Richandzhaoyans Business Update

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Location: Stroud, Glos, United Kingdom

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The Disneyland Paris Holiday

Yes, this blog is just like waiting for a bus.. you hang around waiting for a post and all of a sudden, three turn up at once. Tonight, I am on a hat-trick and although I have drunk a certain amount of wine, I am not going to start a Peter Crouch robotic celebration - I will wait till England bring home the World Cup! (Apologies to any overseas readers or non-football watchers - tune into the the world cup and you may understand what I am referring to!)

I have promised a report on my holidays and despite it being rather late at night/early in the morning, here it is.

So, a week in France - 5 nights at Disneyland Paris and a couple of nights up towards the north coast.

There is no doubt that despite Garys comments before I left, I was a little concerned about my trip to France. The last time I visited Paris was on a school exchange when I was about 10 years old and unfortuately I hated it then - mainly as we were forced to stay on our own with french families we had never met. Pretty tough at that age.

Well, I am happy to report, my worries were totally unjust - we had a great time.

The holiday involved five nights in the Disney hotel (Hotel Cheyenne - the cowboy theme), with three days spent in the Disney parks and two days spent in Paris. Then two nights, one full day, spent up near the north coast. It wasnt the most relaxing of holidays as we were up before 7 every morning for breakfast and didnt get to sleep until midnight - but we certainly packed a lot into a week.

So, Disney - how bl**dy good is it? Well, if you havent been then just get on with it. It is the best! Having been to Florida twice in the past, I was a little worried that the French version wouldnt quite be as good. To be honest, it was just as good and in some ways, even better. What do I love about Disney - its fantasy land - while you are there, nothing else matters. It is not reliving your childhood, its reliving the childhood that you wish you had.

Taking the son was just great - he is 2 1/2 years old - for the month before we went, all he could talk about was "I cant wait to see Mickey Mouse". When we got there and he got to see Micky Mouse - well, it brought a tear to my eye!!! Now we are home its just "I cant wait to see Mickey Mouse again"!

From a previously more cynacle point of view, the wife - who is Chinese - didnt know a lot about the magic of Disney and Mickey Mouse before we went and was just looking forward to going to Paris, thinking Disney was just for kids. After the first day in the park and seeing the son with Mickey and watching the Disney parade, she was converted - it was on her insistence that we had to give up a day in Paris to go back and watch the parade again and we had to swap a day in Paris so that we could spend the Sunday in the park because it was open until 10pm..... We left at about 9.55pm! A couple of things that hooked her were the "happy music".... Wherever you go in Disney there is music and its can only be described as happy music - all around the grounds, in the restaurants, during the parade, on the rides, queueing for the rides, in the toilets even - you cannot escape the happy music! The other factor was the total attention to detail - the design and cleanliness of the park is just out of this world.

Ok, so I am going on a little about Disney - Last comment - if you have never been, just go. If you are of the opinion its just for kids - its not, just go. If you think its going to be cheesy and commercialised - (well, it is commercialised) but still, just go. If you havent got any kids to take, borrow some - if you need to, you can borrow ours - I know he would be happy to go again and again and again.

Enough! How about the rest of the French holiday. Well, in 2 days in Paris we did everything - the Eifell Tower, the Arc De Triomphe, the LOuvre - including the Mona Lisa and Venus D Milo (excuse the spelling), the Champs Elysee, the Sacre Couer, the Seinne, the Notre Damme, the Pompidou Centre and a quick walk up through the red light district...... Had to see the outside of the Moulin Rouge!

After this, we needed the couple of nights in a quieter village and we spent the one rainy day of the holiday driving around the First World War cemetries/monuments - total contrast to Disney, but aside from the thoughts of the horrors that occured in the region, the country side was beautiful and it was still pretty astonishing to see how rural the north of France was compared to the UK - we really are overpopulated in the UK and thepace of life in the French countryside was just so relaxed - I am now understanding why the English are moving over there in droves.

So, a fantastic week really - and all topped of by importing some fantastically cheap contraband - cigarettes at £3 a pack and the wine...... Well, I filled the boot of the car up with 5 Ltr cases of wine that worked out at around 70p/litre. Compare this with the cheapest available at Tescos around £3/litre!!! Oh, and one more thing - talking of Tescos - have you been to a Carrefour - makes Tescos look like a corner shop :)

Alright, its getting pretty late and now I am back at work and trying to pay for the holiday (and tonights intake of soper cheap Vino Calapso is starting to catch up with me - excuse the typos). The final thing I want to mention was the French people - There is no doubt about it, before going I had my reservations about the French, in particular about conversing as my level of bad o-level french was really rusty - and I had heard alot of stories about the French pretending not to speak English just to be awkward - well this simply was not the case - There was not one person we met who coould have been more helpful - As Gary said before I went - great people, great country - I highly recommend a visit.

Cheers,
Rich

Monday, June 05, 2006

An e-directory update...

About a month ago, I got my main shopping website listed with e-directory. I know there were a couple of comments at the time asking for updates as to how it was going.

Well, its all in place and bar a few teething problems, there are orders coming in.

The teething problems are mainly concerning keeping their product list up to date with mine - this is going to be sorted in the next couple of days, as soon as I get around to producing a daily feed that they can access to keep their product list in line with mine. Not being up to date has caused a few problems with customers expecting goods overnight when we have either had to get the items sent direct from suppliers or wait on new stock coming in.

We are getting regular orders, which have added up to about 4% of our sales this last month. Not exactly earth shattering and considering the agro involved - really not worth the effort. Still, its very early and given the fact its the quietest time of the year for us, I really want to withold judgment. Will there be any profit involved over a 12 month period? Well, yes definately for them! For me..... I think so but the factor that needs weighing up is how much extra work will be involved. If I can iron out the problems and get it running smoothly then I have the staff in place to do the packing and other than paying their wages and paying the commission to e-directory, there could be a little left over at the end of the year.

One thing I could do with is some new software for processing the orders. As it stands, we are using their order interface but this is pretty slow and time consuming. They do have a direct link to download all new orders in txt or html format, ready to be integrated into order processing software but at present I am not using any!! I find that with the contributions I have in place, osCommerce is more than capable of handling large order quantities taken through our website so I dont use any other software. However, although I could probably import the e-directory orders into the osC database, I would prefer to keep them seperate. Any suggestions as to a very basic order processing software package?

The Google Update

Ok, I know, I know...... Too long between posts. What can I say, business and family life just gets right in the way and the first thing that gets put on the back burner is the blog.

Anyhow, firstly my google worries. I did email google about my huge decrease in indexed pages for my main shopping website and I received a reply back a few days ago:-

Thank you for your reply. Please be assured that your site is notcurrently
banned or penalized by Google. We understand your concern;however, these changes
are consistent with the normal fluctuationsoutlined in our previous email. As we
add new pages and incorporateupdates to existing pages, you may see changes in
the ranking andinclusion of sites in our index. Because our index changes
regularly, it'spossible your site will regain its ranking. In the meantime, we
hope thatyou will review the helpful tips posted on our site.We're sorry we
can't be of further assistance in this matter.



Well, I am not sure whether to be re-assured or not..... As things stand, I now only have just over 300 pages indexed compared with a previous all time high of about 100,000. As someone mentioned on a forum I frequent, 100,000 was a little excessive for a 5000 product website - however, 300 is also a little on the low side and having checked a couple of competitors, they are still showing about 50,000 pages indexed. Although, I am guessing that one of them has about 10,000+ products online.

I think the best plan of action is still to sit things out but I have made one major change - aside from a couple of changes suggested in the previous thread (thanks all). The major change was actually a remarkably simple one to install. It was of course an osC contribution. It creates a "have you also tried searching for" line of code on each product page with links to the search results for all keywords in the product name. ie, on the thomas the tank engine - engine shed page, you will have links to search results for thomas, and, the, tank, engine, shed. This could of course create a huge number of dynamic results. Spiderable. The osC contribution can be found here and its a work of genius really, so simple to install - even I could do it in seconds.

Of course, whether or not this will make any difference in my google pages indexed - who knows..... The way google is dumping me at present, it may take a look at the large increase in pages and just dump me a little further. What I am hoping is that all the newly generated search result pages will create more links to the product info pages and therefore make them appear more important than the new pages - maybe pushing them up the ladder back into the google index.

I guess only time will tell....

The one positive to come out of google actions is that they do seem to be pushing me well up the rankings for the pages that are still indexed - so I guess, what I should be doing is really optimizing the category pages. Visitors and sales certainly havent dropped at present as I am featuring well for the higher traffic keywords. ie, taking the Thomas the tank engine example, for the phrase Thomas the tank engine I am featuring better than before and as this is well searched for, am getting more visitors. The thomas the tank engine - engine shed listing however would have vanished.

Its kind of swings and roundabouts, six of one, half a dozen of the other - Of course, what I really want is the best of both worlds - despite what I have read elsewhere, the search engines are not dead - and, bar a few quid spent on adwords bring in just about all my sales!!!

Finally on this post, as a complete aside, google has also pretty much dumped my blog. A mere 19 pages indexed - of course, this could well be due to the lack of updates, but again, its kind of annoying when it previously had over 50 pages listed - it really seems to me that despite google loving blogs, it doesnt go a bundle on blogger blogs - seems to prefer wordpress afaics!!??! I guess when I get chance, a move like Garys may be in order - but again, work and the family will probably prevent this from happening in the near future.