Snow - Good for Business?

Hmm,

Its snowing..... In Gloucestershire...... In November........

Whats going on? Global warming I guess is the cause. :)

So, hows this going to affect the xmas trade? Well, it cant be good for the shop thats for sure. But, maybe it will lead to a boom online.

In general. up till tonight, things have been pretty positive recently. The online shop is up about 50% at present on last years November figures. Hopefully we will also have enough stock this year to keep sending out well into December - (we ran pretty short last year and had to pull off most the adwords ads pretty early on in December).

Even the shop is now picking up a little - after a dismal August/September/October, things are now a little closer to being back on track, we are having a reasonable November and assuming tomorrow and Saturday arent totally snowed off, it should be a reasonable month. The trouble with the gift trade is that until close of play on xmas eve, you really cannot count the figures. A good xmas week can make a massive difference to the years figures.

If the above sounds good to you and you are thinking how lucky we are to be benefitting from cashing in on the commerscialism of xmas - well, its a crazy business. I spend 10 months of the year cursing about how quiet things are and then 2 months working flat out, 7 days a week and cursing how hard work it is! :)

If anyone is thinking of setting up a business, think hard about whether you want to work in a seasonal industry. Its a bit of a gamble (but can be fun).

Yes, I finally got the email newsletter sent

Finally got my very first e-mail newsletter out last weekend. I was only working on it for about 3 weeks!!

In reality, due to how busy we have been, this in effect means I was working on it for just a few hours, usually late at night or for five minutes in between a multitude of other work.

The company I chose to use was VerticalResponse

The choices I found were:-
One off Payment - Download a newsletter program - there were various options that included programs that would send out html and text versions, included opening/clickthrough stats and an automatic unsubscribe system. However, although they may have proved cheaper in the long run they are extremely expensive and not viable for what I really wanted that was essentially a one off test campaign.
Monthly Subscription Online Email Newsletter Service - No lack of choice here! There are plenty of companies offering this service, again with html/text and stats. The prices would be reasonable if you were sending out an email or two a month but not good if you only wanted to try once and possibly only send a newsletter every couple of months or so.
One off Online Service - This is essentually what Vertical Response are offering. You pay for each e-mail you send. The rates drop if you are sending alot but are also very reasonable for low quantites. I couldnt find any other companies offering this service and the prices were pretty much the same as the monthly subscription services - just you dont need to pay every month!

The stats - I currently have just under 600 subscribers to my newsletter. It cost me about £5 to send the newsletters - I designed an html and text version - Vertical Repsonse send both and the html one gets through if it can with the text version going through if the recipient cannot accept html. Thus far, 225 people have opened/viewed the newsletter, 24 have bounced, 5 have unsubscribed and 88 have clicked through to my website.

I am pretty pleased with these figures to be honest. Considering the list has been building over the last 18 months and there are bound to be a few test accounts amongst these figures, to have just 24 bounce and only 5 people unsubscribe is good and to have 88 people click through is very pleasing.

The only thing I cant track at present is sales conversions. A good way of carrying this out with osC, as was pointed out to me on the forum is to use a discount code in the email - unfortunately I dont currently have this system implemented in my osC setup - Maybe next year.....

My main aim at present is just to get people who are thinking of buying gifts to think of my site. I am confident that sales will come.

Anyhow, I have found using VerticalResponse a very simple, cheap and easy to use solution and would recommend it to anyone thinking of sending an email newsletter. You can create and account, check their templates or upload your own html newsletters and send yourself test copies all for free, then upload your subscriber list before finally just paying for the emails you require before sending. Then just sit back and check the stats.

I was pleased with their setup and will definately use it again - I hope to try and send out on a regular basis next year and as my subscriber list grows, so it should become more effective.

If anyone is interested, I am happy to forward on a copy of the newsletter I sent out.

OK, now we are flying!

Yes, its busy, busy times. The silly season is definately upon us!

Taken a bucket load of orders last weekend and this week - It seems like we are busy as anything but then it allways does at this time of year. We have really got to go something to match last year and then go some more to beat it. Still, things are definatly flying now and we are definately up on last year - although, we have to be as we now have the extra expense of the warehouse and more staff!

My advice to anyone setting up a business - Try to find something none seasonal!!! Its crazy, I spend 10 months of the year complaining about how quiet it is and then 2 months of the year just working flat out, all hours of the day and night, and complaining about it - :) I guess I am only really happy for about 2 weeks of the year at the end of October when things are busy but not manic.

Ah well, 5 and 1/2 weeks left till xmas. Hopefully I will make it. I reckon when Father Christmas pops down the chimney on xmas eve, my little boy had better leave him out a bottle of whiskey rather than just the usual glass!!

Business Picking Up but Not Flying

Things are picking up as they should be.....But, the orders are not ripping in as yet. Today we have taken about as much in value as this Sunday of last year. A little dissapointing.

A couple of thoughts/obervations though. The amount of traffic we are recieving is well up - featuring a lot better in the search engines this year. The number of orders is up, but the value of each order is down at present. The variety of orders is a lot more. Last year we had one runaway supplier that, as yet is still just ticking over - hopefully it will start to run away again soon :)

I guess, it is probably safer to have a wider selection of items ordered and having more traffic is obviously good news. The reasons I believe business is not a whole load better than last year? Well, I am guessing its a two fold problem, firstly, business in general is poor at present. There is no getting away from it. All the suppliers/reps are moaning, any goods we order are coming through within a couple of days as opposed to weeks (more normal for most of our suppliers). Even most of the nationals are complaining and that is after having slashed all their prices!!

The other factor I am guessing is the number of extra internet dealers. I have no idea what the figures are but I am sure there must be more and more retailers setting up online and that must mean the orders have to be shared. We obviously took a fair bit of business from someone in the last 18 months and I am sure there will be more wanting a slice of the pie in the future.

Do the above factors worry me. Well, the slump in business is more worrying from the shops point of view. At least we are up this year on internet sales, the shop is currently well down on last year. The shop is very well established and hence, a pretty good yard stick. The fact it is well down, along with most of the other businesses in the town (by all accounts) is a sign that people just arent spending their money at present. As long as we can get throught this bad patch and (with the help of the internet) hold our own, things should eventually pick up.

The extra competition on the inernet? Well, as I mention in a previous post, the site has taken a bit of a back seat compared with setting up the warehouse this year. Now thats in place and we have a couple of full time staff in, we should be able to really start to push the marketing/site improvements/stock range, etc. next year. I am not short of ideas and am looking forward to putting them in place after christmas.

One final thing I do want to try this year is the email newsletter. We have around 500 subscribers and as yet have not sent out a newsletter - I have been working on one this week (usually at around midnight!). Just about there now and I have pretty much decided on the service to use to send it. Will try to get it sent at the end of the week. I had kinda guessed that the weekend would be the most effective time and have also read confirmation of this so, probably next Friday evening should be the time to dispatch it. Will have to get the finishing touches carried out now!!

osCommerce Search Engine Optimization

Who says oscommerce is difficult to search engine optimize?

Just found out I have had a bit of a result with the very generic search term "gifts". Check out a google search. At the time of writing Heritage Gifts is ranked at the top of page 2 out of 313 million results!! On a UK only search, its wavering up and down the front page swapping pages with another online shopping store that goes by the name of Harrods - :)

Not sure how this has come about, it certainly came as a bit of a surprise. I do put a lot of effort into SEO but only in the way of improving my site. I have never followed a link campaign and, generally, the only links I have are internal. I think the main secret is just having a large site. Around 5000 products generates a lot of content and a lot of internal links.

The interesting thing is the amount of traffic I am recieving. To bid on adsense for the term gifts costs..... Well, its superbucks. The amount of traffic I am recieving at present is pretty minimal and the effect on orders is totally negligable. It is pretty early days, afaik I have only just been promoted to this esteemed postition and we are only just into the serious xmas gift ordering season but I still think its such a generic term that it may produce alot of "untargetted traffic". As I mentioned before I really dont have a problem with this.

For anyone wanting to know what my osCommerce SEO strategy is, well here goes. My priorty is site wide SEO. As I have a large catalog, it is important that when entering more products, maybe 100, maybe 1000 at a time, I want all the products to be search engine optimized as best as possible automatically. I cannot optimize each indivdiual product page. For this reason, the following osCommerce contributions are invaluable:- Linda McGraths Header Tag Controller and Chemo's Ultimate SEO Urls. These two contributions are simply the best start to site wide SEO.

Another trick that may or may not benefit the 5000+ pages generated from 5000 products is rearranging the standard osCommerce page layout. This basically moves the product description text (or body) in your source code up above the left column code. The method to carry this out can be found in the tips section of the osCommerce forum, here. One word of warning, prior to carrying out this mod, my site featured best in the MSN search engine. Shortly after carrying out the changes, my site plummeted from the MSN search pages. Whether or not this was due to the change I cannot say for sure but it is worth baring in mind. Of course I would like to think that my plight in the MSN searches has been far outweighed by the positive gains in googles rankings but this again is hard to measure.

There are a huge number of resources/sites with info on search engine optimization but quite frankly, in my opinion, alot of it is pure speculation. Simliarly, there are hundreds of companies out there promising the results you wish for but, again, in my opinion and from what I read, all they provide is short term quick fixes. Probably using a fair few black hat techniques.

If you are setting up an osCommerce site, or already have a site in place, and cannot afford the time to read through pages and pages of what may or may not work with regards to oscommerce search engine optimization, there is one very highly rated eBook that will put you on the right track. You can find the book at oscbooks.org.uk and it will save you a whole lot of time and wasted effort. The site also has other very useful eBooks available on setting up your osC store, including guides on design, the simple template system, how to speed up oscommerce and more.....