Looking for feedback from a web perspective on a business idea

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NewKidOnTheBlock

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I'm going to be launching a luxury online business specialising in high end cashmere. I'm wondering if any web gurus here could give me feedback from an online perspective relating to this business idea ? Obviously, I'm going to have online and offline marketing strategies. Just looking for feedback from a web expert really :)

Thanks

Mods, sorry if this is the wrong place, didn't know where else to put it.
 
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Kieran

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I am not a web guru nor a mind reader :) Can you tell us more specifics e.g. the country, keywords that you intend to target?

Have you researched the keywords for this? It's a pretty competitive area for the related cashmere keywords anyway.

Isn't a guru one of those Indian lads with a turban?
 
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NewKidOnTheBlock

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Sure,

Country I want to target primarily is Ireland.

Keywords I intend to use will be a variation of generic keywords starting with primary ones such as clothing, mens clothing, womens clothing, and narrowing it down to numerous types of generic keywords such as "Knitwear" and "V Neck Sweaters" etc etc and because keyword search for Cashmere related stuff is really quite low, was going to be running online and offline ad campaigns increasing knowledge about it etc.

It's going to be cheaper than the cashmere you can buy in this country without subsidising on quality in the slightest making it more accessible to people who appreciate that quality.
 
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Kieran

Guest
Thanks for that. I think Ireland online clothing (no experience on offline) is an extremely competitive market. I get regular contacts from people looking to set up ecommerce sites for everything from baby clothes to wedding dresses and they have no idea of the market - you seem to haver some knowledge.

With the right SEO strategy you could make some impact but I think you need seriously to initially have a conversation with a professional SEO expert on the strategy you want to follow and develop a proper Internet marketing plan. This is cookie cutter text to be honest for any ecommerce site I think. A solid SEO plan is a 4-6 month one with fairly intense work required for the competitive words.

There are several expert SEO people here that do this 24x7 so I will bow to their knowledge and slink off into the sidelines and draw nice boxes and play with CSS and Photoshop.:)
 
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NewKidOnTheBlock

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I like your style. Yeah I've done a lot of research and am learning more and more.

Thanks for your tips anyway Kieran, hopefully some of the other lads will give me a digout and show off some of their knowledge. :)

So anyone else have any ideas on this ?

Greatly appreciate any tips
 
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link8r

New Member
I would say - research, research, research.

Ireland is still a relatively tiny, tiny market online. Most successful sites target the US/UK. It's just really small here.

I've heard a scary statistic that a company in the US who do €3bln in online stationary a year have around a 1.2% conversion ratio. With a potential market of nearly a billion people (selling in the US, Canada, UK + EU). Map that into Ireland, which I doubt even spends a billion online (excluding flights+hotels).

Talk to some people with online clothing shops - ask them how they promote themselves, how much they spend on marketing, how long it takes to build up a trade etc.

I would suggest diversification over specialising as a good strategy for any business, particularly in a downturn.
 
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NewKidOnTheBlock

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Good points, I was definitely going to be targetting the UK also from the off, I think that while there is more competition in that country from a web point of view, I'd still be able to make a dent in the market. For my proper site, I was going to have a .co.uk domain also hosted on a UK hosting company or Blacknight if they have UK servers set up. Either or.

I was thinking about what you were saying, my research tells me that a spike in interest would come from offline promotions such as radio and media exposure but for consistant sales progress, I would be relying on Adwords and backlinks mainly to generate word of mouth among the "sneezers" out there.

Any thoughts ?
 
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websitedesign

New Member
If you want to take on everything yourself then be prepared to loose alot of time and money learning the ropes.

-Start with market research, industry/competitor analysis, customer profiling, etc

-buy domain/hosting at godaddy

-learn ftp and find a cms to work with (magento for shopping cart)

-Photoshop for designing the layout

-Dreamweaver or notepad for coding

-Internet marketing... well lets just say it's complicated and 90% of companies waste money and get few results.

Hiring professional outside help makes sure your money is invested in the proper areas and gets the highest return on investment. Solid companies know what works and get results.
 
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NewKidOnTheBlock

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I was thinking of starting with something like Google Checkout or Yahoo E-Commerce, grabbing an accurate .com domain just to get the ball rolling and once I get sales i.e. additional REAL accurate authentic PROOF for the bank that my product is good, I would straight away ditch it and get a proper site.

What do you think of this websitedesign? Thanks for the post by the way.

PS: My posts aren't generating that much action so every reply helps :)
 
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link8r

New Member
NewKidOnTheBlock said:
Good points, I was definitely going to be targetting the UK also from the off, I think that while there is more competition in that country from a web point of view, I'd still be able to make a dent in the market. For my proper site, I was going to have a .co.uk domain also hosted on a UK hosting company or Blacknight if they have UK servers set up. Either or.

I was thinking about what you were saying, my research tells me that a spike in interest would come from offline promotions such as radio and media exposure but for consistant sales progress, I would be relying on Adwords and backlinks mainly to generate word of mouth among the "sneezers" out there.
Click to expand...

Hosting in the UK isn't going to be a major issue for you - given all the other challenges you have in SEO. Google uses the hosting IP to guess the targeted country if you're not using that countries TLD or using the Geo tool in Webmasters.

You are going to have to build a lot of awareness and information about the problem and the solutions, that's the difficulty here.

Yes, the UK market is quite big and ranking there can be hard, particularly for popular search phrases. I could be wrong but I think the days of a newbie setting up a site on a shoe-string and making a living are drawing to a close (unless its a super awesome idea). Any business takes a bit of a budget and some people seem to think that €2,000 is enough. €2k will get you a site but it won't get you a web business. The problem is that you're competing with people with bigger budgets chasing the same customers - you can be sure the bigger budget will (in most cases) win.

Just honest advice.
 
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link8r

New Member
Was just putting it out for discussion - you're right: I have no idea what your budget is. I have a rough idea of what the various elements might cost though.

I met a very nice chap a week ago - a couple of Irish firms took in excess of €40k off him to build a very pretty but very overpriced site.

Neither of these companies have actually traded online - they sell web technologies and solutions but they sell via word of mouth. Neither have an SEO/Online marketing campaign.

To me - and feedback welcome - isn't it dangerous to entrust web marketing/development (web business development, not tech-development) to someone who has little/no experience in actually selling online?
 
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NewKidOnTheBlock

New Member
Thanks for telling me. When I hear stories like that guy who paid that much for that website, it makes me feel a little more confident about things as I firstly, don't have that sort of a budget for a site but definitely would not have done something that silly.

I completely agree with you. I think it's suicidal in a business sense to outsource something to someone who knows as little as said man in example above. You outsource to save time/money or because that person is an expert at what they do.

For example, If I was looking to outsource to an SEO expert who has experience of selling online and I could afford you, I'd get in touch with someone like yourself. :)
 
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