Name of your website?Scrap N Stamp Emporium
Your name?
Kim Chenez
Your Location (city, etc)
Lockport, Niagara County, New York
Please give us a short summary of your website?
We promote our brick & mortar storefront through our website. We offer scrapbook and rubberstamp classes, customized die cuts and digital storybooks.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Our brick & mortar store. We also use paj ezy, it's a wonderful user friendly program, much easier to use than leading hosts. I maintain and manage the whole site from my personal pc and at my own convenience while keeping the site fresh and professional.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
The original website was Niagaracraftconnection.net in 2005. We offered craft supplies before changing our name and products to focus on only paper crafting. The website programs that we used for over a year failed to promote the store because the website was not being picked up by the search engines.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Our brick & mortar store. We focused on 2 paper crafting hobbies, scrapbooking and rubber stamping. Most stores tend to lean for one or the other, we believe that scrapbooking and stamping go together so we named our store/website to reflect on what we were selling.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
Our website has a professional touch to it, and we manage and update the whole site ourselves. You would not know that I do not use a web design company to create any aspect of the site.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Keep it for income! We love what we do. Having a website allows our brick & mortar to expand with unlimited capabilities.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
I invest very little time and money into my website. It is extremely affordable and it takes seconds to update the site. For what it costs against my success I am truly paying nothing for my website.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
This is a hard one! Unlimited development budgets? I'm very lucky with my website because it doesn't need a big budget to survive. Paj*ezy takes very good care of me. The one thing that I would like to change is having the funds to allow Paj*ezy to optimize my site correctly. I am still in learning mode on this one.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Absolutely! We have a brick & mortar store to compliment the site. The site hardly costs anything to manage. We have the resources to store product and keep our prices reasonable.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
This will probably sound unbelievable to most. I have never incurred any unexpected costs with the program that I use. Doug from Paj*ezy has been nothing but straight forward and helpful to me. He has actually saved me money from accruing expenses that I do not need. As for headaches, I pay Paj*ezy to deal with my headaches. That is what they are there for. I call the staff with my concerns and they usually fix the challenge while on the line with me. It never takes more than 10-15 minutes for the staff to fix. It's been incredible. I used other companies in the past and I left them because the headaches were too much and it took to long to get things straighten out.
What has been your biggest challenge?
My biggest challenge has nothing to do with my website or host. It is the user. LOL. I do not have a lot of time to devote on my site like I want to. To get it pulled together the way I want it to be is taking me some time.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Word of mouth! Originally it was intented to be an informational site as opposed to an online store. It became very popular so now we have had to expand in selling.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
It really has not. I knew what to expect, someday. Right now it could be more popular on the search engines, but in time it will be. The word of mouth and having people click on the site will help the search engines link to it. It will just going to take time.
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?
The website is about 2 years old. I love it. It will continue as long as I have a passion to be my own boss!
If you could offer one bit of advice to those who are looking into websites, what would it be?
As a small business owner, I tried a couple of website hosting companies. I paid a fortune for services that I could not just log on, update and walk away from. When I first started to look into a site I did not know where to begin, what to look for or what I needed. If I had to do it all over again, I would look for a host where I could create and update myself. Eliminate the web designer. Then a user friendly program to use. One which you do not need to build with HTML codes. The paj*ezy program, I upload or type in what I want, hit the publish button and I am good to go.
What is your website address?
Scrap N Stamp Emporium
