Gift of Happiness is a kids-oriented site with a big mission and a big heart. The site sells educational type materials for children and offers resources for parents.
I am about to offer my first product for sale. It is an educational animated DVD. I am more of a teacher/artist, and less of a business man. My site has been up for some time but unless I pay for clicks, I don’t receive much interest. Although kids seems to enjoy the characters and parents typically report it has great potential, there must be some technical issues I’m not quite getting. Any help would be fantastic.
Thanks for your consideration. John Lawrence, owner
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi John,
Thanks for the opportunity to assist you. My kids are a bit too old for your site now but they would have enjoyed it. It’s good that you you’ve received positive feedback from parents and kids alike.
I don’t pretend to know much about this market so I don’t have a feel for what you’re competing with, other than the obvious assumption that the market is huge and so is the competition. On a basic level though if you are looking to get the ball rolling through increased traffic that shouldn’t prove too difficult. There are experts in the SRT better placed to advise but at minimum I would suggest you ensure that your site it optimized from a keyword perspective for the search engines, use social media such as Twitter and Facebook, join and post in forums. Most of this stuff is , time aside, free and remarkably easy to do.
From a local business point of view, I’ve seen similar things in my region of the UK where local press have embraced this type of thing which has helped drive interest through schools and nurseries.
Overall though John, you need to decide what it is you want to achieve through the sale of your products. Is it purely monetary or more philanthropic or both? How much do you wish to achieve in terms of revenues? Are you willing to invest in this venture to ramp it up quickly?
I’m sure you’ll get many comments from the SRT team but I have a common sense approach. Decide what it is you wish to achieve with this vehicle and plan accordingly, which will likely involve using the appropriate area experts. Keep it simple, achievable and put a time frame around it to keep you on track.
I wish you every success with Gift of Happiness.
Andrew Sayers
Acquire Business Consulting
+44 7789 386 990
Hi John
Driving traffic to your site is one thing, and as Andrew said – it is very easy to do, and relatively cheap, using the social media tools. It is also important to get the visitors to BUY, which is a bit more difficult.
Your website is very colorful, which is a good thing – it is not boring! Your website is very colorful, which is a bad thing as well – it makes it very difficult to emphasize! As a visitor, I’m overwhelmed by all the colors, and don’t know what to do. Consider a plain white website, with a BIG red BUY NOW! button, and this tells me, as a visitor, what is expected of me. Plain is not necessarily boring. It gives you the opportunity to make a few things stand out, and place a “call to action”. Think about uniformity in font (make it a little bit bigger), colors, and overall structure. Make the pages navigation buttons stand out.
Consider having a short video when a new visitor comes to your website, welcoming them, and telling them what to do (see http://www.jackdaly.net for example).
If all this is overwhelming for you, I suggest to delegate it to an experienced web/graphic designer. it will cost you money – and it will pay you money.
Raz Chorev
Your Personal Marketer
Hi John,
I don’t think the issues are technical as much as design and marketing. You can drive traffic in lots of different ways, but once people are there, you’ve got to make it easy for them to find what they want, get information, and buy something.
Your site is very colorful and cheerful, but also confusing. There’s too much going on, and it’s hard to tell where to look first. Simplify it. Make bigger tabs that say: Stuff for Kids; Stuff for Parents; Get a Sample, etc.
Make the background white or a light color. The colors on top of colors are hard to read, and the “buy now” buttons are hard to see.
Also, you’re selling books and videos, but not telling me anything about them. What are they about? What do they teach? How will they entertain a child?
You need to do four things:
1) Make a promise about your product (something that parents care about, like helping their child learn their numbers).
2) Paint a picture of what they’ll get (before you know it, your child will know her numbers by heart.). The parent should be able to “see” her child learning, laughing, and having fun with your products.
3) Prove that your product really works. Get some testimonials from happy parents and add them to your site.
4) Push (ask) for the order. Have a clear call to action (meaning ask people to do something, such as “order your copy”, “buy now.”
Jodi