Well hello! I have some exciting news…we are live….just a little bit on Shopping.com. I took to heart a very nice post to my recent blog that recommended that I not put all of my eggs in one basket (thank you Eric!). We all need a wakeup call every now and again, hmm? So I did it, and realized that even though my competition on Shopping.com was heavy on red hats, she was lacking in most other areas, ie. gifts…and that’s where I am putting my focus.

So far I believe we are seeing some action. The cpc is lower than Google or Yahoo, and the leads, I believe, more qualified. I have a few complaints: When you are used to the interface in Google and Yahoo (Overture), and know what your conversions are with a quickie click of a mouse, you become used to it. I can get some of that with Shopping.com, however, I had to dig deeper to find the service, and I’m not sure it’s quite so slick. I haven’t set it up yet. But will update you when I do.

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Hey there everyone, I apologize for my lapse in blogging. I lose sight of the fact that life goes on when my kids are home on winter break.

But lets get to the biz at hand. Does anyone have a crystal ball? For some reason our business has slowed WAY down for the last week. WHY!?.. when all else remains the same, why do we suddenly hit a wall? This is probably the single most frustrating issue in running a business…trying to find a solution to slow sales. I know that part of my problem has to do with not having enough fresh product to show my customers. But I’m flashing a bunch of new sales items at them, and they don’t really seem to care.

One thing I haven’t done lately is to go check out what my competition is up to. That’s probably a big one right there. Every now and again it’s important to check in to see what kind of promos they are running, if at all. Can you do something equally as exciting? I love to highlight products that we are cheaper on. For the most part, our competition is very much in line with us on price. We have one competitor who undercuts EVERYONE, and she’s not making any money, she just couldn’t be. And her site is completely horrible to shop, very amateur, lots of typos, etc. I think she probably moves a lot of the little cheap stuff, but who wants to drop a lot of money on an expensive item at a dumpy store? Don’t know why that is, it just is. (more…)

I actually have a degree in advertising, so it seems like I should be able to answer my own question, but I just can’t make a decision. So let’s see what you think…We market to many thousands of women each week. Does it make sense to contact relevant advertisers and let them run their ads on our site? Our demographic is women over 50, income, if I had to guess, I’d say middle to upper class. I think this is why I’m dragging my feet. In order to approach advertisers, I need some relevent data about my mailing list. I wonder if I should send a survey out to our subscribers to get the information I need. But exactly what is that information? I think I need to contact my old agency that I worked for in Maine and get some advice. (more…)

Hi there, i wanted to share with you all a change I made and am really seeing a change in my sales. I initially put the categories of my gift shop along the top, and if you see my previous blogs about my page width, etc, you’ll see I set out to redesign width, image size, etc.

I changed my gift shop and made all product images smaller, and then ran all departments down the left side. I have seen an increase in sales out of that department! Almost immediately, actually. I really feel that it is due to my changes. In making my changes, I was able to consolidate more products onto one page, so my customers don’t have to flip through pages. I’m guessing that they are seeing more of my product now. (more…)