How do I build a website...not by Using Bootstrap methods but talents here

CannaBusiness Other Cannabis Web Sites
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Morning guys, I used the similar thread name to attract more guys to help me out here

I wanna build few new websites and after talking to those outsourcing companies,I though it might be better to find assistance here,and I knew some of you guys are doing it super well,my simple thoughts on the websites includes

1.we produce vape hardware and plan to promote on the websites, some of you are using or buying these stuff so I think you know way better then those outsourcing companies on what type of contents the target audience prefer;

  1. I saw/knew a lot of you own great websites,either retail or wholesale . Any experience shared would be highly appreciated,and if you are willing to help us build websites,please feel free to contact and I will let you know our budgets and more details . Most Chinese vendors would spend a lot of budget on alibaba or madeinchina.com, or hiring a lot of sales to bump on instagram,or SEO their webpage.
    I knew some of them did spend big money on alibaba ads,so we may not go there to compete with them,but build our own websites instead.

I already reached @moveweight and he replied ,but I know he’s been busy recently so we did not discuss on further yet.

p.s. I had the whole team to read @COVID-69 's How to Build Multi-Million Dollar Brands – Ask Me Anything!

We all learned a lot of from this ,IMO a website would be a part of the brand building. I build the www.qbd420.com by bootstrap steps,and now I’m really hoping build something seriously

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Good questions. The answers are complicated.

I am, unsurprisingly, a big fan of having an exceptionally good website.

HOWEVER, I’ve had to learn over time that my primary reason – the real one – is I am a big fan of doing everything exceptionally well. I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

My current websites are better than average and I get a lot of compliments, but they pain me to look at. I have to fight the urge to spend precious time & resources on them because the reality is that 98% of my business is at retail, and my websites get very little traffic.

I used to make a lot of money as a teenager building nice websites to sell product. But back then, buying the top spot on Google was $.05/click and I knew what an exceptionally good deal that was while the market did not. Back then, you could email whoever the hell you wanted without any regard for the spam filter. And it was exceptionally easy to rank organically in Google search results relative to today.

Websites are one of those things that, when done well, are simple & elegant. It seems like an easy project. The reality is that simple & elegant is time-consuming & expensive.

Now, I’m not trying to dissuade you. But you better be willing to hustle to get traffic to your site and make it worthwhile. People don’t come to your website just because you built it.

Think long & hard about what purpose your website will play in your sales funnel. Is it a place for people to learn, develop trust, shop, and buy? Are you going to be able to spend substantial levels of traffic with that intent?

Or is it merely a place that solidifies / strengthens trust when prospective buyers do their due diligence?

Fundamentally, you have to decide who you want to be.

  1. If you want to appear to be a trustworthy, Americanized chinese hardware company like Greentank, Jupiter, AVD, etc-- It’s going to cost an arm & a leg but if you succeed, your margins will improve substantially, too. Being one of these companies means charging customers more for more peace of mind.

  2. OR, you can be another Chinese cart company focused on Alibaba / MadeInChina.com, charging low prices with a relatively low customer acquisition cost.

Before you decide-- perform a SWOT analysis (Google it). What are your strengths & weaknesses? Opportunities & threats? Now put yourself in your competitions shoes and answer again.

Now put yourself in buyers shoes-- what are they missing that they so desperately desire?

Where is the opportunity in your business from a positioning standpoint?

Thank you for the kind words but take the following with a grain of salt–

My hunch is that there is an opportunity for Chinese manufacturers like yours to hire talented American marketing firms – that would normally focus on eBay / Amazon listings – to optimize your Alibaba / MadeInChina listings.

Optimize them for communication, trust, and organic search ranking.

That means writing good, clean, effective copy with no errors. Writing in a voice that American like & trust. Using real product imagery-- lose all the stock / poorly photoshopped stuff. Optimizing for ranking using real, long-term methods-- not tactics that are technically fraud.

And to go a step further, hire American customer support & sales people-- people who can speak clear english with no errors. Ultimately, make it feel like less of a gamble to do business with you.

I mean no offense here about the language stuff. I respect the hell out of you all for speaking multiple languages & hustling so hard. The trust issues are just a reality of how American perceive / trust. You may as well hack it.

This approach is a LOT cheaper than going the website route. Websites alone are expensive but that strategy doesn’t stop there… you will have to spend millions on paid advertising, outbound sales, conferences / conventions, more American staff to make it really work.

The opportunity here – I believe – is to make Alibaba / MadeInChina listings that are 10x to 100x better than the competitions with relatively low effort / cost.

The answer is not to try and win at every channel. That’s called chasing many birds. Usually if you chase many you will catch none, unless you chase them one-by-one.

Pick a channel that has a big opportunity to position yourself well in the eyes of the target audience, where that opportunity aligns with your strengths & resources, and go conquer it.

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most humble thanks sir ,your reply make my day

the poor build (by myself ) current website www.qbd420.com is a bad example too ,though it’s not for retail. We have only 250 to 300 visitors monthly,fortunately most of these vistors are target audience,since I can see most of them are from future4200 ( appreciate you guys ) ,we received 5 to 10 inquiries from the website . if we only take CVR (Click Value Rate) into consideration,we are not doing bad,but the whole traffic is way too low ( this is why we want a better website and want spend on promoting our websites)

those good days are gone :rofl: When I was in another industry which I did for 8 years, we start a new business in the whole world and you can even register a domain which would worth 1 million at free and you can easily rank on google fist line,first page, since only very few people knew the industry ,knew the product,and one year later the per click increased to more then 5.0 USD/click on google, 10+ USD / click on amazon

100% agree

this is absolutely my first thought and what I am doing, I know clearly on how unclear/improper/poor communication ruined a business ,so when I build the sales team here,I am willing to spend longer time on writing email properly instead of hooking potential clients. I told our team plan to spend 90% of our time and effort on preparation .

possible to let me to know (by message if possible) ?

again we do appreciate your response ,it means a lot to us

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Those are not bad numbers!

Ultimately, total traffic is a vanity metric. What really matters is purchase volume, and that is not a result of total traffic. Sources of traffic are not all created equal. Some convert way better than others. What matters from a traffic perspective is how many relevant, targeted, qualified buyers come to your site.

Consider carefully the buying / shopping experience of your target audience from each source. It is amazing that you are here in the community building relationships 1-to-1 and 1-to-many with your target audience. That makes the vanity of your website largely irrelevant, because people buy from people, not brands.

The important things for traffic from Future are (1) that your website has the information buyers from Future need, (2) that information is easy to navigate, and (3) that information is easy to trust.

Fancy, artsy branding comes last. That is the brand’s job (your customers, or your customers’ customers).

Yep!!

Sure.

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