Creating Product Lines / Over Time

[MatthewV]

Ah, have a very different working characteristic from me. Very very different. I have not been able to make the same shape more than about 20 times.

 

 

You have been taking good quality photos. When pricing for online, consider doing it from the photograph instead of the piece in the hand. Make sure the price still makes sense still. Overall, I feel you are pricing a bit too low -- which leave the potential buyer wondering if there is something wrong.

[Joseph Fireborn]

I agree on my prices being low. I wanted to get sales more than I wanted to get money in the beginning. I will raise my prices again when I list more items. I have them all the same because of experimental purposes.

 

Everything I do in my shop has to be done from a testing point of view, so I can gather data and make the most optimal changes for the long term. Emotional prices won't let me understand the the greater picture of sales long term. I agree on the problem of price being to low influence questioning about something being wrong, that's why I am slowly moving prices around. When I started all my prices for mugs were $30. I sold 2 at those prices then I decreased to $22. No increase in sales. Increased to $25 and sales happened again, while my numbers are low to consider statistics from a error point of view my views per day are an avg of 25-30. So the cheaper pricing netted less sales those 2 weeks I left it low. Anywho boring statistics with low data pool isn't fun to conversation about. When I have thousands of data points I will make a big post about all my research. Hopefully I will keep getting sales so I can do this.

 

Thanks for all your ideas. I appreciate your thoughts.

[MatthewV]

Sets of four/six/eight. That might be the way to go. It will get you into the ~$100 range without changing your products. Even if four random pieces would work as a set, I doubt the public would understand.

 

Smart people are also mindful of shipping costs and have an issue spending $10 shipping on a $25 item.

[Joseph Fireborn]

I have thought about sets of 4/6/8 and I think that is a good plan since people like to buy mugs in multiples if they are looking to replace their pantry full or stock it. This would be a good opportunity that I am currently missing as all my mugs are different. So I think I will probably throw a few different sets of 4 this week.The plan there would be to make the same base shape and have slightly different marks on each pot, the same style just not exactly the same way. This would keep me happy and also make for an interesting set to look at sitting with a friend drinking some tea or coffee.

 

As far as the shipping goes. I really have no idea what motivates people to spend money on shipping. 10 years ago I would have said that shipping is a huge factor in a purchase. Nowadays... I am not so sure, everyone has bought something off the internet, and more and more companies are becoming internet only companies, and I think shipping has became as common as tax in a lot of peoples minds. I know I am picky about shipping, but some people don't even bat an eye at it I guess. I sold a spoon rest, the only one I had listed for 10 dollars with 8 dollars shipping because it went coast to coast. 18 dollars for a spoon rest? Seriously blew my mind. I was just experimenting with it to see if people would buy them, and how many hits I would get from a single spoon rest being added to my shop. Apparently they are a popular item to sell as well, I just didn't think I could sell them for that price. 

 

I have a lot of ideas for testing prices once I get my item listings into the 100's. The issue with my current situation is I can't test reliably because I am only getting 20-30 views a day. This means that I have to make a change and wait months, and then still it wouldn't be statistically a good indicator of the test. So once I am getting 100-200 views a day I can start experimenting with prices and shipping.

 

Some of the ideas I had for shipping was:

 

1. Include all the shipping in the cost in the product price, and just make profit on some if the shipping is close, and break even if its far away. I personally am not a fan of this situation because I currently refund any shipping overages over a dollar. So like sell the same mug for 35 dollars with 0 dollars shipping.

 

2. Include some of the shipping cost in the product price, and lower the shipping to like 5 dollars. So make the mugs cost 30, and the shipping 5. Would this be more appealing I don't know.

 

A friend of mine who sells jewelry can run test like these because he has over 1000 views a day. He sells necklaces with charms for 24 dollars. He said that he thought he could get more views by lowering the price of his items to 18 dollars. So the way he did this was to make the listing say 18 dollars which was for the charm, then make a listing option for a chain, which adds +6 to the price. The results of his A/B test doing this was wildly successful. He had way more sales on the 18 dollar listings than the 24 dollar listings, even though nearly everyone still purchases the chain for the full price of 24. So he currently has changed to that option permanently.

 

So I think having the listing price be as low as possible is inviting to get the customer to your page and out of the search results, then once they are on your site if they like your item enough they wouldn't mind the shipping addition. Where if the item was 35 dollars and 0 shipping, the initial 35 might cause them not to click, because they assume it is going to have shipping cost as well. However I hope to get my prices into the 35 dollar range with the 10 dollar shipping. I am also going to test using their system to approximate shipping price since I now know what box and weight each will be, I think this will probably be the best solution as closer customers will get the discounted price without me having to refund it afterwords. 

 

It all seems so simple at first, but you really have to think in depth about sales if you want to be successful at this stuff. The world of conversions is a huge business that I have read vast amounts of information about back when I was building websites for companies and streamlining conversion pages. 

 

I wish I had more items up right now as I can't wait to test these types of things. My son has been on spring break with me so I haven't gotten anything done, and I have had a lot of wasted time from testing the past few months. I am going back into glossy glazes for a while to get my store listings back up. I plan to throw 25-50 mugs a day for the next few weeks cause I want to get this business going.

 

BTW, really enjoying the conversation here. Thanks for giving me ideas and something to think about Matthew.