Life of an Online Business – My Pillow place

 Well, My Pillow Place received 2 presents on Christmas and I would like to return both.  The first one was that Dec. 25th was the first time this month that we didn’t get a sale.  So our streak was broken and we go another month without a sale every day.  Maybe January will start a new streak.

The second present was also unpleasant.  We fell out of first place in Google for the Keyword Phrase Floor Pillows for the first time in well over a year.  Crate and Barrell jumped ahead to number 1 and we’ve fallen to number 2.  That means that I’m going to have to get back on the link building campaign and get us back to where we belong.

We’ve also put on a coupon code for the end of the year.  If you spend 250 dollars or more and enter the word newyear in the appropriate box on our order form, you will receive a 10% discount on your entire order.  The code will be active until New Year’s Day

This is it.  We’re coming to the very end of the year.  And I’m not sure if I will post again before 2009, though I will try.  Overall, I’m pleased with how much we’ve grown over 2008.  From January to December I’ve done a lot of work to improve our website.  We’ve added and removed many products and more changes will be coming next year.

I’ve seen our traffic more than double from what we’ve had last year.  I’m not sure how much we will improve next year.  But I feel My Pillow Place will see a little growth.  I’m just concentrating on finishing out this year and I will worry about 2009 on January 1st.

If I can pass on anything to people who read this blog.  If you have any important things on your computer, whether it be business files or anything personal.  Make sure you back it up.  We recently had a computer glitch that wiped a bunch of important files and programs.  Thankfully, most everything was backed up on a removable hard drive.  This is so important because you could lose months of work.

I am glad to say that all of our vendors got our shipments out by the cutoff dates for Christmas purchases.  Unfortunately, some people don’t read the information posted on the product pages that state when the cut-offs are.  We are still getting calls and emails saying, “I placed my order on such and such a date and I still haven’t got my order yet!”

We do our best to get products shipped to customers as soon as possible, but there is always a back-up of shipments at the end of the year for the holidays.  I feel bad that people ordered late, but once we place the order with our vendors, we rely on them to get the orders out.  That’s why we only guarantee orders after a certain date to arrive before Christmas.

This isn’t a huge problem, but I feel bad for the people that didn’t see our note on the product pages.  I try to make the note as clear and attention getting as possible.  But sometimes people are so focused on making their gift purchase, that they don’t scan the page for other information such as deadlines and shipping times.

Anyways, as we’re winding down for the end of the year, we’ll probably offer some kind of coupon code that will be posted in the upper left hand corner of the website the day after Christmas.  I plan on letting run through the end of the year so we can try to finish the the last few days strong.  I haven’t worked out the logistics, but visit My Pillow Place on January 26th.

This becomes one of the busiest weeks of the year because not only are sales and traffic increasing, but more people are calling to check on orders.  Hoping our vendors get product out before the Christmas deadline.  To protect ourselves and inform our customers, we always put a deadline box on the product pages to let people know when the last day to order is to ensure delivery before Christmas.

What I’ve seen this year is that we’re not just selling our popular Floor Pillows but we’re selling a variety of different items with regularity.  Our Foam Furniture is really a hot item this year.  Especially the Comfy Cocoon. We’ve also moved a lot of BedLounge bedrests.   We don’t sell a lot of these during the year, but during the holidays they are a popular gift item.

Its been so hectic this year that I’ve had trouble finding time to write in this blog.  But its a welcome problem.  After this week, I intend to see a slowdown because the gift giving season will be done…and we’ll push to see many new customers find us in 2009.  We’ve got a lot of interesting new products coming, but I won’t be able to add anything until after the new year when things slow down a bit.

I’ve been very pleased with our sales and traffic for this 12th month of 2008.  It has only been 6 days into the month, but we’re setting some records.  It only makes me wonder how we’d be doing in a robust economy. 

Another good thing is that Google is starting to find many of the links that I’ve been trading and our link number has jumped from 8 to 27 over the last few days.  The link trading work is starting to pay off. 

Just over the last week I got one of our vendors to create a new Shredded Foam Floor Pillow product for us because we needed to add a affordable foam filled pillow back to our line.  We decided to remove one of the products on our splash page because the company that made the fabric for it went out of business.  So our supplier was having trouble keeping fabric in stock for it.  It is all the same.  I wasn’t pleased with that floor pillow.  It was an ok product, but we have so many better options that are similar.

Mid-November always marks time of the year when our suppliers institute holiday cutoff deadlines to get products to customers before December 24th.  So, I have to go around to all the products on our site and add information regarding when is the last day to order that item to ensure holiday delivery.  That’s not to say that you can’t order after that date and still receive it by the Dec. 24th, but its less likely. 

The thing is, we can’t guarantee any dates because its really out of our control.  We have the manufacturer producing the item, and then FedEx or UPS delivering it.  There are so many things that can go wrong.  Weather can influence delivery times.  Order volume can delay production time. Now 99% of the time, all orders placed before the cut off date will be delivered without a hitch. 

We’ve gone ahead and placed a holiday gift giving guide on our site to help people looking for special gifts.  Its a nice list of some of our most popular items.  Every year we change or add to the list based on what’s available or what new products we’ve added over the year.

Traffic has really been bumped up lately.  We’ve exceeded 500 people per day over the last week and that’s up from about 250 per day a few months back.  It seems the work I put into optimizing many of our pages for the search engines has yielded fruit.  We look forward to continuing our growth in 2009.