Topic: [BitFunder] Bitcoin Pride - Bitcoin Shirts - page 6. (Read 16778 times)

Please feel free to ask me any ecommerce related questions you may have. I have a lot of experience in the field and can help.

Please don't spend time on "features." Minimal features actually work the best in increasing conversion rates and sales.
(Product search, Buy now, 1 page checkout, upselling, and coupons. This is all an ecommerce website requires.)

Instead, focus on increasing the product line beyond just tshirts. Here is what I think bitcoin evangelists would buy:

Hats.
Keychains.
Stickers.
Posters explaining to people what Bitcoins is.
3 fold brochures that people can give to their friends that explains what Bitcoins is (you can sell in packages of 50 brochures for $30 or so...)

And work on bulk sales. Allowing companies to make bulk purchases of 100 units or so for a discount.

Having multiple products to sell also increases our ability to upsell. When people buy a tshirt - we can ask them to buy a best selling keychain while they are checking out.

I have made a lot of money over the past 12 years with ecommerce. I've sold all sorts of products, both tangible and digital. Here are my recommendations in doing better.

- Get rid of the image slider. Research and multiple tests have shown that they reduce conversion rates. They may be good for a blog to have, but they should never be used on an ecommerce website.
Source: http://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-carousels-ignore-the-fad/

- The Free Shipping & The Toll Free information - this should be on the top of the page. Not at the bottom. These are trust builders. Does nothing if they are at the bottom.

- People who don't know what Bitcoins is are not going to buy the tshirts. There is no need to waste prime screen space in educating them about Bitcoins. They are not the audience you should be focusing on.

- Get rid of the social media interaction tools from the footer - twitter and facebook. Its a waste of time for an ecommerce website (unless you are using them to spread your "coupons" and gift certificates). Focus on sales. Not social media. Instead, move the Newsletter form over there.

- Reduce the choices you provide on the first page. The less options you provide, the more sales you'll make. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/your-money/27shortcuts.html?_r=0 (Read about the jam research case study. When people were given a choice of 24 jams, 3% of them bought. But when they were given a choice of 6 jams, 30% of them bought.)
I would recommend showing just 6 tshirts. And then providing a "More" button that shows 6 more tshirts dynamically below that.

- On the home page, I would also only show the top 6 "best selling" t-shirts. Don't showcase the latest 6 t-shirts. Or don't show random t-shirts. Show the highest selling ones.

- It would also be better to show the actual tshirts. And not just the artwork. More people will buy when they can see what the tshirt looks like, and they don't have to imagine how it will look like.

- On the product page, have a "Buy Now" button. Not just a "Add to cart" button. This will drastically reduce confusion and increase sales.

- Get rid of the "Add to compare" and "Send to friend" options. Reduce the number of call to actions you provide. Because the more call to actions you provide, the less sales you will make.

- The checkout page. Don't ask people to signup before they make a sale. This really reduces the conversion rates - even when you offer Guest checkouts. (Instead, automatically sign them up and send them a password on their first sale - to make repeat purchases easier.)  Source: How removing the signup option increased sales by 300 million for one company: http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button

- Having a 4 page checkout process will reduce the conversion rates, as more people will abandon the checkout process. Its better to just have a 1 page checkout - and have a longer checkout form. Source: http://www.abtests.com/test/65001/other-for-single-page-vs--multi-step-checkout


Seriously, spend some time going through the checkout processes of huge multi million ecommerce websites. They test things constantly and know what is working.  This is a good primer: http://blog.kissmetrics.com/40-checkout-page-strategies/

We currently don't have a time frame set. We want to prepare the company for a global press release and formal launch.

But first we are taking everyone's suggestions here very seriously, and plan to launch several critical features that will allow us to gain maximum sales during our PR launch.

Right now shares are still reasonably priced. We will announce more information about the launch as it comes closer.

Thanks

Fair question, but just to be practical I am gonna say this. A business is an entity in itself, so a business may refer to itself as "we" even if it has only 1 operator as in "the business and I".

Do you have a timeframe for the next release of shares?

First, it's hard to qualify how much skill the current management has. Bitcoin Pride isn't what I'd call a very successful business, as much as you can call an ebay seller a businessman.

An avalanche of new products would also lead to decreased attention for each of their products, don't forget about that. The barrier to entry for those isn't high either.

Who is in the management? Just one person? I noticed the use of 'we'.

That's a chicken and eggs thing. The more capital they can raise, the more they can grow. The question shouldn't be about the market it should be about the quality of the management and size of the money they want. We're playing VC here. If they have the money and the skills they can branch out from shirts to other things.

I don't see much growth potential in this company. The market for selling tshirts and merchandise has a low barrier to entry (easy to get to) - there are few upfront and operational costs, and bitcoin pride isn't bitcoinshirts.com which would help with SEO. Like others pointed out, it looks like a failing company with profit decreasing each month.

You're also open to currency risk by holding this asset, effectively a short on BTC. Regardless, while it seems pretty legitimate it's definitely not worth > $60,000.

yes, i know. this is why you would distribute the designs under a non-commercial license so that the community is free to use the work for non-commercial purposes (wear it in a picture without fear of being sued for copyright infringement), but is not allowed to use the work to compete with your model. as the original author of the design, you are able to waive any of the license restrictions and can obviously use your own design commercially.
the license i'm talking about is: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. at the very least a license like https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ would benefit the community because because although this is a restrictive license and the community can't improve on designs, without an actual license behind your work the community can never know with certainty what their rights are regarding the designs on what they are buying.

one idea that could include BitPride is selling community uploaded designs and a cross between http://thingiverse.com, http://threadless.com, http://kickstarter.com, and http://massdrop.com. when a user uploads a design licensed under creative commons, it has an address where people can send bitcoins to escrow to pre-order a product with that design. if it reaches a tipping point (like kickstarter) of enough pre-orders, the product begins a batch cycle, where for 1-3 weeks more people can order the product. as more people order it, the price goes down like massdrop. if a pre-batch product never reaches the tipping point, pre-order people are refunded. generalizing beyond BitPride is 'community uploaded designs sold in bulk with bitcoin', would have to include profit-sharing with the design authors, and could possibly be really great if done right. i'll think about this more, and wait for open source to make improvements, http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/16y42v/chair_of_w3c_rdfa_working_group_explains_their/ and https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bounty-200-btc-for-lightweight-colored-coin-clients-141858, before i might give it a go with profit-shared production equipment over colored coins.

do what you do best BitPride, i have trusted you with my coins.  

Yes...

We are a for profit business. If we let everyone use our designs we are basically giving our entire model away.

This is a business, I think you are describing something else.

is it possible to have all of the designs licensed under a creative-commons license? imo, trying to make the store based around the community means giving the community freedom to use the designs appropriately, depending on which creative commons license is chosen. i'd strongly recommend share-alike and non-commercial is optional if you are worried about other sellers.

I looked up the magneto plugins and they are over $2000  .

Wouldn't we rather spend that money on marketing?

I am trying to find a more stable solution for your request in the mean time though, just give me some time.

Thank you

Why submit for voting? You could just submit it to be sold in the store, then people would "vote" by buying the shirt. It'd have to be printed on-demand, but I can't imagine that to be a big problem (except a maybe a price increase or profit decrease). Well-selling designs could be produced cheaper and put into stock.

Could make a community, if you want your image to be purchasable by others and get a cut, you have to submit it for voting or something. This would help weed out dupes / unauthorized a bit.

Having a shirt design tool gets into copyright issues for sure. There are plenty of great designers that can do work as contractors. If you really want a bunch of random designs from the public, just use a crowdsourcing website, no? Super cheap, and you get tons of options.

Personally, I think the best route is to have a process for determining great ideas, implementing them as great designs, and avoiding clutter in the store with unpopular designs.