Is Wix good for online store?

by Dominika Tracy | Dec 18, 2019 | Uncategorized

Is Wix good for online store?

First of all, full disclosure: I have never been a fan of Wix as a content management system. What I dislike about it is the false promises it makes to people wanting to start their online business. Its adverts (which are EVERYWHERE) will lead you to believe that you can start a website for next to nothing, without the help of a designer and make money from it right away.

Well, 2 of those things are nearly true.

First of all, Wix is by far not the cheapest option to build a website. 100% of the people I spoke to who were planning to build their website on Wix believed that it was free. Is that true? Well, kinda… It’s free if you don’t plan on using it as a business website. If you want to use your own domain name (e.g. www.yourname.com), have your logo on the site or to be able to do pretty much anything with your website – you do have to pay.

Wix hidden charges

And here’s where Wix really annoys me. Their pricing structure is intentionally complex and misleading. Firstly, their advertised prices relate to annual plans. If you want to pay for your website monthly (you know, to keep your cost down or to see if this business is worth committing to for a year) – it will cost you at least 30% more. Secondly, they offer nine different plans and tiers, making it really hard to work out what level of service you actually need.

And thirdly – what I find grossly unfair about Wix – is the number of hidden charges and extra payments you really need, if you want to run a proper business website, makes it probably one of the most expensive website builders in the market.

To compare, extra features, which on Wix are only available with additional apps (mostly paid ones) – are included for free with WordPress, Squarespace or Shopify. We’re talking decent form builders, SEO optimisation and most of the standard ecommerce features, which are pretty basic things for any website worth the binary code it’s written on.

Wix is not a DIY tool

And on to my second reason why I hate Wix – their promise of a stunning website which anyone can create without the help of a web designer. I know what you’re thinking – I’m a designer so of course I’d say you have to hire a designer to have a good website.

But that’s not where I’m coming from at all.

I have spoken to many people who couldn’t afford my services and I always recommend Squarespace over Wix if they wanted to design their own website.

And I have had many clients coming to me and asking me to improve their Wix websites – and I politely declined.

And I can tell you with complete certainty – I have never seen a good Wix website which was DIY-ed. I have seen countless horrible Wix sites which were beyond saving and I have seen some really pretty Wix sites, which were professionally designed (like the ones by my friend from Fresh Leaf Creative).

So – can you have a well designed Wix site? Probably, but you will have to hire someone to do it for you.

Is Wix good for an online store?

It’s hard to imagine what makes a truly successful ecommerce store if you’ve never set one up before. A store is a store, right? You just need to make your product pictures look pretty and have the ability to charge people money… If this is the way you look at ecommerce, Wix can indeed look like a decent option.

But there is so much more to a good online store than that.

Let me tell you about an online fashion boutique I worked with, set up on – you guessed it – Wix!

The owner built the site herself and was very pleased with it. She had a good eye for design, having designed her entire clothesline and the site was really quite attractive.

But it wasn’t making any money.

She didn’t understand where she was going wrong. The brand was doing really well on Instagram, the photos of her clothes were being shared, followers were in their thousands and everyone was saying they loved the product.

But a quick look at her Analytics revealed a whole host of problems with the website.

Hundreds of people were visiting the site every day, mostly from Instagram. But the conversion rate (the number of site visitors who were converting into paying customers) was below 0.5%. In other words, for every thousand people visiting her website, only about 5 people were actually buying anything.

When I looked into the website it became obvious why that was the case. The path from homepage to actual product was complex and unclear, the product page was missing crucial information, the checkout was confusing and there seemed to be no email integration. Forget anything more fancy like currency conversion, product upsell or custom collections.

The worst part? She was already deep in debt and paying hefty Wix fees for a website which wasn’t bringing her any money.

Fortunately, I was able to convince her to ditch Wix and start a high end fashion online store on Shopify. I transferred her domain (so she kept her web address) and redirected all site visitors to her new fully optimised online fashion boutique.

What happened next was pure ecommerce magic.

Her online conversion rates went up immediately. Not only that, but her new email integration, which I created from scratch, started generating 40% of her revenue – that’s money which simply didn’t exist before in her business as she wasn’t using email other than for her monthly newsletter.

Both her old online store and the new one were using the same images, her advertising didn’t change – but the results were like night and day.

Was the move worth it? You betcha!

So, are you thinking of starting an online store with Wix?

Essentially, Wix is a website builder, with the ecommerce function added to it. It wasn’t created for selling online and will never be as good as the other systems out there which were created specifically with ecommerce in mind.

Having said that, there may be cases where a online store on Wix is in fact all you need – if you’re not planning to grow for example, or just want to sell a digital product on your existing Wix site. It can work well and the drag and drop builder is as easy as it gets.

But – if you are serious about selling online and want this thing to actually make you money – start as you mean to go on and get yourself a good ecommerce store on WordPress or Shopify.

I created a free eBook to let you quickly check if you’re ready to open your online store.

Drop your email here and I’ll send it to you!

Have you enjoyed this post? Don’t forget to pin it to your Instagram Ecommerce board!

Did you find this post helpful?

Don’t forget to pin it!

How to write the perfect Instagram bio

by Dominika Tracy | Oct 27, 2019 | social media, Instagram

How to write the perfect Instagram bio

The only thing more tricky than writing a good Instagram bio must be writing your Tinder profile. Ugh. If this is what you’re struggling with at the moment, I feel your pain, sister.

But, after many, many tweaks , experiments and hours of research I believe I found the secret formula to writing the perfect Instagram bio and I’m going to share it with you here. You’re welcome.

First of all, let’s establish what your Instagram bio is really there for. It’s your one, extremely brief opportunity to introduce yourself to new potential followers and let them know why they should make the extreme effort of lifting their finger to press the Follow button.

What it is not:

🚫 A chance for you to talk about your favourite food

🚫 To tell us your cat’s name

🚫 To list 17 different jobs you do (so you’re a life coach, real estate agent AND an actress??)

The perfect Instagram bio formula goes as follows:

Call out your ideal client + identify a problem they struggle with + show you have a solution

The best way to do it is with an I help statement.

So for example:

I help busy mums lose their pregnancy weight in 2 months without going to the gym.

I help Etsy store owners make more sales.

I help spiritual women discover their chakras so they can improve their sex life.

Etc etc.

The point is be specific and offer genuine solutions. So, for example, don’t say:

I help women find their inner goddess – because literally no one knows what that actually means. Tell me how you’re actually going to improve my life and why I should care about my inner goddess, if that is your thing.

Emojis for the perfect Instagram bio

Let’s not pretend, emojis make everything better. They add an element of fun to even the most boring text (please don’t take this as my advice to include emojis in your next client invoice – there are limits).

But they definitely have an important place in instagram bios – to break the text up, make it more visual and personal. Think of creative ways you could express your message via the medium of emoji, like a unicorn, teacher or dollar sign.

Make it easily scannable

Many people wonder how to add line breaks in their Instagram bio (or why Instagram makes it so difficult). The very simple trick to do this is to write your bio using the Notes app on your phone and copy and paste it from there.

Include a link

Ultimately, Instagram should be just one of the methods you use to get people to your website and on your mailing list, not just an art in itself. The one space you’re offered in your bio to include a link is the most important element of this whole puzzle and you need to choose it wisely.

This is the place where you ideally want to promote your free offer which is connected to your mailing list sign up. Offer an incentive to click on the link and make sure you mention it’s free (if it is).

I am not a fan of Linktree for this, and I write more about my reasons for this here.

I also don’t recommend URL shorteners like bit.ly for your bio lin, as many people won’t click on a link these days if they don’t know what to expect from it. Include the whole URL or use Pretty Links to make it look like something a human being created and not just a random string of letters.

Don’t forget to pin this article to your Instagram Pinterest board if you enjoyed it and follow me on Instagram to see how it’s done!

I created a free mini course on how to plan 30 days worth of valuable Instagram content to help you come up with ideas of what to post. Drop your email here and I’ll send it to you!

How to find paying clients on Instagram

by Dominika Tracy | Oct 27, 2019 | social media, Instagram

How to find paying clients on Instagram

Have you ever tried to explain Instagram to your parents?

I still remember the look of disbelief on my dad’s face when I showed him a site with 2 billion daily users who were genuinely interested in finding out what I had for lunch that day.

Even more surprising – for my dad, and for many of the entrepreneurs I speak to – is how anyone manages to actually make money with this thing.

But it is done. Forget Kylie Jenner cashing in hundreds of thousands for chewing on hair vitamins in a photo. If you want to find out how to find paying clients on Instagram, this is the post for you.

I run a web design and digital marketing agency, Speedbird Media and I find most of my clients on Instagram. Or – more usually, they find me. But more on that later. First, let’s discuss what YOU can do to start booking paying clients as a result of hours of work put into getting that perfect selfie!

How to sell with Instagram

Before anyone, including paying clients or customers can find you and your profile on Instagram, you will have to do quite a lot of work to make it worth their while. This starts with creating really high quality, engaging content, a well written bio and perfecting your nice, cohesive feed. Think of it this way:

A person sees your post, looks at the photo and then decides if they can be bothered to read the caption. If they like the caption, they might click through to your profile
Once on your profile page, they will first skim read your bio. If it looks like you might be the type of brand they’d be interested to hear more from, they will look at the rest of your feed.
Without scrolling down too much, they will see the top 9 of your photos. Based on how those photos look next to one another, they will then make a decision about whether you will make a good addition to their daily scroll or if your photos are going to fill their feed with horrible graphics and blurry photos. That’s a quick decision to make so make sure you make it easy for your potential new follower.

So after all this work – baaam – hopefully you have a new follower.

Unfortunately, this is not where your work ends. All this means is your numbers went up. But numbers don’t mean much if they have no $ signs in front of them. You want those new followers to become paying customers but all you’ve done so far is moved them along the path of Know Like and Trust. You have their attention; you now need to capitalise on that!

It is a tricky balancing act, that most of us get wrong and end up never finding paying clients on Instagram. There’s two ways you can screw this up:

You come across as your followers’ new fun best friend. You post about the parties you’ve been to, your dog and about how you like your caipirinhas. Your followers will be entertained and want to know more but they wouldn’t trust you with their money.
You become the boring professor, always lecturing your followers about what they should be doing and trying to teach them a lesson at every opportunity. They will respect you and perhaps learn from you this way but they will never like you. And if they don’t like you, they are never going to give you any cash.

So, how do you strike the balance between those 2?

Remember that all of your content needs to deliver value – but not all value comes from educating. Yes, sharing knowledge is one of the most important things you will do on Instagram but you can also bring value to your followers by sharing your personal journey, letting them in on your private life, sometimes sharing something strictly for amusement, even if it’s nor really related to what you do.

After you have all of this in place, all you need to do is keep turning up daily and letting your followers see what a wonderful, fun and knowledgeable person you are.

I created a free mini course on how to plan 30 days worth of valuable Instagram content to help you come up with ideas of what to post. Drop your email here and I’ll send it to you!

And this is how you find paying customers on Instagram!

Have you enjoyed this post? Don’t forget to pin it to your Instagram Pinterest board!

I created this free Mini Course for product-based business owners to master creating engaging content for Instagram. Would you like to receive it?

Which ecommerce platform will be best for your product-based business?

by Dominika Tracy | May 30, 2019 | Uncategorized

If you’re making a jump into the world of ecommerce for the first time, your head must be spinning from all the options out there. It’s brave enough moving away from Etsy or Ebay or wherever else you might have sold your products up till now – now it’s time to make some decisions!

The first choice you’ll have to face before opening the doors to your online store is which ecommerce platform to go with.

There are many factors you’ll want to consider:

Ease of use
Price
SEO
Customisation options
Whether you have a blog or not
Scalability
And others, that will be particular to your business

In my work at Speedbird Media I help entrepreneurs start and grow their ecommerce businesses – from building their websites to growing their traffic and sales. I have helped them deal with the issues which are common with any new store and have seen how the choice of ecommerce platform makes or breaks them.

So I’m here to help you avoid some costly mistakes!

Let me start with the ecommerce platforms I definitely do NOT recommend.. I won’t go into detail because I know both of them have many fans but please, save yourself some time and don’t build your product-based business on Squarespace or Wix.

Neither of those platfoms was designed for ecommerce, and although it might be tempting to go with the cheap and seemingly easy option, resist. Narrow down your choice to platforms which are actually created for selling online. That leaves you with three main runners:

Woocommerce
Shopify
Big Commerce

Woocommerce

If you already have an existing WordPress website or blog running, and now want to be able to sell straight from your site – Woocommerce is your best bet.

I love working with Woocommerce because – like WordPress itself – it has literally no limits. Any functionality or design can be achieved with either a plugin or some tweaks and sky is the limit in terms what the store should look like or what it should do. The downside is – you will probably need a developer to set it all up if you’re not particularly techy.

To make Woocommerce work you will need to connect it with a payment gateway like Paypal or Stripe and they will take a cut out of your every transaction. On the plus side, though – Woocommerce itself is completely free.

Shopify

You can – and many people do – set up a Shopify store and have it up and running in one weekend. It is very easy to operate and you definitely don’t need a degree in IT to do it. Shopify was created for selling online and is currently the market leader for all ecommerce.

Shopify handles everything for you – hosting, SSL certificate, payment gateway and it’s super easy to set it all up. What it doesn’t do out of the box can usually be achieved with an additional app. But this is what really annoys me about Shopify – if you want it to do anything other than the absolute basics (and you’re going to want to, if you’re in the ecommerce business to actually make money) – you will have to get some apps. And those cost extra.

When the basic Shopify monthly subscription costs $29, if you add several apps which are all needed, your cost will could easily go up to closer to $60 a month.

There are about 50 templates to choose from and most of them are nice looking and with good UX. But if you want to make the design look a little more unique (and not like a template), then you’ll have to play with code. And not just any code, it’s Shopify’s unique Liquid code and it’s not for the faint hearted.

Big Commerce

Shopify and Big Commerce are actually very similar in all of their capabilities and they also have very similar pricing. So, if you’re choosing between these two, the decision definitely shouldn’t be based on cost. Big Commerce has better SEO and offers a lot of the functions which Shopify can only do with an app, straight out of the box.

But – it is much more complex to set up and run because it is created for – as the name suggests – BIG shops. If you have a store with a lot of SKU’s, Big Commerce might be your best option. If you’re only starting out or planning to operate via dropshipping, I would recommend you stick with Shopify.

Which one is the best out of those three? My favourite is Shopify and I would recommend it to most business owners wanting to open a product-based online store.

Do you already run an ecommerce business? Which ecommerce platform have you gone with and would you recommend it?

Did you find this post helpful?

Don’t forget to pin it!

How to make a website that sells

by Dominika Tracy | May 10, 2019 | business, website tips

How to make a website that sells LIKE CRAZY

Are you wondering how to make a website that sells without hiring an expensive web developer? As a conversion-focused web developer myself, I will share some of my best tips with you below. All of these you can easily apply to your website right now and see an increase in sales/enquiries almost immediately!

Let’s start with your homepage.

Do you know what the first job of a good homepage on your website?

It’s to make the visitor not bounce, i.e. leave your website immediately. Depending on the quality of your page, this will happen with 50% or more of the people who land on it.

So, provided the person who’s visited actually sticks around to absorb any of the content you have on there, what are the elements of a good homepage? First, the area you want to focus on the most is ‘above the fold’, so the part of the page which is visible without the user having to scroll down. That’s your prime real estate so use it wisely.

✅ Do use a strong, clear hero image
❌ Don’t use sliders

The image is what will grab the visitor’s attention first, that’s why it’s important that it’s top quality. A slider on the homepage, although used by so many, is actually proven to hurt conversions. Objects moving before you get a chance to read them is pretty annoying for the end user, so try and avoid if you can!

✅Do use a short sentence to describe what you do and how that helps them.
❌Don’t write a long paragraph about your company history etc.

Within the first 30 seconds of the user landing on your homepage, they should be able to say what’s in it for them – and then be able to find out more if they wish.

How to make a website that sells – Sort out your navigation

The rule of a thumb is – if it takes your user more than two clicks to find the thing they want to buy, you’ve already failed. Keep your menu straightforward and only use secondary items if necessary. If you have a lot of items which should be included in the menu, for example if your website is an ecommerce store, your best option will be a megamenu, which will display those vertically, without the user having to scroll down.

The other mistake I see people doing a lot is have too many options in the menu. I get it, you want to show all the things you can do but chances are you’re just confusing them.
Try and think about this from the user’s perspective – what pages would they want to find on your website and what path would they expect to take there?

Create a website that sells – Forget YOU

It’s about them, not you – your homepage, that is.

The most common mistake I saw when reviewing the homepages submitted by you in the last couple of weeks was a complete fixation on Me Me Me 🙂

If your homepage talks about YOUR experience, YOUR company history, or worse yet, YOUR hobbies and interests – I would reply with a big ‘so freakin’ what’ every time. And so will your visitors.

A person landing on your website only cares about one thing – themselves. And what they want to know from you is how you can help THEM.

As an exercise for today, I urge you to go to your homepage and check how many times you talk about You – when you should be talking about your visitor and their needs.

Did you find this post helpful?

Don’t forget to pin it!

« Older Entries

Next Entries »