March 2010 Featured WebNet Hosting Site: PinkPonyTail.com

UncategorizedTags: miva merchant, miva merchant 5.5, PinkPonyTail.com, SEO, web hosting, WebNet Hosting

Featured WebNet Hosting Site for March 2010

PinkPonyTail.com

The featured WebNet site for March is PinkPonyTail Presents, located online at PinkPonyTail.com.  PinkPonyTail Presents specializes in selling dolls, doll accessories and doll publications.  PinkPonyTail is an authorized gold label Mattel dealer for Barbie, her family and friends.  We spoke with Claudia Brookfield-Cogley, owner and operator of PinkPonyTail.com about her site and experiences running an e-commerce business.

What is the name and URL of your business?
Pink Ponytail Presents
http://www.pinkponytail.com

When did your site launch? Can you give us a brief history of your business?
I wanted to open a doll shop with my oldest daughter in the mid-1990s but the local economy alone couldn’t support such a specialized business, and the Internet was not very well established in our area yet.  So we shelved the idea, my daughter left the area.

In late 2003, I decided to move forward with the doll shop on my own.  The site was launched in spring 2004.  Having a website was essential for the success of the business.  We are located in a very rural area of Oregon and we needed to be able to reach doll collectors on a larger scale.  We now ship worldwide.  Some of our strongest international customers are  in Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Finland and Australia.

How long have you been hosting with WebNet Hosting?
WebNet has hosted Pinkponytail.com since 2007, and I am looking forward to a continuing working relationship for the future.

What made you sign up with WebNet Hosting?  Did you switch from another host?
My former webmaster recommended we move the hosting to WebNet and it was a great decision to do so.  Our two previous web hosts were somewhat unreliable and tech support was sketchy at best.

What do you like about WebNet Hosting?
WebNet has fabulous customer service and I really appreciate your technical support team.  After my former webmaster abruptly changed professions, I was left to figure out how to manage my website by myself.  I’ve learned a lot, but there is a lot that is still way over my head if a problem arrises.  WebNet’s tech people are patient, helpful and always available.

I really like that you are sending out a monthly newsletter and reaching out more to your customers.  The Internet keeps us all connected, but that human connection can get lost in the process, and I think it’s important that your customers know you care about that as well.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
Pink Ponytail is an Authorized Gold Label Mattel Dealer.  In addition to the full line of collector Barbies, we also carry many Play Line Barbie, Ken and Kelly dolls.  We offer designer doll fashions by Randall Craig and Dressmaker Details, as well as a large selection of Re-Ment Puchi Petites, which are collectible food miniatures from Japan (doll collectors love them for their dioramas and displays).  We also carry back issures of Barbie Bazaar Magazine, current issues of Haute Doll and Fashion Doll Quarterly.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
Yes.  The site was originally designed-to-suit by my webmaster.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
I use PayPal as our payment gateway.  Overall, we have had positive experiences.  Although I have been very interested in using Miva Merchant, after we lost our webmaster and was left to manage the website myself, I felt converting to a full-blown shopping cart was a little too daunting to tackle.  So you can imagine how excited I am to have won the “Miva Merchant 5.5: The Official Guide” book.

The website currently uses the PayPal shopping cart, and we accept credit cards in addition to PayPal.  I would like to switch to Miva because I think it will offer me greater flexibility for the varied products we carry.  Currently we are using separate special ordering forms for orders that are submitted via email instead of going through PayPal because the shipping calculations using PayPal are so limited.  I plan to start using Miva after I familiarize myself with it and all that it has to offer.

How many employees do you have?
I am a one-woman doll shop.  And my husband packs up orders for shipment for me.

What are your strategies for SEO?
At this time in an effort to keep expenses low, I utilize doll collector message boards and other collector communities to drive traffic to the website.  It has been very successful to do so.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
I think one of my biggest mistakes was not setting up a full-blown shopping cart on the website from day one.  PayPal Checkout is very limited for shipping calculations for the many different products we sell.

What have been your biggest successes?
My biggest success is having developed a large, loyal customer base through individual attention and customer service.  If you take care of your customers, they will take care of you.