10 Tips to a More Profitable Web Site
By Marilyn Pritchard, Contributing Editor

A great Web site is like a store with helpful salespeople, attractive displays and a well-traveled location in a busy mall. It can’t lose. A poorly designed Web site, on the other hand, is like a store in a hard-to-find location with a confused and inattentive sales staff, dim lighting and sparsely stocked shelves. Even with unique products at fair prices, how can it win?

Experts say that although almost all offline retailers now have Web sites, many of these sites are not accomplishing all that their creators had hoped for them. They offer the following ten tips to help you maximize the value of your Halloween Web site.

1. Do your homework. “Go out and look at the competition,” says Tony Smallmon, president of Mid America Web Solutions in O’Fallon, Ill. “See what works and what doesn’t. Emulate people who are successful.” (The most successful online Halloween businesses are astoundingly successful. E-Commerce News describes Buycostumes.com as “the nation’s biggest online seller of costumes.” The article notes that the company has sales of $17 million annually, that in the last three years it has experienced growth of 1046 percent, and that it has been cited as the 75th fastest-growing private firm in the U.S.)

2. Don’t skimp on costs for new Web sites or redesigns of existing sites. “Consider [your Web presence] a brand new business,” says Rich Williamson, president of Pierre’s Costumes in Philadelphia. “It may not cost the same dollar amount, but it will cost no less than $10,000 or $20,000.”
   
   “My advice is to find the extent that you can afford,” adds Jeff Russell, co-owner of The Costume Bazaar in New Haven, Conn. “Budget for it like any other expansion of your business.”
   
   Arlene’s Costumes in Rochester, N.Y., which has a main store year-round and four to five temporary sites at Halloween, has been online for five years but recently went farther with it. “The Web site represented a substantial investment at first,” according to Internet manager Cindy Sinopoli. “Rebuilding it cost between $8,000 and $15,000.”

3. In addition to initial set-up costs, remember to budget for any additional hardware, personnel or inventory you may need. Arlene’s ordered extra inventory when it launched its new site. “We knew we needed to have the product on-hand, so we ordered more than we normally would have,” says Sinopoli.

4. Keep it updated. Improve your site every week, suggests Pierre’s Williamson. “I’ve made hundreds of revisions.... It takes lots and lots of hours.”
   
   Shelly Korves of Tribout’s Carnival Supplies in Belleville, Ill., usually spends an hour a day updating her company’s site, but some weeks she may spend 20 hours or more. “I try to keep the information updated, so if people come in from 45 minutes to an hour away, they’ll know what we have in stock....At first, we tried putting only our staples on. Then we transformed it to try to keep everything on. If it’s not on the Web site, they think you don’t have it.”

5. Hire professionals. Don’t try to do it all yourself. Even though Williamson of Pierre’s Costumes was once a computer software designer, he chose to have an outside company handle the design of his Web page.
   
   Russell wrote a lot of the copy for The Costume Bazaar’s site himself, “piecing together what I wanted each page to look like.” Then he turned it over to a professional designer. “It takes a lot of hours,” he says. “I did a lot of the work ahead of time, and I still paid for 70 to 80 hours worth of work.”
   
   Make sure you have the appropriate staff on board. “Satisfy yourself that your staff will be able to handle the data maintenance,” says Nick Pardasani, who has expertise in both technology and Halloween. He is CEO of Anilta Systems, a Web site design firm in Paramount, Calif., and CEO of Costumes4less.com, an online costume retailer. “You don’t want unpleasant surprises later.”

6. “Dedicate someone by job title for better results,” adds Brian Nizinsky, Internet media manager for Logical Solutions in Rochester, N.Y.
   
   Depending on the volume of orders coming in, you may also need to hire people who specialize in shipping and customer service. “You should have your inventory shored up and people on staff who are Internet savvy,” Nizinsky continues. “You may have to reevaluate your customer service.... They have to be ready to field wacky, weird requests.”

7. Learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). “How you’ll be listed in search engines is the most important thing,” says Bob Heyman, of Mediasmith, Inc., San Francisco.
   
   “Most people agree that the listings on the left — they call those the organic listings — are more valuable than the listings on the right (the paid advertisements),” Heyman continues. For that reason, he recommends against a strict cost-per-click strategy. “Small merchants get more traffic from searches,” he says.
   
   Experts urge retailers to be extremely wary of SEO firms. They suggest avoiding companies that solicit clients by e-mail or that guarantee rankings. Choose wisely and carefully examine your contract.
   
   To learn more about SEO, go to www.google.com/webmasters/ seo.html. Alternatively, look up Cre8asite Forums at www.cre8asiteforums.com, where experts exchange information, advises Alan Runfeldt, a professional and technical consultant based in Frenchtown, N.J.
   
   Create a niche. Competition on the Internet has become fierce, so you need to set yourself apart in some way. For Williamson, that meant focusing on what Pierre’s has done best since it opened in 1943 — costumes. “We don’t believe in being everything to everyone,” he says. “We don’t sell novelties.... People who buy $15 novelty items demand the same level of attention as those who buy Halloween costumes.”

8. Debbie Lyn Owens, of Debbie Lyn’s Costumes, Sunnyvale, Calif., advises retailers to make sure “your Web site reflects your store and the service and the experience you provide.... Be really clear about who you are and what you do.”

9. On the other hand, be adaptable. Sinopoli of Arlene’s Costumes in Rochester, N.Y., reports that she began carrying more lighter costumes because so many of her online customers were from California.
   
   Cross-market your Web site. Experts say many merchants make the mistake of not branding their Web site with all their ads, letterhead and signage. “The baseline is to put your URL in every ad,” says Nizinsky. “That’s not even an option. You may want to add a special code or URL to track who’s responding to what offline ads. This helps you track the effectiveness of your ads. You could even do a special promotion, for example, ‘mention this ad for a special discount online.’”

10. Get your customers involved. “If you get people more involved in your site, it’s no longer just a selling machine. It becomes an experience,” says Logical Solutions’ Nizinsky. “[For one client,] we did a usability study. We’d ask customers to go to the site and give their feedback. You could offer a 5 percent discount if they do.... Listen to your audience. It’s cheaper to market to existing customers than to gain new ones.”

“We send out discount coupons” to members, adds Mid America’s Smallmon, “but we talk to our clients about spam. If you use your members’ [e-mail addresses] to send out spam, you will lose them as customers. We do target marketing, but we don’t just e-mail them without a reason.”

Remember that any information you put on your Web site is also available to your competitors. “I guarantee you my competitors are on my site every day,” warns Pierre’s Williamson. “It [the Internet] makes you very visible to your customers and to your competitors. You are the store next door to everyone.”