StoresOnline Day 44: Do Research Before you Pay for a Domain
June 16th 2007 03:00 am
In a previous post I mentioned that my domain was BabySlingsRUs.com. I should have looked into it before I grabbed that. I chose it because my keyword phrase is baby slings so I wanted this in the domain. I also wanted it to appear at the front so that it grabs the eye of the person, especially if I do pay-per-click ads that show the domain name. The name people see can influence the click-through rate greatly (how many people actually click on your ad).
However, decided to check if “R Us” is trademarked, and it is. Apparently Toys R Us went after a couple of companies who used “R Us” in their names. True, the companies were something ToysRUs would not want to be associated with (GunsRUs and AdultsRUs) but it shows that they really could take legal action against any company that uses R Us if they wanted to.
Since I haven’t had much traffic anyway and haven’t invested a lot of time into getting links, now would be the best time to change it.
So my new site is Baby Slings Direct. I still have Baby Slings at the front, and I think “direct” indicates it is being sent directly from the manufacturer, which it is since they drop ship for me.
Emailed StoresOnline to have them activate the domain. Two days later, no response and no activation, so I asked the online chat person. He had me “on hold” for a few minutes and then said it was done. A couple of days later, no site. Asked another online chat rep who checked and told me the first person hadn’t done it after all.
Sigh…it seems like I get the right answer 60% of the time with StoresOnline help. It may be more than that, but perception is 90% of reality.
However, decided to check if “R Us” is trademarked, and it is. Apparently Toys R Us went after a couple of companies who used “R Us” in their names. True, the companies were something ToysRUs would not want to be associated with (GunsRUs and AdultsRUs) but it shows that they really could take legal action against any company that uses R Us if they wanted to.
Since I haven’t had much traffic anyway and haven’t invested a lot of time into getting links, now would be the best time to change it.
So my new site is Baby Slings Direct. I still have Baby Slings at the front, and I think “direct” indicates it is being sent directly from the manufacturer, which it is since they drop ship for me.
Emailed StoresOnline to have them activate the domain. Two days later, no response and no activation, so I asked the online chat person. He had me “on hold” for a few minutes and then said it was done. A couple of days later, no site. Asked another online chat rep who checked and told me the first person hadn’t done it after all.
Sigh…it seems like I get the right answer 60% of the time with StoresOnline help. It may be more than that, but perception is 90% of reality.
RSS
Sue Edlin responded on 17 Jun 2007 at 11:21 pm #
Hello,
Let me start by saying that I tried to send this to you privately from the “Contact Us” area of your page, but, as you’ll discover, I could not.
Yesterday a friend and I spent all day at a SOL “seminar”. Despite the high pressure, we held our ground and chose to do more research. Among the many links, pro and con, I found your excellent blog. It is a very interesting journal of the evolution of a store.
I, of course, went to your site to check it out. (Sorry, I’m well beyond the baby sling needing age and no grandchildren in sight. but, back in the sixties I used a “Gerry Seat” for my kid, it was great, took the weight off my arm and onto the shoulder. Mechanically it was good, but nowhere as pretty as yours.) but I digress.
Please check out your page on other computers. The little thumbnail that comes up when you mouse over the link in the blog looks different from the live site. With my screen resolution, what comes up is a whole lot of white space next to the picture of the lady with the beautiful hair. The “Welcome” title is below the picture. You want to have the reader’s attention immediately, without scrolling.
There were a few other things, I looked up the National Parenting Center, and with some poking around found the sling. Oops, they show it at a price of $36.00!!!!
Give me a call, I can point out a few other things that could help.
Good Luck,
BIG PROBLEM – When I hit submit, here’s what popped up…
warning_message You must select at least one First Choice fabric. Continue Shopping
I tried several times and gave up, sorry.
Nancy responded on 18 Jun 2007 at 11:21 pm #
hey! i’m a storeonline merchant too…my web is up a week ago, got few clicks from pay-per-click
i like your web!!
good luck!
what are sum of your marketing stradgies?
susb8383 responded on 29 Jun 2007 at 11:22 pm #
Sue–
Thanks so much for your comments!
I discovered that white space problem as well. Sometimes the page renders correctly, but sometimes I think the image takes too long to load and the text does not properly flow in around it. I think I have to figure out how to load the image before the rest of the elements. I’ll try to take time to do that this weekend.
Thanks for the heads up about the Contact Us! I put that warning message on for a sling order so that the customer specifies a first choice fabric (or so I thought) but it looks like I set it up incorrectly so that it applies to Contact Us as well! I’ll fix that this weekend too.
Nancy, thanks for your comment as well.
So far, 0 orders. D’oh! I’m getting a few (very few) visitors from PPC, but so far nobody has made a purchase. I’m just using Google Adwords right now because that’s what I know. I read someplace that the best thing to do is use Adwords to buy traffic and get your conversion rate up. Once you have a decent rate, then expand to other PPC, affiliates, etc.
I haven’t made much of an effort to get incoming links yet. I joined one webring but that’s it so far. I plan to do a few blogs that link to is as well as write some articles. Then I’m going to check out competitors and see what sites are linking to them and try to get on the bandwagon, so to speak.
What is your website?
susb8383 responded on 29 Jun 2007 at 11:22 pm #
Fixed the contact us issue. Thanks!!