Name of your website?Bulk Jewelry Chain, Jewelry Findings and Jewelry Supplies: Shop OhioBeads.com
Your name?
Paul Brandon
Your Location (city, etc)
Maineville, Ohio
Describe your website?
OhioBeads.com supplies bulk jewelry chain (unterminated chain) and matching jewelry findings for the DIY jewelry-making professionals, hobbyists and amateurs. We also distribute quality components, such as Lockets and custom charms, that are hard to find.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
A state funded, city-managed construction project that didn't seem to be entirely well thought out scared us. We knew we had to get a web shopping site up to meet business objectives and to minimize the disruption from the construction project.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Our first website, ohiobeadsandgems.com, launched in late 2002. It was a one-way, promotional site for our bricks-and-mortar bead shop, formerly located in Landen Square Shopping Center in Landen (Maineville), Ohio. The site is still operational, although in the WordPress blog format, for our current bricks-and-mortar shop location in downtown Mason, Ohio.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Our bricks-and-mortar shop is called "Ohio Beads and Gems". OhioBeads.com is fewer letters for people to type.
The name describes the current location (although our market is across the United States) and our main product family.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We know DIY jewelry-making: the products, the techniques, the fashion and the finished goods from about 20 person-years of experience. We're not just dealing with SKUs and packing lists -- we know how to use what we're selling.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Our main goal is to grow the business and to diversify the offerings, especially through custom product development.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Sometimes I forget the color of the sky in the afternoon...
But seriously, we're competing in a world-wide market against aggressive competitors. There is always something to improve in this business.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We know already that we need a site that is more visually stimulating.
We'd spend money on a custom skin for the e-commerce package, osCMax, a flavor of osCommerce. We'd have more embedded audio and video resources.
I'd outsource the development. (Our site has been developed almost entirely in house.)
We'd move to a dedicated server.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
We'd buy bigger lots of components more often and we'd hire more people for functions that don't match our gifts, especially accounting and taxation.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
We've had a couple of downtime events from being on a shared server. Those took me by surprise.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Time. As I said before, we developed most of the site ourselves. That means developing competency in digital photography of small objects, picture cleanup, HTML, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, Google Analytics, SEO techniques, etc.
Some of those applications mentioned above keep people busy for their whole professional lives.
Even now, I need to send an e-mail newsletter, clean up a few photos and post more products onine.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Most of our promotion has been organic SEO. Just lately, we've submitted to some better regarded web directories such as elib.org, excellentguide.com, joeant.com, goguides.com and seen some success with that. Links from HotFrogUSA.com, Kellysearch.com and press releases at HotFrogUSA.com, ClickPress and PressMethod have helped, too.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I've spent more time getting traffic up. Since we started developing the site, the major search engines have really made ranking more difficult. Gaining PageRank is no easy task.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
We spent way too long in development, about two years, since it was the task at the end of the day. The site went live in the wee hours of April 2nd, 2007. I think we have to give it a good two years to produce. The early results are encouraging: gross income doubling from June to July, again from July to August, and we're heading to double again from August to September.
What is your biggest challenge with the site today?
Our biggest challenge is to increase the unique visitor traffic by about ten times, assuming the same conversion rate/ticket price. Boosting the conversion rate and boosting the ticket price would help, too.
What is your website address?
Bulk Jewelry Chain, Jewelry Findings and Jewelry Supplies: Shop OhioBeads.com
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