Each month we profile a client that is operating a successful e-commerce site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is Russell Rhodes,  located online at RussellRhodes.com.   Russell Rhodes is a seller of customized and personalized Christmas ornaments, many of which are original designs.

Russell Rhodes is happy to extend a special offer to receive 25% off all personalized ornaments using the following coupon during checkout:

Coupon code: 25WN0810
Offer: 25% off all personalized ornaments
Expiration: Aug 31, 2010

The following is an interview with Denys Slater, President of RussellRhodes.com:

When did your site launch?  Give us a brief history of your business.
We launched in 1997.  We sell over 2,000 unique and custom personalized Christmas ornaments, many of which are original designs by Russell Rhodes.

How long have you been using Miva Merchant?  WebNet Hosting?
I used Miva Merchant once around seven years ago and I didn’t like it.  I tried it again last year, thought it was much improved and I now use it on over eight websites.    I have been with WebNet for about six or seven years.

If applicable, were you using Miva before you switched to WebNet?  If not, what made you switch?  If so, what made you signup with WebNet?
I was looking for a robust shopping cart software that could handle a lot of custom data fields, as everything I sell is personalized.  Nothing involves just a “add to basket” button.  I switched primarily to leave a suppressive, horrible, unfriendly company called Dydacomp and their shopping cart called Sitelink.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant?
It has the power to handle a lot of customer data input very well via attribute fields.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
The service and help desk have been absolutely amazing.  I have NEVER had an experience even half as good as WebNet Hosting.  WebNet is the fifth hosting company I have used in nine years and I have every reason to believe I’ll never need to go anywhere else.  Seriously, I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to get a technical question answered at 1AM right when I need the answer.  The longest wait time I’ve ever had in the peak of the day has been 40 seconds.  Every need has been met and it’s really the people at WebNet that make it what it is.  PJ and Vincent have been invaluable to me.

What do you like least about Miva?  What are some common problems?
It’s still very “1990″ in terms of uploading data.  You can’t upload categories, headers, footers …  the list is long.  Even when you take into account all the modules out there, nobody makes a module to upload all info (for example: categories).  I have two different modules that upload various parts of categories, but nobody makes a module to import the category images.  So, I have to go hand code the image paths x 180 categories.  Very antiquated in terms of data upload.

What do you like least about WebNet?  What would you change?  What features would you add?
Seriously, the only thing you could add would be a personal masseuse while I am speaking with tech support.  I’m joking, of course, because I don’t have the slightest complaint about anything.  I can’t find one.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
I have nine Miva websites with WebNet Hosting.  I’m adding two more over the next two months.  All together, I offer over 5,000 products.

What Miva features do you use most?
All my %^&(* modules.  Without them, I couldn’t use Miva at all.

Which are your favorite modules and why?

I couldn’t live without toolkit and the prod and cat templates.  However, without the other import utilities, I still wouldn’t use Miva.  I simply can’t enter 25,000 pieces of data by hand.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
Yes.  I’ve taught myself html and a little php, but I couldn’t find a book on “Miva script” so it was a better use of my time to hire someone.  But even that was difficult.  There were not a lot of “Miva coders” clamoring for my business.  I felt lucky to find two very good ones.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
MasterCard and VISA.  I won’t pay Amex fees.  I added Paypal and, as expected, sales went up 20%.

How many employees do you have?
Eight of my nine websites are seasonal for the Christmas season.  So from January through August, there’s one employee — me.  From October through December, there are usually about fifteen people working in various capacities.

What are your strategies for SEO?
You’d have to hire me as a consultant.  My main site is PR6 and ranked in the top 2 spots for over 100 keywords.  All other sites are the #1 page for their dozen or so keywords.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
The biggest mistake I made was paying an SEO firm $500/month for 10 months until I fired them.

What have been your biggest successes?
Deciding to do my own SEO.  Studying Google’s algorithm for 700 days.  I did a lot of live site testing, with the final result a close approximation of their mathematical model for ranking sites.  And then continuously testing and following SERPs over time because Google’s algorithm is dynamic.  And so are their penalty models.  In the end, it’s a big math formula, and I’m amazed in hindsight how much “opinion” there is about a math formula.  In the end, it is only and utterly math.  Brilliant math, but still math.  This means it can be understood by anyone.  There’s no need to have a “professional opinion” about what Google will like.  In addition, listening to what Matt Cutts says on video or writes in his blog doesn’t hurt either.

Take the time to peruse the inventory at RussellRhodes.com today!

Each month we profile a client that is operating a successful e-commerce site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is Youngevity,  located online at Youngevity.net.  Youngevity is an authorized distributor of a line of healthy mineral supplements created by Dr. Joel Wallach.  The following is an interview with Christopher Scruby of Youngevity.net:

When did your site launch?  Give us a brief history of your business.
Originally we started on the web in 1995 writing natural health articles and marketing products for Dr. Joel Wallach (of “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” fame).

We did not even have a shopping cart then. At that time it was phone in only and needless to say it was a slow process. We built our first websites with Notepad. There were few service providers that were stable at all and would crash constantly with nonexistent tech support. It was hard to keep a business up and running.

How long have you been using the Miva Merchant Hosting services from WebNet Hosting?
We found Miva in 2004. But we did not use it right away, mainly because our old host was having trouble making it function.

We moved our first site to WebNet in September of 2009, and then in December we moved our entire web presence to them.

So you were using Miva before you switched to WebNet?  If not, what made you switch?  If so, what made you sign-up with WebNet?
The hosting company we were with was not really able to support Miva well and minor problems became disasters. The site was not able to stand without constant intervention, sometimes offline for 24 hours or more. It was not a good way to do business online; totally self-defeating. We spent weeks working on the site to finally see orders coming in then it would stop, only to discover that the site was down and my last host was clueless as to how to fix it. Finally, we were out of business during Christmas and our old host was moving the server (during Christmas)? This was too much and it was then we found WebNet to be the best solution.

My hat is off to PJ and Vince of WebNet, who took a disaster (my Miva storefront), moved it, fixed it and had it running in 24 hours.  Actually, they moved two Miva storefronts. One was damaged and we had a hard time getting the files to make the move. We would have lost a year of work, not to mention Christmas sales revenue, if the WebNet team had not jumped in to fix it so quickly.

I cannot say enough about the WebNet crew! They are PRO and they respond quickly when I need them and seem to have the right answers. I have never seen this type of instant service in 15 years on the net.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant’s shopping cart software?
I like the Miva interface mainly because it is predictable in form and function. Once you get the learning curve behind you it becomes second nature to make modifications.

Making mods is well supported in the forums and if you do make mistakes, it is easy to revert to a copy that was working before.

Making product changes is not a big hassle as the fields are well defined and you do not have to be a tech guru to update product data on the fly. For us, this is crucial since we offer about a thousand items and they change all the time. Miva makes this so easy to manage that even our non-tech staff can update product data with little hassle.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
This all comes back to the point, we were doing ok before WebNet, we stayed in the game but there were always problems on our site that would make it tough for us to grow. Plus, we had no real solid tech support to point us in the right direction. We are finally able to show a consistent growth of sales and revenue starting from the time we came to WebNet until now. We are having one highest ever monthly profit after another.

It is the same site, what is the difference? There has been minimal disruption of service for one thing. These servers are very stable and I always get immediate response from support. WebNet’s servers are fast; this translates into customers not leaving because of slow response.  A hidden benefit of fast servers is that search engine spiders will get deep into your site where you want them, as the time a spider stays on one site is short and limited by design. I can compare this activity to my older logs and see that there was nowhere near this much activity by the spiders before moving to WebNet.

This is key to being in business on the web. Speed of service, stability, durability of service.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
We currently have about 800 different products from 14 different product lines with more to add.

Do you use any modules?
Just the show basket and the mini basket. We try to keep the site as simple as possible because it seems as though our customers are more interested in getting right to the point which is getting their product ordered securely, rather than shopping on a flashy site.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
No, we have been hands on since the start in 1995. It makes more sense to me to be able to keep hands on rather than count on a “would be” developer to keep it updated for you. I have seen that go far astray of what is considered optimal in managing a site.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
We have always handled credit card payments in house and never had problems.  Then again, we are still old school in that area. We have always taken security very seriously in this office and work behind layers of firewalls and limited access to our processing system.

How many employees do you have?
We have a small crew here of less than ten team members so everyone has overlapping functions.

What are your strategies for SEO?
First and foremost, I don’t spam the head tag with unrelated tags and keywords. Also, I spend time daily studying my logs to see keyword trends. Don’t make the mistake of guessing what people are searching to find you. Always remember that trends change and if you are not paying attention you will be yesterday’s news. Also, write real content (articles with some real meat on them) and never ever copy another person’s articles — having duplicate content is a sure path to page 1000 on the results. Furthermore, follow the Miva Forum for SEO tutorials because one can always glean new insight from the Pros.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
Read the SEO section above. Those lessons were learned through painful experience. Also, as you can see, the wrong hosting provider can do more damage to your online marketing efforts than you could ever possibly imagine. It hides out there as a hidden “WHY” things are not happening for you. If you are not on top of it you will be out of the game before it starts. Make sure the host is not limiting your bandwidth or dumping you on an overloaded shared server with a spammer that keeps getting your whole IP block banned for Viagra ads. You laugh — but it happens frequently! Don’t cheap out on domain services. We had a few heart stoppers in the early days with domain registration services. Go ahead and register your site for at least five years just for piece of mind. We had a (not to be mentioned here) cheapo registrar that actually gave my prime domain to my competition over the phone. So save the heartache. Spend the bucks with a reputable service.

What have been your biggest successes?
I guess the biggest success has been that I am still here doing this business online after starting from scratch with a 33mhz computer, 4megs of ram, two 20 meg hard drives, Windows 3.1 and a 1400 bps modem that was so slow, I could put coffee on and get the kids ready for school in the time it took to load a web page and download the email, providing it did not crash … 15 years ago!

Finding WebNet was a stroke of luck and for the first time I have been able to get back to building new sites and upgrading my existing sites, instead of constantly having to deal with crisis management. The professional hosting environment frees up a lot of energy one could waste on substandard providers, which by their nature are a risk due to incompetence.

Thanks for everything, WebNet! I feel we have finally arrived!

Take the time to visit Youngevity.net to learn more about their healthy mineral supplements and Dr. Wallach’s ideas!

If done properly, there are a few basic practices you can follow to make your site more friendly to the search engines and thus rank higher for certain keyword phrases when users search for them. Being at the top of the search engines for your target keywords is a make or break factor for the success of your business.

There are millions of websites in existence and there could be thousands competing for the keywords you want to rank highly for. The Internet is a very competitive marketplace so it is vital to stay on top of the current SEO trends. Not being recognized by the top search engines can be very frustrating, especially after putting a lot of work and money into creating and designing your website.

Each search engine uses a different algorithm to conduct their searches. These algorithms are kept secret by the companies and are always changing but there are numerous people in the search industry whose jobs consist of attempting to deconstruct these algorithms to figure out how the engines rank pages.

The first thing you will need to do is figure out what keywords you will be targeting as your site’s search terms.  There are several tools to aid in discovering keywords such as the Google Keyword Tool.

In order to increase your web page’s rank in the search engine results:

Keywords:

• Remember that content will always be king. Fill your web pages with relevant information that will help visitors – search engines love this.
• Fill your content with your target keywords but don’t overdo it! Do not stuff your content with your keywords. This is known as keyword density. Make sure that you have no more than one keyword hyperlink per 100 words of content. If the pages of your site contain relevant keywords to a searcher’s search phrase then your site has a higher likelihood of appearing on the results page.
• Be specific with your keywords. If you are selling “Men’s Nike Air Jordans” target that phrase not “Michael Jordan shoes.
• When choosing keywords, put yourself in the shoes of the searcher. What would you search (WWYS)?

Meta Tags (Title, Description & Keywords)

• The title tag is what appears on the top of your web browser. For SEO purposes, you need to use your first targeted keyword at the beginning of your title and try to describe what your website is all about In 10-15 words.
• The keyword tag consists of the list of keywords you have put together in your market research. Search your competitors websites and see what keywords they are using than rank them in order of relevancy from first to last.
• The description tag is a short explanation about the content of your website and its topic. Keep this under 20-25 words and try to use at least three to four target keywords. This is what users will see on the search engine results pages under the link to your site.
• For the best SEO results, edit the meta tags for each page of your website to match the contents of that specific page.

Submit Your Site to the Search Engines:

• It is a quick and painless process to submit to the top search engines. Simply visit the links below and fill out the appropriate forms:

Google
MSN
Yahoo

• You should probably also submit your website to the DMOZ.org directory. It can take a few months to get listed but it is a great SEO technique and most sites listed in the directory get higher priority in the search results over sites that are not listed.

• Patience is a virtue when it comes to submission. It can take days or weeks for the search engine spiders to actually crawl your website.

Build Links by Submitting Your Site to Directories and Niche Websites:

• The more meaningful links from high ranked websites linking to your site, the higher your search rating. However, this does not mean you should practice “link farming” or paying for links.
• The best way to be featured in directories is to make a profile with a link to your page.
• Article marketing is another very valuable SEO tactic. Write articles with keyword hyperlinks pointing to your page. Other sites are happy to have quality content and you obtain linkage so both sides win. You will also see direct traffic from these links which will help your site gain popularity.
• Link building is a time-consuming process that takes time to see the results so again – be patient!

By following these simple SEO tactics, you can raise your ranking in the search engines!

The Miva Merchant 5.5 SEO features will help any e-commerce merchant rise to the top of the ratings.  WebNet Hosting offers fully PCI Compliant Miva Hosting.

Featured WebNet Hosting Site for June 2010

AGardenPlace.com

Each month we profile one of our clients that are operating a successful e-commerce site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is A Garden Place located online at AGardenPlace.com.  AGardenPlace is a small  garden boutique in Southern California that specializes in selling all the products you could possibly need for a garden.  The following is an interview with Diana Hall of AGardenPlace.com:

When did your site launch?  Can you give us a brief history of your business?
We have been in business since 2002. It sprung from the belief that your garden should make you smile. One of my creative outlets is gardening and I have always loved interesting gardens. Not boring patches of fence lined grass, but fun gardens that make you stop and take it all in.

Our test garden is a fun stroll through tree-lined paths dotted with colorful kid size hobbit houses, fountains, kinetic garden art and visiting wildlife.  Visitors always loved hanging out there and slowly over time, a business was born…

How long have you been using Miva Merchant?  WebNet Hosting?
I have been using Miva Merchant since 2005. I switched to WebNet Hosting in 2009 after countless problems with my former web host almost destroyed the business.

So you were utilizing Miva Web Hosting before you switched to WebNet?  What made you switch and why did you choose WebNet Hosting?
Yes, Miva had come bundled with the previous web hosting company’s plan. It was the only shopping cart I had used. I really wasn’t looking to start from scratch with a new shopping cart so when it was time to move my business, I needed a web hosting company that was very familiar with Miva. WebNet Hosting came highly recommended within the Miva community forum.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant?
Miva and its developers seem passionate about their product and constantly work to make improvements. I like that a link to the Miva forum is built into the Admin panel. The forum is very active and a great way to find answers as well as stay current on bugs, fixes, patches, etc.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
WebNet Hosting has been great. The move was easy. The few glitches were handled promptly. I have experienced 100% uptime, super fast page loads and excellent in-house support.

What do you like least about Miva?  What are some common problems?
Miva Merchant 5.5 out of the box is ok, but many features require buying additional add-on modules, which drives up the cost. Miva has it’s own coding language which can be daunting to learn. In the past, SEO was a challenge. Admin did not have a way to handle phone orders. I am looking forward to the soon to the new Wombat version which addresses many of these lacking features.

What do you like least about WebNet?  What would you change?  What features would you add? VPS hosting is great. I would like to see more allotted disk space and bandwidth transfer. We approached max bandwidth transfer last month.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
We  offer 300+ garden décor items such as gazing balls, toadstools and handcrafted gnome doors. Spring gets people into garden cleanup. Our current top seller is called Ever Edge, which is a heavy duty steel lawn edging that can be mowed over. We also provide information on where to buy 1000’s of other garden products.

What Miva features do you use most?
I use the shortcut buttons in admin to view orders, delete shopping carts, manage inventory.

Do you use any modules?  Which ones?  Which are your favorite and why?
We use modules that make shopping easier for our customers. Breadcrumb navigation, mini basket display, coupons and product ratings are a few. Most are from Emporium Plus. William Weiland provides outstanding support and prices his modules fairly.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
No, everything has been done in house with improvements based on customer comments.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
We use Authorize.net.  Our experience has been great. Pay Pal and Google Checkout are also available.

How many employees do you have?
Just a handful (if you cut off a couple fingers ). Actually, I designed a small business I can enjoy, rather than just manage employees.

What are your strategies for SEO?
We use natural search and good quality link referrals. We focus on optimized pages with short, descriptive links, external CSS, fast loading pages, frequent page updates and Google sitemaps.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
Mistakes have been a big part of the learning curve. Most of the early mistakes involved poor web design and shared web hosting. Some other mistakes involved bad code, use of flash, failure to account for browser differences, useless link exchange pages – that kind of thing.

What have been your biggest successes?
Growth and survival in a tough economy. Happy customers and great working relationships with top notch vendors.
Make sure you visit AGardenPlace.com to peruse all of the items they offer for sale!

Each month we profile one of our clients that operate a successful e-commerce site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is Lydia’s Land LLC.  Lydia’s Land specializes in selling handmade greeting cards for all occasions.  Each card is decorated with Lydia’s original artwork, using a wide variety of materials and textures to create extremely unique cards at an astoundingly low price – most cards retail for just $3.  The following is a discussion we had with Lydia regarding her site:

Can you give us a brief description and history of your business?
Lydia’s Land cards mate positive and uplifting quotations with handcrafted artwork to create products that attract buyers looking for truly unique greeting cards.

I use a wide variety of exciting materials and textures, such as marbleized paper, painted tissue paper, fabric ribbon, acrylic paint, and more to create eye-catching cards that bring customers back time and again.

Most of my greeting cards retail for just $3.00 and all are manufactured on 100% recycled paper.  Additionally, my cards can also be found in some of America’s finest card, gift, stationery, and book stores.

How long have you been using Miva Merchant?
We have been using Miva Merchant for at least five years.

If applicable, were you using Miva before you signed up with WebNet Hosting?  What made you choose Miva and WebNet to host your store?
We switched to WebNet because of their extensive Miva knowledge and because they informed me that I could stop buying the costly Miva Support plan from Miva Merchant for technical support because they would handle my technical support issues.  Also, my experience with my past host was horrible.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant?
The administration page is easy to use and user-friendly.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
So far, I haven’t had any problems.  They have good technical support.

What do you like least about Miva?  What are some common problems?
I do not like that you need to buy third-party modules for features that, in my opinion, should be built into the product by default.

I also think the program could provide better user documentation.

What do you like least about WebNet?  What would you change?  What features would you add?
Personally, I wish they had a modestly priced VPS plan.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
Approximately 200.

Do you use any modules?  Which ones?  Which are your favorite and why?
I use Emporium Plus Toolkit.  It is simply the best module and includes so much increased functionality to your store.  It is like the missing link of Miva Merchant.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
No.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
I use merchant services through my bank and have not had any problems.

How many employees do you have?
One.

What are your strategies for SEO?
I use a site-map to help search engines index all pages of my store.  I also utilize meta tags with strong keywords.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
Not having a large enough sales force.

What have been your biggest successes?
Building a loyal customer base of good customers that keep re-ordering.

Make sure you check out the unique greeting cards that Lydia makes at LydiasLand.com — Below is an example of one of her cards:

Featured WebNet Hosting Site for April 2010

Each month we profile one of our clients that are operating a successful e-commerce site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is The Elephant’s Trunk located online at TheElephantsTrunk.com.  This site specializes in selling beautiful, rustic handmade solid wood furniture.  The following is an interview with Roger, Sales Manager of The Elephant’s Trunk.

When did your site launch?  Can you give us a brief history of your business.
Our site launched in 1996.  We offer hand-crafted rustic solid wood home furnishings.  Besides our online store, we also have a physical store located in San Diego, CA.

How long have you been using WebNet Hosting to host your website?
We have been with WebNet for about three years.

If applicable, were you using Miva Merchant before you switched to WebNet?  If not, what made you switch?  If so, what made you sign-up with WebNet?
Yes, we had been using Miva prior to our switch to WebNet but it was too limited for our needs so we had a custom shopping cart developed for our site.  We switched to WebNet because our site crashed when using our previous hosting company.  Also, our previous host’s customer and technical support were not able to respond to us in a timely manner

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
The customer service.

What do you like least about WebNet?  What would you change?  What features would you add?
We wish WebNet was more local.  Since we are on opposite ends of the country, there is a three hour time difference, which can complicate things a little sometimes.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
We  have approximately 600 items for sale on our site.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
Yes, we have had outside consulting on the visual design of our site done.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
One big mistake was working with inexperienced web development consultants.

What have been your biggest successes?
We have experienced continued growth during economic downturns.

To view their collection of beautiful hand-crafted furniture, please visit TheElephantsTrunk.com!

]]> http://blog.webnethosting.net/2010/04/13/april-2010-featured-webnet-hosting-site-theelephantstrunk-com/feed/ 0 http://blog.webnethosting.net/2010/03/10/march-2010-featured-webnet-hosting-site-pinkponytail-com/ http://blog.webnethosting.net/2010/03/10/march-2010-featured-webnet-hosting-site-pinkponytail-com/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:00:34 +0000 Forrest http://blog.webnethosting.net/?p=250
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.

2.  http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/
An educational site powered by ControlScan to address concerns regarding PCI Compliance.

3.  http://controlscan.com
The leading provider of PCI and security solutions for small to medium sized businesses.  Miva Merchant and WebNet Hosting are partnered with ControlScan to address the security needs of our clients as related to the PCI.

4.  http://knol.google.com/k/pci-compliance-and-the-pa-dss-protect-the-realm-of-e-commerce#
A Google Knol that examines the PCI guidelines and PA-DSS written by your’s truly.

5.  http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1371-PCI-Compliance-Three-Important-Questions-to-Ask-About-Your-Shopping-Cart
A Practical eCommerce article that examines PCI Compliance as it relates to e-commerce shopping carts.

6.  http://www.thewhir.com/Webinar/pci-dss-compliance-in-the-hosting-industry
An hour long webinar featuring Rick Wilson – Executive VP of Miva Merchant, Craig Fox -  Founder & VP of Product Development for Pinnacle Cart and Stacy Griggs – VP of Sales for MaximumASP on the WHIR (Web Host Industry Review) that discusses the PA-DSS guidelines in-depth.

7.  http://www.thewhir.com/blog/Rick_Wilson/011410_Demystifiying_PCI_DSS_and_PA_DSS_Compliance_For_Web_Hosting_Customers
An extremely helpful blog post written by Rick Wilson of Miva Merchant that clearly addresses and “demystifies” the new PA-DSS guidelines.

8.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aagYuqwZYEY
A four part video series that clears up a lot of the confusion regarding the upcoming PA-DSS deadline and what it entails.  This is a link to the first installment in the series.  Make sure to watch the subsequent installments by clicking on the links to the next videos in the related videos menu on the right.

9.  http://usa.visa.com/merchants/risk_management/cisp_payment_applications.html
Visa originally established the Payment Application Best Practices (PABP) in 2005 before joining forces with all major credit card companies.  Visa explains the whole thing pretty well.

10.  http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1028-PCI-Compliance-Frequently-Asked-Questions
A nice FAQ regarding PCI Compliance.

We hope that these links will help make sense of such a confusing topic that a lot of people have been struggling to understand.  It is very important to grasp these rules because they really affect everyone in the e-commerce and web hosting industries.  Just remember that by July 1, 2010, if your site stores or processes credit cards and/or confidential information, you MUST be compliance with the PCI PA-DSS.

Also, keep in mind that Miva Merchant will be a fully PCI compliant shopping cart by the July deadline and that WebNet Hosting offers totally PCI Compliant hosting.

Good luck!  Please contact us with any questions!

Featured WebNet Hosting Site for February 2010

AwesomeAlmonds.com

Each month we profile a client that is operating a successful Miva Merchant site in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is Dr. Lankin’s Specialty Foods, LLC, located online at AwesomeAlmonds.com.  This site specializes in selling all natural flavored roasted almonds containing no cholesterol, artificial preservatives, added cooking oils or the guilt that goes along with most snack foods. Here is an interview with Dr. Kenneth Lankin, MD, owner and operator of AwesomeAlmonds.com.

What is the name and URL of your business?
Dr. Lankin’s Specialty Foods, LLC
http://www.AwesomeAlmonds.com

When did your site launch?
2002

Can you provide us with a brief history of your business?
As a physician, I founded the company because I was inspired by the research demonstrating the many potential health benefits of almonds including lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk of colon cancer.   In 2002, none of the large food companies were selling almonds based on their nutritional value.  So along with my business school classmates at the University of New Haven, I created Awesome Almonds® — a line of flavored, roasted almonds made with no added cooking oils.  Since I was in full-time practice, family members and other partners formed a team to run the company.  Going “online” with a website and online store was critical because maintaining a brick and mortar facility wasn’t feasible.

How long have you been using Miva Merchant?  WebNet Hosting?
We’ve been using Miva Merchant since 2002 and WebNet Hosting since 2007.

So you were you using Miva before you switched to WebNet Hosting.  What made you decide to sign-up with WebNet Hosting?
Yes, we used Miva as we started the business.  We switched to WebNet because we were having problems with frequent glitches with our previous hosting service, resulting in lost orders, missing payments and countless hours spent trying to rectify all these computer generated mistakes.  For our Miva makeover, WebNet was one of two companies suggested by Chuck Lasker.  I contacted both and decided on WebNet Hosting because of their superior customer service.  No regrets.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant?
The many available modules and the flexibility to grow proportionally to the needs of your business.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
Customer service is #1.  I enjoy talking to real people who speak clearly and take a genuine interest in resolving issues.  The expertise level is high hence problems are solved quickly compared to talking to a call center halfway around the world where the rep has to put you on hold for 10 minutes while “checking something” (probably finding a supervisor who actually knows something or doing a Google search on your time).  Having said that, the inherent quality of the service is so good; we don’t need to call that often.

What do you like least about Miva?  What are some common problems?
Miva is not intuitive in many ways.  For example, to make adjustments to coupons, one must enter under the hyperlink about “order fulfillment.”  OK … I get it now but that’s not where I’d think to look.  To see the 2^nd page of the list of coupons one needs to hit a button called “update” (rather than “next page”).  Also the maintenance requirements seem complex.

What do you like least about WebNet?  What would you change?  What features would you add?
I can’t think of anything I don’t like about WebNet.  The online features are very useful, for both account and website management.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
We offer our three almond products: Cinnamon-Vanilla, Orange-Vanilla & Cocoa-Java — roasted, flavored almonds in various combinations.  We also have Awesome Almonds® mugs for sale.

What Miva feature(s) do you use most?
UPS pricing.

Do you use any modules?  Which ones?  Which are your favorite and why?
Yes.  Basket Tracker.  Buy X Get X Free.  Payment via PayPal.  Checkout button label.  Bread crumbs.  Basket tracker and bread crumbs are among my favorites because they help our customers navigate and track their pending purchase.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
Yes.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
We use First Data Services and Authorize.net.  Authorize.net is awesome.  We have only been with First Data a short while.

How many employees do you have?
None.  We are all very part-time and virtual.  But put together the team makes things happen.

What are your strategies for SEO?
We are consistently on the first page of Google for the search term “almonds.”  The main ingredient, I believe, is our original and relevant content.  Ninety percent of our site is dedicated to providing information rather than selling.  Secondly, we’ve been at this for over 8 years, long before other companies became aware of the health benefits of almonds.   I have to believe the search engines give us some “credit” for our longevity on the topic. We also liberally provide samples of our products to bloggers specializing in the review of quality foods.

What were some of your biggest mistakes? (so that others can possibly learn from them)
Not realizing the differences among hosting options.  We started out with a good but very generic company.  It worked fine as long as we weren’t busy.  Being with a smaller but more specialized hosting company that understands the technical requirements of Miva has resulted in much improved uptime, faster page load times of our site, faster online processing for our customers and less time spent correcting errors.

What have been your biggest successes?
Top 3 Accomplishments:

1)Awesome Almonds® won first prize for two consecutive years for “Outstanding Snack Award” as voted by the Connecticut Specialty Food Association.  The Cinnamon-Vanilla flavor won the 2008 award and the Orange-Vanilla flavor won the award for 2009.

2) Awesome Almonds® was chosen as a supplier to Well Baskets, an enterprise that creates healthy baskets centered on health and wellness.  Like us, they are a family-oriented company who believes in the power of healthy food to help prevent disease and maintain good health.  Well Baskets, LLC is clearly among the premier companies in the healthy gift basket segment.  Their customers are precisely the people who would appreciate and enjoy our products: a physician-created snack.  We are not trying to be all things to all people.  We have a special product.  We really don’t want to be in Wal-Mart or other mass “big box” stores. Well Baskets is exactly the kind of specialized retailer we enjoy working with:  great people, great products, and a harmonious business model.  As we both have substantial presence online, it re-emphasizes the power of the Internet.  Our website is not only for the retail consumer, but also a way of forging new and creative business relationships.

3) We have a customer in England who has been ordering from us online during the holidays for over five years straight.  At times the cost of shipping has exceeded the cost of the product.  I’m sure there are plenty of excellent snack foods available in England but despite shipping costs, Awesome Almonds® has become a holiday tradition for that family.  That’s success!  It wouldn’t have happened were it not for the Internet, continuous improvements, and the excellent service we receive from WebNet Hosting.

Thanks to Dr. Lankin for participating in our interview!

Featured WebNet Hosting Site for January 2010

PlumbTile.com

Each month we profile one of our clients who are running successful Miva Merchant sites in our newsletter and blog.  This month’s company is Plumbtile.com – the premiere online retailer of luxury bath, tile and kitchen products all with the industry’s most competitive pricing.  Here is an interview with Lucy Rojas, CFO of PlumbTile.com.

What is the name and URL of your business?
Plumbtile
http://plumbtile.com

When did your site launch?
January 2004.

How long have you been using Miva Merchant?  WebNet Hosting?
Three years for Miva Merchant and WebNet Hosting.

Were you using Miva before you switched to WebNet?
We signed up at the same time.

What do you like most about Miva Merchant?
The variety of modules and can be applicable for different types of businesses.

What do you like most about WebNet Hosting?
No hosting problems.

What do you like least about Miva?  What are some common problems?
The customer service and technical support. They tend to refer us to the module vendor often times.

What would you change about your hosting?  What features would you add?
We don’t like to request tech support by email. If there’s an important issue we prefer to solve it with a phone call.

How many items do you offer for sale on your site?
Over 275,000 items.

What Miva features do you use most?
Import/Export, upload products.

Do you use any modules?  Which ones?  Which are your favorite and why?
Import/export, discount, feed shopping carts. Our favorites are those too. We get a lot of use out of those. We use a bunch more though.

Have you had any third-party development done on your site?
We have had outside consulting on page views, social media strategies, and the visual design of our site.

What do you use for credit card payments and what have your experiences been?
Authorize.net. We’ve been satisfied with it.

How many employees do you have?
10.

What are your strategies for SEO?
We have directory links, multiple blogs showcasing our products with links back to our site, Facebook and Twitter accounts, meta tag rewrites, properly spider-crawled .txt pages and domains that make sense to our business.

What were some of your biggest mistakes?
Working with inexperienced consultants.

What have been your biggest successes?
Steady increase of sales at above industry rates in a down-turned economic cycle.

Thanks to Lucy Rojas for participating in our interview!