I've created the infrastructure - how do I market the brand?
Hi all! Coming here seeking some advice. I am a software engineer living in San Francisco. I've got a full time job, but in my spare time I've spent hundred of hours building www.archadon.com - an online e-commerce platform selling hand-knotted oriental rugs (made in an ethical way). Backend built with the Serverless framework living on AWS lambda, filtering by Algolia, front end is isomorphic React + Redux. Since I was a kid I've always wanted to create something cool and give people a product they like. I've spent thousands of dollars on design/copy/advertising and I've sold one small rug with a profit of about $12 after it was all said and done.
So needless to say it's disheartening that my advertising/time/money has not yielded in me becoming the biggest rug czar in the land (jk). I've got a pipeline of rugs to sell, but I'm not selling any. Any advice?
This is exactly why many of us would advocate working out the marketing problem before diving in and spending hours and tons of money on developing something that might not have a future :(
Further down the thread you mention you didn't want to use Shopify and deploy on AWS for scaling reasons. Yet, here you are, without customers and therefor without scaling issues.
Essential to building any business is finding our who your customers are and how you can reach them. IMO, this should be worked out before, or sometimes in tandem, with developing your product. If this is more then just a coding exercise and you really want to turn this into a business, I would stop all development now and start working on the marketing problem.
Those are some expensive rugs.
This isnt a technology problem, its a marketing problem. Someone might buy them and to make the offer you first have to get their attention.
What have you done in the way of Google ads? Facebook ads? Instagram? Pinterest? Go in depth if you can.
Kudos to you on putting your money where your mouth is and giving it a real go. Regardless of results I have the utmost repsect for that.
Hey thanks for the feedback. I've spent the most on Facebook ads a few thousand dollars at least. I ran different ads testing different tag lines and pictures. Some out performed others, but no conversions. Currently I have one ad running on Pinterest linking back to the product page for the rug. The one previous Pinterest ad I posted performed well in regards to interactions and saves, but no conversions. I think Google ads is too expensive for the minimal amount of traffic it will bring to the site.
"Art for you floor" needs to be changed to "Art for your floor"
You have a lot of broken images: http://prntscr.com/i2t6m5
On the plus side, your site is SUPER fast. Wow !
Thanks for pointing out the typo! Are you outside the US? That's probably why the images aren't showing up.
Yes I'm in UK. Why would you block images from loading outside the USA?
Another point: your products are high value. People don't like to hand over thousands of bucks to an unknown site, all at once. Often people don't have those funds available. Have you considered adding a "credit" option, where they pay monthly?
Also, how is it so bloody fast?? That's awesome
I've disabled the geo restriction. You should be able to see the images!
Hey Bruno - great idea about the credit option! I'll think about that more. I have disabled the geo restriction for the images. Since my products are only shipped in the US I disabled outside traffic at first, but when I re-enabled it I must've forgot about the images.
Thanks for the kudos about the speed! I am using AWS Cloudfront to cache the site and I've also added as many optimizations as I could for images as well as code - including serving different optimized images depending on screen resolution, lazy loading images, inlining code, and minifying code.
I have a question for you. Why did not just use Shopify or something like that?
Just because you can develop, doesn't mean you should.
In the future, I'd suggest doing something the cheapest way possible to test demand, before investing a significant sum of money and time to build it.
For advice on how to get more sales, first things first... fix your image links and typos.
List your products on all the marketplaces you can find. Look into affiliates, look for places where rug people aggregate and be active there. Good luck!
"In the future, I'd suggest doing something the cheapest way possible to test demand, before investing a significant sum of money and time to build it." Great advice.
I didn't use Shopify for a couple reasons. I wanted to have full control over the code and not have to rely on any 3rd party plugins. Even though the initial setup took longer. I wanted the ability to quickly add new, custom features to the code base.
For scalability reasons I wanted the infrastructure to live on AWS.
I also built the backend using the Serverless framework with the plan to open source that code so people can deploy an entire e-commerce backend in a few minutes.
*If you're outside the US the images are probably not showing up for you. I am going to change that configuration.
Gotcha. You never know, maybe your e-commerce backend is the real product :P
It's a really pretty site. You should eventually work on how you photograph the rugs or correct for the angle that you took them from.
Have you analyzed for SEO? I see the URL for a rug is: /product/59c8631b907d2a0d06a4d5b7
After addressing SEO concerns you can start writing blog posts about where the rugs are sourced, who makes them, how they are made, etc.
I'd agree with the photo angle too. If someone is going to spend that much money on something then it should be clearer visually what they are going to spend their money on.
Who are your customers? Where do they hang out? Who can you write for to gain awareness of your store? Where is your inbound traffic coming from? Pinterest might be good for that btw.
How can you get some customers in (even if you don't make money) to give you feedback and reviews?
And true what Anthony says - maybe your product is the ecommerce thing you have built? If it were me, I would've used shopify first to validate the idea of selling rugs. Sure, it's not perfect by any stretch, but if someone wants a rug you sell then that wouldn't stop them buying? I have a shopify store as a side thing in my current business, it just about justifies its existence, but hopefully over time it will grow and I can then look at implementing something better. My choice was launch something with Shopify now, or not get around to launching a shop for 1-2 years.
Thanks for the compliment on the site. I agree about the photos. I'd like to have some in-situation shots in the future. Unfortunately the shots on the site don't do the rugs justice. Yeah I can probably update the urls to be more descriptive for SEO purposes. Good idea about the blog as well. Thanks for the advice!
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
👏 the hard truth. I agree with you 100%. In order to do what your saying would be a complete redesign of the site/brand, but that may only way these rugs are going to sell. And I don't know if it's worth the time/money it will take to do that, because it will take A LOT of time and money. I'll have to think about this.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago