Writing About your Business

Staying in touch with potential and existing customers is important to getting more sales.  This is especially true for websites.  You need to build an online relationship which is similar, but has a different expression, to in-person relationships.  You need develop your online business profile.  Whether you concentrate on craft fairs or wholesale and online sales, you need to communicate about what you do.  Whether you have a website with a shop or just a Facebook page, you need to tell people what you do to build support.

It may seem difficult at first to know what to write about your business that will be interesting to your customers and support sales and be worth the effort.  There are a lot of things you can say about your business.  When you begin to think of the elements for communication with your potential customers there are lots of things you can say that will interest them and give your business a personality and an interesting profile.

But I don’t have a web site.  I sell at craft fairs and to galleries.

This still applies to you.  You need to tell all sorts of people and organisations about your business.  You need to have something for galleries to look at.  You need copy for newspapers and other media.  You need a  statement about you and your business at craft fairs.  You need to use social media to get people to the physical sales points.  You need to think about how these elements can help provide interesting posts.  Of course, not all that is given here is directly applicable to personal interactions, but it will give you the direction you need to present yourself and your business in the best light.

There are lots of ideas to get you to thinking about what you can do to communicate.  What follows are indicators of what you can do. You don’t need to use them all, but employing a range of these elements will give variety and interest to your communications.  It may also, along the line, provide you with a much higher profile and incidentally, sales.  You do need to communicate regularly and consistently with the audience.  An irregular post every month or so, is not enough.  You may have to set a schedule for publishing communications to your followers.

Write -

- About your business

·        What started you in business? what was the inspiration? Talk about any greater purpose than simply making your items. What are your motivations to continue working? What gives you joy?

·        How, and why did you choose the business name? Who did you involve? How does the name continue to be appropriate?

·        Tell people what it is about you and your work that is special or unique.  Indicate what your niche is, make it explicit for your potential customers.

·        How do you do business? Do you take commissions?

·        Share the stories and case studies of your experiences.  For example, take people through the stages of a commission.  Telling about the changes, developments, challenges shows how you work.  Show the results and tell what the client liked most about it. This provides the opportunity to include testimonials.  Include lots of sketches, photos. Importantly, get the commissioner’s permission to share details.  

An example of a site which provides a number of testimonials: http://www.gilroystainedglass.com/gilroy/testimonials/

Another example is this blog which does everything – the way she works, her stories, information, inspirations and there is no obvert selling at all. https://morganica.com/about-me/

- About your Location

·        Tell people where you are located. This helps to increase trust.  Talk about why you chose the area. How does the place affect your work? Provide pictures of your specific location, the area, and elements of landscape or cityscape that interest you.

The Northlands Creative site gives you a sense of place. 

·        Essentially, offer a behind the scenes view of how your location interacts with your creativity.  An inner-city industrial area can be as interesting as the countryside.

An insight to working practice is given in the Bob Letherbarrow website. 

- About your inspirations

·        Talk about people that have inspired you, role models, influencers. What have you learned from them?

·        What events – personal and world-wide – affect your work? Write and illustrate them.

An artist statement example from Bob Leatherbarrow 

·        Write about the kinds of environment that influence elements of your work.

- About things that interest you

·        Reviews of exhibitions, events, books.

·        Share your passions, reveal your personality, what excites intrigues you about your craft.  Why your glass expression than others? Does your work tell stories? Do you have a bigger purpose in making your craft?

·        Write about what is important to you.  This shares your values, and by writing from different angles will bring more visitors to the site.  Recommending other small businesses with similar values not only creates a business community, but a customer community too.

- About the process

·        Share the creative process involved in your body of work.  It can  be in words or images, short videos. 

·        Show the design process – inspiration, sketches, prototypes, final items and then the results at shows.  Use lots of pictures.

- About useful information

·        Share information and guidance about looking after your products.

·        Give information about related businesses.  These will be services or products that you do not supply but are relevant and are provided by other local businesses.

·        General tips related to your area of business shows you are knowledgeable, helpful and trustworthy.

·        General tips on how to display, use or wear your work grab attention.  Pictures are especially important here. 

·        Write useful communications.  Think about what your ideal clients would find useful to know.  Is there any maintenance needed for your glass? How to clean the glass. Give practical advice and suggestions. 

·        Promote other resources or books you like. Avoid a sales post, just include a link to the relevant page of your site as a sign off.

·        Think about having guest writers.  Getting others to write occasionally for you saves you work.  Interviews are another way to vary the voice of your communications.  It is essential to be clear about what these guests are to focus on, and give them the opportunity to promote their own site.

- About your customers

·        Ask your followers specific questions, get them involved in new developments at an early, planning stage, rather than at the end.  This gets people committed early to your work and without any explicit sales pitch. 

·        You can ask about the barriers people have to buying from you or others.  You can get information about what publications, sources they use, by asking.  This can be done on social media, or via direct emails.

·        Answer clients’ questions quoting their words.  This can increase the visibility of your site by using others’ searches, so leading them and others to your site. 

·        Helpful responses create a trusted business source.

- About developments and news

·        Write about the events you are planning to attend. There needs to be a group of communications leading up to the event.  Lots of advance notice is needed for people to plan a visit.  To give this notice, you can produce a number of  notices: Lead them through your preparations, the development of your collections, background to the work you will be taking, show the packed van and the final show setup.  These six notices will involve potential customers and build their interest in coming to the event.

·        Tell the stories of the event. What happened, your best sellers, star purchasers, meetings with fellow exhibitors all provide interest to your customers. You can include links to your price list or catalogue in these communications.  This is much better than sending a bare list or catalogue.

·        Talk about your product of the week or month - why the design, what inspired it, how did you name it, what’s special about it.   Start with a good photo of the work.  Possibly add something special – free p&p, special price in combination with another item, etc., to attract a purchase.

- About outlets

·        Blog about your retailers and wholesalers.  It cements your relationships with them, by showing your commitment to supporting their business too.   It  provides publicity for your work. Photos of your work in the locations is good customer-assuring publicity.

·        Let other businesses know that you have sent out information about them.  It may get you reciprocal mentions.

·        Working with wholesalers has better results when directed to individuals or single companies.  Preparing introductory material that is relevant to the client and adding the relevant images, lists, catalogue, gets better results than generic approaches.

An example of telling people where your work is available in Steve Immerman's website. 

Of course you do not need to write about all of these elements all the time. But they form the background to what you write about your business, craft, current work, and to some extent your life.

Writing specific, focused, timely communications

·        Timely communications are important.  When are customers likely to buy? – send out things prior to that time.  Think about the reasons they might buy and include them.  Gift giving times (such as back to school, springtime, valentines, awareness days) are times for focused communications indicating what you have that is relevant to the event or occasion.

·        Send out notices of an upcoming event through all your communications sources in a kind of countdown to the event giving your activities toward the opening of the event or show.

·        Be consistent in the style of the communications.  Short, direct, and focused posts with lots of pictures are most likely to be read.  Handmade Lives says immediately what it is about (unfortunately now ceased). 

News vs. Newsletters

These communications are not newsletters. Who reads newsletters anyway?

• Stay updated https://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/
• Use lots of photos.  Make the communications visual. E.g. https://www.designspiration.com/
• This site has busy visuals, but leads by images rather than words https://www.craftscotland.org/

All your posts and communications should be simple and direct.  They should be fairly short (unlike this post!) to be sure they are read.

In Summary

How do you put all this together?  This is an example of a blog which does everything – the way she works, her stories, information, inspirations and there is no obvert selling at all. https://morganica.com/about-me/

Writing about your business is more than just the business.  You are the business.  So, it is writing about you and what you do, not just a dry business description.  You have an advantage over big business. You have a personal story to tell.

Selling online

Credit: 48HoursLogo.com

Once you have achieved a lot of visits to your website, you need to convert the visits to sales. 

The first thing you need to do is consider your products.  Craft products are more difficult to sell online than mass manufactured items that are completely standard and so have known quality.

Is your product suitable for online selling?

·        The general case is that lower priced gift items are easier to sell than expensive ones. 

·        Is delivery expensive relative to the cost of the item? 

·        Do the items have to be sized, e.g., rings?

·        Are the items easy to post safely without breakage?

·        How much packaging will be necessary?

If the answers are that what you sell is expensive to buy or deliver, must made to a size, or are difficult to post, you may have difficulties in generating sales.  If you have items that are likely to sell less well online, consider the other ways you can sell them – trade events, galleries, shops, wholesale.  Also think about making items that are easier to sell online, but still fall within your style.  This approach will help support your more difficult to deliver or more expensive items that won’t sell well online.

Then

Online selling techniques are not so different from in-person selling, except that you have to rely on text and images to do the selling.  This puts more emphasis on words and images and getting your personality into those two things.

The basics are:

Get the viewer’s attention

Stimulate their interest

Develop their desire for the object

Convert these elements into the purchase.

There are many things that can create these three pre-requisites for a purchase.  

Images

The quality of images is extremely important.  Photographs must be sharp, focused, and with lots of light.  They must be taken to show the quality of craftsmanship.  Multiple pictures of the item help to give a better feeling of the object.  They should be taken from various angles, including the unseen backs of items to show the craftsmanship and help promote the assurance of quality. Lifestyle images bring items to life, but have to be carefully arranged.  This is often done best by a professional photographer.

Get and maintain interest

What you do must be apparent immediately.  Do you have recognisable work or style? Is your business name memorable?  An explanation of what you do and why it is unique is important to maintain interest.  Links from these explanations to relevant individual items or product groups are appropriate to keeping people engaged.

It is important to maintain interest after the initial contact.  Make it easy to find other relevant items. Use links, buttons, suggestions, etc., liberally.

Keep the site alive with case studies. These can be the background to your workday, or events in your business life.   Inside views of the development of new lines shows how you progress from idea to finished work.  You have interesting ways of working, that many people are interested in knowing about. Show your working practices, tell them the story of making.

You need to keep in touch with potential and existing clients.  Direct posts to those you have contact details for, with information on developments keeps you and what you do in customers’ minds.  These must not be direct sales pitches.  You can ask questions of these people to keep them engaged. They may also tell others about you and your work.  General posts to targeted audiences can help spread the word too.  Some paid promotion on social media can help, if targeted to the right people.

Provide information

Explain the potential questions about each item that client may have.  Think about the kinds of questions you ask about non-glass craft products. Use those approaches in stating and answering these questions.

Make the explanations personal and consistent with your site and the glass products you are offering.  In many cases, it is desirable to establish a FAQ section, including terms and conditions.  This can help maintain confidence of the buyer in your ability to make and supply the work.

Purchase

What’s for sale

You need to overcome any difficulties that the client might face in coming to the buying decision.  The website should be immediately clear about what you do and for whom.  Price levels need to be clear, possibly by grouping or sorting. Images need to connect with client desires.  This is where lifestyle images are useful.  Do remember that first impressions are all important.

Develop trust

Development of, or appearance of trustworthiness is essential to buying.  People buy from those they know, like and trust.  Development of this is essential for consistent online sales, as well as anywhere else.  This can be promoted by your presence on a group of platforms that you link between. Good descriptions of products and about yourself are important to maintaining the trust of the client.  Testimonials, if you have them, are useful. 

The website must appear professional.  Knowledge of your location is important to developing confidence in your work. Knowing where else your work is available is also important in validating confidence in your business.  Knowledge of where else your work can be purchased gives creditability to your standing within the craft  buying community. This can include your attendance at craft and trade fairs, as well as any awards or press mentions.

Buying and delivery

Make it easy to purchase.  One-click links can help ease the customer into buying. Use of a known payment provider increases confidence that the purchased item will be delivered and that there is a mechanism to get money back if not.  Make sure you explain about postage and packaging, unless you have included it in the in price.  If P&P is included, make sure that you are clear in the text accompanying the image and description.  If you don’t do that, the price comparisons with those that don’t include P&P are skewed against you.  Include plain English terms and conditions, to engender trust if something were to go wrong.

But

Don’t rely exclusively on online sales. There is enormous competition online, even though it is a means to get your work known to a wide range of people Importantly, it is a way to get year-round sales rather than the summer and autumn craft circuit.  Other sources for consistent sales - without you being present all the time - are galleries, shops and wholesalers.

Think about combining online sales with craft fairs and other selling events.  These face to face events give you the opportunity of getting direct feedback on your work, which will help develop what you do.  Promote your attendance at events on the website and tell about your website at events.  Blog about the events before and after their occurrence on your website and social media.  Tell stories from the events on your social media and in the website, too.

Selling online requires getting attention, stimulating interest and promoting desire to buy.  Some of the things you can do are noted.  But do not put all your effort into online.  You can gain a lot of information by attending face to face selling events.

Stand Alone Online E-Stores

Perhaps none of the existing online marketplaces fit enough of you needs to join them.  You can set up your own and make it your only online store, or you can do it in addition to other ecommerce sites that have some of the features you want.

Advantages

The advantages of your own online store relate to control and adaptability to your design needs.

You retain control of the design, layout, branding, etc., of your site.  This helps maintain your identity or brand and aligns it with your product range.

You have control of when the store is live and when it is updated. You, of course make the rules for what can be listed and how it is displayed.

You don’t have to acquire a lot of knowledge about setting up websites and online stores. Website builders offer templates and store services. You can also use professional website builders to get complete control.

You can link to Etsy or other market places from your own store.  You can funnel the traffic from these sites to own site.

Your own site will enable you to build closer relationships with your buyers. You can communicate directly rather than through intermediaries.

Disadvantages

Nothing comes free of course.  There are some disadvantages to establishing and running your own site.

An especially important element of a store is visits – akin to footfall in real life stores.  You must get people to visit.  You get the visits by making the links with people using a variety of communications.  You need to combine social media with the creation of newsletters, direct mail, blogging, etc.  These relationship building efforts are vital to get people to your website and store.

There are costs relating to hosting fees and one-off fees for the building of the website.  The online stores also charge fees in different ways, so a careful comparison of the best-looking services is important.

There will be additional administration in comparison to an online marketplace.

Questions for E-commerce Site Building

       

What are the facilities for integration of Etsy offerings into your own store? Will separate loading be required?

Is drag and drop site building supported? Is there user support or a user group to support you?

Is an integrated shopping cart available?  What are the order fulfilment assistance options?

Will the site support expanded functions as your business grows?  How adaptable it the site to changes in business?

Is the e-commerce site a market place?  How will exposure of the site to potential buyers be managed?

What is the cost for the features you want?

       

The Balance

You must decide whether the advantages of having your own e-commerce site outweighs the disadvantages in terms of traffic, time spent developing relationships, administration and cost

Websites for Selling Craft

This is not a discussion of which site to choose, but a range of things you need to think about when considering which site to use for selling your craft items.  This includes whether to have your own e-commerce site instead of, or in addition to, a market place site.

Evaluating website offerings requires you to think about a multiplicity of things.  Many of these are listed here, although there may be a few additional things you need to think about for your products.

Recognition/Visits/Traffic

You need to think about the amount of recognition the marketplace has.  Is it the place your potential buyers know about?  Are there a lot of visits to the site?

Is it a market place offering where the website promotes the whole site and the shops within it?  Or is it a site where your own efforts to drive traffic are required? This latter element is like having your own site.

What is the competition within the site? Are there many other sellers of your kind of product? How easy will it be to distinguish your things from others?  Are there mass production sellers on the site?

       

How selective is the site in approving sellers?  This also relates to reputation.

Reputation and Products for sale

Is the site restricted to craft made items? How are mass production manufacturers eliminated?

What range of products are allowed? Is it possible to sell services, and digital products as well as physical goods?

Is the site focused on general products or arts and crafts?  What pricing levels are exhibited on the site?  Is the focus on arts-based items, or does it include bargain basement and cheap deals?

What is the level of security of transaction information offered to you and your customers?  It is vital that the site offers good security for transactions to give customers confidence in buying from the site.

Your identity

Whatever site you join, there will be many other sellers or shops.

Do you get your own shop? Or are all similar products grouped? Is there support or templates to set up your shop?

If you have your own shop what degree of control do you have?  How are images formatted?  What amount of text can be included?  What range of formats are allowed?  Does the site brand dominate, or can you have yours as the prime visual?  What number of themes are available to you?

What level of flexibility in store arrangement and titles do you get?  What number of pages do you get at the various plan levels? How much flexibility and customisation is allowed? What number of items per page are allowed? And what descriptions are allowed either in length or number of terms?

What are the restrictions on the number of products you can sell? Are you allowed discount codes?  Is there inventory control with the site? What is the assistance for order fulfilment?  How much and what features? Is there a system set up for returns? How much support is available?

Are searches restricted to your shop or for all shops on the site?  How are the meta tags used by the site? Are hyperlinks within site only or allowed to outside sites too? Are social media buttons available and with what flexibility?  Can you use your own domain name?

Connections with other e-commerce sites

Are connections allowed?  How easy is the linking? Can you link to multiple sites? Are links to social media – Facebook, etc. – allowed? And how are they managed? Can you link the potential customer to mobile phone sales?

Costs

Of course, there are always payments to be made. You need to look at the various options offered, and the charges involved in them.  If you are new to online selling or have low volume sales, it may be that higher selling fees rather than regular payments with lower transaction fees is better for you at the start.

Listing costs are normally linked to number of items you are offering in your shop. There may be refreshing fees – you must pay a fee to keep the product in the shop after a set period.

There will be continuing fees.  These may be in relation to each item – commission - either as you sell or related to the plan level you choose. Are the commission fees in addition to the listing fees?  Are there additional credit card fees?

Plan level costs are ongoing fees that may be monthly or annual. They are often linked to the length of contract between you and the site provider.  They will give different levels of item fees, and levels of features.  What are the costs of the plan levels? What benefits to they give, and do you need them?  What level of functionality do you get in relation to plan level costs?  How are the plan levels related to the volume or value of sales?

What is the ability to expand and grow through graded plans?  How and when can you move from one plan to another?

Administration

The costs of doing business online may be significant. They may also be related to your familiarity with online offerings.

The creation of an entry should be easy and flexible. You should find it easy to move around the listing form, and it should contain a significant amount of flexibility.  You should be able to make bulk changes.  It should be easy to move items and entries around your shop. 

How much control do you wish to have?  With less experience, you may want to have a lot of the listing, editing of pages, especially contact information done for you, or highly guided.   The kind of support is important. Does the site have a maker support community?

An often-unrecognised level of administration is inventory management. Does the site support that?  If the site does not have inventory control you will have to do it yourself. If you don’t have the stock to satisfy the order, you probably will lose the sale. 

Is the site easy to use?

An important general question is the ease of use for you and for customer. Test the sites out for how easy it is to find and buy an item.  Look at how easy it is for you to use the tools to list your products.

Reviews of e-commerce sites

There are sites that review the offerings of various sites to help you answer some of the questions listed above.  One I have found to be helpful is Ecommerce Guide.

The answers to the relevant questions listed here will assist you toward choosing a website that suits your needs.  It may also lead you toward considering a stand-alone ecommerce site if there are not enough positives in your review of market place sites. It may lead you to consider both.  But the more sites you have the more important it is to be able to link between them and move entries between sites.

A discussion of various things that need consideration on whether to sell on line at all is here.