Dealers? We Don't Need No Stinkin Dealers!

Brixtonchrome,
Understood, but I do not think that online buyers are much different than brick and mortar buyers. I owned a retail shop for two decades only to have most of the small retail businesses in my town decimated by the arrival of Walmarts. Even through we had competitive prices and offer FAR better information on the hobby, people flocked to Walmart. It was not uncommon for people to come into the store for an hour worth of information but buy little. Later in the day I would then see them buying the majority of what they needed at WalMart. Talk about discouraging for a retailer.

The 'build an ebay store and they will come' does nothing for communicating excitement. 'Build a website and they will come' works but takes an extraordinary amount of time and money. It has taken me over 5 years and 1500+ man-hours per year just to get Stamp Smarter over 100,000 page views per month. Dealers who develop a retail website often struggle on getting traffic and even fewer are willing to spend the thousands of hours developing content on a daily basis. To your credit you are exploring alternate ways by investing time and money in this community. Other social media venues may also represent possible ways to increase reciprocal and cross-over traffic.

But to go further than that you are going to have to get into new innovations for servicing online buyers. Consider how Amazon has streamlined customer service. When I buy something, I get a pre-printed return label and an automate webpage for handling returns painlessly. I get things delivered to my door the very day after I order it. On some sites I often get a real-time chat capability (not a FaceBook chat which many of us refuse to use) which is great for order status, support questions etc. I get reviews and other content which helps me make informed buying decisions.

It is going to take an online huge investment in content, innovative customer service features, SEO efforts, and time. Alternatively dealers can try the 'build it and they will come' approach but it will literally takes years and years to build traffic.
Don

Don, I am well aware of what you are saying, though with the passing months I realize that this is a very long game indeed and will take a lot more resources than I thought I would need. This is why I originally chose to try and build my business with E-bay - because I naively thought that E-bay would help me build my business for a monthly fee. But they are the Walmart of the online world.

So I do see what is involved. Right now I have returned to Toronto to work for 8 weeks at my old firm helping them through tax time. That 8 weeks will make me enough to get me and my wife through a year in Saint John. This will take a lot of the pressure off, and I may wind up sacrificing 2 months of focus every year to pay for the other 10 if it means that I can make this work.

The fact that you have been able to get your website to 100,000 visitors a month gives me a lot of hope. I haven't been developing content on more than a weekly basis, but soon that will change, when I have employees to help me. I have every confidence that the Walmarts of the world do appeal to a very large segment of the population, but not everyone, and not for everything. But I do see how discouraging it can be to have people come to you for info, only to buy from a competitor. However, I do believe that most will return to buy from you when the Walmart does not have what they want.

Walmart shares an important attribute with Amazon, buyers feel confident that they are not paying too much they shop there.

This is a critical feeling when someone is making a purchase. When folks go to a small retail brick and mortar, or to a nice website, they immediately think they are going to see higher prices. I think you have a nice site and it makes buying online easy and simple. But this is only the first step of a long journey in what it will take to build traffic.

There are some 'less than ethical' methods including one that has been hitting philatelic website in the last few months. Website owners get an email like this


This is a scam for simply building traffic. But it gives you an idea of just how far people will go to generate the required traffic.
Don

I agree with what Don said. I recall him coming from a deep background in technology as well.

I feel as though something like engaging in stamp dealing is not something I would want to just try out (If I were interested in it - which I am not). If it were me, I would have sought to become an apprentice or take a low paying job working for an existing dealer to learn the ropes. I feel as though there would be so many pitfalls that only come from years and decades of experience. Dealing with the front of the store is one aspect - probably the easier one, but I think the magic happens in the back. Building a strong relationship with other dealers is extremely tough as a new player, and I could see newcomers being marked as patsies amongst an old boys network of fiefdoms. Earning reputation respect is a non-trivial affair among folks who spent their lives doing this. I'm sure it's all familiar faces at auctions, nods, and side chats among the dealers.

For me, as a tech guy - I envision a game changing e-commerce platform. For me, it would be about connecting information and fostering sales. Let me give you an example. Not to be critical, but standalone blogs on a ".com" site, while educational, should tie back to merchandise for sale, and vice versa. If I read the blog, and there are stamps being discussed, I want to be able to buy those stamps to be a part of that experience. Conversely, if I am browsing for stamps and come across one, I want the associated blog, comments, and reviews on what other people think of the the stamp. The good and the bad, unfiltered. This way I can learn more about the stamp I'm looking at one direction, and when I am learning I can relate that back to purchasing it. Everything on a site should be geared toward driving sales, especially in the most subtle of ways.

I also think price transparency is extremely important. I like how on swappa you can trend prices on cell phones. I want baked in PFC search results, auction realizations, and datz counts, all in the same screen, ebay listings for the same stamp from other sellers. I want to be so compelled to stay on a stamp site, that I don't need to run a siegel search, search for certs, look for wares on hipstamp and ebay that are similar. I want all the information consolidated neatly. Suppose tags were put onto threads here, say Scott#s. It would be cool to tie Scott #s back to threads here so folks could read about conversations elsewhere about the stamp. Information aggregation is key. I suppose I envision it somewhat to what my Stock brokerage account looks like. Quotes, News, Research, Historical, etc about every investment.

I like this EFO that is offered by only 2 sellers. Its 5000. There are only 6 in the world. It sold on auction a few times for about 2500. I want to know that without leaving the dealer's site what it went for elsewhere - even what other people are listing it for. It's not a secret how much auctions realizations are. It's publicly available. And I think it's good for the hobby to share public information. It doesn't undermine the business. It fosters it.

My good friend tried for years to sell nice stamps on ebay ,with low prices like 1/4 catalog for British Colonies and 1/5 catalog for others mostly complete sets .He was getting very little sales .

I hooked up with him after I moved to Florida and took a lot of his material and place them on stock cards and dealer display sheets and started selling mixtures and collections for 5 cents to 10 cents per stamp all in groups of 50 to 200 stamps per lot ,we sold hundreds and he was happy to get the money and reduce his huge inventory .

Now he got me buying massive lots at auction for us and he is a happy seller after I take out a few items and helping him make up ebay lots .Fun time for me and extra income for him .

That is how I get thousands of better stamps and he is a successful ebay seller.

Brixtonchrome,

I went to your website and wonder if you only sell Canadian stamps? I saw an image of a Nigerian stamp but did not look like you sold any.

I am with rismoney in that I want to find stamps fast so do not want much getting in the way. I do not need image thumbnails unless I actually want to look at the specific copy. I would prefer to search by catalog number or logical group/series by country then see what material is available. Obviously topics would be sorted by country for each topic.

I also looked and wondered the exact thing as Angore. Clicking through all the categories would be easier if they were lined up on the left as links.

Hi Guys. To answer your question my main focus is Canada and Nigeria. I just haven't gotten around to listing all my stock yet. That is coming now that I have found an efficient way to do it. I'm about 2 to 3 weeks away from finishing my master excel CSV spreadsheet that will allow me to list en-masse my Nigeria and the rest of my Canada inventory. As I said in an earlier post I'm in Toronto, working on a 2 month contract. When I return, I plan on hiring an assistant, finishing the spreadsheet and getting him to start helping me list inventory. When I have everything listed, I will begin controlled expansion into other countries. I try to explain this in my "new developments page"

I emailed you from the site about a stamp I am looking for. Just a thought- you have 17 active links at the top of your home page, in a small font, competing with large colorful pictures of beautiful stamps. Collectors coming to shop want to browse and buy- so the stamps will quickly get their attention, not the links. And the images of the stamps are an active link too, (which is GREAT). Clicking the stamps image will take you to another page full of stamp images which is also very excellent to engage potential buyers. As it should be.

That said, it's very unlikely that collectors wanting to buy stamps and seeing all the stamp images will click on one of the 17 small links. Nor should they. They should be shopping and buying. So even if you've provided the info on your "What's New" page, you don't really want collectors in there often.

I did navigate to the what's new page. There is a very long discussion of what's new. I couldn't count the words because none of the text is selectable- which means it probably isn't searchable by Google either. It's so much info, I wasn't inspired to read it. If it were my site, the only reference to "what's new" that I would make is at the top of each page, I would write "New stock being added daily! Come back often! Or perhaps change the messages frequently, "Basutoland & Bechuanaland stock additions on 4/1/19. St Pierre & France stock additions on 4/8/19. Come back often!" This creates a potential "call to action" needed to get collectors coming back.

I then navigated to your blogs pages, which are loaded with great info. That said, in your most recent blog about Canadian Gum and Chalk Surfacing none of the text was selectable. Not even the title. Now Don is our resident expert on all things internet, but I don't believe Google can find your blogs if the text isn't selectable. And if google can't find them, they will not improve your search ranks. I also believe that you get more bang for the buck if the blogs are updated frequently vs. all at once, but again Don is the expert. If my theory is correct, then you may get a lot more help from the blogs if you remove all but 1 or 2 and then upload them, with real text that is searchable, weekly so that google finds new and fresh blog content all the time. Good for ranking.

Last suggestion- please consider modifying content to orient strictly to the collector and perhaps shorten content down to the most salient info. An example is your mission page. I'm not being mean or nasty in any way- I'm trying to help- but read that info again from a collector's perspective. Is the mission page written for you or for them? How many times are the words "I" and "me" used? Could that page be written in a way that makes a potential customer feel like it was written just for them?

Hope my thoughts are taken in the manner in which they have been offered.

Many website owners use JS or other code to prevent users from 'copy and pasting' their content out of fear of that others will steal their work. Of course this does not prevent anyone from taking it if they know what they are doing, but it slows down the less geeky users. You can still allow search engines access.

In looking at the source code of his site, he is using SEO techniques although it is probably actually getting penalized by some search engines due to the over-implementation of meta tags. But it is hard to find middle ground for the constantly changing search engine landscape (read as = full time job).

I agree that the navigation needs some work. While the site uses templates which are all 'mobile friendly', they do not require developers to be knowledgeable. So it is common to see 'deep' menus like this which are un-usable on mobile devices. Requiring mobile users to scroll the menu will cause many users to just leave the site.

But he can see if this is the case by looking at his traffic metrics and seeing how many users are leaving the site on the opening page and/or <30 seconds.
Don

One of the dangers of trying to combine a storefront and an informational site is that it inevitably makes it more difficult for both audiences to use. The shoppers don't want their experience muddied by informational pages; they just want to shop. The information hunters aren't necessarily looking to buy.

It becomes cumbersome to try and be "all things to all people" IMO. Sometimes a better approach is to put either the store or the information site on a subdomain or even a different domain, with similar branding and navigation but clearly separate. Otherwise, as content and features grow, you get this morass of confusing hierarchy and content.

All the SEO in the world won't do you any good if the functionality/design drives visitors away.

Just my opinion.

For me Siegel is a great example of an entertaining and informative site that also serves the sales side well. Yes, it is an auction house but you can research, read interesting articles, link to lots of great content and still peruse items for sale albeit items not available for immediate purchase.

I think you guys may be right. I know the site needs a lot of work. This is the biggest issue I have had to wrestle with. I tried to overcome the menu issue with dedicated landing pages on the home page that take you to a "map" of where to go next, kind of like Ikea does in their stores, where there is a trail. I've tried to segregate the informational sections from the shopping and the search engine is very powerful and will display both stamps and blogs.

But based on the input I have received here and from other sources, I will have to get rid of the large menu.

I could consider a subdomain for the informational side. But I'm reluctant to do that. Yes I want to sell stamps for course, but I also want my site to be a resource, as I did say that I want to help collectors. Isn't there a way to design this so that the two sections are easily separated?

I will admit that I have protected all my text and images with a separate app. I might be able to be persuaded to remove that protection, but one of the reasons why I have done it is because virtually all my stamp listings did get stolen. I did some google searches and found several affiliate marketing sites that had my stamp listings, with my images, advertising my items for a 1/5 of what I was asking. I tried to have some taken down, but after a while it was too much work. But maybe it is turning visitors off. I didn't think it would. But maybe you can elaborate as to why.

On the subject of the Mission page, I will have to take another look at that. I honestly thought that although I use the word I quite a bit, it is within the context of trying to understand and help my readers. But I guess that is not how I am coming across.

In any event, I won't be able to do much with it until May when I return home from my contract. I see the theme developer has updated it 4 times since I bought it, so I have to do updates too. But I don't want to just click "update" until I have time to go through it properly.