Hassassin's ecommerce journey

[bmyers]

​

It's been a while and we've made some progress since then (not all positive though). I'll go over:​

The source of our first few sales. The marketing & branding initiatives we’re working on. Our next steps for building the brand and driving sales.

​

​ We finally launched the flagship product​

Launching the flagship henna kit took way longer than expected.​

I wanted to launch around Feb-April.​

But our landing page and ads went live in the first week of August 2024. And we’ve also uploaded our catalogue on TikTok (at a discounted rate to build momentum on the platform). View attachment 58127​

There were a bunch of things that went “wrong” with the launch process:​

Building the landing page on Shopify app PageFly was a struggle! It took some fiddling to ensure the page was responsive across all devices (and even then it’s not the best on desktop, but we’re optimizing for mobile anyway.) Our product model bailed on us. A friend of a friend agreed to be the model for the brand/flagship product. We were supposed to shoot a video with her showcasing the product and her feedback, but she bailed last-minute. So we rolled with the punches and continued with a more product-focused ad (without a human face involved). Printing issues. The flagship product involves custom designs that need to be mass-printed. Our printer started messing up a bunch of these as we prepared influencer boxes! TikTok violations for delivery. Honestly struggling to wrap my head around the platform and how you’re supposed to mark an order as fulfilled or shipped. Keep getting violation warnings for this. This is not good considering that TikTok is our ONLY source of sales so far.

Ongoing: ​

Launched Google ads focused on the flagship product at the start of August. We ran a TikTok video ad for a week to test the waters. During this last week, I’ve set up an ad group for our white-labeled products that runs to the catalog page. I’m also using TikTok Affiliate Centre to find and send products to potential influencers.

​ “The numbers, Hassan”​

27 Jul - 27 August:​

Sales: 4 sales - £17.00 in revenue.​

TikTok has been our only source of sales so far despite running ads to the Shopify Store.​

These sales are for our white-labeled product (tattoo stickers) which aren't that unique and retail for £3-6 on our TikTok shop, and £9.99 on our Shopify Store.​

The products are available elsewhere on Amazon and via other players in this space.​

But our branding is different and we tell a story with each SKU.​

Our flagship product, on the other hand, hasn’t had a single sale.​

I’m quite worried about this because it’s had 400+ visits from paid search costing £193, & 0 conversions. Makes me wonder:​ Is our product a dud or do we just need time for the market to respond? Do I need to drive demand with aggressive influencer marketing? I’ve been thinking about launching ads on FB/Meta, but I’m holding off because we’re spending a lot right now without any ROI. My think is that if there’s a solid need for the product, it should sell with ads…

​

Not sure how to read the data and respond appropriately. Any ecom vets have an opinion here?​

Traffic: 462 users​

Paid search: 286 Direct: 114 Organic search: 55

Ads running: ​

As a content/SEO guy, I’m new to ads and enjoy the process of planning and running them.​

Currently, I have one conversion-focused Search Campaign with two Ad groups:​

Ad group to the landing page for our flagship product (been running for a few weeks and is the main source of traffic). Clicks: 332 Impressions: 24,451 CTR: 1.36% CPC: £0.58 Cost: £193.12 Conversions: 0 Ad group to our catalogue of white label products (launched this week) within the same campaign. Not worth sharing data because it launched 3 days ago.

I’m having conversion tracking issues with Shopify. Working on correcting it. Let’s see how that goes​

Finding the whole paid ads thing daunting but fun. If any of you reading can help me out here I’m all ears.​

Speaking of ads…​

TikTok’s CPC works out 100% cheaper​

​

We recorded a product ad and ran a TikTok promo that leads to the TikTok product listing:​

CPC: 0.19 GBP Impressions: 12,016 Clicks: 307 CTR: 2.55% Total cost: 58.17 GBP Conversions: 0

Compared to Google Ads, that’s roughly a 100% difference in total CPC. Although, while I write this I realize the comparison is unfair as the TikTok ad creative is a polished video ad, and the Google Ads are search only.​

A better comparison for TikTok would be YT/Meta video ads.​

Brand growth:​

170 followers on TikTok. Roughly 100+ from last month

We know producing content is going to be key for organic growth and exposure, but it’s been difficult for my wife to find the time with my daughter at home.​

My daughter will be back to school next week, which means we can focus on producing more content on TikTok and growing our following.​

To be honest, we’ve both been a bit down considering the poor sales performance of our flagship product and all the time that went into it, but the trickle of sales from TikTok has given us some hope lol.​

If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have gone with a custom all-in-one kit to launch the brand. Instead, I would try to pick one part of the kit to refine and improve first.​

Loving your story (and product). Very cool to watch in real time! Good luck and congrats on the launch!!

Thanks so much for sharing.

 

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[Hassassin]

Love the feedback @Spenny @MitchC & @amp0193. Here are the actions I've taken so far based on that + what I plan to do next:

Today I've:

• Ditched the landing page for paid ads and updated the original Henna Boxx ad to link to the product display page instead, based on feedback from @MitchC & @amp0193. Let's see how this performs, as we're currently at 500+ clicks & 0 conversions (gulp!).
  
  Note: Instead of creating a new ad, I updated the final URL of the published Henna Boxx ad so that it now goes directly to the PDP. Should I have created a new ad group or ad for this?
  
  
• Updated the product display page copy to feature a bulleted list of "what you get" in the text description + added a link to the video within the description.

Also recently uploaded our first blog post. I'm not expecting an immediate return from these just yet, but they can slowly help with the overall authority and traffic of our site. We'll also repurpose messaging & topics for brochures and product-related marketing.

Next priorities:

• Social proof: We have a small-scale but recognized "influencer" who's offered to review our product and give it some love in exchange for a sample. We're working on creating her order, and will use her content to build out our social proof to integrate into the product display page.
  
  
• Better product images: Our product images are on the plain side and need refining to concisely convey the value of the product and what it actually is. I'm researching ideas on how to improve the images so that my wife can get working on them. It'll probably take more time than we like because my wife isn't that experienced with graphic design.

 

[MitchC]

Sinuwi tjuq qez cavvup
Neli emm vji cavvupt e tumof dumuas vjev tvepft uav, puv vji tvaqof hjutv cavvupt
Neli ov hu tvseohjv vu desv puv vji tvaqof iyvse quqaq tviq
Sinuwi vji tqidoem usfis puvit epf tjuq qez cavvupt gsun desv
Nevdj vji qsudiif vu djidluav epf emm djidluav cavvup dumuast vu eff vu desv tu emm vji teni tvepf uav dumuas

Xjisi esi zua tipfoph qiuqmi? Og ov't vji capfmi qehi vjisi ot pu onehi tjuxoph xjevt edvaemmz opdmafif op vji cuy, tjux iwiszvjoph, neli ov muul moli e taqis huuf fiem

O'f ci vitvoph iwiszvjoph xuslt vuu, 500 dmodlt epf pu qasdjetit ot cef, esi vjisi epz eff vu desvt?

Xjisi ot vji vseggod dunoph gsun? Esi vji eft uqvonotif gus qasdjeti iwipvt?

Zua'si xsovoph cmuh qutvt xjip zua jewi qeof eft sappoph epf pu temit

O'f ci xevdjoph sidusfopht epf fuoph iwiszvjoph O duamf vu hiv vji tovi vu dupwisv

 

[Two Dog]

Sinuwi tjuq qez cavvup

Jux duni? Ot sappoph exez e lpuxp qsucmin?

O upmz tex Tjuq Qez gus vji gostv voni e gix xiilt ehu epf jitovevif gus exjomi puv lpuxoph XVG ov niepv.

 

[MitchC]

Jux duni? Ot sappoph exez e lpuxp qsucmin?

O upmz tex Tjuq Qez gus vji gostv voni e gix xiilt ehu epf jitovevif gus exjomi puv lpuxoph XVG ov niepv.

O qsigis 1 DVE epf e vsefovoupem gappim, O piwis caz epzvjoph xovj vjin, O piwis tii vjin up coh tvusit vjev lpux xjev vjiz esi fuoph

Nezci qiuqmi ati vjuti cavvupt pux cav muul ev jot tvusi, zua jewi e DVE vjev zua xepv qiuqmi vu dmodl vjevt cesimz wotocmi epf epuvjis upi vjev e tnemm % nohjv ati epf iwiszupi imti ot dupgatif cz