Anh: Getting traffic to our website

Greetings,

Sorry folks, it’s been awhile since my last entry… Been so busy and preoccupied with a lot of things…

Still working on the branding and the store look and feel – I will endeavour to get this done this weekend (it’s a promise! So tune in next week for the results)… Going for a vibrant, strong, colourful, fun type of theme

In the meantime, with Christmas fast approaching (more people are shopping online) we need to act fast and start setting some ground work for encouraging traffic to our store.

I will be focussing on the following things:

1. Add the URL / domain to search engines and online directories.
   • To Google
   • Microsoft / MSN / Bing / Live
   • Yahoo
   • DMOZ
   • Other search engines
2. Set up a fan club /group or account for social media sites like:
   • my facebook account
   • my twitter account
   • Blog site
   • Ning site (if time is kind)
3. Create and add XML sitemap to the main search engines
4. Come up with 20-40 good keywords for our site and add them all in the “Site Config > Site settings – Keywords and Metadata” section of our store. Will use the following tools to help with choosing the right keywords:
   • Google Adwords keyword suggestion tool
   • Google Search-based keyword tool
   • Keyword Discovery
   • Word Tracker
5. Set up Pay-Per-Click (PPC) account with the 3 main Search engines.
   • Google AdWords
   • MSN adCenter
   • Yahoo! Search Marketing

The good thing about using DecoNetwork is we can add in our Google Conversion Tracking Id (in Site Settings) to track our purchase conversions for our Google Adwords campaigns.

As a bargain hunter myself, I’ve remembered seeing so many of those $75 Google adwords voucher floating around… If you haven’t signed up for any of those PPC account, maybe consider registering for one. Do keep an eye out for those special vouchers and promos that are constantly circulating all the time. With all promos - terms and conditions do apply to all of them.

Below is a complied list to start of with:

1. Google: USA – Free $100 USD Google adwords advertising
   http://www.google.com/ads/analytics/100.html – expires on the 30 November 2009 (hurry only few days left)
2. Google : Australia – $75 AUD free advertising
   https://services.google.com/fb/forms/displayau09/ (expiry date not specified)
3. Yahoo / Ninemsn: Australia – Get $50 free advertising http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/en_AU/arp/internetmarketing.php?o=AU0033 (using promo code AU0033)
4. Yahoo : USA $75 USD
   http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness/adcredit/yahoo
5. Facebook: USA $100 (need confirmation / readers’ help)
   If you have a Facebook account, consider joining the visa business network – http://apps.facebook.com/visabusiness/sign_up. There is a $100 advertising credit for Facebook and a $75 Yahoo voucher. I’m waiting for the email with that offer code for $100 credit for Facebook… Did it work for anyone else? Or is there another Facebook promo floating around?… Will search for some facebook advertising vouchers.

I’m sure there are plenty of promos out there, please do share if you know of any other… in particular for Microsoft/MSN/Bing – couldn’t find any recent ones (may need to search abit more).

If the links are not valid by the time you are reading this – worth investing an hour to do some searching for current promos for all of the search engines and social sites.

Till next week…
Enjoy!

Kristi: name is decided. Descriptive name versus quirky name

This is just a quick one to say that the name is decided. Custombucket.com it is!

Why? Well, firstly thanks for all those who voted on my poll. The results were 60% for CustomBucket. I also asked lots of my friends what they thought. While not all of them loved the name, some thinking it was wierd, they ALL remembered it.

I was proposing two different naming strategies. Descriptive and quirky.

Descriptive seems more logical and appropriate. However, in the example “Your design here” because it is like you are speaking, people forgot what it was called. They said variations of this “put your design here” “my design here” etc.

On the other hand, custombucket is not a common term and sticks in people’s heads. Partly because they wonder about it – “Why did they call it that?” “Why bucket?” It’s quirky and therefore memorable.

 

Phoebe: Cool ideas for a t-shirt print!

Hello All!

Thought I’d conduct a little survey. Wanting to see what kind of things you wear everyday. It can be anything from colour, to prints, to styles. Links welcome. Please write this in the comments section! And the second question is: what kind of stuff you’d like to see on a t-shirt? I’ll try to design some stuff that fits in with the subjects or themes.

Please vote the ones you think are cool and remember to add two subjects too! It can be anything non offensive and not racist Looking forward to hearing what you have to say.  Thanks!

Phoebe: Creating the store

So I’ve decided that a heart will best represent the brand! Yay!

I’ve gone away and played with a few typefaces and have used my own handwriting to create the logo. What do you guys think?

Here’s the evolution :

The evolution of inLovewithLuna logo and branding

Was going for something quite cute but quirky and a strong shape that ties in with the name. Please feel free to comment!

Now, how do I implement this quickly with the new brand? I’ve played around with DecoNetwork and it seems pretty easy to use. It’s similar to facebook or ebay where you upload pictures and click on icons to change items.  

Have a look to see the progress of the site! www.inlovewithluna.com.
Or for the smaller view look below. I’ve also included a screen shot of how to change things in DecoNetwork. It’s fairly straight forward. So far I’ve just inserted in the banner at the top. Next steps are to create some designs, take some photos and then upload them! Here are some ideas for prints that I think are really cute! I’ll be creating a series of prints soon. Would love your feedback on what you’d like to wear! 

Coming up next… Work on the branding on the site and search print ideas!

Here's the progress of my webstore. I've inserted the banner in so far Changing things in DecoNetwork

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Changing things in DecoNetwork

 

 

 

Kristi: committing to a name today…

the result of a Saturday afternoon

Well, thanks for participating in my poll. It’s now 50/50 for yourdesignhere.com or custombucket.com. You can still vote here!

I’ve also decided to go for the .com.au as I am only selling in Australia. It tells Aussies right away that they are dealing with a local company.

SO – now I have to make a decision.

I was talking to my friend about it at a BBQ on Saturday. Before I knew it, the whole group was vigourously debating it! They even went and got some paper (yes, a few of my friends are the marketing type) and came up with these additional names.

Some of the names are already taken, but the ones worth looking at I think are:

wear-is.com.au

yourthreadsinstead.com.au

wearwolf.com.au

onetopshop.com.au

youretops.com

theshirtlist.com

Comments welcome. A decision is being made today!!

Kristi: taking the plunge – what to call it?

Hello again!

Before I choose a name for my online t-shirt store, I need to work out the brand, who it is for and what I want it to represent. Here are my thoughts…

Who is it for?

1. – people wanting custom tees for their events or clubs (mainly  guys but also girls)
2. – creative people who want to make a statement by what they wear

Things they will want to create:

• Hens nights, Bucks nights
• Schoolies, Footy/soccer trips
• Fun runs, charity events, Pub crawls
• School/university clubs & societies
• Baby shirts
• Sports uniforms
• Make a statement

I asked a few friends what they liked/didn’t like about ordering custom t-shirts. Here what they are:

• Good quality shirts that are comfy to wear and don’t shrink
• Give you a cheap price since you’re ordering online and doing the work!
• Good quality prints that wont fade after one wash
• Prices upfront
• Good selection but not too many to overwhelm me
• Tell me what colors and sizes are available
• Give me some inspiration!
• Make it easy to order online
• Let me see what it looks like on the t-shirt
• Tell me how long it will take upfront
• Have a phone and/or email I can contact you on
• Tell me where you are – a physical address

Personality of the brand:

Honest, upfront, open

Refreshingly good service

Sense of humour, don’t take ourselves too seriously

Key point of difference:

Make ordering custom t-shirts enjoyable.

So, next question – what to call it?

I have two ideas. I like one, my husband likes the other. What do you think?

Phoebe: Creating the Name that becomes the Brand

Hi everyone!

I’ve decided on fashion tees and accessories for men and women. After some time I would then eventually expand out to kid’s tees. Now that I know what products and industry in and target market I’m interested it becomes a lot easier to think of the name and branding ideas. I myself like things that are a bit strange, a bit left field but are still socially acceptable. As mentioned I liked cute monsters, interesting quotes from movies and songs and toys to put next to your computer baby animals and nature. This is a perfect starting point – listing random things that I enjoy or would have a laugh at.

Although a lot of people may think that fashion and caring about what you wear or not wear in some cases, I really beg to differ. I believe what you wear affects your state of mind or personality. Notice how I said affects – not reflects, though sometimes I think it’s actually both. So if you wear a colour that’s fun or a print that’s interesting, it almost becomes a part of you when you wear it – an extension of your personality if you will. Now I won’t get all hocus pocus, fashion forward, try hard on you but this is relevant to what I would like to design. What would I want to products to stand for and where do I want them housed?

I remember seeing Kookai for the first time. When I walked in the store I felt a rush of awe, because yes – it was that beautiful. The floral wallpaper, streams of light peeping through white tassles descending on the racks of beautiful dresses with a circle centre piece where the lush carpet was – sort of like an island with the tree leaves hanging down. (Someone bring me a mocktail!) So I would love for my store to reflect this sort of personality. I would love for the brand to be as powerful as this. Ambitious I know, but this is the aim part of the experiment! J

I think starting off the brand personality is much easier to think of a name that condenses all the ideas of what you’d like to stand for.

Keywords:

Fun, cute, a little bit different, my favourite, colourful, feminine, soft, pop culture, sweet, black, cartoons, old school, meaningful, going out, beach, holidays, soft cotton, strong prints, forest, animals, organic, superheroes, light, space and maybe characters that are recognisable.

So names… what are some words that spark an emotion? Strange – but not too strange! Quirky without being too ugly?
Let’s see…I think I like these words:

Cute. Cool. Weird. Funny. Quirky. Lufu (means love in Latin). Bebop. Monster. Magic. LightSpaceTees. 

Mixing them together – WeirdButCoolThings (quite long?) MonsterMagic. (nah too much like Monkey Magic – I’ll get teased to no end). Bebop. Acid Tees (inspired by Acid Jazz). MonsterTees (taken- just looked), Lufu (also a nearly extinct Nigerian language),

* It’s a good idea to look up the name either on www.name.com.au, www.godaddy.com, www.domainsbot.com, while you’re thinking of names to save time and disappointment! Sometimes with registering for a name you’ll need to have your ABN with you. You can apply for an ABN (Australian Business Number) here. From memory it doesn’t take long… a day or so where you fill out an online form and then they send it to you in the form of a letter after it’s been approved. Sometimes it gets lost (speaking from experience) so best to apply and then call them afterwards to see if it’s pending, so you don’t waste your time and effort. For GoDaddy you don’t need an ABN but you’ll need to provide your details like address etc and with Name you need an ABN.

I like the idea of space – the stars and the moon but want to be a bit different. The word Luna is nice, because it’s feminine and means Moon Goddess which is pretty and is quite short. I’ll have a look on one of the domain websites and see if it’s available.

30 seconds later…

Luna.com, LunaLove.com, LovelyLuna.com are taken… I’ll try inLovewithLuna.com… Yay! It’s available! Perfect!

Coming up next… Signing up as an affiliate by going to DecoNetwork’s site and then develop the prints and branding!

Kristi: choosing an online store provider

Choosing an online store provider is a really relevant point. In my previous job I was a web designer for a Design and Marketing agency. We were asked to create an online store for a custom embroidery and workwear/uniforms company. Man was that a tall order!

Firstly the amount of time and research required to build a suitable solution from scratch is really not justifiable or in the scope of a small -medium size company’s budget. We had to figure out all the logic, understand the garment industry and the complex pricing of light colours, dark colours, embroidery cost per stitch…. Not to mention having to organise a photo shoot of all the garments and creating thumbnails for them all!

I think we did a satisfactory job but it was a hefty sum we charged ($10-15k from memory) and very time-consuming for one web designer and one web developer with a limited time frame.

So when I heard about DecoNetwork.com I was totally sold. The guys have spent years on research and development, optimizing the system specifically for custom goods and apparel. The online designer is a huge factor too, allowing customers to self serve and mix and match designs on different garments. They also include heaps of popular products already built in with different views, color, size and pricing information- gold.

So basically, instead of trying to put something together from scratch you can get started immediately. As we know, Web 2.0 is about being a “platform for platforms” –  if you want to build an online t-shirt store, you should consider as your platform, not the web itself, but a platform built on the web.

Something important to note is the DecoNetwork subscription is for people who actually print or embroider the goods themselves. A feature of DecoNetwork is the Affiliate stores – basically people like me sign up for Affiliate stores under a DecoNetwork Fulfullment center.

Someone asked me – why dont you use Cafe press? Well the benefit of choosing a DecoNetwork Affiliate store is that it’s local and personal – not a US corporation. The DecoNetwork fulfillment guys I have chosen are the same city as me, so my customers wont have to wait to get something shipped from the US. I can call the guys anytime and ask for specific products or to add my own swing tag, whatever.

Because my online store will be driven by my own social networks it makes sense to be local and help support small businesses in Australia. Plus I’m not competing with 1000s of other designers in the same space but instead be niche market focused.

Anyway that was a long one (again). Hopefully it made sense. Let me know if not.

Anh: Choosing the name for your online store

Greetings,

I have now signed up my online store.

I went through a series of days and a number names for my store / domain name.

To help you get started too, here are some tips for registering a name or domain name for your online store.

Tips for choosing a domain name

1. Brain storm a number of keywords for your domain name… say 5-10 keywords. This will also helps with your phrases and tag line. From the list, you can come up with a good name by shortening a keyword or combing certain keywords together to form an unique name.
2. Keep the name short, easy to type and easy to remember. I read somewhere that some registrars allow you to register a domain name with up to 63 or 67 characters.
3. Consider the domain extensions – .com, .net, .info, .biz etc… I would recommend a .com domain name… Also to consider your local market, if need, have a country associated domain name.
4. Domain names are not case sensitive, use only letters, numbers and dashes. Spaces and symbols are not allowed.
5. When you do a domain name search and the name you want is taken, you can add plurals to your domain name like “My and “The” or even make use of hyphens in your domain name. Hyphenated names is good for search engine and thus will return your site more prominently in search results. I would personally avoid this if possible but depends on the situation, it may be the best thing to do.

The name that I have chosen for my online store is called “Stickkers”
When I signed up and started setting up my store, I chose a temporarily name (from Wilcom DecoNetwork) and with my registered domain name, I updated the CNAME  and DNS record to point to my Wilcom DecoNetwork store. You can check out http://www.stickkers.com  - Fresh and new – this is as core as it gets (nothing been done to it).

A personal tip about registering your domain name, I would recommend Godaddy. It is reliable, has great customer service, prices are cheap. Godaddy have ongoing specials (via email and on the website) – so it is even cheaper… If there are no special promos at your time of purchase (a good little trick is), add it to your cart and leave it for a day or so. Godaddy will send you an email advising that you still have some items left in your shopping cart, so to entice you, they will offer a 10% discount if you make your purchase(within a time period of course).

Not to forget to mention, when you register your domain name with godaddy, it will also allows you to check if that name is available on twitter too. Social sites is a big thing and I am looking forward to exploring and use it for this experiment.

This weekend I will be setting up my store.

Till then, bye for now!
Anh

Phoebe: Thinking of a strong idea for your online store

Phoebe’s words…

Hey everyone! All my entries are my own thoughts. I’m just starting out in the online business part of things, so any feedback, suggestions (and praise :) ) are welcome.

The Big Idea 

I feel a lot of people think good ideas are hard to come by and even harder to pursue. It’s funny, because I think ideas come rather quickly to me but it’s hard to sift out what’s a waste of time and what’s brilliant.

After giving a lot of thought as to the business idea (product, market etc…), a conversation I had with someone during uni suddenly inspired me. At that time I was confused as to which road I wanted to go down for my career path. I was finishing a degree in Visual Communication and wasn’t sure what was going to become of me. There are so many avenues in graphic design – illustrator, desktop publisher, advertising, commercial artist, mac operator and a heap of other miscellaneous roles. Since there wasn’t a career advisor available I decided to talk to my uni mates. It was a bit like not knowing what to order at a restaurant and asking what others are having in hope of sparking some sort of decision to be made. A lot of people were into desk top publishing, advertising… that sort of thing. I knew I didn’t fit into any of those categories. It sounds like a role that Captain Planet would pursue, but I was actually interested in environmental graphic design – designing for a particular space on a large scale so it could be really large 3D words that act as a sculpture or parts of retail design or shop face. But environmental design sounded pretty unfamiliar to all my tutors at the time so I was a bit unsure how I would approach and continued the question poll to all my friends. Mind you most of them were as clueless as I was at that time :)  So anyway, just when I felt like there was no sort of verdict to be made when suddenly, one of my fellow colleagues hits me with:

“It’s not you trying to fit into a job. It’s using your strengths and interests and finding a job that’s right for you.”

I was blown away by that. Although it’s incredibly simple logic, I still find some people changing their personalities to suit the job. In other words the glove has to fit the hand, not the other way around – which leads me to the business idea for the online store.

By asking what are my interests are, what kind of skills and vision I have for the business and what I want the business to stand for these keywords are sparked:

dresses, t-shirts, singlets, sleepwear, natures, notebooks, cute monsters, tote bags, handbags, interesting quotes from movies and songs, mugs, toys to put next to your computer, summer, necklaces (silver, resin, wooden and leather), family portraits, model shoots, travelling, Japan, birthday cards, pet accessories, baby animals and weird trinkets.

I could go on forever but these are some of the things that generally came up as my interests and what I think I’d like to buy online.

Some of my ideas are to create things that are fun and quite mainstream but still clever. Some looks of other fashion sites and brand ideas I like are: FashionPalette, Booware, Polyvore, American Apparel, hellosoursally and trilbyphoenix.

So what now?

Choose your favourite love – What’s good for yourself as well as good for your pocket?

I know it’d be great if you chose a passion that’s individual to you, but if it’s so obscure others might not be able to relate to it and therefore not buy anything from you. How do we balance love and money?

For me I rely on instincts and might base my initial favourite products on what I personally think will be popular on the long term basis. There are two ideas that I’m leaning towards – the first one being t-shirts and singlets (different shapes), totes bags and maybe necklaces (going in for an inch wide, a mile deep here), so in a nutshell – Ladies Fashion. My skills I think would be graphics so if I pursue this idea, I would stick designing t-shirt prints and having an option for other people to upload their own designs too.
The second idea is pet accessories. I really like animals and I know it’s cruel and totally a niche market but I like seeing really cute custom collars, t-shirts and costumes on animals (mainly cats and dogs).. Since DecoNetwork has an online designer I’ll use this to show what my designs will look like on the product, so it’s almost like a print preview Plus when I was in teaching English in Japan, pet accessories were huge!

Next few steps : Now all I must do it decide between the two (like deciding between ice-cream and chocolate- both have great potential), source inspiration so I’ll have an idea to how the brand will grow. I’ll keep you posted!