Bikers! Need your input

Mackeral_Fillet · 7 Jun 2011 at 20:44

Hey all.

I have just dipped my toes into an ecommerce store selling bike cleaning products and would really appreciate some input from my fellow bikers. What I'd really be interested in is some feedback on my site. What do you like/dislike, what type of products you would buy from an online store vs traditional and what brands do you normally go for.

In addition, any thing else you can think of would be much appreciated.

The site is:

http://nicemotorbike.co.uk

Cheers,

Rob.

SKILL · 7 Jun 2011 at 21:02

Only had a quick look, but a few comments (I think this may come over as quite harsh, so sorry in advance)

Site itself is quite nice, two comments though:

Name - "Nice Motorbike" doesn't really roll off the tongue, not sure what would be better, "Nice Bike" seems to roll off the tongue better whilst remaining essentially the same...

Twitter - I'm not a fan of companies using Twitter/Facebook for advertising in the first place (call me old fashioned etc...) but the three tweets currently displayed don't seem to even be related to the shop, could comfortably scrap that without removing anything of use from the site.

And onto the products, I did notice that certain items (WD-40 for example) appear in multiple sections, but then it would look like quite a small range without doing that

Pricing - I looked up two products just on ebay (for brand new from 'traders' rather than 'private' sales) and the ACF-50 was £2 or so cheaper + free postage (assuming single item so not going over the £30 for free P&P), the 325ml Super Resin Polish was £4.50 cheaper again with free postage, these are just looking at the first few results.

Essentially it boils down to what does your site offer me over the alternatives?

Sorry again if this is not very constructive/overly harsh, just how I see it after a very brief look...

Felix · 7 Jun 2011 at 21:50

Twitter does work, Sportsbikeshop use it to push promos. Same with many of my suppliers at work.

SKILL · 7 Jun 2011 at 22:20

I agree, using it to push promo's can work, personally I still see it as being slightly 'unprofessional' for some reason, but I acknowledge I'm very much in the minority with that opinion,

My main gripe was actually that the tweets shown weren't anything to do with the shop, hence useless frankly, if they were related to the shop I wouldn't have mentioned it, or it would've just been a pointless moan

Snaggle · 7 Jun 2011 at 23:00

I agree with skill . Dont like the name . To many repeated products . Twitter feed is pointless. And the majority of the products you can buy in Halfords/elsewhere cheaper . Also i dont see the point in a forum (and the fact it opens in a new tab) . Other than that its quick well laid out and clean

Persil

Mackeral_Fillet · 9 Jun 2011 at 17:20

Thank you all for the feedback. No problems with being harsh - that is how I learn and is much needed feedback.

Regarding the name, agreed it is not the best. However there are many sites that have names that are not tip-of-the-tongue such as sportsbikeshop.co.uk, Hein Gericke etc etc. Not much I can do to change it now lol!

Twitter feed - agreed it is using my other forum and I will change it to a relevant shop feed asap.

Products. At the moment I have a very very small range which is why products seem to repeat them selves. I've tried to remove some duplicated items and now every product should only be seen within a particular category once. At the end of this month I will have a much bigger range (Wurth, Muc-Off and some premium waxes).

Price. This is a tricky one. Many terms of becoming a reseller (particularly for start ups) is you don't sell below RRP (this is actually illegal for this term) but they tend to not want to supply you if you intend to undercut RRP (devalues the brand etc). I plan to be very competitive on some items but RRP on others. SDoc100 Total Cleaner for example - I am the cheapest in the UK.

Anyway, any more feedback is much appreciated!

Cheers,

Rob.

Flukester · 10 Jun 2011 at 06:22

Nice looking site.... just out of interest what content mangement system are you using for shop / cart etc ?

edit: ignore, it's opencart

4T5 · 10 Jun 2011 at 07:26

I can't see a reason for ordering off you rather than going down my local shop, The selection is to small & nothing grabs me. Although the site looks good I don't think it suits Bikers/Blokes & what's with the horrible grey border.
I know that's a bit harsh but I am a bike owner who obsessively cleans his bike & car & has a table dedicated to cleaning products in the corner of my kitchen. The couple of items I thought were cheap would be canceled out by the postage & none of your products even match what I have let alone beat it.
Trying to end the post positive I'd say you need to specialise more, The Autosol polish for starters, On the front of the tube/box it says for chrome but read the back & it says Not suitable for Highly polished chrome(like most of my Chopper) Now if there was Text explaining this then a suitable polish available your knowledge/expertise would come over & I would trust you more on other products that I don't know making me much more likely to actually buy summit.
Hope that all makes sense & Good Luck with your Business.

Mackeral_Fillet · 20 Jun 2011 at 22:06

Thank you for the feedback guys.

I have taken it all on board. Many prices are now lowest in the UK and have played around with colours etc to get it looking a bit better.

Had quite a few sales now and selling out of some lines already - there is a market out there!!

DanF · 20 Jun 2011 at 23:42

The main add steam on the homepage seems to scroll too quickly, if you read all the text slowly then sometimes it's scrolling when you get to the price. Also over half the stock is on sales which seems a bit weird like the prices should just be cheaper anyway.