

Show HN: My new side business - devcom
http://www.rogerthat.com.au/

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prawn
If I was tackling this space without a monstrous marketing budget, I would
pick a niche (art and craft, hobbies, gardeners, cookware, etc) and run with
that. A lot of the best niches already have players - young mums has MumGo,
wine has VinoMofo, etc.

Going with a generic spread of products means you won't be ideal to anyone and
you'll have to compete aggressively on price against established companies who
already have volume, capital, marketshare and so on.

For best results as a new entrant, if you can pick a niche you have an
interest in, that would help a lot. You might already participate in niche
forums that would make ideal advertising partners or early users, for example.

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yataa
My first thoughts were: 1. Don't make customers login to make a purchase,
allow guest checkouts and this will improve your conversion rate. 2. The
homepage is too crowded, reduce the number of call to actions/buy now choices.

~~~
devcom
Ok guest checkout is a good idea, totally overlooked that. Thanks.

With the homepage do you mean just have the single deal. And remove the deals
on the side?

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yataa
Yes, as nithinpb has said too, just focus on a single deal on the homepage.
Users/customers will find it easier than having to scan through multiple
options/deals.

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wildcardww
How does this differ to the 20+ other 'daily deal' sites in Australia? Is
there a particular niche you are targeting?

~~~
devcom
We wanted to make ours more fun for the buyer and have a 'theme'. All our
marketing has been aviation themed, such as "fly in for a great deal".

At this stage we kind of went broad, having a bit of everything to see which
products sold more. We are a little limited to what our suppliers have at this
stage. But the prices are still cheap

~~~
stephengillie
That's a neat marketing theme, but I'm unsure how today's deal, a shaped
cookie dough press, ties into that theme...

~~~
devcom
good point. I guess none of the items are really themed. But we could possibly
add some themed artwork on the picture?

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redact207
My $0.02 is that daily deal sites like this are tough to market, as you're
only real ongoing customer base are those who want discounts. The tricky part
is that they're a very diverse customer base so you can't base your pitch on
what the products are and who should get the message.

Like other people here have mentioned - if you had a niche it could make
things easier. Ie: if you're providing deals on baking products only, then you
can build some customer profiles (stay at home mums, japanese girls (don't
ask, but it's a thing)), find where they gather and get your message in front
of them consistently and build up a following.

~~~
mikescoffield
My thoughts, too.

Plus, it'll be very difficult to get repeat business. I run a couple ecommerce
sites and repeat purchases / customer loyalty is a major part of sales. If
your products don't have a central theme (i.e. target a focused segment), it
is unlikely that a customer who bought random product A would be interested in
random product B.

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sideproject
At the bottom you say it's SSL secure. And it even says "Click to verify". I
clicked on it and it says

"www.rogerthat.com.au is not a valid identity."

Huh? SSL is.. almost.. mandatory as a bare minimum when you are doing some
e-commerce transaction to at least give the customers some sort of confidence.

~~~
devcom
Yeah we have purchased it. Hasn't come though yet apparently. I will chase
that up. Thanks

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nithinpb
I resonate with another comment that the homepage looks crowded. This idea
reminds me of woot.com. I would do something like that. When someone opens the
homepage, I would show one product to grab their attention and have them
browse other products by scrolling or through Menu bar. Also, what does the
button "Roger that" suppose to do? It wasn't intuitive for me that it's a menu
button. Finally, I think you should use the top left space above the logo for
something important rather than leave it empty. It will be displayed on all
screen sizes and can be used for Menu options or something else.

------
pbhjpbhj
Quite a lot of images appear to be missing, eg on
[http://www.rogerthat.com.au/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=0...](http://www.rogerthat.com.au/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=09475).

The site only ships to Aus., that might be obvious to you but doesn't seem to
be to me - to avoid traffic that's wasting your bandwidth perhaps you could
sniff for ex-territory (using a geoip service) and refer them to a similar
Amazon product on the local Amazon or to a site you have a link with in their
territory?

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devcom
If you wouldn't mind I would love some feedback on this. I haven't made a sale
yet and I am not sure why.

ANY feedback is appreciated!

~~~
jere
My first thought was "hope you're good at baking cookies."

>I haven't made a sale yet and I am not sure why.

Is "14 OFFERS SOLD!" BS then? One small thing: the "what's hot" products on
the right looked like third party ads. Maybe it's just me.

~~~
devcom
Yeah the 14 offers sold is just to make the website not look like a ghost
town. Put some activity on it.

That's great feedback on the sidebar thanks.

~~~
sideproject
Love the honesty there. You should've said 114 then. Heck, how about 1140?

~~~
pseut
Go all the way: either "N" or an empty text field.

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missenlinx
Good work. You should probably apply some basic SEO work to it also. e.g. your
missing text in your <title></title>

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fuddle
The Facebook and Twitter links don't work for me.

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mikescoffield
How are you marketing it?

~~~
devcom
Just facebook at the moment. Any other ideas?

~~~
frakkingcylons
I've used Reddit (you can advertise on specific subreddits such as
/r/australia) and StumbleUpon. If you go the Reddit route, don't use an
annoying amount of fluff words in the post title. That'll make 'em upset.

~~~
devcom
Hey thanks! I haven't got any experience with reddit but I have heard that you
can upset them easily. I will look at some of the other posts to get an idea
of what is suitable.

StumbleUpon is a great idea! I used to use that all the time. Didn't cross my
mind to use it. Thanks

