
if your able to provide something more obscure/harder to get, then it removes that element, as people know what you have to offer, is something they can not go into their local virgin megastore and pick up.

personally i rarely buy records online, because I enjoy the whole record store experience, but when I do its becuase the website has things that i simply CANNOT get locally.
check out a few of the big ones to see how they do it.
http://www.juno.co.uk/
http://www.ultimatedancemusic.co.uk/
http://www.globalbeatz.net/online-record-store.php

otherwise perhaps a sales promotion, which is more of a short term way of getting people aware of your site.

might also want to 'sex up the site' a bit, some flahs animations, bit of colour, some scanned party flyers etc.

affiliate banners with the big dance music websites? (not a clue how its done)

or for something a bit more below the line, maybe some stencilling (nothing thats going to get you arrested).



good luck
G

[Adrian]

find forums representing the genre of music you pedal, and hit em hard, its free advertising

Ahem, ah, that is provided you're not just spamming them. We go to a lot of effort here to remove spammy link drops and ads by people, and many other forums aren't keen on it.

A better way is to actually get involved in the forum, maybe have the link in your signature if they allow it, that kind of thing. As you actually get into conversations with people, so some of them will click on to your site. It can be time consuming, but good for reputation.

And uh, juno.co.uk may not be the best place to look right now, I'm pretty sure its look is going to be changing fairly soon

I also don't think you need to go adding flash and stuff, that can get really boring....

I think you've got some good stuff there, maybe you just need to improve on it a bit. Remove the splash page for example, it's doing nothing for you. I'd rework the Info page a bit and make that the home page, add a couple big links at the top to the Catalogue and Upcoming, and I think you'd have something much more useful as a home page.

If you make all that text actual text, rather than images, you're also going to improve the way Search Engines look at the site, at the moment, they can't read that kind of content.

It might be worth posting in the Website Hospital forum, that way you could get some ideas as to what you could improve on the site and maybe generate more interest that way as well.

[Gidz]

ah yes, obviously should be cleared up, if you just go onto forums and spam them you'll get nothing out of them, but by participating, you become part of their community, and in turn people will come to you.
plus if you have an online record store assumably you know your stuff re music, share that with them.

[StevenBarkess]

Thanks for all the info, somethings already considered, others not. Appreciate the comments.

Funny, I thought the design work was hard, getting customers is harder!!!

Steven

[kensplace]

You could try ebay, a basic listing would probably cost you what a few clicks on a ppc program would cost. You could do a lot of listings for what you are probably paying for the page advert.

One good thing about ebay is there are plenty of buyers.

[StevenBarkess]

Tried that one already. Put a few things up, (even got a few friends to buy things to get some cred), and wanted to set up a store. Should probably return to it.

Cheers

Steven

[ounoely]

Just a couple of comments on the eBay thing...

We have had a site selling our Classic Rock N Roll photos up since March of last year. We have tried many things to bring new visitors to our site. We now only use Google's AdWords and eBay Auction listings. Also, we will find forums that are interested in our individual artists and always ask the moderator if it is appropriate to submit a posting first. (We learned the hard way!)

We have a decent placement on most of the search engines (including Yahoo!) IF... the query is pertinent to our product!

We tried eBay stores and found that (for the most part) a FEW eBay auctions at a time seem to work best for us. We've tried as many a 20 at a time but 3 to 5 a week seems to generate the best returns.

eBay allows you to set a link to page on your site as long as that page does not directly promote "offsite" (non-eBay) sales. We created a special "auction product" page that is not accessible from within the site... only from our eBay auctions. However... our standard navigation links are available from this special page and we do generate visitors to the site from that page.

For a start up web business we are not doing too bad. We average a little more than 1 sale per auction campaign (per week). We also start our auctions at $10.00 less than our retail price. We have been using eBay auctions for about 14 months and I have to say that our largest orders were generated due to the customers finding our site via our auctions.

Anyhow... I hope this may be useful to you.

All the best...

[Respree]

If you haven't done so already, I'd submit a datafeed to Froogle.

It's free.