TulipTools Internet Business Owners and Online Sellers Community

Alrighty, I think that I want to do a storefront rather than a mall, but using product photos rather than a bunch of banner ads.  I've put it on vitalfinds.com.  I had no idea how to price it, and all the sellers on the site now are getting freebies.  I'm wondering if the storefront idea might be better than expecting a seller to open up yet another online store and manage yet another set of inventory.  This way, the theme-related site will hopefully draw in a target market, and then they can be directed to the seller's core selling site. I'll need content also, which I have plans for.  So what do you think?

Think like a buyer. Ask yourself if you would rather visit a site of linked product photos or a store if you were shopping. Ask yourself if you would rather visit a site without any pricing or merchant information or a site with both like Shopzilla.

Full member. 

I like the all picture format. I love to click on pics.  Actually I like the idea of seeing all the offerings in one compact place in pictorial form and then clicking on what interests me. Even when I shop on that place with the dirty four letter word I shop by gallery pics if I am looking for something that has a lot of listings.

Quote:Think like a buyer. Ask yourself if you would rather visit a site of linked product photos or a store if you were shopping. Ask yourself if you would rather visit a site without any pricing or merchant information or a site with both like Shopzilla.

Ditto what Miss Turquoise Shooting Star wrote.

Quote:would prefer to be able to just "look around" first.

One reason I shop at Amazon is that I prefer looking around and buying in the same place--I like unified checkouts .  If I saw 3 product photos on Vitalfinds Storefront that interested me I'd first have to click through to each web site to find out the product name/pricing/shipping/etc, and then go through 3 separate checkouts on 3 different web sites.

Honest opinion: it would be even more of a turnoff to me as a buyer than the Wiz's navigation/search challenged Main Street Mall stores.  I wouldn't go there to shop.  I would however go to the mall you originally suggested--as long as it had a unified checkout and didn't suffer from Wiz Main Street type problems.