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made a brand need help with target audience

2871 Views 22 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  uncenshirt
Hello everyone! my tshirt brand is UncenShirt (Uncensored + Shirt). I think that the concept is very unique, and i tried to implement that concept into the brand and design.

I am not sure if my designs would fall strictly into the 'silly tee. I need some third part feedback so that i can focus my marketing strategies or expand my target audience. Thanks for your time! UNCENShirt- Unique, quality shirts; Uncensor the censored with UNCENshirt! Made with 100% organic bamboo or cotton shirts! Free same day shipping/returns!
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To be honest, it looks like you have created a website with funny/clever tees rather than created a retail "brand." A brand should have a cohesion throughout the designs, logo, brand etc. There should be a specific identity and personality that connects with the audience. I'm not sure if your site really does that. Other than your website, where else are you selling your shirts? Have you thought about getting a vendor space at a local event or fair?
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I agree with the first reply but I also know that simple sells. I hope you do well! =]
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Thanks for your responses guys, I really appreciate it. Well , my brand name is Uncenshirt, and I have different lines within my brand. I tried to make a connection to the overall concept of the brand. I know that it is an overall silly tee, so I am glad I got some third party confirmation.

I basically did a prelaunch at a site called kickstarter, technically making it a project. I wanted to see how it would sell on that 'preorder' site, but I was having a hard time marketing so I asked on the forum for some feedback on some marketing tips and on finding the right target audience. I thought my concept was unique overall and I am hoping i find the right niche for my brand.

If you have any other feedback, or criticism, please tell me. I really appreciate it. Thanks!
Other brands that I have seen that use a recurring theme (like the red outline) and then just change the words, seem to do well. Personally I don't understand the interest in shirts with wording only and no artwork, but it seems to do well for other people. Other than the boob and fork shirts, I didn't really think the shirts were silly. I do think the finger shirt is cool though. One thing that was confusing was the difference between the 4 "label" in the t-shirt category.
Good luck!
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Thanks for the comment Reinhard. So my brand is called UncenShirt, and within that I have 4 'lines'. So unCEEN (unseen) line would include the silly boob or fork shirts. UNiCEN (unison) line would include the designs with different languages.
I know that simple sells, so I am not sure if I am complicating everything with this. I thought it might be better having different 'labels' for different category of designs.

I hope I do not sound silly for asking, but can I ask 'finger' shirt you were talking about? I am a bit confused about the finger :p
Sorry - there was one that looked like the facebook hand but with a middle finger sticking up. That is what I meant with "finger". I think the categories are great, but might want to explain them somehow, otherwise it might not be intuitive to your customers.
ohh I understand.. that finger :) yeah I should put a description of the different 'lines' on the site. Thanks for the suggestion and i really appreciate the feedback Reinhard!
I like the shirts and concept. Quick question, what supplier do you use for your shirts?
Thanks
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Hello everyone! my tshirt brand is UncenShirt (Uncensored + Shirt). I think that the concept is very unique, and i tried to implement that concept into the brand and design.

I am not sure if my designs would fall strictly into the 'silly tee. I need some third part feedback so that i can focus my marketing strategies or expand my target audience. Thanks for your time! UNCENShirt- Unique, quality shirts; Uncensor the censored with UNCENshirt! Made with 100% organic bamboo or cotton shirts! Free same day shipping/returns!
I think the design could be better, in many pages there is a lot of blank space which could be utilzed to give the site a more professional look.
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I like the shirts and concept. Quick question, what supplier do you use for your shirts?
Thanks
Thanks Squidward :) ! I am currently using Alpha shirt company near Sante Fe Springs.

I think the design could be better, in many pages there is a lot of blank space which could be utilzed to give the site a more professional look.
Thanks for the feedback. I actually did a soft launch, so I am still in the middle of things, such as designs and website. For designs, I am trying to make everyhting not so horizontal. For the website, I am still learning little by little in order to implement my concept into the site hahaa. I dont have the budget to pay 2800 for a website makeover yet.. :(
Yeah i was thinking shooting for that age bracket.. hoping to get up 25 year olds, but some college students dont have all that money to spend these days.. or do they hahha
Just some observations from a customer point of view.
I know you mentioned you made a 'soft launch' or rollout or whatever, just means the site isn't done yet. That really doesn't matter from the customer point of view, the customer sees what the customer sees.

As to the branding - um, not much 'branding', except for the main one 'Uncenshirt'. I liked the logo a lot. The four 'categories' or sub-brands don't make much sense.
Imagine it like a car - you have a Chevrolet and within the Chevrolet brand you have different models that are 'sub-branded', Caprice, Imipala, Chevelle, Nova, etc.as it seems that you've tried to do here with Uncensorshirt (Chevrolet) and unCEENshirt (Caprice), UNCENShirts! (Impala), UNICENShirts! (Chevelle), UNDERCENShirts! (Nova). Quite honestly I can't even tell your words apart, much less make any distinction between them.
You want distinction in branding - not Impala, IMPala, Impalla, impaLLa representing four entirely different cars.

On the other hand, when you come up with a distinct 'brand', you should have a corresponding distinction between the products. Don't come up with a brand, then fill it in with products - sort your products in some logical fashion, then come up with 'brands' for them. Chevrolet developed a mid-size, mid-price car then named it a Chevelle, they didn't decide one day 'Hey! We need a Chevelle! - get busy!'

You also want what the 'brand' represents to be different - an Impala is a larger, fancier car than a Nova. You don't brand one model an Impala and the same car with power brakes an ImpaLLa. Your first two 'brands' Unceenshirt and Uncenshirt are like that - same exact design shirt with different words on them. If you're going to do that make them all distinct under the main brand 'Uncenshirt'. Kleenex comes in dozens of styles of packaging and colors, but it's all Kleenex.
When somebody asks one of your customers about their T-shirt, do you want them to say "It's an Uncenshirt' or 'I don't remember, something spelled funny'. If you want sub-brands, make them distinct - one with the over and underscore logo and one with images, say. It's just too confusing to be memorable the way it is.

As to the site - there's a mysterious searchh Duck, Duck, Go, link just below the center column nav bar. Don't know why it's there, but it throws everything down the page, leaving a big gap.
Your center column is 3 across, yet you have 4 category links -
it looks like one of those old 'Plan ahead' posters with the A right up against the right margin and the D below it. Just my thought - combine the products in the first two 'sub-brands' and leave 3. It would make your site look a lot less like a series of random acts.
You have 6 categories listed on the left nav - 5 of which are 'Coming Soon' - the death knell fo the internet. Check out how many sites there are from 1999 that are still 'Coming Soon!' Take 'em off 'til you have something for them to do - put a product image up there or something. Maybe a coupla Amazon items. If you want those sub-brand things, put them over there.
I'm still trying to figure out what those are for, since all of you products are shown on the first page. It's like you walk into a grocery store and it's arranged normally, all the normal things on the normal shelves and you walk to the back and there's a series of doors that say 'Bread', 'Meat', 'Cupcakes'. If you're going to have them put something different behind them, otherwise they're just taking up space.
The site's very difficult to navigate - you can't go from one section to the next section without backing up to the main page. That's very tedious, especially once you realize that what you're seeing in the sections is all on the first page.
If you want to keep them on the site put some nav at the bottom of the section page that'll lead to the next section. If I went to the first section, then backed up and went into the second section and found the exact same shirt as the first section with four different words I probably wouldn't be too curious about what was in Section #3. The second time I got to the main page I'd probably split.

About the product display - I looked at the 'beLIEve (catchy design, cudos) shirt for example, dark gray lettering on a washed out black shirt - had to look at the caption to see what was on it. T-shirts are pretty graphic - people see something, it strikes them and they buy it. They don't look at a shirt that they can't make out and start looking around for an explanation. It's like going to "www bikinisonthebeach com" and finding written descriptions - people buy what they see - you're not selling roto-tillers. So anyways - I pursued it, wanted to see what it looked like in white - went to the detail page, selected the color and nothing happened, selected a size and boom - it turned white - then tried to go back to black and it just stuck on white. You might have an explanation for this, but it does no good when someone's trying to buy your product - you're not there, it has to work.
Since you're logo's are red and one of the shirt colors is red I wanted to see how that was handled. Apparently red shirts are not available, I had to guess this because nothing happened when I chose red for the shirt color. If I was trying to buy a shirt at this point I'd probably go elsewhere.
Every time I flipped a switch I had to wiggle the bulb.

Well, there's a few other things, click on a shirt and a different shirt pops up (made of lies/truth). The same shirt with different word, one's $10 (focus) and one's $15 (made of lies), no mention of the shirt construction or quality anywhere on the site, sliders under the shirt detail aren't the same shirt, etc. but this is kinda windy already.

All this was meant to be helpful, hopefully it'll be taken that way, but you never seem to know on the internet. :)
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I thought it might be better having different 'labels' for different category of designs
By labels, do you mean the categories I already have up?

Or do you mean calling them 'labels' iinstead of calling them categories?
@ wtd

you dont know how glad i was to see such a long post and criticism :)

I am still processing everything you wrote.. but i just wanted to say thanks for your input.

My site is definitley not finished, becasue there are so many aspects to fix, such as prices, SEO, layout, etc. The only reason i did a soft launch was because I had so many designs, so I wanted to sure what the response to my shirts were before i invested in a huge inventory.

I wanted to ask you if you think a soft launch was a good idea, esp because my website was far from finished. I worked out my brand for a while, so I guess i sorta rushed into the process of a soft launch especially with my unfinished website. Do you think this would hurt future sales? I haven't done any offline marketing becasue I am preparing for that after my site is finished and organized.

But I am definitely implementing your advice into my site, if you do not mind.

I hope you don't mind if i ask you a couple of questions later on after I reread your post. Thanks again WTD!
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The only reason i did a soft launch was because I had so many designs, so I wanted to sure what the response to my shirts were before i invested in a huge inventory.
The only problem with that is that you're not going to get a reaction to your designs, you're going to get a reaction to your broken website. If I like the shirt, but want to see it in white, then change my mind and actually want to buy a black one, but the broken site won't let me go back to the black one ... see what I mean? Customer liked the shirt, but gave trying to buy it.

I'd fix those things first - seems no shirt is available in red, take out the red option, fix up the color selection scripts, etc.
Once they hit your site they should be on ice with wet leather soled shoes headed to where you get their credit card.

As to the SEO, there's almost no text on your site and nothing in an <H1> tag. What you have in <H2> tags is 'Categories', 'Newsfeed', and 'Featured' - nothing that tells the search engine anything about you.

You have 46 images and 30 of them have empty alt tags. Search engines don't see pictures.

Replace that dead menu on the left with a good description of your product, actually the link you put in your first post is better than anything found on your site, and get some keywords in it.
The meta description is a good paragraph describing your product, but about twice as long as it should be for a meta description. Ditto with the keywords (48 of 'em!), pick a dozen or so and stick with 'em, should be something less than about 120 characters or so altogether.
Just some more random thoughts after another quick look.
If I can answer question, happy to. Lotsa great info on this site too.
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Thanks for the reply. So the SEO is something I can research and do on my own? I am new at this, but can catch on pretty quick. Just want to make sure that there are other people doing it on their own and not hiring others to take care of the SEO. I am away from my home computer, so I am going to fix it all tonight.

Would you recommend that I temporarily shut down my site until I complete my website? Or do you think its fine.

Also, After my site is completed, I am going to do some real marketing, such as going to shows or such. I know online and offline marketing are pretty both important, but which one would be more effective? Which type of marketing should I invest more in?

Sorry if I am asking too many questions, but it seems you are very knowledgeable in the industry and I find your advice so far very valuable. thanks! :)
The problem with SEO is that so many of them are simply link farm spammers that clog Google with (BLEEP), you have to do some deep research to find a good one. And you will get recommendations for "this one worked great for me" but it worked "great" because they were a spam factory. This has a tendency to backfire horribly after awhile.
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@Fenrir - ain't that the truth. Not worth my money. THey throw a jargon cloud around your head and by the time your vision clears your all your rmoney's gone and you're sitting there with 1200 links from crap sites in languages you can't speak. Your site goes to #3 in Google for ten minutes and then disappears from the SERPs forever.

@uncenshirt -
Whether you leave it up or not while you fix is pretty much neither here nor there. I just tried to follow your site from picking a shirt to buying it. Got to the checkout page and there's no way to buy it - no CHECKOUT button. Also when I tried to estimate the shipping and tax it told me that you couldn't ship to California.

So if it's not up you won't get customers, if it is up they can't buy anything - same difference.
Run through your site one time and try to buy a shirt and then address all the stuff that gets in the way of that.
Then get someone who's never seen the site to do the same thing - note the problems and fix them.
Don't worry about anything else until the site works and people can buy your stuff! Not much matters until that can happen.
Since the field is very competitive I'd think that you'd get better bang for the buck to spend more effort on offsite and offline marketing than SEO. In other words, you're more likely to get more sales running around the internet getting people to know about you than hoping to plow your way to the top on Google and letting people find you.
I see you've started everything at once. So to keep from getting overwhelmed, just take the three steps one at a time -
1) fix the site
2) offsite marketing (you seem to be doing good at this, props)
3) work in some SEO if you get the chance. You can figure this out and do it yourself, there's only a coupla things to do. Change/add the easy things, don't obsess on it.

If you're obsessive, obsess on #1, then on #2, then just do #3 while continuing to obsess on #2.
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