Needing advice as a young aspiring entrepreneur

[BritBrat]

Hello my name is Brittany and I could use some advice. Just last month I started up my own business making jewelry, boutique style and all handcrafted. I have some inventory already uploaded on a website that I created myself nyajadejewelry.com and I have had almost 300 people viewing my site and I haven’t had any orders yet. It’s disheartening but I’m not giving up. If anyone could give me some advice on some aspects that I should improve on that would be most helpful.

[FiatLuxDave]

Hi Brittany,

You probably aren't getting any orders because your payment process won't complete. I tried it with the choker. I was hoping to give you your first order to prime your sales pump :) It is also not apparent whether your prices include shipping. This is important, as I do not see how you can make any profit at those prices if you do, and if you don't the shipping price needs to be calculated before the sale can be made. If "shipping not included in list price" is not made clear earlier in the process then you may later have people dropping out of the sale when they see the real price.

The other posters' points about discoverability and matching your target market are spot-on.

I made some money back in high school reselling wholesale jewelry, and one thing I would add is that one of the best ways to get the online sales to start moving is to also sell offline. In my case I would sell jewelry to kids at my high school which was nicer than dollar store junk but not as expensive as the real jewelry store down the street. Most of my customers were guys looking for a cheap way to impress their girlfriend. A good friend of mine sells jewelry both online and from a store, and he estimates that more than half of the online sales originate from a customer or referral from the physical store.

Making the first few sales are the hardest part of starting almost any business, so it should get easier. I don't think retail jewelry offers a great return on investment, but good luck in your endeavor.

[anon50118810]

I'm not an entrepreneur or into jewelry so I hope this advice isn't out of place.

Your jewelry is too inexpensive to be really handmade. You have a metal charm bracelet with several parts selling for $6. I'm assuming you're ordering components online and assembling them on demand. You describe your jewelry as boutique-style but at that price and quality you're competing with Amazon, which is impossible. Maybe instead refocus on a very specific theme or customer demographic, focus on two or three good pieces created from scratch, and charge a lot for them, like ten times what you're charging now.

Have you looked at sites from successful competitors to understand what they're doing differently from you?

Consider selling through Etsy or some other standard storefront. Your value to your customers is the jewelry, not the website. Any time spent on the website is distracting you from your core business. Actually I wonder if maybe what you really want to do is make the website and not the jewelry, because after all you're asking for help on a technical site, not a jewelry site. If web development is the real goal then consider just switching to that.

[constantcrying]

Discoverability seems to be your largest problem. To sell inventory you need to increase both the number of visits and the likelihood of converting a visit into a sale.

The later is mostly about your product and its presentation, what would make you buy that product?

Getting potential customers is another thing entirely. The quality of product/site is irrelevant if the number of visitors is small. The easiest way of increasing visitors is of course paid advertising, ideally targetting potential customers. Before paying significant money make sure that the views convert into actual sales!

If your website is only available via google that is bad. You should increase your discoverability, e.g. social media activities (tutorials, blogs, entertainment) or even other stores e.g. etsy (likely reduces profit margin, but customers are there). Google offers very little discoverability, just try how hard it is to reach your website via google, by just searching for the terms a customer who knows nothing about you would search for.

[BritBrat]

I have reached out to other social platforms like you mentioned. I made a Tik tok page, Facebook page, Instagram page, Mercari account, etc…and have even done some advertising on my own personal accounts for those platforms as well. Thank you so much for your input! It means a lot to me. I definitely have some things that I need to adjust on the site.

[tonylemesmer]

Make sure whoever visits your website matches the kind of person you're making the jewelry for. So if you think your designs appeal to twentysomething girls: post the website link in places where those kind of people will be browsing. Have pictures of the kind of customer you want on your website.

There are minimum 3 things you need to trigger a purchase - this is a good starting point: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/buying-cycle-and-triggers/

[BritBrat]

This is amazing advice thank you so much! I really appreciate you taking your time to help me out!

[tonylemesmer]

Its a science - and there's plenty of help out there. I'd like to start an online shop but I'm too distracted! But I've been on a couple courses to help with things like this.

[BritBrat]

I’ve gone through some of the sites and courses on the topic but it didn’t seem to change much, no matter how many things I read or research will be better than getting the input of like minded individuals such as yourselves who can look at my work and give input. This will all help immensely.

[ddmma]

Humans are un/predictable but gain their interest, attract their volatile attention with your unique value proposition. As rule of thumb you might consider the following: If (Pleasure - Pain > O) then { Purchase == Yes }

Interesting read: Stephen Wendel, Designing for Behavior Change - Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics

[BritBrat]

Thank you so much! I will definitely have to look into that!

[ddmma]

Also do it like everything is depending on it, it’s even more fun :)