LAND OF
ODDS - The South's Most Unusual
Shop
Beads, Beading Supplies, Books
-- For the Bead and Jewelry Making Artist and Craftsperson
From time to time, we have decided to relate and share some of our e-commerce experiences with our customers and friends. Doing business on the Internet is a new thing, a wonderful thing and something not quite the same as running a regular store, and not quite the same as operating a mail-order print catalog business. The Internet is very democratic, and we feel our on-line store should mirror some of the aspects of Internet culture. The Internet is very "information-centered" as well, and our store should also be. We want to chronicle our successes, trials and tribulations.
Some of our goals have changed, since we became a primarily-on-line enterprise, and closed our main store.
Our goals for our catalog include:
The last year, as usual, continued to provide new tests, new ideas, and new challenges. Highlights:
The new on-line shopping system worked well, and needed only simple fine-tuning. Virtually all customers found it easier to use, and used it more often and more intensely. However, the current system seems complicated to those people who have not shopped on-line before, or have some computer fears.
The Checkout process has one annoying extra step, where the customer is asked to confirm their shopping basked plus the assessed estimated shipping costs, before submitting their final order. Many people seem to stop at this point, not realizing that they must click further, in order to send their order to us. We're stuck here, because this is how the canned shopping system we use works. Moreover, I cannot reposition or change the text of any of the submit buttons to make things more obvious. I have added some instructions in a red font, thru-out the page. This helps, but doesn't solve the full problem.
The new system increased productivity tremendously, allowing us to reduce our staffing. For on-line orders, this actually works out well, increasing our efficiency in handling on-line orders. It decreased our efficiency for handling phone-in orders. While in most cases, we can get on-line orders out within a day, there is a 2-3 day delay with the phone-in orders, since we have to re-enter the order on-line in order to process them. We don't have the staff to do that. I noticed that airlines are now charging extra for phone-in and ticket-counter tickets, without surchages for on-line orders. If that catches on, we'll definitely implement something similar. It's become very difficult to process orders outside the on-line system. The computer does a lot of the order processing, shipping, inventory control, supplier relations, customer relations, and accounting functions that had previously been done by human beings.
As staff salaries in Nashville approach the $10-12/hour range, and as the internet forces more and more competition over price, our primary choice has been to increase productivity, primarily through computerization. This makes "reality" a bit crazy, in that many requests for service come in, and we try to redirect them on-line, rather than have a person respond to them. There aren't enough persons anymore. Today 4 staff do twice the work as 7 people did just 3 years ago.
We began to advertise the on-line catalog in print magazines. Here is one of our ads:
This effort increase sales and volume dramatically. We plan to increase our print advertising.
| On April 29, 2003 | On May 3, 2003 | On June 29, 2003 | On Nov 3, 2003 | On Nov 3, 2004 | |
| # of unique visitors per day | 1950 | 300 | 1250 | 2450 | 3800 |
| # of active links that come up on Google | 1550 | 40 | 2190 | 3290 | 7900 |
| % of visits that result in orders | .66 | .77 | .77 | .77 | .78 |
| average time spend in catalog | 7 minutes | 10 minutes | 28 minutes | 28 minutes | 32 minutes |
| google ranking on the keyword "beading supplies" | 18 | indeterminate | 8 | 3 | 4 |
| google ranking on the keyword "bead supplies" | 8 | ||||
| google ranking on the keyword "beads" | not ranked | not ranked | not ranked | not ranked | not ranked |
| google ranking on the keyword "clasps" | 4 | ||||
| google ranking on the keyword "jewelry findings" | 6 | ||||
| # of sites on google search engine that come up with keyword "beads" (was only 250,000 when we began the catalog in 1996) |
9.2 million | ||||
| average order amount | $47.50 | no average computed | $67.00 | $71.00 | $75.00 |
| orders per day | 12 | 0 | 8 | 12 | 20 |
| average items per order | 15 | 0 | not determined | 10 | 10 |
proportion of orders by returning customers
|
not collected | not collected | not collected | not collected | 24% |
Both our national contests -- The Ugly Necklace Contest and All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition -- have been doing well, and bringing in lots of attention and customers.
Some of our suppliers have finally discovered the internet, and are gradually switching to a more on-line ordering and inventory tracking systems.
We moved our physical location on 4/1/04. Be Dazzled Beads and Land of Odds now operate out of a strip center in space almost 3 times that of our previous location. We continue to update our computer and communications systems as well.
The on-line operations continue to grow faster than our retail store. The on-line business is about 60% of our sales.
Our order turn-over time is about 95% within 24 hours. The means that only about 5% of our orders now have to wait for us to pick up items from the distributors before they are shipped. This is a VAST improvement over past years.
We now have a new store dog -- Lily. She's very cute.
James retired from our retail operations. He is still teaching silver smithing and lampworking at our CBJA.
Most of our attention in 2005 will be on re-editing the catalog, and adding or updating many more images and color charts. We began this in 2004, but didn't get as far with this as we'd like. But it's absolutely critical that we complete this in 2005.
We are focusing more on Glass Beads and on Jewelry Findings, and less on other product lines. These are our strongest areas, and ones where we can offer the best prices and selection.
Thanks for being there for us and with us,
Warren and James