l have just opened my online shop 'wiltshire-giftbaskets.co.uk' selling gift baskets.l am trying to work out if l should make any edits to the website to make it more appealing, any comments?Also l am looking for any marketing ideas to get my website out there, l currently have a marketing company working on getting me on the search engines.

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Hi Natalie

Had a quick look.

Some thoughts:

The pink & heart theme looks a bit too lovey-dovey Valentine Day-ish to me. This is a year-round business, so maybe u need to make it more general. You do need a banner picture at the top. The site seems a bit bare without.

You might consider a bit of sales talk for each of the categories - an intro telling people why a gift basket makes sense for a birthday etc, how it saves time & hassle. basic principle is to sell the BENEFITS, rather than the item itself. People buy benefits - a saving in time, convenience, originality, etc. - Why people should buy a gift basket rather than send an M&S voucher.

Pictures load slowly. You may need to look at the resolutions (72dpi is standard)

But more fundamentally, Wiltshire Gift Baskets to me (living in Kent) conjured up an image of Wiltshire specialities - whatever they might be - l dunno, maybe Wiltshire bacon. But the gifts r fairly generic. Nothing wrong in that, but it may puzzle people slightly. Is there actually an opening for gift baskets of Wiltshire specialities? - maybe.

Now, other ideas to steer people towards the site (apart from the search engine stuff):

''County' type magazines. Where l live, there r about 4 or 5, a few free. Write an article about the business for them. Not TOO sales-y, it needs to appear to be editorial. Most of these mags rely on such pieces, & welcome stuff pre-written - it saves them time. They might try to persuade u to advertise with them - resist until the business takes off.

Local newspapers: again they r always crying out for material. If u can write a piece about ur new business & make it not too obviously a self-advertisement ..

Links with other sites - local business sites, wedding sites, local town sites.

Good luck!

Hello Natalie

Harumbah gives u some very good advice. I've had a quick look at ur site & agree about the hearts. A touch too 'girly' even for another girl!

l agree that it is confusing about ur chosen name. Wiltshire does not seem to have any relevance to ur products.

Gear ur site more towards ur target markets. Birthday gifts for men, birthday gifts for women, wedding presents.

Think carefully about ur target markets, go after them & drive them to ur site. You will need to do a lot of marketing off-line as well as on-line to make it work.

For example, go along to wedding fairs & offer ur site as one to go on the couples gift list. With a little bit more work from ur web designers u can provide a wedding list service.

Your thank u gifts could be suitable for companies that want to say thank u to employees. Contact the heads of personnel in local companies & offer ur site as a resource.

Any press coverage about the story of how u set up ur business or what makes it different will help enormously in driving traffic to the site. Sometimes the weekend papers (nationally) run features on people setting up in business. The Times did a piece on us many years ago. Someone else we know received so many enquiries following their piece in one of the weekend papers that they could not cope with the demand. Make sure that u can!

Make contact with ur local Business Link, if u have not already done so. They get requests from the press for stories about businesses in their area. (That was how we ended up in the Times.) They've also a lot of free help & information on marketing that is worth having.

Best of luck!

Hello Natalie,
I've looked & it is a nice idea but the theme to me will not get u taken seriously, it is to personal, it needs to be more appropriate to ur product, also on ur front page make better use of it by putting the pictures of ur products, like for example u have on the ''anniversary page then add ur current front page under a tab ''about us/me'' this will make people stop & look.
Blogging or adding ur link to sites will create backlinks which search engines pick up.
Good luck, you've done really well.

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