Would really love some honest feedback.

[LittleCreativeMum]

I set up my business selling craft kits for kids last October and I know it's early days but we are really not selling enough. We seem to be getting plenty of traffic from our Google Adwords but once people get to the site they just don't buy. I don't understand why, whenever I tell people about them they love them and get really enthusiastic. I ran a competition recently with a mummy blogger and had loads of really positive feedback but no one actually bought any.
I have had friends look at the site but I think they only tell me what I want to hear it's so frustrating. I've just had a call from someone trying to sell me ways of getting me up the search engines but before I waste my money I really want to know if I'm just barking up the wrong tree.
Please please can you take a look at my website and tell me what is putting people off www.littlecreativedays.co.uk

Thank you.

This is all my own opinion.

But.....

Superb website & the kits do look wonderful.

But parents tend not to buy things like this for their own children. Craft kits for home are nothing more than paper, glue & felt tips from Wilkinson.

The people who WOULD buy stuff like this are, for example, slightly well-to-do parents getting a gift for their child to take to a party. Or brides might put these out for children at weddings to keep them busy.

I honestly don't know how online selling works - but can you make yourself available on Amazon & Not On The High Street etc? Plus on various kids party retailers sites?

Oh - and I used to be a copy writer specialising in search engine optimisation (which is what these people are trying to sell you). Don't pay them a penny.

All you need to do is write several articles yourself for your website using key phrases that you think various people might use - "wedding goodie bags for kids" or "great party present idea" - stuff like that.

But well done, I think your products & site are really great :)

They are lovely but very very expensive. I think you need to consider whether you can sell them at a much lower price.

Too expensive for the amount of play value/entertainment
Eg the wooden cars, planes etc... £7.99 &£1.99 delivery is £10. My kids would do this in minutes,
Also agree these are not the type of things you buy for your own kids. More for parties or to entretain a group of kids, could you batch them up say into sets of 10 and be more competitive? Also do look at yellow moon. I buy art stuff there mostly to make presents or specific easter/christmas crafts. Or themes, eg teddy bears picnic where dd will invite some friends over.

I had a look on NOTHS and I don't think your prices are that expensive compared to what's on there - they seem similar.

Here:

www.notonthehighstreet.com/search?utf8=✓&term=craft+kits

Thank you so much for you feedback, we are looking into creating kits for children's parties. My sister is starting to write children's stories so we are looking at setting up some Create and Show kits the first one is on the site already. Where kids make puppets to act out the story. One kits would work for up to 7 kids do you think £16.99 would be too much for that.

We can't see much cheaper because we source everything from the UK (not cheap from China) and all the kits are handmade.

Btw I posted on another board about some market research we are doing www.mumsnet.com/Talk/parties_celebrations/1541223-Help-needed-with-some-research-into-Kids-parties

As a potential customer, I am put off by the prices TBH. £7.99 for a kit to make something that I could buy complete in a shop for £1-2 doesn't attract me much.

Some nice ideas though, I like that there is a clear list of exactly what you will receive, perhaps sets of X number of kits, eg for a party might be an idea? Online tutorials for basic skills or links to existing ones?

I think it is a lovely site but two things struck me. Firstly, there isn't much choice. You are competing with the likes of Yellow Moon and Baker Ross who have thousands of ideas to choose from. I also felt that most of the things you have offer too little scope for real creativity. I'm not sure how much fun simply painting a ready made car, dog or suchlike really is. My children would rather have a big pile of different coloured paper, some scissors, bit of glue, few lolly sticks etc to create their own things. I wonder if you'd have more success with boxes full of random crafty bits. Just my opinions. You did ask!

Sorry, x-posted there. Could you make a lot more of the handmade/UK produced side then, as a USP for why you are different? Focussing on handmade, UK produced, high quality etc.

The About Us section and the detailed product info doesn't mention that at all - could be a big draw for the wnaky basket people

Ok, honest, you say?

Layout...quite nice. I like the freshness of it. I prefer justified text, but that's neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. A couple of grammatical errors, but generally well written.

Range:

This is where I think you come unstuck.

0-5: You sell 11 products, and 10 of the 11 use paint. The issues I have with this are:

1. If your child doesn't like paint, you have only 1 other choice, and that choice involves peeling a thin layer of paper from a backing. Realistically, any child in the 0-4 range is going to need extensive help with this, and it's unlikely to capture their attention.

1. As a customer, if I buy one kit from you, I'm going to have 3 pots of paint. If I then buy another kit, I'll have another 3 pots of paint. You can see that even if I loved all of your designs, I'd be thinking 'hmm...don't fancy 18 bottles of paint, so I'd go somewhere that sold just the sponges.

1. The section is 0-5 years, but each of your products say 'not suitable for under 36 months'. I understand that is legislation driven, but it does take the section into a 3-5 category!

5-10: You have more items (19) but they fall into 4 basic categories:

-Make a wooden toy
-Make a fabric item
-Paint something

12 of the 19 items involve paint.

10+: All your items are fabric craft.

As an aside, I think unless you have items on 'sale' then don't have the 'sale' page shown, because it's a bit disappointing to find nothing in there!

It's a nice website but I agree that there aren't enough kits to choose from. It's a really good idea doing workshops. Could you not expand on that side and go into schools or youth clubs. But anybody who does this sort of enterprise has my admiration. Do you also sell the kits at say craft fairs.

I just had another thought. What about party bags. Kept very cheap.

Nice website, but agree that it seems a bit expensive for crafty stuff as usually this sort of stuff is a bit flimsy and doesn't last well.

Also your 10+ range is geared towards girls. I try to keep things as gender neutral as possible but I'd have a hard time selling a bag and coin purse to my two boys.

I took a look at your meta tags and one thing that struck me is that they are very repetitive. You have all the 'craft ideas for...' more than covered but might try something like 'easy gifts for kids' or 'easy craft gifts for kids' to target more the birthday present market.

Also, it's obviously a very similar design to a lot of other sites. It's clean and easy to navigate, true, but it really has no 'wow' factor.

I'm a Lazy Mummy [tm] and when looking at the offerings for toddlers, I just can't be arsed to compare and contrast 8 lots of 4-6 quid.

I want a "bumper pack" with everything (e.g., 5 rainy days in 5 packs) - and am happy to pay more - would also feel happier about the postage.

I echo what was previously said - make a HUGE deal about the stuff being UK produced, a photo of a happy lady on a production line waving a Union Flag?

there's just not a lot on there, what is I could either get easily and cheaply on the high street or make myself having seen the idea

I have a 3 YO and also a lot of children's birthdays comming up to buy from (ranging from 2 yrs to 13 yrs and everything in between) but there just isn't enough on there to get something personal that's "them"
e.g. the next birthday is an 8YO who is mad about dance, she wouldn't do most of the activities on there but if there were balerina puppets for example she might, next birthday after that is a kid that's very into football, not mad about craft but might make football bunting in his teams colours etc

I actually tend to choose craft kits as my gift of choice, but they have to also be a craft of something the kid is into if they aren't specifically into craft for craft's sake, and your site isn't working for me with the children I have in mind

Thank you again for all your honest feedback. I've found out more in the last few hours than in the last 6 months. So many people only tell you what you want to hear. I've had appraisals done by my marketing course tutors but none of them are looking at it from a mum's point of view.

Lougle I was just updating the site when you looked and took down the sale stuff and just decreased all the prices instead.

As far as not enough choice we are working on new kits all the time we are a new company and we have quite a long lead in time because we send them to kids to be tested first. I so hate it when you buy something that doesn't appear to have been near a human - such as my new iron. Sorry I will stop there I feel a rant coming on.

Will definitely look at it from the gift angle but had also already been thinking more down the party pack idea. As I said we are doing market research into kids parties at the moment. Any help would that would be greatly appreciated I posted a link to that higher up or alternatively click on the competition on our website.

Personally I don't like the pile high sell it cheap approach that's why we put everything you need in. For instance Hobbycraft do sponge painting kits for £5.99 which is what ours are now down to but there is no paint or tray to put the paint in. So what happens, you go to start doing it and you have run out of paint and dc gets really annoyed.

I'd like to see more paper/collage/sticking and gluing based ideas. Also on your gallery you need a description for each pic - you have the photo number on most of them. You can use the description and the title of the photo to have keywords in. (I read about this recently) Before uploading your pics make sure the title is a description rather than a number, and add a description under each photo. It helps with image search stuff on google.

Hi have just had a look, firstly I like the colours and layout-fresh and light and looks very professional IMO. Negatives: the prices too I'm afraid my son is 4 and would be interested in many but the price is off putting. However I agree with the others that u need to make a bigger deal of the fact things are handmade, uk products etc as for me this would encourage me to buy from u rather than cheaper in hobby craft etc- u are more expensive generally so You need to focus on making it clear why you are worth the extra. I would also like more choice felting kits for example to make you own felt picture are very popular around here and it's expensive to buy all the little bits so one kit including everything I know would around here at least be very popular. Have you got a fb page ? A friend of mine sells handmade jewellery online through fb and does very well, she runs promotions and evenings where people can come ask questions or see works in progress all online. Some real customer examples would be good too-just to see
What can be made realistically. Have you tried local fares? Again word of mouth is the best advertising you can have. Best of luck hope any of that helped.

But with regard to the sponge painting - if you are making the kits up, surely you could have two items on sale:

Sponge painting Kit (animals) complete with paints £x
Animal sponges for sponge painting £y

Because if I was a mother who had ordered from your site, what would you expect me to do? By your logic, do you think I should buy another sponge painting kit when I run out of paint? Of course not, I'd just buy more paint. My logic says that I shouldn't have to buy a whole kit to get a bit of variety in the sponges my children use.

My thoughts echo other posters. I was looking mainly at the 0-5 range and it just isn't inspiring. I would imagine a large proportion of people who would buy this sort of thing would be buying for the pre-school age range.

Every child I know already has paints at home, and that type of kit is available in Tesco at a lower price. Granted, the Tesco kit won't be UK produced, but for a sponge painting kit I wouldn't really care too much.

I love that you can choose by "mess factor" - that is inspired. However not one item in the 0-5 range is mess free.

To be completely honest with you, some of the kits that come free with children's magazines are more inspired than these. I also went into Wilkinsons the other day to look for stocking fillers, and they had a large range of children's art kits in the £1-2 range. If I was to buy something like this I would expect it to be something a bit different. Something I couldn't buy on the high street / supermarket.

Have you thought about doing party bags for different occasions? Eg children's activity bags for weddings which are mess-free (highlight that no one wants their wedding outfit messed up but wants the children entertained during the boring bits)?

I think you've had a lot of honest advice about your products and your prices - so not going to mention that, but personally i don't think your website looks professional. It's a good diy job but not good enough to pass off as professional. For instance - when you first look at it - your forced to scroll down to even see what products you sell, my attention is starting to go if I'm not wowed straight away. Again add a product to your basket and its not immediately obvious how to 'check out'. Your product page photos don't show 'happy smiley toddlers' playing with such toys - and they should. It's just not compelling me to buy.

These issues can all be fixed btw, study your competitors websites.

hth

I can get similar at lower cost from wilkinson. That said if packed for specific events: party etc then I might buy, especially if touted that it is uk made and that it arrives "special", addressed to party child, has free gift for said child and (taking a tip from another company) my child got a "it's you're birthday soon card" with a voucher for mummy if you buy again. Bluntly, you can't compete with the mass providers so it's either offer something unique (which no-one can afford, or be seen to afford, these days) or go for the niche markets. No idea how Internet marketing works, but do know as a consumer that links intice me. Good luck.

Some other points- when I click on the social media buttons for facebook, twitter etc they navigate me away from your site- could these open in a separate window?
In the left hand side menu, 'occassion' is spelled incorrectly (also 'any occassion'!)

You need a picture of children doing craft on your front page, at the top.

I am a sucker for anything that says 'you will keep your children entertained for a whole afternoon' to me and I have to read too much stuff to get that idea (perhaps I have a low attention span but I can't be the only one).

Don't put 'as seen in' on the top left - it's a waste of the first thing I'll look at. Put a picture of a kid holding up something they've made and looking proud/ like they haven't been moaning for a bit.

The first thing I read is 'we guarantee that with one of our blah blah blah'. Start more punchily - 'kids will love...' 'fill those empty afternoons with...'.

The product looks ace (and yes a bit expensive but I don't think too expensive to sell). Don't give up on it.