Does anyone know if Google can track a conversion on a customer who comes to your site from AdWords, but then leaves and returns? Does that still track? My sales pick up when I have AdWords on, but my conversion rates are getting higher. I wonder if they are leaving, bookmarking, and returning.

There’s another benefit to leaving AdWords on assuming you are making some money off of it..when on, you pump a lot of new people into your site. And if you know that you have a high return rate of existing customers, which I do, that is a very positive benefit, even though you may not be able to quantify it in the short term.

There are lots of new salemail subscriptions, and a lot of new people buying. So I’m having a hard time believing that google conversion rate. I turned google off to test my theory, but I just did it, so don’t have a feel yet for whether I have AdWords to thank for this new business or if it’s people coming in off of organic listings.

So it’s officially spring in Michigan! All windows open, and kids outside, bikes and toys scattered all over the front lawn. I LOVE this time of year. And I’m especially grateful that I have my own business and can hang around in my front yard on my laptop doing what I do while the kids are doing their thing outside. It’s one of those “life is good” moments where suddenly the countless hours that I spend on the site doesn’t bother me, and I’m grateful for the freedoms that this business of ours affords me. Have a good weekend and I’ll catch up with all of you from Maine next week. It’s spring break soon, and i’m going home to be with my family for a while.

Well hello! We put our new answering service to the test today, and probably picked up 3 additional sales in just a few hours. I’m really excited about that. It was such a simple thing, but it’s working. There’s always a tendancy to not want to add to your overhead for obvious reasons. It was just one more bill. But it has paid for itself in a few hours. …no brainer right? So the moral…don’t put off the obvious.

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I LOVE my customers, and really don’t think of them as “old dogs”. Although some of them have such great spirit that they would wear that definition with honor. They are full of fun, great to chat with, but God love ‘em, many don’t really trust the online order experience. Keeping in mind that my customers are women 50+, I am considering a “how to use this website” page. I have been wondering about this for a while, but I really don’t see it done anywhere. This sounds simple and unnecessary, certainly not in this day and age, however, it just might be the ticket. Let me explain…

Yesterday, Lee Ann had a field trip with her daughter, so she wasn’t home to answer the 1-800 phone. All day long I waited for orders to be placed, and nothing…until Lee Ann came home. Once she did, she checked the phone, returned calls and all of a sudden the orders started coming in…placed by Lee Ann. Now, let me be clear, we are not complaining about the orders on the phone, but how can I close the gap with this learning curve, and how can I make my customers more at ease about placing that order online vs. picking up the phone! You have to understand also, that our frustration is compounded by the fact that for every message, there are two or more hangups, because no one wants to leave a message on a 1-800 phone voicemail. I get that, it’s just not very professional to not answer it if you have it.

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Well hello! We’ve had a odd week. Some great days, and some very slow days. I’ve spent quite a bit of time this week moving our blog over to Blogger. This was something I was talking about doing at least 6 months ago, but decided not to deal with it for a while, which became much longer than it should have! We were using Serendipity, which our host provided, and were having a lot of problems. Despite the fact that I was updating our templates, it wouldn’t update, and I had turned on some spam controls that just weren’t turning on. I had enough, and our tech support wasn’t supporting me, and so I moved our blog to Blogger, which I like, but haven’t really found out what our spam control are yet.

I feel like I have more control over the templates in Blogger. I can change the colors and make the templates suit my color palette. I also feel like the templates are just more hip and fun. My whole business revolves around playfulness, and it just felt like a better fit.

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