[patio11]

I mostly sell software to businesses rather than selling balsamic sauce to upper middle class women but, hey, if you want free advice:

1) Every e-commerce company ever will tell you to offer "Free shipping" even if you have to build it into the price of the bottle. Your target customer doesn't care about the difference between $15 and $20 but, oddly, she does care about paying five whole dollars to ship something she could "just pick up at the store."

2) You're currently selling authentic, which is better than selling nothing at all, but authenticity is not the primary driver of the food purchasing decisions of upper-income Americans. Some options which would complement authenticity: exclusive ("not like the kind you get at the supermarket" / (generally not explicit but heavily implied) "better than what the poor people put on their caprece"), healthy (oh God is that a big one), decadent, social conscience (produced by small family-owned farms rather than big evil agribusiness) etc.

Yes, there's a bit of tension between someone wanting to use class consciousness as conspicuous consumption, but meet your customer where she is at -- and she is at Starbucks.

3) She doesn't care about your story. She cares about her story. Does this make her better than the other moms of the PTA who buy $5 balsamic at the supermarket? If so, lead with that, support with your story.

4) Get some photos of people on your site. Laura of Laura in the Kitchen, for example, as she is a good stand-in for your customer's ideal self. Failing that, if someone who is involved in actually making the balsamic has camera appeal, use them instead.

5) Do some deep thoughts on where people are in the purchasing process when they find you. If they're sure they want this, you don't put the "BUY OUR STUFF" nearly front and center enough. If they're not, your current focus on persuading them that you're the best balsamic makes more sense.

[iyulaev]

You know patio11, sometimes I read your blog posts and get a feeling of lingering doubt, like, "there's no way this guy can be as clever and successful as he claims." And then I see a comment of yours (like this one) and any trace of doubt evaporates.

[tmandarano]

Thank you! Extremely helpful.

[colinm]

6) Don't have an order page that 404's

http://www.balsamicsauce.com/collections/frontpage/products/...

[newobj]

"upper middle class women" "moms of the PTA"

holy wtf dude?

[tptacek]

Women are more likely to shop for food than men.

Upper middle class women spend more on premium food products than lower middle class women.

(I'm a friend of Patrick's and have had dinner with him enough to guess that he's not food-savvy enough to know that upper-upper class women wouldn't buy "balsamic sauce" because it isn't packaged in a thimble and doesn't cost $150; he just happened to get that one by accident.)

Moms often cook for their families.

Moms of the PTA are especially engaged with their family life, and are especially likely to take seriously the process of shopping for premium food products.

This is called customer targeting. It's about as sexist as it is ageist to target advertising for American Girl Dolls to 8 year girls.

I'm not sure what's so hard to understand about this. Sometimes, by being knee-jerk and superficial in your reaction to gender issues, even in the "right" direction, one can actually come close to betraying a lack of understanding about what the real issues are.

(I say this as someone who has spent an embarrassing amount of money on vial-sized jars of balsamic.)

[patio11]

Is that like "WTF, the primary market for this is not upper middle class women" or "WTF, you are being very blunt about this." If the second, guilty as charged. If the first, I'd very much like to hear who you think buys premium-priced balsamic.

[snowwrestler]

Women who are older than PTA age. The percent of old people in the population is increasing, and older women tend to have more money, more time, and fewer kids in the house. Most PTA moms in the U.S. do not feel they have the time or money for premium groceries one might linger over. They do care about healthy, but they're not feeding their kids premium balsamic.

[coldtea]

That's not at all that the PC parent meant by this.

And I don't think it's true either -- that older people are the major buyers of premium groceries. I don't see that many older people when I go into premium grocery stores -- except if by that you mean 35-50.

[dragonwriter]

> Is that like "WTF, the primary market for this is not upper middle class women" or "WTF, you are being very blunt about this." [...] If the first, I'd very much like to hear who you think buys premium-priced balsamic.

Upper-middle class foodies. Who are probably less likely to be women than the market for non-premium balsamic.

[mechanical_fish]

This is a fine hypothesis but, without data, it's hard to see why it's probable. In the USA, two-thirds of grocery shopping is done by women. There are studies:

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/newswire/2011/in-u-s-men-are-sh...

...which suggest that men make 38% of retail grocery shopping trips. So, if you're going to envision a representative person who is looking for a grocery item, you should probably start out by envisioning a woman.

It is, unsurprisingly, difficult to find more specific information online for free. Instead, by googling "market analysis salad dressing", I find approximately six market research organizations that offer to sell me a report. Perhaps the OP has bought such a thing, but none of the rest of us are likely to bother.

Of course, what actually matters when trying to convert website visitors is not the demographics of the universe, or of US grocery buyers, or even of US buyers of balsamic vinegar, but the behavior of the people who are actually reaching the website. About whom we really know nothing.

[newobj]

Let's focus on your "moms of the PTA" comment.

[patio11]

OK. Can you articulate why you object to me using those words, now that we're in apparent agreement that the target customer is actually an upper middle-class woman? I mean, I know why it would cause a few of my professors to sputter, but their rationale for that isn't persuasive. Maybe yours is.

[ktsmith]

Your summary is my sister in law and her mommy group friends. They would totally buy this stuff if they thought it would make them "better" than the other women in the mommy group or if it were more socially conscious in some way so it could be a talking/bragging point at the next mommy meeting.

[tmandarano]

To his credit, "moms of the PTA" are quite close to our target customer.

[coldtea]

Yes. It's a social critique style comment.

It doesn't have to represent the 100% of the consumers of such products. Just the majority.

And by the unwritten rules of how we talk about such things (in essays and such), they don't even have to be "moms of the PTA" literally. It's enough to be "moms of the PTA"-like, ie. ascribing to belong (and exhibit) the same kind of social characteristics (class, sophistication, etc) as "moms of the PTA".

[throwit1979]

Sorry, patrick cares more about the actual reality of what motivates buying decisions of the target demographic than whatever is nicer to believe.

[tmandarano]

Correct. Thank you Patrick.

[coldtea]

Holy wtf back at you.

For calling the Politically Correct SWAT teams into innocent conversation. Can people say anything that does not annoy the PC crowds anymore?

Yes, in the real world, women drive more food purchases such as this than men. And mostly "upper middle class" women, or, to be more precise, upper middle class wannabes, buy something like balsamic.