Making Friends & Building Relationship

Another busy and productive week, I amazed it is coming up to about 7 days since my last blog, forgive me blogger :)

The developer has got in on the blogging action as well, and has opened up his blog about Beautiful Balms at wordpress, he is doing reviews at the moment on each of the balms in the Beautiful Balms Collection bless his cotton socks, though I think he wants to get the balms out for the ladies to use and review themselves, so don't be shy if you want to review one of the balms from Beautiful Balms just get in contact with us.

I have been working hard on the links section to Beautiful Balms, been in contact with most of the suppliers to see if they would like a link and if they wish to link over to Beautiful Balms. The next step is to find some online shops who deliver to the UK and see if they wish to be linked to from Beautiful Balms, I think it is good for the customers to be able to move across the different shops at a click of a mouse.

I was contacted by debbidoo who is setting up a Keep Christmas Cheap campaign, and we have put a few balms onto the site, we wish her the best of fortune in her endeavours, the site also has some great ideas for the holiday season to keep the expense low.

One of the guys in the office has joined Beautiful Balms at Facebook, promising he will find new leads there, I think he just enjoys the social chit chat really, but we can keep tabs on him using the twitter feed :).

As Christmas fast approaches and predictions that people will start to spend at the beginning of December it is all hands to the deck to get Beautiful Balms out there and promoted just in time for the Christmas rush. So, not only is there a chance to review the balms for free, I would be interested in hearing from others who are in the middle of pre Christmas season promotion, see if there is something that we could do together to help promote each other, this the season of sharing.

 

Online and Upline

Been too busy to blog for a while, just keeping up with orders and general housekeeping of the business.

The fair was fun, and a few balms were sold, but when returning back and checking the site orders, more had been sold online then had been sold at the fair :) My focus is now solidly on improving the Beautiful Balms website and how it interacts with the Net as a whole. I checked out this phenomena and it seems to be quite common, online sales rapidly pass brick & mortar based retail sales in a fairly short space of time.

I have been looking through the logs, trying to gain an appreciation of how my customers are finding the site. It seems a couple have a problem with the order at Google Checkout but not many, GC adds a layer of login as the transaction for the order at that point is between Google and the customer, and I have been reassured that other elements of Google Checkout can be brought into play to make the transition even smoother between the Beautiful Balms site and Google Checkout. As the site and order grow, I will be looking at offering other payment gateway services as an option for the site, though so far Google Checkout has been doing very well.

We worked very hard to get Beautiful Balms to be number one in many search engines for the search terms 'Beautiful Balms', and it is great to see a lot of people come in when they use various other search terms. My main focus now is on building up a list of keywords I think is most appropriate for Beautiful Balms and seeing if we can get into the top ten search results for that.

The captcha ( human identification system ) seems to have people playing with the get a new captcha button :), but I think on the whole that it is simple enough for most to use, and gives us a degree of protection from automated registration systems that may have gone awry. Beautiful Balms has never been intended to be a huge site with millions of customers; there is no way I could keep up with the handmade production of the balms at that rate :). Just a few thousand loyal customers are what we are looking for, the Balm Collection is not so much exclusive by design, and more exclusive by creation, I think that gives us a breathing space where we don't have to generate too much traffic to the site, just enough to make the business work. By keeping levels manageable it also allows for fairly good control over the database and good auditing procedures.

I managed to the get the FAQs ( Frequently Asked Questions ) onto the site, and will be adding more questions and answers as questions come in or when I feel something about Beautiful Balms requires more explanation. A new oil blend has been added to the site - Fennel Firming Oil, and the body lotions have now been moved from a 250ml bottle to a 150ml jar.

So, it is all go for online :)

 

Off to the fair

I have been making a lot of balms over the last couple of days, have had little time for blogging.

I have quite a collection of creams, lotions, floral waters, oil blends and aqua flower essences made up for the craft fair at the Old Gaol in Buckingham. If you are in the area come along to the fair, there will be lots of entertainment and even a rock band playing, make sure to pop over to the Beautiful Balms stall, and say hi as well :-).

I have designed a couple more promotional pieces; a sheet showing and Everyday and Night Beauty Routine using the balm collection, from face cleansing, freshening, nourishing, and deodorising, to all the body including hands and face. Beautiful Balms can be used from tip to toe. I have also grouped the balms that are most useful for dry and sensitive skin, and will be getting both lists up on the web site very soon.

The other promotional sheet shows, the balms that nurture the skin and the aqua flower essences to lift the spirits. Everything is starting to become beautifully organised now, and it is wonderful to see it all come together.

Promotional Sheets

Everyday & Night Beauty Routine with Extra Help for Dry & Sensitive Skin

Healing Balms to Nurture the Skin with Aqua Flower Essences

There are a wealth of great forums out there for business and commerce, though I haven't managed to find an active Health and Beauty or balms forum yet. I have spoken with the developer, and he says he will be sorting out something extra there, that I should be pleasantly surprised with.

Beautiful Balms is now listed in most of the major search engines, and traffic is starting to build up quite well. We have only be online with the shop a week or so now and it is beginning to look like we will be quite popular :) There is a limit to the number of balms that can be made though, so I have been thinking of ways to either extend the production or to inform people we are at maximum production, still that is a little ways off in the future.

Have to keep this post short & sweet, and go prepare for the fair :).

ps just posted this blog to BlogFlux in the Directory of Beauty Blogs.

 

First Order Feedbacks

Today I got some lovely emails from my first clients, all remarked on the beautiful fragrances of the creams and oil blends, and they were just the perk me up I was looking for.

The site needs a testimonial section, so I will be working on getting that up there very soon.

The feedback was all on how easy the site was to navigate and use, and how the creams felt great against the skin, and the fragrance! Someone really needs to work on digital fragrance, my balm shop could really do with that; as soon as people smell the balms that is when I make my sale :)

I have been busy making more balms, as I have a small fair to go to at the end of October. It is set in the old gaol at Buckingham and should be a very entertaining affair; there is a medieval theme, with minstrels, court jesters and mulled wine to get everyone in the mood.

I take a few demo ( tester ) pots with me, so people can try the creams and lotions against their skin, before they purchase. They always prove popular and the aroma around the stall starts to fill the air with the beautiful fragrance of the pure, essential oils. The balms all have good healing properties from the combination of tinctures used in the blends, and the pure, essential oils are also filled to busting point with goodness.

More people are visiting the site now, quite a few from people just searching for various balms or information on the ingredients in the balms. So, I will be adding more articles to the sites. I have started using Lady Unicorn to publish the articles, and I just need a bit of work done to the navigation system.

The developer is working on some of his own sites for the next week or so, but he has some plans to help build a community around Beautiful Balms that sounds really exciting. As long as I leant a bit of HTML markup, he said he would take the business to the next level, and I have read my book and find it quite useful now to markup nearly all my text, my ingredient lists are next for the HTML treatment :). I love the way I can just include imagery right in the document, I am no style sheet whizz yet, but I am learning.

I have some more balms to add to the site, and I am always on the look out for good suppliers of natural organic base creams, I like my creams and lotions to be as natural as possible, just as nature intended for the skin.

Time to get back to work, creams and lotions waiteth for no lady.

 

Beautiful Balms Buds and Flowers

The flyer and poster campaign continues in earnest, a couple more villages and towns are off the list now. This is certainly grass roots marketing, I should get a placard with Buy my Balms emblazoned across it, hmmm maybe the car could have a decal :).

I got an email from the developer, he was so impressed with my dedication to marketing the site that he thought he would wade in with another site, for Beautiful Balms. So, I am proud to announce the launch of Beautiful Balms UK, two sites launched in one week :). The site is more of a support site, that he often writes for people behind the scenes, so that imagery and descriptions can be checked. But, he thought I might want to make this one client facing, for a bit more publicity and because I think he secretly enjoys the imagery.

I am working on extending the lotion collection, and offering smaller size lotions. Currently the size is 250ml, and it is the only balm image on the site, that is not in ratio to the others, 250ml is a lot of lotion :). I am looking at 150ml though there won't be a pump dispenser it will just be gravity and a pat assisted. The smaller sizes should make the lotions more affordable, the primary expense are the pure, essential oils and a lot of drops are required for the large 250ml balms.

Orders were slightly up on yesterday, the weekend is the shopping time, it will be interesting to see what happens today, the first Sunday of opening I was told should be a lively one. I was keeping my eye on the site rankings in various search engines, and saw a lot of advertisements come in just for the weekend. I am debating getting some ad words, Beautiful Balms uses google checkout, and there is a tie in deal over the charge for the checkout, and the cost of ad words. I will probably make sure the brand is covered, but may not scurry after all the keywords :).

Beautiful Balms was never intended to be a big operation, we don't need tons of customers, just enough to match the production level for the balms, which are all made by hand. The balms are sort of exclusive by the amount that can be physically be made. Beautiful Balms the prêt-à-porter of the balms world, with sensible prices :).

I have been thinking about what to do if demand got too large ( a girl has to dream :) ), and the developer has a few plans that may work out great for others as well. He is big into his community building element of the web, and is happy to help others realise their business dreams, having done quite a lot of commerce sites for large companies I think he rather enjoys the startups, never a dull moment is what he chirps :).

I was just looking over the new site, and it really does help make sure we have all the photos required for each product, he has added a gallery section, and I have just been told that it should help keep the brand at number one in Google searches for beautiful balms, which is what I am most concerned with at the moment. I am going to place an ad in Cygnus Review and hope people can find their way to the site :). It does appear quite frenetic at times on the search engines, but I suppose Christmas is around the corner and the whole of the retail sector is warming up. Well Beautiful Balms is small but we are feisty when we have to be.

We actually released a little early because of Christmas, working through the night to get the site out, I don't know if I could do it again, but the developer just laughs about it; I think he is battle hardened, crunchy time is what I think he calls it, all I know was I missed my pillow a few nights.

The aqua flower essences helped me get through it though, kept me focused and calm. I got a new computer in for the project, custom built by the developer only cost a couple of hundred pounds, he installed Linux for me and its great, I thought I would only be able to get around using windows, but the Linux desktop (rock? rox?) is great, it roxs :).

Beautiful Balms is running on the developer's server at the moment, but as soon as I get the orders in to cover a new server, the sites will get their own electronic home, it is quite daunting, but I am going to be getting lessons in how to do basic administration and I think well I hope he said he would be popping on every now and again to make sure everything was ok, some form of monitoring software I think was mentioned. Sometimes I think it is all moving too fast, but once I just accept it all it seems to work out quite smoothly.

I really want to focus my efforts now on creating new blends of balms, the new lotions will be for sale soon, and there is an oil blend in the pipeline as well :). The balancing of the fragrances as I have said before is what takes the times for those. The aqua flower essences, I do when inspired so I hope to extend those, perhaps taking them to the Lady Unicorn site and really focussing those there. I have some more articles I would like to write as well, always a busy bee.

Time to add some photos to the post, and then upwards and onwards!

 

The Essence of Promotion

Busy, busy day today.

I have been out and about, getting posters, flyers and cards out to various outlets in the local area. There are some really charming little villages and towns in the local area, each with a number of independent retailers, most of whom are really supportive. I feel like I have joined some type of club, I will be on the lookout for unusual handshakes soon :)

I managed to get advertising quite cheaply, sometimes for free, in quite a few places and thankfully it all tied in with www.beautifulbalms.com finding its way to the number one slot on google for the search terms beautiful balms, hooray, and phew.

I had three types of flier, promotion designed up, I kept it simple just promoting the Beautiful Balms name, the balms, a beautiful photograph and of course the web address; www.beautifulbalms.com.

Beautiful Balms promotional material :

Postcard size (14cm x 9cm)

A5 size (21cm x 14.85cm)

A4 size (21cm x 29.7cm)

I am very happy how the flyers have turned out, and I will be doing more local promotion, and taking them along to the various fairs I go to, promotions girl power in full swing :)

Back at Balms HQ, I set about checking for orders, not too many today :(, but early days, start shopping ladies :). I check the site over at least once a day, checking to make sure the basket and order system works, and tweaking some of the product descriptions. I then do a quick check to make sure beautiful balms and the products are listed on the search engines. Mental note must be able to automate this a bit - will get the developer to write or find something.

It is only the first week of opening and I am already developing little web rituals, I will be a geek any day soon now :).

The balms are really central for me and I am constantly working on new balms. It takes a lot of time and patience to balance the fragrances and develop recipes that work well. I would really love to get that work into the promotion and extension of the site. So, I will be meditating on a way to do that, hopefully inspiration will happen soon!

 

Adventures in Balms, Commerce

... & blogging.

So, here I am 4 o'clock in the morning, moving through the web looking to promote a new online ecommerce Balms Shop - Beautiful Balms. Then it comes to me, I may as well blog about the experience :).

The site has been live now for a few days, emails have been sent out to friends, the 'overworked' developer has been linking a few of his sites to me, and is working on a link system for others to use if they wish, and now it is up to me to do some promoting. Producing the creams & balms is more my forteé, but I wanted to experience this side of the business myself as well.

From my understanding of how the web works, it would appear the best way to promote a site is to build content in the hope others will link to, or to supply content with a link back to the site. Directories also appear to be a good way to generate one way links to the site, though some seem to want a Google page ranking, mental note to work out what that is all about.

I have joined a few forums, and popped my site link into my signature, and am looking to contribute to a few online communities - the chatting can be quite addictive.

In some ways I have a little trepidation about generating a stampede, my balm shop is a fledgling business & all the balms are made by hand, would I be able to keep up with demand. I spoke with the developer; he smiled and told me, 'the web is a big place, sales will grow but you will have to work at promoting the business.'

My initial thoughts were to find my niché on the web; get in contact with people whose businesses or interests were similar to Beautiful Balms & see if they wished to do, what I later discovered is called, reciprocal linking. I sent out some emails, & pleasantly found people eager to do this, I am still waiting on a few replies, but was informed that is 'par for the course'.

The developer added the balms into Google Shopping thru' some type of data feed he created from the database. We are using Google Checkout as the payment facility, to this seemed to come together well.

I love my web shop and enjoy all this modern way of doing this, but deep down I suppose I am also an old fashioned girl, and really want to do promotion both online in the digital world, and offline in the real world. I have designed a few posters and leaflets, and will be off down to the local shops in the area this weekend to do some old style promoting.

I am actually looking forward to the experience. Before the site went commerce live, I dropped off some leaflets at local shops, and I saw traffic increase just to the holding site. I was selling the balms at local trade fairs, one of the more fun ones was the Glastonbury Goddess Conference, the balms all smell so lovely, they are great to sell face to face, so I will still be going to local fairs even now I am 'high teched up', the personal touch goes a long way I think. Though, now people will be able to get hold of the balms from the comfort of their computer screens as well, this tech stuff is a real blessing.

So, for me & Beautiful Balms promoting is going to be a two world exercise, I will endeavour to network online, and build up relationships between www.beautifulbalms.com and other sites, creating more content for the site, & creating more balms, and I will also get out there & bring the balms to the people.

I feel like my electronic adventure has probably only just begun, but the first few steps are behind me now. It was quite a lot of work, and I am sure there will always be something to do, but the trepidation has eased, it is actually becoming quite good fun.

Now I wonder if that developer is up, so he can make the Blog look all beautiful :)

Oh, and not sure if I can take comments, but if I can and someone reads this, what would they suggest as a feature to add to Beautiful Balms, the fancy pants developer said I could have what I liked within reason, as, and these are his words, he is a 'coding machine, no algorithm too big or too small'. So, think of something that would work, please drop me a comment :).