We’ve just placed our fist order with Kanban, so we’re expecting delivery any day now. Watch this space for further details!!
Either check back here or keep an eye on our store homepage. Either way, you won’t be waiting long.
Start Slide Show with PicLens Lite
We have spent some time redesigning our site, finally managing to get it up and runing last night.
As with all processes of this nature, we have probably made the odd mistake! SO, we would like your help.
If you spot any bugs, we would really appreciate being told about them. We would also love some comments about the changes we’ve made. Even if this is a fist time visit to our site, we would still like to hear what you think.
As a Thank You for this help, we will gladly send you a voucher code for free postage.
Comments can be added to this blog, emailed or simply use the contact us form on our Contact Us Page.
We’ve spent the last week or so looking at the design of our main site.
Since adding new stock, the left navigation bar has become rather long. This means that the site is very long, needing a lot of scrolling to get through all the content. We thought this made looking at the site more difficult than it should be.
Our answer? A new skin with two side bars! At the moment, the left side bar contains all the links you need to find our stock. This will stay the same but most of the other links and information will be moved over to the right. Hopefully, this will result in a site that is easier on the eye and much easier to navigate if you don’t yet have a scroll wheel on your mouse.
All the hard work is done. We need to switch to the new skin and tweak. With luck, we’ll be finished by the end of this weekend.
Comments would be very welcome.
Our initial hope had been to use EBay as a source of advertising, thinking that potential customers would do some research about us and find our website.
This proved not to be the case. Our sales were reasonably good through our EBay store but EBay is not the best place to be selling the low cost items we sell. Their fees structure hits us quite hard because there is a ‘per item’ fee and then a ‘final selling price’ fee.
In our case, the initial listing fee made up a comparatively large proportion of our costs. If our products cost more, we would still be charged the same ‘per item’ fee. Of course, this means that in terms of percentage values, we are paying much more. The fee is a fixed amount, so a 10p fee on an item costing £1 is 10%. If the item cost £5, the percentage would be significantly less.
Of course, we then have no choice but to pass on the costs to our customers. Something we really hated doing. In fact, for a while before making the decision to close, we had been selling several items on our website for less than we had to charge on EBay. With luck, some people noticed this and went for the website instead of Ebay.
Currently, we still have some listings on EBay. These will be around for another week or so but after that, you’ll find everything on our website!
We have added a gallery of Home Made Card by Jill Hiatt to our website.
When Jill told us she gave all her profits to charity, we thought it only fair to offer her some advertising space. She supports Water Aid, a charity that works in 17 countries providing water, sanitation and hygiene education to some of the world’s poorest people.
This is what Jill told us:
“I have made several thousand cards so far, mostly this size unless special requests. I make almost any card from blank, birthdays, Christmas, sympathy, think of you, new home, get well soon, various anniversaries and new babies etc. I have lots in stock.
All cards come with blank inserts for own message, envelopes and poly bags. I sell them at £1 each with all the profit going to WaterAid. I also support a Children’s Hospice in Oxfordshire who sell my cards in their shops”.
She has opted to advertise her cards through our site, adding just £1 for postage. Fantastic value! You would be struggling to find a mass produced card for that kind of price and think of the benefits of a High Quality, Homemade card instead.
For further details, please email The Crafty Beggars:
We will pass on your details.
