Lessons Learned

Good time to start this post.

1. Never hold an office jewelry party 2 days before payday!!!!
* Always find out when their paydays are BEFORE setting the date. It seems rude, but you are running a business after all and it is your responsibility to make it as profitable as possible.

2. Find out how much space you have to set up your display.
* This can help you determine what to take. Some may say, "Take it all!", but it isn't necessary if you plan ahead.

Add your own lessons learned in Comments to this post. And don;t forget to put a link to your website in your post.


"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

Jewelry Parties

 I wrote an article on the Home Jewelry Business Success Tips about Jewelry Party Games.  I was debating Rena Klingenberg about having games during the jewelry party all depends on the demographics of your attendees. If you'd like to add your own comments to this subject you can do it here and on Rena's site below my post by clicking here.

If you are in the jewelry business and wondering about Jewelry Party Games I would like to hear your ideas. If you are thinking about getting the business for fun or profit, Rena's website is just full of wonderful articles that make good reading for the professional as well as the novice.


"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

What Makes A Good Store

 Since I have switched over to using Big Commerce as my eCommerce provider I have had a lot of people who use other shopping cart and eCommerce providers ask me what I think about BC? It's easier for me to ask them what they don't like about their present provider and then set their minds at ease about using BC.

Is that all it takes to make a good store?  Absolutely not, but it is the foundation for one. If the site doesn't function the way it should when it is supposed to then that may be the straw that breaks the camels back, thus adding to your abandon rate.

So, what do you need? In summary;

• Products that people want
• A good looking site
• Prices that are in line with the market
• A great eCommerce partner
• and if you want sales you better have great Internet Marketing strategy and effort

 There is no one thing by and of itself that will do it, rather the combination of all these things.

"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

Analysis Paralysis

There are several ways of analyzing your website traffic; Google Analytics (my preferred), having your "log.file" read and interpreted by any number of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) software programs, and others.

I have a little bit of experience in analytics, somewhere around 37 years worth. It's the experience and the methods and knowing how to "read" the numbers to tell the story that makes a good analyst. Being able to dig in and find the really important things and never being satisfied, that's what makes a really good one.

There is one pitfall, or trap that one can get into, and that is what we call "analysis paralysis." This phenomena happens to every analyst at some time or other in their life time, more than most want to admit. It can best be described as being frozen in time and space, unable to move your eyes, limbs, speech is lost and the brain stops working. Typically it occurs after staring at numbers, figures and data for extended periods of time without getting up and separating yourself from the work. It can be compared to "writer's block."

One thing you learn and I can vouch for is that you can take 2 data points or 2 sets of numbers and make them represent anything you need. Seriously, manipulating figures is something that is part of the job.

Key thing is to know what you are looking for and then identifying the data that best represents it. One of the big points everyone is business is looking for is return on investment, or ROI. Essentially you want to know how much bang you are getting for the buck. I had a client once who would not spend a cent on certain Internet marketing if he could not get a minimum of a 300% ROI.  There are 2 formula's, the simplest is Revenue divided by Cost. So, define what you need in terms of return n your investment and play with that for a while.

"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

Confession

OK, I have to "fess up." I followed myself. Not that I wanted to see where I was going mind you, but I had to start it off, you know.

"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

On Twitter

Well, there's that too.

I have several Twitter accounts;

http://twitter.com/doug_kelly    with over 12,300 followers as of March 17, 2009

and

http://twitter.com/jdkelly_jewelry   with about 200 followers that I just started in the last few weeks.

and

http://twitter.com/navychief     with about 6,200 followers - my darker side and represents where I spent 18 years of my life.

If you'd like to follow, click on the links above and we'll tweet to each other!


"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com

Looking for Ways to Get Your Site Listed Higher

I could have titled this, SEO for Your Website.

Either way, I thought I would post this link for you folks who are doing your own Search Engine Optimization and want to hear it from the "horse's mouth" so to speak, Matt Cutts is a senior engineer with Google who provides video replies to questions that people have emailed to Google's Webmaster Central and he provides great insight to the world of SEO as it pertains to ethical organic search.

http://www.youtube.com/googlewebmasterhelp#p/u/4/MkLFlaWxgJA

This link is to one of the more informative videos, but look at the list on the right-hand side and click on "view all" to get the entire library.

"Inquiring Minds Want to Know"
Doug
www.JDKellyJewelry.com