Name of your website?Urad/Leathermate - Award Winning Leather Care
Your name?
Sean
Your Location (city, etc)
Sydney
When did you start your website and why?
About 3 years ago. I had been using the Urad and Leather Mate products for about 15 years and absolutely loved them. I had an opportunity to get involved with the sales and marketing of the product in Canada. I realized there was enormous demand all over the world and used my knowledge of web design and marketing to get a comprehensive website established to answer product questions and supply Urad and Leather Mate to interested customers.
Please give us a short summary of your website, business model, etc
The model was quite simple. Attempt to duplicate the marketing methods we used in department stores, exhibitions and markets and fairs in the 2 dimensional world of the internet. All images, text, FAQs and other information is based on the exact methods and patters we use in live one-on-one sales presentations.
What has been the most difficult part of creating and running your website?
Keeping up with the continually changing search engine criteria. Something that works well for search engine ranking one day suddenly doesn't the next day. A close second is setting up cost-effective delivery internationally.
What has been the easist part of operating your website?
Receiving enough business to make all of our efforts worthwhile. This has occurred almost from day one. We are lucky that the website is centered around a very well known and popular leather care product line.
What was your biggest mistake?
Doing wholesale changes on the website and related marketing actions to "improve" the look of the site and its search engine rankings. Some of these backfired and resulted in a severe drop in business. We should have done a bit more research to find out how these changes might effect things. For example, paying for a service that suddenly increases your inbound links can actually depress your search engine rankings, not improve them! The search engines want to see steady regular increase, not an overnight jump of 2,000 inbound links.
Who maintains your website and why?
I maintain it. Mainly because I am the most familiar with the product and undestand what our consumers are looking for.
Tell us how your business has benefitted from your website?
Apart from the obvious income generated from the website, there is the factor of increased customer confidence. Businesses that have an established website are more likely to be legitimate operations.
What are your views on ecommerce and the future of the internet?
The internet will never completely replace actual stores and shops, but it will become a major income line for most retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers.
What are your views on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Do your research but don't just listen to what the "experts" have to say. Maintain your own detailed stat tracking programs (such as that offered by http://www.statcounter.com) and watch closely the effect certain optimization changes have on your stats. If things improve, reinforce what you did. If they get worse (that is to say less traffic to your site) then get the changes off the lines and revert back to what you had before. Make sure you keep backups of all live pages before you change them so you can easily change back if needed.
What are your views on Search Engines? Have they helped or hindered your website?
Probably a bit of both, but more in the direction of helping the website than not.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Believe it or not, google adwords has been very successful. However, they have become a bit more costly and a bit more bureaucratic. Even so, they are still cost effective. The other has been locating and the top free classified ad sites in the world and getting product listings on them.
What method has been least successful for promoting your website?
"Guaranteed Traffic" services where they guarantee a large number of visitors to your site for very low cost. From all indications these have never produced anything.
What would you like to see change with respect to the internet?
An easy way to weed out sites that have no real value but dominate the search results for certain categories.
What is the best way to get your website designed?
Don't pay a lot of money to a professional company (unless you have plenty to spare), but at the same time don't try to do it yourself from scratch. Instead search the internet for companies selling website templates. Find one you like and buy it. From there it is quite easy to edit and modify to fit your needs. A good one should cost any more than a couple of hundred dollars at the most.
What is your website address?
Urad/Leathermate - Award Winning Leather Care