I want to hear some feedback on why we might not be getting the conversions expected. We launched using a WordPress setup just to limit our risk on development (e.g. produce an MVP), so I would hope that is not the feedback (but if it is, so be it). Please be brutal as normal :) If we suck, we need to hear it.
Thanks!
1. The design is boring and tacky. You really need to ditch those flames at the top, flames to me are an immediate warning sign the site you are on is going to suck.
2. The designs lack any kind of design to them. I don't get the content of some of them and I find the shirt that says something along the lines of, "Popped my cherry" somewhat gross.
3. The container around the site is too big and the combination of the white and purple border is a nightmare for my eyes.
4. The site lacks content, consistency and is all over the place. My eyes don't know where to focus...
Hopefully that helps. I'm not trying to be rude, but extremely honest.
Basically, content we are lacking and working on, I am concerned about drawing peoples focus so we need to study that some more. Some of the shirts are specific to a group of people, and I don't think they will have a mass appeal, but I hear your comment.
Thanks for taking time
You'll need to either pick a niche, or outdo them in either designs, price, or variety.
I feel our value to people is we stock almost all of our shirts and we don't have shipping and handling fees etc. Something we saw when we researched is other sites started their tees at 15-20 but then tacked on 8-10 shipping. So we thought instead, just make it flat and get it to people as quick as possible.
From your comments though, my guess is none of that comes across on the site, and/or it is not a valid draw? Of course, if no one likes the designs none of that matters, or if the price point scares people away, again none of it matters.
I hear you on picking a niche etc, I think that is where we need the content to fill in. Its good to have this feedback now while we are in the early stages, I'd rather hear it today and fix it over the next month than have huge amounts of content that didn't work.
Greatly appreciate you being direct and providing solid feedback.
We started off trying to target and launch some of the Halloween Horror Nights shirts, and hence we rushed to launch a little earlier than I would have normally liked. But you nailed it, we aren't trying to be a large reseller and have hundreds of active designs, although I think donkey tees only has a small resale side now. We were shooting more for a niche of some slightly off color, but mostly pop culture topics. The idea was to only keep around 40-50 active designs for order, and to make them a better quality than most others.
I'd say its probably an easier road to be a reseller because you can pick designs that have a track record of selling and then just compete on price and service. In our case we are trying to hit a harder target I think, not that the t-shirt business isn't already crowded as hell anyway. And I think a couple of people nailed it, we aren't communicating clearly through our design about what we are doing and why it looks like we are charging more but really are the same price as others because we don't have shipping charges in the US.
Thanks for taking time.
So maybe you can leverage the social aspect of the internet here to keep your inventory costs down (with a slight hit to speed of delivery?)
Also, are you guys looking to custom print? Because I could argue that the money that you were going to spend to purchase inventory could maybe be better spent with a machine that could quickly produce prototypes for the first, say, 50 orders of a new hot design, and then if it escalates, you can get more production. What I guess I'm trying to say is that you could be more elastic with your inventory by sinking your startup cost (or what you were going to pay to GET those initial quantities of the current designs) with a screen printing setup that could print modest qualities (allowing you to iterate faster), and then hook up with bigger printers when necessary
Our value proposition beyond custom designs is that we stock almost all our shirts and you aren't being asked to pay shipping and handling fees etc. We just do a flat cost for the shirt shipped to you (INTL orders do have an added shipping fee). Although I see an A/B test lining up over this, given a couple of comments about cost.
Another member made this point, but I'll repeat it. The design of the site is not very usable, and looks outdated. You should look into that, because tshirts fall inside the fashion industry. Where design is #1.
I think you and the other member(s) are right, conversions are suffering because of the design. Hence job 1 is to change it. The odd part is looking at the other t-shirt sites that are popular and doing well their designs seem to be only so-so, and overall look like they were stamped from a mold. Also most are not mobile friendly at all, we are at least mostly responsive and operational on a mobile device too.
This is not to say we made some radically cool design that is better, obviously, plus we used a template to save time for the initial launch. We were trying to do some things differently, like not cramming shirt designs with no whitespace and hiding prices until you get into the details of the shirt, or in a lot of cases until you go to checkout. I was trying to not do that but obviously these other sites design must work. And since ours is lacking a conversion rate I would call successful, we have to adapt.
I also evaluated price again today when I was bouncing around other sites. Someone else brought that up, which to me is always worth evaluating. Overall for those sites using the same quality shirts, once you checkout they we are all within a few dollars of each other, with us being middle of the pack usually. There are some shirts that are high discount mass produced tees that you can get for 19 shipped.
I am thinking we are also suffering though because we don't call it out in a bold way saying shipping is always free in the US. That could make people see a $18-25 shirt and they mentally do the math of another 6-8 dollars and say hell no thats way too expensive. So I think we need to figure out a much clearer way to communicate our value prop on that front.
I always appreciate feedback, and the fact people here are generally direct and don't load each other with BS .
Thanks again for taking the time.