cultureblog

Post 2 of our ongoing case study – Project Tee Compressed

Most startup businesses probably already have the answer to our next question but for the sake of our case study, we need to decide – What product are we going to offer in our new online e-commerce store? Surprisingly, we didn’t need to think too long or too hard about this one before we came up with our answer. Usually, however, when considering your options, you should do considerable research before making a decision. Sifting through the thousands of product options, we could have gone with more popular products but usually that translates to heavy competition and thousands of websites already selling your product. Electronics for example, is almost impossible to compete in because the market is just too saturated with high volume sellers and keeping competitive pricing means slim profit margins. Ideally, you want to consider niche products that have a wide shopping audience but not much competition. Making a list of your favorite things or hobbies can be helpful. Selling what you love doesn’t always mean it’s a good business idea, but it’s a good place to start. It’s difficult to find that one product that nobody else is selling but doing your own research and investigation usually pays off. A key ingredient is making sure you can actually source your product at a price that allows you to resell it at a profit.

For a number of reasons that we will dig into later, what we decided on as our product is the innovative promotional product called the compressed t-shirt – "compressed tee". We believe this is a great product idea that has a lot of potential if marketed in the right way.

The next step is deciding on a name. The direction we took was to keep it close to the product we are selling. We followed our own advice and went with an easy name to understand rather than acronyms, numbers, or something too long. In coming up with a short-list of names, we had to make sure the correct combination of domain names were also still available. This is an important step everyone should consider before choosing their business name. Before getting too attached to a clever name, you have to make sure the domain name, and all variations of it, are still available. You don’t want to invest in branding a company name and not have your website reflect that investment. If you get too far down the road with the wrong domain name, you will quickly regret it. Most online shoppers today will hear a name and try for that exact URL. Your domain name will also play an important part in your search engine rankings so it should be relevant to your product. Try to avoid acronyms or clever misspellings, unless you also own the correct spelling to catch traffic from both sources. It’s important to really put some thought into your domain name, it’s going to be the retail face of your business for years to come. While getting the .net or .info or .biz domain name extensions isn’t that critical, getting the singular and plural versions is important. Ask yourself what people will hear when speaking your domain name. Is it easy to say without having to spell it out and are there dashes or hyphens. For our compressed t-shirt store, we decided on TeeCompressed.com – along with tcompressed.com and TeeCompress.com. We also grabbed a few "inspirational" names in case we want to experiment down the road – teeshrink.com and compresstee.com.

Domains are inexpensive so it pays to buy several variations of your name. The last thing you want is a competitor on your heels with a name too similar to your name who is stealing away your customers.

In our next post we will roll up our sleeves and talk about designing our official store logo and begin mapping out our online store.