Web Page, does it work for you?

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JRB

JRB

PFG, Picture Framing God
Founding Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2000
Posts
7,107
Loc
San Diego, CA
I noticed on several other threads that some framers have their own web page.
I, so far, feel that they are a waste of time and money. I have yet to hear of any custom picture frame shop that was actually making money from a web page.
When I discuss them with people that have them, they all seem very proud of them, but they have never made enough money to justify the expense.
My question is two part:
1, Do you have a web page for your custom framing business?
2, If you do, have you made back your investment in time and money?
Thanks,
John
 
We started our web site last year. It was meant for advertising not e-commerce.
The way I looked at it is it was cheaper than print advertising in our area. When we got the CMC I put samples on the site.
We keep it updated with new information.
As for return on money, yes it's hard to say.But then how do you know about other advertising unless it's with coupons?
I view it as another way to keep customers informed as to what's going on in the gallery. It does appear EVERYONE is on the web these days and I know many of our customers surf.
Are you thinking about starting a site? It's kinda neat to have one.
Check us out: www.gallery45framing.com
Cody
 
John, we don't have a web site. It would be nice if there was a definite way to know how much business a shop got strictly from the web. Maybe a %-off with a printed coupon?

Cody, your site looks great!! One question, I noticed your diploma was from Appalachain State Teachers College. Wanna comment on that??? Ha!!

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I'm not totally worthless. I can always be used as a bad example...
 
JRB,

Good question in light of the increasing number of websites now appearing within our industry.

Out of coincidence, we "launched" our site just this past week: The Frame Workshop of Appleton, Inc. We'd spent approximately 5 weeks working on this with a local designer/web hosting company.

As Cody mentioned, he views his site as advertising and a "tool" to keep customers informed. I also believe this has some real value. If you will, just another way of grabbing your local potential customer, and make them realize that "perhaps they should actually visit your shop!"

In addition, we elected to set-up a real shopping cart and attempt to garnish some E-commerce with our gift items from our site. We'd spent the past two years looking at many sites.....I have about 75 frame shop and 75 gift shop sites book marked.

As we just launched, and it takes search engines about 2-8 weeks to spider into your sites....we'll have to wait a bit longer to share with you any evaluation remarks.

Even if you use your site as a "billboard", you can increase it's effectiveness by making sure it's listed with search engines, has the right balance of metatags, and is easy to "find". A couple of Websites will provide free website analysis for you with just a few clicks.

One such tool is: SiteSolutions.com Do recognize that some of the guidelines offered are disputed among web designers & hosters, so take the results with a grain of salt.

As most of you, we too are proud to have created this web presence.........we'll keep you posted if it really provides some increased traffic and business.
smile.gif


Regards,

John

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The Frame Workshop of Appleton, Inc.
www.theframeworkshop.com
Appleton, Wisconsin
jerserwi@aol.com
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We've had a web site as image advertising. I mentioned I've not made any sales. Now I have to back track. We were able to have a customer go to our site, link to the artist of the work they wanted and that helped them make a decision on a particular print. We ordered and we are now framing.

Ours is not an expensive business site thus we don't put up prices etc. It pays for itself as an image and on the incriminating end it also keeps us connected. We also are able to do searches for art work for people because we have the internet connection.

Granted it is something we could keep more updated but it serves our purpose. I would say the $200 a year for connection and the few megs we use is worth it. I think the site web space is about $2 a month.



[This message has been edited by JPete (edited April 22, 2001).]
 
Three or four years ago I had a wed site developed through what is called "a virtual mall". It cost about $800 to design and $99 per month to maintain. I promoted mostly LED prints. (I think framing is too local for most web applications). After one year and the sale of only one print I informed the company that I wished to discontinue. It took them more than a year to take my page down...during which time I sold well over $1200 in LED prints. The page was still showing when I closed my shop in May last year.
 
I think that custom framing is ill suited for e-commerce. Costumers need to see, touch, hear and believe that what they buy is indeed an appropriate and tasteful frame. The web site is merely a window (hopefully attractive if not convincing) of opportunity that opens for computer savvy shoppers (not that many, anyway) only.
In this respect I am not surprised by JBR's long waiting to yet see a profitable custom framer's web site. Those sites must be aiming at something else than immediate sales.
Lise from Calgary has experience with getting orders via the net. If nothing else, that Texan costumer that she mentioned not long ago is one such example. But we still don't know if she gets "one of a kind framing job" customers over the net, or just corporate, large order jobs which would be an entirely different animal.
I believe that ready-mades (frames/giftware) are better suited for wholesale type of transactions over the net. But even then, larger than expected value, rare items are more difficult to sell. In my view, Internet buyers tend to buy bargains, or new products, but only those that they already know full well (if such goods happen to be less expensive or are hard to get otherwise).
If my take is a valid one, custom framing does not fit the profile of a very Internet friendly and sellable product/service.



[This message has been edited by Frame Harbor (edited April 23, 2001).]
 
Perhaps this thread shows up the difference between sales and marketing.

Some times we just need to market.

In the past week I have had three customers come in and tell me that they found me on the webb.


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Timberwoman
AL
I cut the mat, I pet the =^..^= cat.
 
I don't have a web site, but people tell me that they found me on the internet all the time... the "Yellow Pages".

They often don't look for web sites, but they do look in the Yellow Pages.
 
We have a Web Site and have had it for about a year. We are lucky enough to have a computer wiz for a son, who had already made his own Mountain Biking in Western North Carolina website(which, proud mom that I am I will tell you has been featured in a number of magazines). Anyways, our son is our webmaster, and that worked out great.
We are not looking for a lot of e commerce. We do use it as an advertising tool. It also helps customers to find local artists whose work we carry. My husband is a photographer and we have sold a number of his photos through the website. Some of the artists we carry have their own sites, and we simply put links to those sites.
We do use it for informational purposes. We have a "Tips and Techniques" page with PFM's Framers Focus on it. (with permission from PFM)
We also sell wholesale mats for artists across the country. I now have my son and another boy working and with the CMC these are quite simple now. I actually started this whole business years ago cutting mats for artists (with a Speed Mat) in my basement. This particular part of my web site has become very popular, with orders and inquiries daily.
The hardest part is getting your site recognized among all the others. Jordan has done well with that.
For what it is worth, more than anything, it is fun to be on the web. At least I know my name is mine and no one else can have it!
 
For those of you who do have Web sites, just a bit of info for you. I got on my site statistics this morning, where you can look at all your referrals and see exactly what criteria people put in when on a search engine and they get to your site. What was interesting is a lot of people are looking for "framing ideas". Probably the majority of searches were for this. This is the kind of info which can help in designing your site
to fit the needs of the people looking.
I would like to now get some examples of our work on the site (I am not the best at having taken pictures of them, though.) But then that brings me to the problem my husband brought up--we can't put copyrighted art work on our site, even as a framing example, without permission of the artist. Can't honestly say I even know the artists of some that we did actually photograph. Guess I'll have to keep that in mind in the future.
 
Carladea, if you wish to put framing examples on your site you may get permission from some of the large print dealers. New York Graphic, Winn Devon to name a few. I was very surprised how cooperative they were when I asked permission. They will only allow about 3 at a time and you must tell them which ones you want to use. They will fax an OK to you. Hope this helps.
 
I got two clients today who, in their orders, specifically referred to items shown in my website. However, I must confess, they both were old clients of mine who already know, trust and sell my frames for a few years now. So, not real home runs. Guess I have nothing else to add or take back from my previous post.
 
Here are a few things to think about if you are contemplating a web site.

1) Your web site may help a few new local customers find you, perhaps a few from outside your local area if you have a very unique product or service that you offer.
2) Web sites are not the nirvana some make them out to be, particularly for small companies. They are generally best used as a multimedia information source for your existing customer base. There are millions and millions of web sites featuring hundreds of millions of products. The chance that customers will accidentally stumble upon your web site is close to nil. Therefore, most small companies that use a web site in their business, use it in place of, or as an accompaniment to, direct mail, prints ads, radio or television advertising, bill boards etc. Content should primarily reflect the message you want your existing customers to know about you, and then to a lesser extent what you want a new customer to know about you.
3) For the custome picture framer, I believe the greatest use of a personalized web site is in using it with direct e-mail to existing customers. If your shop is diligent about collecting the e-mail addresses of your customer base (they will gladly give you their e-mail address if they think they will get some sort of special or premium), you will have the most inexpensive way to contact them with the greatest advertising medium available … your site! Simply make sure you have the key ingredients in your e-mail message, a product/service promotion, an offer, and a reason to take action now. Oh, and don’t forget the most important thing, a direct link to your web site.

This is starting to sound like a lecture so I’ll stop here. I’ll close with stating that web sites can be beneficial to any frame shop, provided the shop takes a little time to develop their strategy, and the provider/developer of the web site has enough experience to design a site that promotes that strategy.


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www.wizardint.com
 
In response to JRB's questions about whether or not we have a site and if its making money. Yes yes, and no.
Yes we have a site which is 50% complete, yes we've made back our initial investment but no we have not made back the time and effort. Our site was developed for the sole purpose of showcasing a unique Canadian site, for Canadians who were wary about cross border shopping. Because we specialize in mid - high end framing, we are not shy about asking top dollar for many of our framed items.
What we have found has been interesting, most of our sales have been from US purchasers. The lady in Texas I mentioned on a previous thread found us through some well seeded search engines, looking for Canadian art. We ended up framing them all and shipping for free.
Another angle that makes our site worthwhile is the corporate market, because we already have a good market share in this city, our next step was listing all the corporate services that we provide.
Lots of companies employ people that do nothing but search out suppliers on the net. A subsidiary company of Wal-mart told us "if you guys did not have a web prescence, we wouldn't deal with you."
The great thing is that we have a professional looking site but the challenge is that thousands must be spent on marketing the site. Constant refreshing of products is also important, not to mention constant promotions, a great bi-monthly newsletter, and all the other techie stuff like meta-tags and search engine submissions. We also purchased over fifty .com and .ca names, some of them the competition's.
Anyway, our site isn't for everyone but it seems to be okay for us. The most important thing about having a website is that it will elevate your professionalism, providing it looks like you spent a fortune, rather than home made.
Anyway, that's been our experience, for what its worth.
 
We had a small brochure style web page once. It gave the shop hours, introduced the staff and listed some of the things we framed. The site had only one picture on it and was one of those freebie web pages your internet service provider gives everyone who signs up with them. I thought it looked cute. The address was this long alphabet soup mix of my e-mail address and a Ukrainian hockey player's full name. I couldn't find it on any of the search engines I tried.

But, the attorneys for a mail order frame company, two states away, with a similar name sure did find it. Since their name (not a exact match) was trade marked they insisted I "cease and desist" using my 8 year-old shop name. Eventually, we came to a agreement where I get to keep using my shop name so long as I don't expand my business beyond my local area and pull all advertising and references off the web.
I,m glad I didn't invest thousands of dollars before finding out about this little problem.

Although I get weekly offers of free-trial web pages, I have yet to have a single customer ask for my web address. I think I can live without a web site just fine.
 
a

[This message has been edited by John Ranes II, CPF, GCF (edited May 17, 2001).]
 
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