Ask HN: Review my Custom Rosary Startup
6 comments
This site is great. Two things to think about:
(1) I'm 99.9999% sure Patrick McKenzie will be here within the next 15 minutes to tell you in detail how to pull this off, but you are selling something that has a natural content SEO fit and you should chase that down.
What you want to think about are ways to break down your subject matter into categories (again: it's natural here; the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, etc). Look for other angles; when are people praying the rosary? For what occassions? Think about kids, think about class projects, etc. Break content into atoms.
For each atom of content, have a system that allows you to host it on its own page with a meaningful URL, a meaningful title, a meaningful article summary (meta description), the atom's worth of content, some contextual content (general stuff about the rosary, how you got to that page, etc), and some basic call-to-action to get people to pivot from reading information about the rosary (which is how you got them to your site) to looking at easily buying a rosary (extra bonus points if there are convenient ways to customize the rosary based on the atom of content the user is looking at).
Note that this sounds suspiciously like programming and application development. Who'd have thunk it; selling things online can be an engineering process!
I have been continuously astonished by how quickly you can capture swaths of Google search space by generating content that directly and succinctly answers one very specific question people ask Google. Remember: do not try to answer every question on one master page. Anathema! Have a crawlable sanely-indexed sanely-browsable system on which you can hang hundreds of pages.
You can start all these things very simple, and once you start, if you attract a baseline level of traffic, you can start A/B testing, which will get you to a place where you can start assigning a dollar value to each thing you do for the site.
(2) This system looks very well set up to address the case where I want to carefully buy one customized rosary. Isn't it very common that people want to buy many rosaries, say for the 60 students in the 5th grade at St. Barnabus elementary, or (if you are one of my aunts) every one of her 18,000 nieces and nephews?
(1) I'm 99.9999% sure Patrick McKenzie will be here within the next 15 minutes to tell you in detail how to pull this off, but you are selling something that has a natural content SEO fit and you should chase that down.
What you want to think about are ways to break down your subject matter into categories (again: it's natural here; the Joyful Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, etc). Look for other angles; when are people praying the rosary? For what occassions? Think about kids, think about class projects, etc. Break content into atoms.
For each atom of content, have a system that allows you to host it on its own page with a meaningful URL, a meaningful title, a meaningful article summary (meta description), the atom's worth of content, some contextual content (general stuff about the rosary, how you got to that page, etc), and some basic call-to-action to get people to pivot from reading information about the rosary (which is how you got them to your site) to looking at easily buying a rosary (extra bonus points if there are convenient ways to customize the rosary based on the atom of content the user is looking at).
Note that this sounds suspiciously like programming and application development. Who'd have thunk it; selling things online can be an engineering process!
I have been continuously astonished by how quickly you can capture swaths of Google search space by generating content that directly and succinctly answers one very specific question people ask Google. Remember: do not try to answer every question on one master page. Anathema! Have a crawlable sanely-indexed sanely-browsable system on which you can hang hundreds of pages.
You can start all these things very simple, and once you start, if you attract a baseline level of traffic, you can start A/B testing, which will get you to a place where you can start assigning a dollar value to each thing you do for the site.
(2) This system looks very well set up to address the case where I want to carefully buy one customized rosary. Isn't it very common that people want to buy many rosaries, say for the 60 students in the 5th grade at St. Barnabus elementary, or (if you are one of my aunts) every one of her 18,000 nieces and nephews?
The great part about having exactly one drum and banging it all the time is that every time other people bang the same drum they give me credit!
Seriously though, that is exactly what I would do. (I would prioritize occasions, people, and styles of rosaries way above what types of Mysteries there are, simply because I think the average American Catholic is going to be much more conversant with those topics than with the latter.)
One obvious choice for an atom of content in this context is a photo of a finished rosary. Have a bunch of adjectives which you can apply to a photo. Check them off like boxes: this is an [Asian style] rosary with [black beads] made of [mahagony] that was given to [a boy] on the occasion of his [First Communion]. With a few dozen madlibs templates like that you could fairly easily turn every handmade rosary ever into a web page, without necessarily duplicating anything.
Incidentally, you do rosaries with names on them, right? You know Catholics have a quirky cultural tendency to name their children after saints, right? And that the list of saints is very well enumerated, right? So if I were to pick the most outlandishly obscure Catholic name I can think of to name my daughter, you could already have an entire set of web pages for her baptismal, First Communion, etc etc rosaries ready to go, right?
By the way, John Paul II was a really big fan of praying the rosary in general. Find some of his writings on the matter. Put them on your website. I mean, seriously, you'll be in the running for "most credible endorsement of product category in the history of the world."
Seriously though, that is exactly what I would do. (I would prioritize occasions, people, and styles of rosaries way above what types of Mysteries there are, simply because I think the average American Catholic is going to be much more conversant with those topics than with the latter.)
One obvious choice for an atom of content in this context is a photo of a finished rosary. Have a bunch of adjectives which you can apply to a photo. Check them off like boxes: this is an [Asian style] rosary with [black beads] made of [mahagony] that was given to [a boy] on the occasion of his [First Communion]. With a few dozen madlibs templates like that you could fairly easily turn every handmade rosary ever into a web page, without necessarily duplicating anything.
Incidentally, you do rosaries with names on them, right? You know Catholics have a quirky cultural tendency to name their children after saints, right? And that the list of saints is very well enumerated, right? So if I were to pick the most outlandishly obscure Catholic name I can think of to name my daughter, you could already have an entire set of web pages for her baptismal, First Communion, etc etc rosaries ready to go, right?
By the way, John Paul II was a really big fan of praying the rosary in general. Find some of his writings on the matter. Put them on your website. I mean, seriously, you'll be in the running for "most credible endorsement of product category in the history of the world."
And he was uncertain that he'd get much domain-specific feedback on HN! ;)
Your first point jumped out at me too. A Rosary is a natural gift for Confirmation, First Communion, Baptism, Wedding... It's also not a bad gift as a Mother's Day present or an anniversary present. The SEO opportunities are pretty substantial. I feel the gift angle is not to be overlooked. I have a collection of them in my night table and never purchased a single one for myself.
1) I hope you are correct about Patrick, I always love reading his take on things and no doubt he will have one on this. We've also been studying his Bingo card site setup because I think we want to do the same thing (IE: generate lots of content for very small, specific topics). He has had some great posts detailing his workflow, so we have been referring to those as well. Definitely going to do this.
2) Actually, after you add your rosary to your cart, you can change quantities on the fly (I want 15 of these rosaries I designed). It will undoubtedly need smoothing and clarification.
Thanks for the kind words!
2) Actually, after you add your rosary to your cart, you can change quantities on the fly (I want 15 of these rosaries I designed). It will undoubtedly need smoothing and clarification.
Thanks for the kind words!
So, I know that you can set quantities, but the process of ordering a bunch of rosaries for a classroom is not the same as the process of ordering one very intricate rosary for a First Communion gift (which, by the way: shouldn't there be a button for "rosaries for First Communion" which is tailored to what people are going for with a First Communion gift? I dunno, this is something you might be able to test, first with a simple link to a page with a different header, and if that moves the dials, then with a more involved shopping experience tailored to that setting).
It looks good, nice to see real eCommerce exists (e.g. you pay something for a product, I was beginning to feel like everything was a service of a service).
One thing that really really puts me off web sites is if I can't tell shipping costs quickly and easily. Your site is good in that at least you don't have to register to see the total cost, but you do have to add a product and go to the cart to find out shipping. If your shipping is a flat $8.45, I'd suggest having that under a FAQ type area.
Also gift wrap options are good.
I'd be interested to know who you are hosting with. Is it a 3dCart or Shopify type or did you go solo?
One thing that really really puts me off web sites is if I can't tell shipping costs quickly and easily. Your site is good in that at least you don't have to register to see the total cost, but you do have to add a product and go to the cart to find out shipping. If your shipping is a flat $8.45, I'd suggest having that under a FAQ type area.
Also gift wrap options are good.
I'd be interested to know who you are hosting with. Is it a 3dCart or Shopify type or did you go solo?
Wonderful suggestions on both accounts.
We went solo and built from scratch with Django, not because it was easier, but because we want to do a lot of fancy stuff with content, tracking, A/B testing and custom product generation later down the road.
We went solo and built from scratch with Django, not because it was easier, but because we want to do a lot of fancy stuff with content, tracking, A/B testing and custom product generation later down the road.
All good reasons for going solo, and exactly what I would expect HN user to say :)
Good luck
Good luck
"This is definitely not the standard HN high-tech start-up "
But it does look like a good example of finding an under-served niche and doing a better job.
BTW, on FF35.9 the text in the boxes on the right gets a bit chopped at the bottom. Otherwise the site looks quite good.
But it does look like a good example of finding an under-served niche and doing a better job.
BTW, on FF35.9 the text in the boxes on the right gets a bit chopped at the bottom. Otherwise the site looks quite good.
Thanks for the kind words; the font selection has been a mess of compatibility, so I appreciate your response very much.
I have nothing to add from a business prospective, but from a UI/UX perspective, you NEED to change that header font. It's not legible. Your logo uses a serif font, so you should use a serif font for your headers (that's legible), such as Palatino.
Looks great.
1. Might be nice to let me cycle through products from the homepage.
2. When you show the price, always show the shipping cost (or at least an estimate) right there as well. Don't wait until checkout.
1. Might be nice to let me cycle through products from the homepage.
2. When you show the price, always show the shipping cost (or at least an estimate) right there as well. Don't wait until checkout.
Clickable: http://beadifulrosaries.com/
A little about us: the mother of a good friend of mine (friend is also an entrepreneur) makes absolutely gorgeous handmade rosaries. While I'm definitely not religious (I'd say I'm agnostic, but who knows? ;-), I couldn't debate her knack for creating these rosaries. Most sites selling rosaries are (not surprisingly) still in the stone age. A quick Google reveals the state of rosary websites after only a few results.
We're definitely aiming for a market segment who understands and is willing to pay for quality (and our prices reflect that). Made in the USA by independent artists, etc.
Marketing is initially PPC (Adwords), though Facebook is probably next. Once keywords are locked in, SEO will ramp up. Also, we plan on going church to church hanging up fliers.
What are your thoughts? We'd be forever indebted to you! If you PM, I'd be happy to send a fancy coupon. Obviously, the rosaries make awesome gifts for special events like weddings and baptisms.
http://beadifulrosaries.com/