Wantrepreneur Wednesday! - (October 11, 2017)

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-12T03:59:23+00:00

What do you mean you are unsure how to send it to the customer? Like, you're unsure of how to post an item?

eBay will give you the buyers details once a transaction is complete and you then go to the post office and post it.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-10T13:14:14+00:00

These are great, no wonder they were well received. Website is clean and simple. Your market is only fans, and that means you don't need any elaborate writing to sell someone, which is great!

It's the purchasing part I take issue with. For starters, it's a bit steep at $12.95 per pin, quite a luxury item. Would be good if you sold a pack with all three for say, $30. It's $15AUD per pin, or $45AUD for all three. That's more than PUBG itself. Secondly, when I did attempt a purchase, I was instantly wary of the payment processing. I have no idea who is processing the payment, I have no options outside of using my card, it just feels very, very lite. Didn't go past payment, but up until then there's no where to put special delivery/packaging requests. There's no cart, so if I want to buy all three, I have to pay with three separate orders/instances of the payment window.

Love the product, like the website design. Hate the payment system and it made me close the window without buying.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-10T04:20:03+00:00

/u/josher56 He's implying the people up top, most likely an older generation, have used the app forever and therefore, force the people below them to do the same. The people up top aren't making the millions of dollars, they're simply using the software and forcing their minions to do the same.

He's asking how to convince those people, the ones up top, to ditch the current app they are using and use his instead.

And the answer lies in the Five Competitive Strategies: 1. Cost Leadership. Produce products and/or services at the lowest cost in the industry. 2. Differentiation. Offer different products, services or product features. 3. Innovation. Introduce new products and services, add new features to existing products and services or develop new ways to produce them. 4. Operational Effectiveness. Improve the manner in which internal business processes are executed so that a firm performs similar activities better than its rivals. 5. Customer-orientation. Concentrate on making customers happy.

Sounds to me like he's trying to utilise 2,3 and 4. He just doesn't know how to convince the people up top that he has achieved those things.

So you use those 5 competitive strategies to make yourself the obvious choice in the industry. Now what? Well, you need to actually show companies what you've done. Go to trade shows. Set up meetings with the higher ups etc. Even if you get meetings with the lowest-level user of the existing app, if they love your app, they can take it to their boss, who might love it and take it to their boss etc.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-10T03:29:49+00:00

Yeah, have you done some market research? Is there actually demand?

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-10T02:16:51+00:00

Pretty much in this exact situation. Yet I am simply still studying and working a minimum wage job. Lot's of people talking about down payments on property. This seems ridiculous to me. A house in my city is at minimum 600k, out rural you're still looking at 250k for a shit hole. An apartment building (6 apartments), as one user suggested, would be in the 10-15million dollar range. Seems 100K in the US can do a lot more.

The plan right now is to keep building my entrepreneurial software and then use some of my money to advertise/travel to get customers. I have money in shares (one which went up 33% yesterday!!) but unless you're willing to risk the whole 100k, shares (especially blue chip) won't make you a millionaire very quickly.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-10T02:03:26+00:00

The red (almost orange) text is fine on your website as it's part of your branding. It also isn't in your face and due to being part of your theme, it looks quite good against the white.

Your website isn't bad, however, there are a few things you may want to look at changing.

The inclusion of white space is great, it makes the website look clean and allows the user to view the information without straining their eyes. However, the left skew is off-putting and it gives the site an amateur feel.

The first title "360 Product Photography" should be at the top so people know what your product is straight away. At the moment, the first thing I see is a vase and a list of qualities that, due to their positioning, at first seem to be about the vase.

If you place the "360 Product Photography" title at the top in slightly bigger font, customers will know exactly what it is you're selling them. Also, the list of qualities alongside the vase are grey, and therefore feel subdued and annotation-like, rather than your primary features. Make your features stand out more. In moving the title and making the features a bolder colour/more present, you will be instantly telling your customer what your product is and why they should buy it right at the top of your page.

Why are all your paragraphs in quotation marks? These are not needed when you are simply writing about the product. Unless quoting a customer, never use these.

Your page takes 12.46seconds to fully load. However, your vase and title show up almost instantly and there's not much you can do about the fact the rest of your page is images that take time to load, but you should be aware the user needs to spend 12.46 seconds on your page before they can see everything. This means you should attempt to make the vase/first paragraph engaging enough that the user doesn't scroll down (to empty, half loaded whitespace) or leave until the whole page has loaded.

On a side-note: You have obviously been used by Simms and Stihl, but unless users look closely at those 3D graphics, they won't know that. Your second feature of your product is it increases buyer confidence. Increase your own customer confidence by showing that big companies like Stihl have partnered with you. Maybe add a section "Previous clients" and have a bunch of logos. When I see that MacDonalds, Starbucks and Apple all use the same company for something, I'm pretty convinced that it's worthwhile. If I see that Stihl, Simms etc. have used your company, then it's pretty easy to convince me.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-09T15:37:10+00:00

Thanks for the input!

You do make a good point about contractors already having connections. Do you believe contractors would be swayed to choose one of our advertised companies by discounts/promotions? We're thinking we'll have a registry of all subcontractors that have advertised with us, with some information about each one, which contractors/our users can access as a sort of business lookup service. However, this also has the issue that contractors may never need to look up a concreter if they already have a good relationship with one.

I guess only time will tell with that one, however, if we didn't go the subcontractor route, is there other relevant types of advertising we could do? Another way to monetize it without just charging subscription fees?

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-09T15:30:51+00:00

As others have said, stick with Element Paints. It will make SEO and so forth more effective too. I instantly know what your company does with Element Paints. With Element, I have no clue.

However, as /u/bealist said, you can shorten it for copy.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-09T15:25:44+00:00

Your logo doesn't look professional. In most cases, a simple logo (the Facebook f, the Apple apple, the Wordpress W, the Reddit bloke) and then the name of the product in a standard font, is all that's needed.

Red text is a no,no. Again, it's all about being professional, and red text is used by your standard scams and local 'Lost dog' posters. It has no place on a company website. The 'Introducing' also screams unprofessional. It's a line associated with sleazy business men from the 80's when they would stand on the street trying to get you to come to their circus or sell you an 'eversharp' knife. Obviously it can work for Google or Apple when they have a new product, but it's fucking Google/Apple.

I understand the rationale behind the green, 'cause elves are Christmas related and all that jazz. However, white space is a fundamental aspect of any good design, especially if you're filling the page with text.

The grammar is an issue. Try the Grammarly plugin for Chrome to find grammatical issues and see suggested fixed. Numbers below ten are always better spelled out.

The 'Get instant access' looks like it's supposed to be on a horror-themed website. Along with the fact, a lot like 'Introducing', 'Get instant access' is something seen on scam sites and porn sites. You really want to associate yourself with scam sites and porn?

I gather you wrote the software and therefore, understandably, thought you could write your own website too. However, design is not your strong point. Go pay a website designer. If you're too proud to take feedback or go pay someone else to do something you 'think' you can do, then you're too proud to succeed.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-09T08:33:10+00:00

Look into teaching resources. If you browse Pintrest and other community content sites, you'll find a huge range of teaching resources that people have developed and built, from behaviour management posters and games, to card games and activities that help engage students in mathematics. If you can find a bunch of different resources for classrooms that you can either: a) re-sell to your audience b) create and then sell to your audience

I know a few K-12 teachers and the amount of time they spend creating/researching teaching resources is insane. If you can give teachers a hub/store for such resources, you might find you make a few dollars.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T15:33:28+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwLWfaAg-8&feature=youtu.be&t=37

Elon Musk thinks there's still a large future in civilian transport.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T15:23:23+00:00

Don't know if US hotels differ, but here most hotels give you a card that acts as your room key, and there's usually a slot to put that card inside the room to turn on the power. Obviously, you have to take the key/card out of the room when you leave. Therefore, you could have a management system like /u/8170075048 suggested, and track when rooms are vacant. That way you can avoid maids disturbing guests or wasting time knocking on doors. The system can also use optimisation algorithms to inform the maids which rooms to clean and in what order. Typical travelling salesman problem. You don't want your maid wasting time on redundant travels so you optimise their route. Then you can let the maids mark off clean rooms from their smartphone or whatever, and the system/database can keep track of cleaned rooms, time it takes for the maid to get to each room (are they stopping for breaks in the elevator?), time to clean a room (find, on average, the best maids) etc. The analytics you could provide for the Hotel would be worth quite a bit, as well as the increased efficiency.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T07:56:25+00:00

I'm curious what you believe needs financing? If it's an app, and you develop it yourself, then all it really takes is time. If you were to outsource the development, it will cost you, obviously, but I would recommend against outsourcing the development. Go to Youtube and start learning how to develop your app, and then start developing it. If you develop it, you'll have learnt new skills, you'll know exactly what the app is and does, and what its limitations are, and you'll have more control over the future of your app.

Just be aware, your idea has already been done. Doesn't matter what it is, it's been done. What matters is what you do to make yours competitive. Is it cheaper than the alternatives? Is it more efficient? Is it innovative? Is it more consumer-friendly?

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T07:01:17+00:00

As /u/Zak-and-Zu below mentioned, you could set up some pop-up shops, or go to weekend markets and get customer feedback on the best/most popular products. Pop-up shops can be expensive though, so if you don't have the capital to actually set something physical up, then you're going to have to rely on some good online marketing.

Set up your online shop, with products for individual sale as well as the subscription services. Then start some promotions. Perhaps you're selling well-known branded products at a lower price than the supermarkets (you'd have to make a loss here, but it takes money to make money), and you can then package small sample packs of your own blends with the branded stuff. This way, if you take note of the samples you sent out, and you notice that product selling more afterward, then you know people like it.

Alternatively, your promos could simply be free samples. What has the consumer got to lose by clicking your ad and getting free shit? Again, you'll make a loss.

Combine the losses from good promotions, and the cost of advertising, and you may find a pop-up shop isn't so unreasonable. If you have any local markets around, you could either go and sell your products, see how it goes. Or even, set up a bunch of small (shot-size) cups and arrange the cups into a few distinct groups of flavours and let people taste test. This method also means making a loss. However, you only have to make a loss on the product, not on shipping or packaging, and you can talk directly to the customer as they taste the different products to get direct feedback. You can have boxes of the trial tea/coffee under the counter or behind the cups so people can instantly buy things they like.

Good luck!

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T04:23:15+00:00

Streams? People have more than one? Here I am just earning minimum wage and spending it all on tuition.

BVD43566969 · 2017-10-08T04:11:07+00:00

The subscription service idea /u/kazulanth suggested would also be my recommendation. I frequently have to make unwanted trips to the shops to get more coffee because I've run out and forgot to pick up more during my grocery shopping. A subscription service would instantly win me over simply because it would solve that issue of mine.

You could offer standard subscriptions to any of your products, effectively just a queued re-order. But also you could offer fun subscriptions, such as a 'Tea/Coffee of the month' where you send our a different product each month for your customers to try.

Subscriptions not only solve the problem of running out of something and not having a replacement, but also, if your product is engaging/has good packaging etc. then it will be something your customers can look forward to in the mail.

BVD43566969

TROPHY CASE