Hi Folks

[dmfragrances]

It's nice to find a fresh new forum filled with like-minded business folk. Let's hope we can keep it that way (on topic and spam free). Well done Will and good luck!

A bit about me - I built and run (together with my wife) an online perfume shop, DM Fragrances which we launched at the beginning of 2006. Not exactly a new business I know but trust me, we're still learning as we go so from that point of view, it still feels very new to us.

I come from a web consulting/development background and over the years I got tired of building websites that made lots of money for other people. That, together with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit got me started on DM. (Debbie & Martin in case you are wondering - not very original I know, but there were no problems registering that domain.)

Why perfume? It's definitely not the easiest market to be in, but hey, it's an Internet business so it works for me and it works for my wife - she loves perfume (go figure). Hopefully, it will be the first of a number of online businesses (I'm sure many of you can relate) and the way I see it, even if we don't make it big selling perfume, everything we learn along the way will be worth it in whatever else we do.

And talk about learning! Neither of us had any retail experience before we started this so it's been a pretty steep learning curve, everything from finding suppliers to forecasting and buying stock to dealing with fulfilment, not to mention designing and coding the site itself and then trying to get it listed on the search engines.

The bottom line is that we've come a long way, but when we started out, it would have been really great to know that there was somewhere we could go to find answers and ask for advice without feeling stupid (or it costing the earth). Hopefully this forum can be just such a place where we can share and learn from each others experience.

I'm ready - are you?

Martin

[Will]

Hi Martin, welcome to the forum.

I have seen you lurking so many times I was beginning to wonder if you were going to introduce yourself! Glad you have.

Nice, cleanly designed website, did it take you long to code it?

How's business going in general, hitting your better or worse than you expected? I bet it is a hard market to penetrate.

Will

[dmfragrances]

Thanks for the feedback. It's hard to say exactly how long I spent with the actual coding since we did it out-of-hours - altogether we spent a year researching, planning, developing, gathering content etc.

As far as business, it's looking good and I'm getting the kind of conversion rates I was expecting although order volume is still low. That's partly by design though - we kept our marketing costs pretty low until we could get a feel for whether or not the site had real potential. (Easy to do when you don't have to commit several £k upfront for an ecommerce solution - the advantage of sweat equity.) We've had some great feedback and repeat customers and the numbers indicate that if we up our marketing spend and generate some real traffic, the business will be a success.

[ASD]

Hi dmfragarances, welcome to the forum and good luck with your business.

Jeff

[Wizard]

Hello and welcome

[Will]

Hi Martin,

That's great that you are getting the converstion rates that you expected. I hope it continues to grow as you plan. Out of interest, where do you get most of your customers form - google, paid inbound links etc. Just interested to know how you have marketed the site so far. And have you paid for offine advertising as well?

Will

[dmfragrances]

Hi Will

Organic listings on MSN and Yahoo are doing pretty well (e.g. Calvin Klein Perfume) - I put that down to good on-page optimisation and a few well placed directory links, but Google organic is still an uphill struggle for me. Over the the next few months I want to focus on getting more inbound links to try and boost PR and hopefully get some better results. (Are there any SEO consultants out there who can offer a long-term, cost-effective link campaign?)

Other than that I've been running some test campaigns on Adwords which have been doing ok (mostly long-tail stuff, averaging 7p per click) and most recently, I've added my products to Froogle which is doing really well. Based on the results I've had so far I'm definitely going to look at advertising on Kelkoo and a number of the other comparison sites. (Anyone got any experience or tips they can share on shopping comparison?)

As far as offline - I haven't done anything yet but I definitely have a few ideas I'd like to try but right now I see online marketing as more cost effective (PPC spend in the short term, SEO spend more long term). I'd be very interested to hear other viewpoints on offline spend to promote an online business.

Cheers,
Martin

[Will]

Very impressive organic search results, wish I could get that sort of ranking for "business forum" and similar keywords. Hopefully when the content builds up a bit more though, it should improve.

I've setup minimum bids on keywords in adsense and overture, they seem to bring in a few new members every now and again so I will keep running them. Probably should look into advertising on msn as well, but haven't got round to it yet.

Sounds like you have it all planned out pretty well.

Will

[Alessandro]

Hey Martin,

very neat looking site, you really cannot tell that there are some novices behind this set up,well done.

What is your policy? Are offering a unique selling point? Is it price? I quickly checked prices on your site and a couple of competitors, and you seem to come in slightly more expensive.

If this is of any help, I think that if you do have something different you should advertise it very clearly on your home page, as from this experience I came to a choice very quickly by thinking/looking at the following.

*Are both sites professional looking? Yes
*Would I buy from any of these? Yes
*Are they selling the same product? Yes
*Is it easy to find? Yes
*Are the sites easy enough to use an intuitive. Yes
*Any unique offer/selling point?
*......They are on a par for me,which is the cheapest? (keeping in mind that it is exactly the same product).

I have to say that if I was buying (and as it happens I do need some aftershave!) I would have probably gone for the other site. Off course if I do buy anything, I will from your site just to keep the money in the circle!

Hope this helps.

Alex

[Geoff]

hi dmfragrances, welcome to the forum and goodluck with your business.

geoff