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Client: | Sxeco
- Designer, manufacturer, distributor of hip cool clothes |
Web site: | www.sxeco.com |
Goal: | Make more money for Sxeco by producing more sales, reducing selling
fees, reducing hosting costs, reducing general overhead, and reducing
labor costs. |
Solution: | A selling plan using eBay, a brand new e-commerce web site
and shutting down Yahoo! Store. The plan was to use eBay to generate
new sales. The new site was to lower selling costs and create a brand
awareness and to develop trust. See a picture of the old site here and
the new site we developed here. Shutting down Yahoo! Store was to save
money since the store has high overhead and selling costs. |
Problem: | Old site was busy, confusing, no theme to tie in the various
selling channels. Old site had no e-commerce which required customers
to go to Yahoo! Store. Customers had little confidence in the old site.
Yahoo! Store was over $50/month plus selling fees and hard to maintain.
eBay charges a listing fee, final value fee and PayPal charges 2.5%
to process the payment. eBay also creates high labor costs due to the
way it handles payments. |
Results: | Larger orders materialized in less than 1 hour after posting.
Costs were reduced to only 2.5% of sales. Sxeco's expectations were
exceeded the very first day on delivery! They're happy and so are we! |
Details: | Sxeco sells cool and hip designs. eBay is the most cost effective
way to get the word out to millions of buyers. People initially buy
due to the low cost of the items and the cool designs. After the sale
we wanted to make it easy for the customers to return and buy more designs
with higher profit.
The sales generated the first few days are over 50% larger, due to
less confusion and clutter. Customers feel confidant doing business
since we tied the eBay user feedback ratings ensuring customers this
is a reputable business. Using PayPal also ensured confidence since
most eBay users are also PayPal users. Browsers turn into customers
because pages load fast, are clean, neat and items are easy to find:
it's easy to spot something cool to buy. Payment is convenient and flexible
allowing all major credit cards or PayPal accounts to be used. Customers
buy more items because again, the pages are fast, items are easy to
see and it's quick to see the many designs. Less labor is required to
fulfill orders because customer input is verified, payment is immediate
and emails are generated with all the information in one place. Inventory
is simple due to XML text file. The new site costs only $10.00/month
to run and we closed Yahoo! Stores for a major savings.
The experience: design, responsiveness, colors, layout, sound, secure
shopping cart. We were thinking about the customer's experience
when they arrive at the web site. The items are prominently displayed
all the time, ensuring the customer sees something interesting
that's for sale. There is little to distract the customer from
buying. Customers will naturally click on the items for sale to
see a bigger picture. At this point, we add a sound track that
explains the item in an exciting way. The page features the item
for sale with a small amount of text. Ultimately the image is
what sells the item to the customer, not a ton of information
and distractions.
The solution uses very basic and clean HTML with a little Javascript
added to make the menus work clearly. Style sheets were used extensively
to give the look we wanted and also to reduce the HTML necessary to
create the look. This ensures a fast responsive page load. We didn't
want the customer to get frustrated and leave. We wanted the site to
look right even when ad blockers and cookie stoppers are turned on,
ensuring that the most people can use the site. Again, we put no banners,
ads, popups or anything to distract customers from buying. No fancy
frames or script tricks are used so search engines will find the site
and index it properly. The images were all optimized to be as small
as possible for fast page loads while still looking as good as possible.
Notice the lack of animation and Flash. An intentional design: don't
distract from the designs.
The whole look of the site ties into the eBay store so customers feel
confidant when they buy from eBay and then go to the Sxeco store, it
is the same business.
Since a big part of the customer experience is responsiveness. We
chose to host this site on a fast web server with a high speed connection
to the internet. Studies show time and again that customers leave a
site that isn't responsive. Sxeco is shutting down the Yahoo! Store
to save $50/month or $600/year plus the sales commissions. More sales
will be generated from this new site, reducing the eBay listing fees
and final value fees. The savings alone will pay for the new site in
less than three years. We expect the new site to be paid for in 6 months
due to the cost savings, repeat orders and larger orders. The plan is
to continue to use eBay and the new site. eBay will introduce and attract
new customers to the Sxeco line. The main site will expand the offerings
and provide repeat business. Satisfied customers will tell their friends
and they will go to the main site to buy.
One of the problems with using eBay is that after the auction ends,
people don't pay right away or at all. This creates more labor
costs following up on the post sale. The new web site eliminates
this waste since people shop, buy and pay all at once. The savings
are significant.
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Services used: | Consulting, Marketing strategy created, SEO,
e-commerce, graphic design, creative layout, technical design, programming,
semi
dedicated hosting |
Technology: | C#, Microsoft .NET (aspx), JavaScript, XML, streaming
audio, PayPal IPN, Delphi, Excel, MySQL database |
Features: | Cool graphic design, fast page loads, style sheets, tell
friend, search engine optimized, easy to expand inventory with XML,
low cost. |
Future: | There is a plan to continue to tune the site to attract more
customers by using more search engine optimization and keywords. Also
a comprehensive affiliate program is in the design stage to allow Sxeco's
brand to get exposure on other web sites. The technology used makes
it easy for others to add Sxeco inventory to their sites easily. This
will help other's make money from the Sxeco brand, plus sell more of
Sxeco's products. This will create a chain reaction and build a large
demand which will in turn create more demand. Customers who opt in to
see new designs will get the chance to see new designs immediately and
offers to buy them immediately from the email will be available. The
idea is to sell and not miss any selling opportunities. |
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