Help With New Jewellery Website & Advertising

paulwf

Could I ask how long it takes to make the products. For example if you had to make a batch of 10 rings from scratch how long would that take?

donkeygeorge

The polymer clay jewellery takes about 20 mins each to make for the chocolates and more detailed items and the simpler things such as doughnuts about 5 mins. It then takes 30 mins to bake them but I can bake hundreds of them at a time.

So to make say 10 bitten chocolate rings
10x 20 mins= 3 hours 20 mins
Baking= 30 mins
Varnishing = 5 mins

total time= 3 hours 55 mins for 10 pieces

boombap

Hi,

Just wanted to say that I've taken a look at your site and I think it's fantastic and you're products lush. Literally good enough to eat!

I obviously don't know a single thing about the other Moneysaving posters who have replied to you so don't know if they're your target audience but I would say that, being a female in her twenties, I would put myself in that bracket.

One of the other posts implies that your site is a bit amateurish but I like the fact that it has a personality rather than being over 'sleek'. It reminds me of the website Sick For Cute (won't post the url here so google it if you want to see) which might interest you. I would howver definately leave off the hit counter and show products on the front page.

I definately think you should start a FaceBook group as I should think most of your demographic have FB accounts.

Re pricing - I think you should charge a little more. If somethings too cheap people will dismiss as junk whereas a higher price would indicate to people that it's of higher quality. I also think you should up the price and include postage within it. Your items will not cost you much to post and I think buyers prefer 'free' posting. Or, you could state that postage is 'free' if you spend over £10 which should encourage people to buy multuple products.

One other suggestion I'd like to add is could you make cookie stud earrings? The necklace with the cookie jar pendant is lovely and I'd thought that the cookie shape would lend itself to earrings well.

Good luck!

S.

Slinky

It's not my sort of thing personally (I'm in my 40s) but I do think it's very clever and if I was younger I might buy. I agree with others that I think your pricing is too cheap. Have confidence to price it higher, you don't want to spend life being a busy fool.

One thing I did think of is that maybe on your rings page you should put at the top what sizes your rings adjust to.

Good luck with it.

Jo_F

Do you have product liability insurance?

If not you need to look into getting it pretty sharpish, items like that are not looked upon too kindly by Trading Standards due to the Imitation Foods Act, which you really need to look into, and check what stance your local TS office take on it.

I know of companies that have had their entire stock of fimo foods confiscated under the law, due to the chance of children thinking they are real and choking on them.

I actually had to pull all my stock until it had been checked over, I am using up the last of my allsorts, but will not be making any more, I am sticking with 1 inch ice creams etc as there is less chance of confusion there, and I am insured should the worse case happen.

paulwf

squee wrote: »

Hi,

One of the other posts implies that your site is a bit amateurish but I like the fact that it has a personality rather than being over 'sleek'. It reminds me of the website Sick For Cute (won't post the url here so google it if you want to see) which might interest you. I would howver definately leave off the hit counter and show products on the front page.

I agree the style is great but it does have "free website" written all over it (implied not literal). This is very important if you are looking to wholesale and generally build up customer confidence...at the moment it says part time business run from home not here's a top class individual designer. A website can look professional without looking corporate and boring...look at the type of graphics Lush use throughout all their advertising for example.

With regards to the brand name and logo - could I keep the My-Sweet-Boutique for my own webstore and just source my jewellery under range names. What kind of names do you think would be appropriate for my jewellery.

I'm not an expert on branding, all I know is that it is key to your business for the type of product you are trying to sell. I think your best bet is to do it properly, do some market research and speak to some people in the industry. Personally I would go for something that relates to you or the product you are selling, Kitsch Jewellery Company or the Laura Smith/Jones Collection.

With regards to pricing there are several ways you can approach it. The key to all of them is to have confidence in yourself, your items are unique and people will pay for that. Don't ever try and be the cheapest in your field.

The first technique is simply put your prices up, raise them 10% immediately and see what happens. Keep doing this until sales fall and then back off a notch. Remember that even if you lose a couple of customers if you still make more profit than before that's fine, you only need to lower prices when you start to lose a significant number of customers. You'll be kicking yourself when you start seeing 25% more profit and have less work

The second pricing strategy is to set different price points. Customer 1 might have £10 to spend on a gift and customer 2 might be looking to spend £20 on a ring. Try and have a selection of price points in each category to suit what your customers want to spend. How many of us choose gifts depending on our budget not just what we like?

The last point about pricing is as I mentioned before you need to be selling much more expensive items. By my rough calculations you are making a profit but it is so time consuming you're never going to be able to have time left over to develop your business and you'll never be able to hire staff. Selling £5 items will take up all your time, you need to get some high value sales in the mix to free up some time. At the moment I'm concerned that if you start getting decent wholesale items you are going to have a huge backlog, you can only make about 20 items a day so there is a real risk if this takes off of not being able to cope. Luckily if you put your pricing up plus develop a more expensive range you should be able to solve this.

Try and see if you have an enterprise agency in your area, my local agency offers 1 to 1 advice and will guide businesses through the development phase. I think your jewellery is excellent and if you can get help with the boring business bits it could be a great business. Try and step it up a notch, get proper business advice and consider getting funding to create a really good website and brand so that you've got a foundation to build your business on.

martindow

donkeygeorge wrote: »

Martin- I am going to have a good make over on my website changing all the things you have suggested. With regards to the buying, you simply click the Add To Basket button on the product page and then you can pay with your card or Paypal account via Paypal shopping cart. Could you tell me what you had trouble with and I will look into changing that too to make it easier to shop on my site. It seems obvious to me but that's because I designed the site so it is good to get a customers perspective.

Right worked it out. I didn't realise that I had to click on more details to be able to order. It would be much better if you could buy directly from, for instance, the necklaces page.

It is good if everything is absolutely simple and obvious for people like me. On the web people are very impatient - any problem or difficulty they are likely to give up easily and be off to another site.

PurpleSmile

Hi there, I hope you take this as advice rather than offence.
But I don't think your website is very professional. It looks quite childlike. I would not buy because of the website despite you having some lovely items.
It might be worth having one made up for you ( a small fee but worth it in the long run)

Also If you also sell on ebay and folksy (you are paying a listing fee which is a little bit annoying) but you are able to promote your own site, and bring customers in that way.
Whenever you sell on folksy or etsy, add the email on a mailing list, and send a newsletter out monthly directing them to your own website.

You already had facebook which is great, get your friends to spread the word.

I sell handmade cards. They cost around 30p to make each. 10p listing fee, 40p paypal fee. So after selling for £2.50-£3.50 each I am not left with a profit. It is just a hobbie that brings in £40-£50 a week after tax. I work full time alongside this.

Craftfares bring in so much more money and no paypal/fees
Just the cost of hiring the table.

Have you ever thought of selling craft kits alongside your products.
Like
A kit with pliars, beads, findings etc. Call it a 'Inspiration kit' or 'starter kit' No work for you, and its probably things you'd have anyway or could use if you never sold any of them.

donkeygeorge

Thanks again to you all for your help and advice. I will try and answer all your posts individually.

Squee- Thank you very much for all your lovely comments. They mean a lot. I am thinking of doing a kind of survey to ask people how much they would pay for an item then averaging it out. Could I ask would you be willing to complete one once I have done it. I think outside advice is much better as they are all potential customers. I do have a Facebook page, the address to join is in my profile somewhere. I should be able to make the cookies into studs too, I will have a go at weekend.

Slinky- Regarding the rings, you can make them as big or as small as you like as they are completely adjustable so they can suit all sizes.

Jo_F- I have just purchased my insurance that covers me for everything I need. Did they let you carry on selling them in the end?

Paulwf- I have added a link to a new website I am working on with a professional web design company. If you could have a look and see if this is more like you mean. The web address is in my profile and I would appreciate your opinion on it. None of the links work on it as it is just to show the design before I get started on it being made. I am also looking into getting the one to one business advice.

Martindow- when I get the new web design done and running I am going to have it so you can buy the item from the category pages too as well as some of the other advice people have given me on here.

Purplesmile- I have sent you a pm regarding the new website design and would love to hear your opinions on that too. With regards to sales I make on Ebay, Etsy and Folksy, each one I get I add the email address to my contacts list and email them when a new range of items comes on to buy, special offers etc. I also include a business card in with their purchase for my own website plus 20% off their first order via the website. I have just got my insurance sorted so I can now start to do craft fairs so hopefully this will drum up some interest as well as customers.

Thank you all very much for all your help and advice, I really appreciate it and fingers crossed it will all help my business become a success.

Laura

paulwf

donkeygeorge wrote: »

Paulwf- I have added a link to a new website I am working on with a professional web design company. If you could have a look and see if this is more like you mean. The web address is in my profile and I would appreciate your opinion on it. None of the links work on it as it is just to show the design before I get started on it being made. I am also looking into getting the one to one business advice.

It looks like with all the changes you are making to the business it is really on the up!

Unfortunately I can't give you a fully objective opinion on the website as it is constructed in Flash which makes me cringe regardless of the content. Flash can look fancy but it has issues with accessibility and general ease of navigation. On a purely business level Flash websites AFAIK can't be viewed on iPhones and iPads without major workarounds which could impact your business in the future...these devices are sold by the bucketload and mostly to people with money, if they can't see your site expect less sales.

If it isn't too late please get some opinions from others before deciding on the best route to take with your website.