Life of an Online Business – My Pillow place

April has followed suit with the last 2 years being one of our slowest months.  I actually thought it would be better than average because it started out relatively strong.   Then it slowed around tax time.  Then it picked up again.  And the last 6 days have been our worst span in a long while.

I’ve taken this slow time to exchange many links, work on some SEO and tweak some of our navigation.  I’ve edited almost every page in our Bean Bag Section.  I’ve spent some time linking the pages together so people can navigate from one product to the next easier.

Last week our contact from one of our Vendors was let go because of the economy, as well as his difficult boss.  He helped us a lot and was a joy to work with.  I fear that we will not see the same customer service and the quick resolution of any problems like we had with him.  He may be going to another furniture company and I hope we get the chance to work with him again.

I’d like to point out that even though you never meet some of the people you do business with when you have an online business, you do develop relationships.  You rely on these people to make your business successful and it is hard when you lose the ones that help you the most.  Good Luck Rick, I hope we work together again.  Thanks for all your help.

Right before Easter, we offered a standard 5% off coupon code to anyone who entered the code in the code box on our order form.  I usually post such offers in the upper left hand corner of our site on the navigation bar so people can see it. 

In the past, not many people have seen these discount offers.  So this time, I added a little animated image to catch people’s eyes.  And the image worked and many people used the discount code.  This is a slow month, so we offered a second code for the week of income tax filing.  Again, we used another animated image to catch people’s eyes.  This time, it didn’t work as well.  Less customers used the code.

I’m wondering if the image itself had anything to do with it.  The easter code has a jumping easter egg catching people’s attention.  The tax day code was a waving dollar.   It was a little more subtle.

The idea is, you want people to see what you’re offering.  You need to catch people’s eye.  If people need that extra little discount to push the “add to cart” button, so be it.  But make sure they can see what bonuses you are giving.

Ok, I wrote the checks to pay may taxes, so that pill has been swallowed.  I can now move forward in concentrating on making my business better as the economy, hopefully, moves towards recovery.  However, this socialist government spending may deter the growth of any business. 

I’ve got a lot of catching up to do with fixing and updating many pages of our site.  I’ve put some things off for way too long.  Word to the wise.  Don’t let things pile up on you or the hill becomes very high to climb.  

One thing that has irritated me lately is that one of our vendors has changed some of our products lately.  They’ve changed the filling or redefined what the product is.  So, I’ve had to go and update the information.  Our Sphere Foam Chair is one such product that has gone though a change.  The filling changed from a shredded memory foam, to a softer, furniture grade urethane foam.  The product is good either way.  But we are trying to represent our products as acurately as possible. 

We had a coupon code up for the week leading up to Easter and it helped generate some sales.  But this week, we’ve seen a slow down.  I speculate that people may be more concerned with paying their taxes than spending money.  Maybe I should put a tax refund coupon code on this week and next to encourage people to spend their refunds with us and save some money at the same time.

As I go through this process every year of getting our business taxes done, it turns my stomach. I made my estimated tax payments, as is required, after each fiscal quarter. After getting my taxes done, I still owed money. And it was a lot of money. So, now I have to write this large check to the government, who will misuse my tax dollars on pointless social programs.

Its really upsetting because we work really hard and our labor and dedication is rewarded with high taxes. The current government is dis-incentivizing hard work and capitalism. It really turns my stomach.

I usually like to counter my bad stuff with something positive about our business. But considering how I feel like I was kicked in the gut yesterday, I just don’t want to be positive. Here’s more bad news, April has been pretty slow far, I think we’re going to put on a 5% discount Easter coupon code tonight. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be more positive.h

Google has obviously put a curse on me because not only did www.my-pillow-place.com not receive a Page Rank bump (if you’ve been following my diatribe on this, Google took us from a PR 3, to a PR2, to a PR 0 over the last 2 years).  We are still sitting here with a 0.  That bothers me a little.  My keyword listings are still pretty good, but mentally, the PR makes you feel like your work is paying off.

What’s worse, this blog was a PR 4 a year ago, then we fell to a 3 and then a 2 and as of today, we have a PR of 0.  What the hell!

Aside from these obviously unimportant transpirations, I’ve been working hard on our Dog Bed section and finally caught up with the work involved there.  I’ve finished updating pages, adding the new products I wanted to and I’ve interlinked these pages to expose customers to some of our other related products.

The pages are optimized and Google has already indexed and listed these new pages.  I have a new list of products to add and I will get started on that work over the weekend.  I’m really engaged in growing our site over this slow period.  I’m focused, I’m determined and we’re plowing ahead.  Look Out!