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.