How do we increase sales on our startup clothing website?

I am sorry that this will be such a long post. I do hope that it will help. I see many companies making the same mistakes that you are making. You are confused as to what your goals are and how to reach them. You need to realize what your goal is (and you only should have one goal), what are your strengths and what are the obstacles that are blocking you from reaching that goal. By looking at sales I fear you are don't understand what your goal should be for your company. Your goal: Your goal is to make as much money as possible for the least amount of effort in the shortest amount of time by selling clothes. That is it. Don't let any other concerns blind you to that goal. You make the common mistake of thinking that the website is your business, but it is not. You think that the number of sales that you make is your business, but it’s not that either. Your goal is to make as much money as possible for the least amount of effort in the shortest amount of time by selling clothes. There are several ways to streamline and improve the profitability of your company without getting bogged down in some of the issues that you think are holding you back. Issues: You want to sell to the market with the largest number of people that are willing to pay the highest amount of money your product right now. It is a balancing act as you very rarely get to maximize on all three. Right now your market is lacking all these. 1)     Size: It looks like right now you are marketing women in India who can read English, use computers to shop online, and are able to afford your prices. That strikes me as a very small niche even in a country with as many people as India. You also have the disadvantage of competing with every other local vendor who is trying to sell the same item to the some women, but are doing so in shops or at the markets. 2)     Location: People do not think that location matters with a website, but it does. But the term location is slightly different. You want to be the first person selling what a customer is looking to buy when they decide that they want to buy it and for a price that they are willing to pay. You have set up a small booth off on a side road and have decided to try to convince shoppers to come down a dark alley to look at your clothes. That takes a lot of work and you must be very good at convincing people that you are trustworthy and that they are not going to be taken advantage of if they follow you. Anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or is inconvenient will make them leave as it is safer and easier then taking a big risk for no apparent reason. 3)     Perception of Value: Perception of Value means that people think that your product costs less then what they would expect it to cost. People like to buy things that they perceive to be a good value (i.e. cost less then they expect for the level of quality they get). There is an odd corollary though, people perceive items that cost more as being of higher quality then products that cost less. That means that something that is truly a great value is not PERCIVED to be a great value as it does not meet their expected price. If someone offered to sell you a car for $50 you would not go “What a great deal!”, you would probably wonder “What is wrong with it that the price is so low.” To an American buyer your prices are so low so they may think it is cheap, while someone in India my question if the quality is worth such a high price.   So my recommendations (for what they are worth) are the following: 1)     Go to the biggest market that you can find with the people willing to spend the most money: In this case I think it would be someone like Amazon (you would need to apply to be approved as a seller) or even eBay (or both). People go there to shop for clothes and they are less afraid to buy something from these sites as they know they can get their money back if there is an issue. In my metaphor it moves you off the side street and into the marketplace. There will be more competition, but also many more people willing to buy your clothes. You would just need to change your links to point to the items you are selling from your website to their website. It also allows you to worry less about spending money developing your website right now as it will not be driving 100% of your sales. As you have the money to invest in your brand you can refine and expand your online identity, but you must first be known and have the money to invest.   2)     Charge more: Going to eBay or Amazon will mean paying some fees (and with Amazon I suggest shipping goods to their warehouse so they can handle shipping orders for you), but you are now selling to a much more affluent shopper and your goods are now perceived as being something exotic. They do not sell clothes like yours in the malls so you are now only competing with the other sellers in the online market that you choose to use. You are charging Rs 2,099.00 for your Reddish Pink Silk Kurti (about $48.50), but they can sell for up to $155 on http://www.amazon.com/Exotic-India-Kurti-Hand-Embroidery-Threadwork/dp/B0054JH89I/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&qid=1381853316&sr=8-13&keywords=Pink+Silk+Kurti (and honestly I think yours is much nicer). If you make a dress  that looks good and is made well don’t be afraid to charge a premium price. You will sell fewer items, but make much more money off each sale. Remember you can always give discounts and suddenly change the perceived value of your clothes. Something that is regularly $155 but is discounted to $120 is seen as a bargain when something priced at $10 is perceived as cheap (even when they are the same item). 3)     Enhance your image:  You have a few things that make your product seam cheap. The first is that your copy is not clean and feels like it was sent through Google Translator. You should go to a website like http://fiverr.com/ and have someone proofread and edit your copy. This will probably cost you less than $50 US and give you a much more polished look. You can use the same copy and photos (which are great by the way) on other web stores. Once you have money coming in you can spend the money to get the website improved.   I hope this helps. If you choose to ignore all of it I understand and will just give you this one simple piece of advice: People expect .COM websites that are in English to have things priced in $USD. When I see a price in some other currency I leave right away. At least add a drop-down menu with prices in Rs, $, £ and € for buyers in other countries.

Since you have already identified your problem, I will try to talk about just that. Clearly your first priority needs to be to get the conversion rate up. Lets divide this problem into two simple steps. ( I am avoiding the discussion on product quality and prices as those are obvious things) A) Get the bounce rate down by optimizing your landing page B) Analyze the incoming traffic to see if the people who are visiting the website are actually looking for your product or is it just the case of targeting gone wrong in your marketing. Talking about case (A) - These are some of the points which come to my mind. 1) There are 6+5+6 products on your home page. Out of these, only 6 are clearly visible. Rest are in the form of slide shows. The user would stay only if he/she finds something interesting on the landing page. By interesting I mean either something the user is looking for or some thing that catches his/her attention and prompts to explore further. Keeping this in mind, you might want to show more products on your landing page or may be a snapshot of all your product categories individually. 2) Images in the form of slide shows are good but why have two sliders? If the second one is for featured products what is the first one for? 3) What is the point of having beautiful images on an e-commerce site if I can not click on them to buy the product? (First slideshow) 4) How is the response for the products which are on sale? Why not try making the 'Sale' page as default landing page for a couple of weeks? 5) Having an in-house developer won't hurt. There are many things which must be changed in the website immediately. And when are 30 small changes in the website every month, you must have an in-house developer. 6) Get more products on your website. People are spoilt for choices and the boutique concept does not really do the magic in Indian internet space. 7) What is the default sort order of your products? Margins? Might make more sense to sort by ratings/popularity as the default option. Talking about case (B) 1) Try to see if you have too many male visitors. Your products would mostly appeal only to women. 2) Is any one traffic source giving better conversions in particular? Focus more on it. 3) Study the conversions. Find anything special with those visitors. "Torture the data enough and it will always tell you the truth" Finally, have a surprise gift on the checkout page. Promote this offer on every page of your website and see what items people add to their cart to get to the checkout page. All the best.

Your problem is deadly obvious. You state "we would like to avoid spending more on developing the website as we are a StartUp Company". You then proceed to say "We have received very [few] sales with a conversion rate of approx. 0.01%" and then you say "visitors however, they tend to leave within 2 minutes". This screams, your website is crap. It's not doing the job it is meant to be doing. How can an e-commerce company say: We don't want to develop our website? What business do you think you are in? So here's what you need to do. Do A/B multivariate testing, lots and lots and lots of it. Update your website every week and try and stretch out that two minutes by a few second every week. Bring that abysmal 0.01% conversion rate up, increment by increment every single week. What is the point of spend money on generating web traffic only for your website to bounce them away? Look at your full end to end sales process, starting from the point you are trying to attract a potential customers attention all the way to the delivery of the products. Every step of the way you should ensure maximal conversion/success rates. If you focus only one area you're just going to find that something else further down the sales process will lose you your customer. Don't believe me? Read the second half of

We are more inclined to trust our friends over a paid advertisement. As a result of this, getting ‘User Renerated Recommendations‘ should be a core focus of your marketing efforts as we continue down the track into the socially connected, 21st century, digital world. The popularity of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, (shall I go on?) have made it so that the most powerful forms of advertising that really any business or merchant can utilize is user generated recommendations. Friends telling friends what they recommend is nothing new. In fact, referrals are one of the oldest forms of marketing that has been utilized. The difference between now and five or more years ago is the sheer size, popularity, and amount of time that well over a billion people spend on these social sites. 7 Ideas to Implement in Your Business. 1. Make it easy to share. 1 or 2 clicks should be all that your prospects and clients need to do in order to share your business, product, or services to their network of friends and fans. 2. Ask people to share. Don’t beat around the bush about it. If you are proud of your business, products, or services; have a very blatant call to action encouraging users to help spread the word and share. You’ve seen how political pundits take away points from politicians if they don’t specifically ask for your vote? Well, the same holds true online. Make a direct request! 3. Make it ‘hard not to share.’ Some things are just too good NOT to share with friends and family. Whether or not it is because it is hilarious, think dollarshaveclub.com, or just an incredible deal, if the product, service, or offer is good enough, folks feel inclined to tell the people they care about. 4. Price Drop Drop the price if user shares or tweets about your product or service immediately before purchase. This could be a fool-proof way for you to maximize your user generated recommendations. Even the slightest of discounts can encourage your about-to-be-a-new-customer to share. 5. Offer Coupons Give coupons or incentives to your customers for sharing immediately after their purchases. If they share on Facebook or Tweet it, they could receive a coupon or discount. 6. Affiliate commissions and incentives. Give affiliate commissions, credits to your site, or referral incentives for your customers and prospects to share or tweet your product or service. These could be cash incentives, prize incentives, or even credits for future use. 7. Use Humor, Fear, or Emotion. The next marketing campaign you run, try and incorporate humor, fear, or some form of emotion that directly connects with your target market. Making people think, like, share, and talk about your advertising or promotion will yield more social interaction, more traffic, and hopefully… more sales.

Basic Promises, Trust (not a fly-by-night operator), expertise and uniqueness etc need to come out. Start by reviewing your site as a customer & not as a biz owner perhaps. Articulate on your site about why one should buy from you - whats the benefit for handmade vs machine-made, savings, fast delivery(?) etc. Experiment with promising faster delivery and see conversion impact. If all good, then re-engineer your processes for delivering the promise Provide more product information - weave, material etc. Zoom option, reviews etc FB fan numbers should get highlighted on the site (std widgets etc)

Why Do People Pay $150 For a Tee Shirt?The fact that you pick and choose products for your e-commerce site makes you an editor, just as a magazine editor picks and chooses which articles are published within his or her magazine. As an editor, you ideally build trust with your shoppers. As an editor, you are also the arbiter of how to position your products. Position them as a commodity and you will sell them at commodity prices. Romance and gussy them up as the coolest, hottest or most valuable thing, and you too can sell a $30 tee shirt for $150. 1. Take Advantage of "Pause Points"There are many points in an online purchase process where the visitor "pauses" for a moment before continuing to shop, to checkout or to receive a confirmation of his or her purchase. While typical retail wisdom states that one should not distract the customer from the task at hand, in my experience as an e-commerce practitioner I have found that there are many places where an offer or additional incentive to purchase performs quite well.These points include at the bottom of the shopping cart page as people add items to their carts, and on the confirmation page that people see after they have made their purchase. We typically offer relatively low-cost items that might not be heavily promoted throughout our site, or the ability to purchase items where the proceeds go to a particular cause that is part of our marketing campaign at that time. And these offers do quite well; our analytics reflect that.2 Highlight Your ExclusivesThis may seem like a no-brainer, but often retailers and marketers are so deep down into their business that they do not realize what exclusives they have to offer. Other exclusives may be lurking inside your business. You may have an exclusive VIP club or other membership program. You may have exclusive editorial such as Top 10 lists, guest editors who swoop in and provide their opinions on your products, expert shopping tips, user-generated content, buying guides and the like. While some of these ideas are time-intensive (such as organizing and monitoring user-generated content), creating Top 10 lists or asking partners or brands to provide some editorial is an easy way to "beef up" your site with some useful, interesting exclusives.3. Leverage the power of Social Media http://simicart.com/blog/how-to-use-social-media-for-increasing-sales-in-a-business-by-300/See their case study to get an overview of using social media for business. When social media are becoming more and more powerful than ever, to keep pace with the competitors, the business owners cannot ignore the trend of viral marketing via social networks, especially Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest. However, not all of e-retailers are aware of how to increase online sales fast using the tools that take advantages of the power of social media.http://simicart.com/blog/how-to-use-social-media-for-increasing-sales-in-a-business-by-300/4. Reduce Abandoned CartsIt’s not enough just to draw visitors to your mobile app. According to the Baymard Institute, only slightly more than a quarter of them add items to their shopping carts and actually buy them. You’re losing money by missing out on potential orders. Think about that for a minute. Your sales are one-fourth of what they may potentially be. What are tips that help your mobile app reduce abandoned carts?- Make the checkout process as short as possible. - Remind customers of their abandoned carts. Read my other post for further information about http://simicart.com/blog/increase-sales-in-a-business/In the a report conducted by Movies Unlimited, they saw that just by sending out the email to remind customer the items they placed in the cart, 1,5% of those previous abandoned are completed. They came back and make the purchase, especially if they’re encouraged by promotions in the reminding email.Besides, this study also gives a different prospect. A person abandons their carts because they are unprepared to make the purchase. Therefore, online store should give customers the option to complete their purchase when they are ready.5. Up sell your productUpselling and cross-selling commonly cause a little confusion. Sometimes, people these interchangeably, however, there’re some differences between them.Upselling is the action of encouraging customers to spend more than they had originally intended. For the purposes of this article, Upselling is when seller recommends the customer for a higher priced alternative to the item currently considering.While Cross-selling is the action of inviting customers to buy related or complementary items. It’s applied when satisfy additional or complementary needs are unfulfilled by the original item.So, come back to the solution – Upsell your products.Sometimes your customers don’t know how to make a product better. Or they’re still convincing whether having any different product fit for their needs. Your task is to instruct them!For example, your products made of slightly better leather or one special component’s handmade. Make sure to emphasize it as a distinction and ask if your customer might be convinced to make an upgrade.There are two keys to upselling. Can you guess what are they? Here are the answer : http://simicart.com/blog/increase-sales-in-a-business/

Increasing your conversion rates is crucial. Having a good conversion rate is the foundation of high sales volume. I also have the online store and recently, have faced with the same problem. I decided to choose the right platform for solving this issue. I chose Magento as it’s the most popular company. But soon I understood that they don’t care about my problems and gave me only standard options, I was disappeared. My friend advised me to try the new company – ShoppingCartElit. First of all, I was doubt, because I have never heard of it. However, their team suggested me some options which helped me to increase my sales almost to 50%. They have tool – TEA (Threat and Engagement Analytics), it was perfect. It is a free add-on that gives you the ability to track your visitor's mouse movement and mouse and keyboard clicks on your website allowing you to understand better your shoppers’ behaviors. I’m definitely satisfied, their price matches their quality. I recommend it, according to my experience.  Disclosure: I wrote the post.

Well most of the points have been covered I believe, although I haven't gone through all the answers. What I would suggest: 1. Your Product: Handmade dresses for ladies of all ages. Unique and elegant. Detailing matters like the fabric, work, style, etc. are critical. Fitting is the most important aspect(you must have a made to measure system on your site), online measuring chart should do. 2. Your Traget Market: Female shoppers who hire tailors/master for a dress. Working women predominantly in the age group of 21 to 38 may be. The marketing channels for this TG will be: 1. Content Marketing- Give a personality to each dress like defining it by its make the fabric, work, significance etc. Use this content extensively on all your online platforms to reach out to maximum people. Your content must be informative and insightful try to make it as interesting as possible. 2. Facebook marketing: Spend on some ads targeting your age groups in the regions like (Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, to start with because here your have your chunk of buyers). Again here your content is the key. 3. Google AdWords: Use unique keywords and only in the regions mentioned above. Keep it tight initially and see the results. 4. Free Fashion Counselling: Add this feature to make people talk to you may be one dedicated day in a week. This way you will get a lot of customer feed back. Similarly a Twittinair will also do. 5. Affiliate marketing: - Try to get some designer dresses on your site. Do cross promotion with the designers. - Tie up with a good wedding photographer on FB for your brand promotion like Tarun Chawla. Work out a deal with him. Push quality content through him. - Try to get some models talk about your products on your blog, FB pages etc. There are many out there looking for cross PR. You can use their FB pages as well. Remember, Content is the King. Price in the Prince. Service is the Soldier. All have to be good to win the battle.

What if nothing is really wrong with your site/ page? Clearly you have a traffic driving mechanism, one that displays probably 1 or 2 or 3 of your products, Obviously the viewer is either interested/ has taste in your products or he is a guy who just dropped by to ... in the first case, lets say 5 out of 100 visitors were very impressed by your product, and they can afford to buy the product. but just imagine, how many would go for an impulse buy (on a 2000Rs product), (you have the figure, your traction % of buyers). since it is an online store, they think they can always come back. and unlike an offline one they are confident the stock will await them. Now you have 5 prospects. and they should come back ASAP to make the purchase. else there is a good chance that they will forget your name. 1) have a time frame for your discount coupons, (3-4 days) on the product page. and keep the coupon flash.  2) on every product page have a mail id drop box, so that they drop their ID for you to intimate when their fav product is on sale. this will ensure atleast 1 or 2 of your prospects are converted. 2) place your product on all the major market places, where girls ready to shop visit. and see that the prices on your page are atleast 5% less than that on registered market places (just in case..) it will take some time for your brand to enjoy the top of mind status, until then consider and sell it as a commodity on market places. till you have a loyal customer base.