Act 1. Scene 1. Take 3 - My website

[Inprogress]

No worries Dave. Fire away.

I could find no other site that provides me with something similar in South Africa. I did not search internationally since my research was coupled with me actually searching for a product.

I am unique in what I offer in South Africa. And that, my strength is thus my biggest weakness. Introducing a new concept is very difficult I think.

[Inprogress]

P.S. The closests I can see to this might be kalahari.net and the rumours I hear about being able to sell your used books with them, like Amazon is doing. And then there is the other version of what I am doing and that is site like findit.co.za, pricecheck, bizrate.com. However, they all focus on what is available online at online shops.

[Dave A]

However, they all focus on what is available online at online shops.

The question you have to ask (and where my line of questioning comes from too) is why do they do that?

Pricecheck I've heard of, and it seems to be a viable model.
Now analyse it (and anything else that seems to work in this niche) -

• How does it work?
• Why does it work?
• Where are the opportunities to develop my own USP? (unique selling proposition). This could be areas such as regional, granularity, functionality, ease-of-use, attacking markets they're not interested in...

My advice is be careful of trying to reinvent the wheel when all you need is to tweak it.

[wynn]

It is not a new idea but a 'shopping mall' might be what you need?

This is a virtual 'mall' where different businesses have their own 'shop' with a list of their products, pictures, prices 'n all.

I looked at this but the software was very expensive at the time.

[Inprogress]

It is not a new idea but a 'shopping mall' might be what you need?

This is a virtual 'mall' where different businesses have their own 'shop' with a list of their products, pictures, prices 'n all.

I looked at this but the software was very expensive at the time.

Yes its a shopping mall, but not for online products, for all the products that we need on the off days, like a bike tyre etc. However, it does allow for businesses that isn't onine yet to get online pressence AND start selling products online. Maybe I should also work to include that feature, a Virtue Mart.

Thanks Wynn

[Inprogress]

@ Dave.

My model is very much based on all those online price comparison site, actually I intended to call my site "Comprice" initially. However since I saw how it evolved into a very practical real world application, I changed it to what it is now.

Pricecheck et al works IMO because it achieves to important things: It tells you where to go to buy, and compares prices. My site does that as well, only it is applied to the real world (as oppose to virtual). Its applied to the products that does not necessarily lend themselves to be sold online, however consumers still need to find these products everyday. Its about local online "shopping" or rather local online window shopping.

My site is also a "real-time" version of flyer's and newspaper inserts. There is the gap between what is online and easily found online, and offline. Offline product searches is still very much pre-internet. You still need to get into your car and visit each business to see what they have, compare prices with other business.

Its a practical application of the internet, however, is conveying that concept that gets my tongue tied.

As to how those site work is pretty much the same as mine, or rather mine works like theres, its only my application that differs. They are about online product searches and comparisons, I am about offline product search and comparison.

Granularity = small words Dave, please Have to do and look up this word now.

Regarding ease of use, that is something I am striving for as much as possible. Coming from an Industrial Engineering background, I know the way humans work, in a sense. If its difficult, they wont use it. That is part the reason for the 3 month trial period. Register and start using it, easy.

I think I need to finish my user guide, and rework my about and info pages.

Thanks for all the advice thus far. I REALLY appreciate it.

[Dave A]

Man, I shouldn't be spending time on this today.

Buddy, you've got to look way waaay deeper.

Here's an example of research on one aspect - SEO (and I'm backing into this the wrong way because I'm in a rush).

I picked a product on Pricecheck - in this case a Parrot Evolution Bluetooth Car Kit.
Then I viewed the source code looking for something I expected to find to demonstrate a point.
Kinda blew my mind when I discovered it wasn't there.

So now I went looking for a site that would have what I'm looking for. Slapped Parrot Evolution Bluetooth Car Kit into a search on Google.co.za and I'm shocked. I cannot believe that so many online shopping sites are using such outdated SEO.

What was I looking for? The kind of extra information shown in the middle listing below:



That extra information takes special tagging which has been around for over a year now, and most of the online shopping malls haven't updated yet! It might not improve your SERPs directly, but it helps get your listing to stand out which will generate more clicks per display and as a result will improve your SERP position.

It gets better.

The top SA site listed was bluetoothcarkits.co.za (made page 1) - pricecheck.co.za was the 8th listing on page 3. (OK, my link might help them climb the ladder a bit now).

There were only 2 google ads - from bidorbuy.co.za and wantitall.co.za

Picking pages from South Africa only, the picture gets worse (or better, depending on your interest in this ).

So what can we conclude so far:
The SA "online mall" shopping market is probably wide open to an online shopping website with up-to-date SEO.
A properly structured Adwords campaign is likely to be very cost effective (and I mean properly structured), probably around 7c a click which is as low as it gets.

There are still a ton of questions to answer just on this aspect, but at least this surface scratch shows that it might be worth investigating further.

Gotta go do some work. If there are any terms in there you don't know yet, google it.

Which also happens to be the way most people do their online shopping research nowadays

[G Robin]

Hi
You have a pretty well good site...

My opinion will be to have a....
Site Map..to increase your SERPS
Check your site upload time
Monetize from ad campaigns

You site look great, all the best

Thanks
Gino

[Inprogress]

@ Dave and G Robin.

Thanks for the interest. Dave, not sure exactly what your post means, but I will re-read it. And no, not skimping that you should explain it again, I will ask, we are busy people

G Robin. I have just spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out a way to get a site map. I will continue the quest. The extension unfortunatly isn't setup for my application, so a lot is work arounds. To much to explain what happens, but I hope I can sort it out. Because of this short comming, I can't really create a site map that is structured like my website.

But thanks for the interest, I am working on that sitemap. Also trying to eliminate my frontpage to only have two or three modules to load.

Thanks again guys! let me continue.

[Dave A]

Here's a very short version - you really need to look at alatest.com.

Take something like that, optimise for South Africa and you're cooking!