tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82695354595137418912011-07-31T04:32:25.403+01:00So you want to setup an e-store? Make your fortune online, working from the end of your garden. How hard can it be? Very! Read on my friends.Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.comBlogger91100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-25519356259359178032009-07-17T11:50:00.002+01:002009-07-17T12:15:55.030+01:00

Flashback to Early 2007We took the decision to change web companies, I think basically because I was suspicious of how our previous developer could reduce their price to a quarter of their original quote in an instant. Our new developer could also provide reasonably priced hosting as well, although not as cheap as doteasy.com, which are basically free. In fact, if you’re just starting out and

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-3628575643210464192009-07-15T17:04:00.003+01:002009-07-15T17:08:40.863+01:00

And so things ran along quite smoothly for the next few months. I didn’t really have any way of monitoring the website so I had no idea if anyone was visiting it. We seemed to have inherited a good organic ranking in Google but for what keywords I had no idea, as I wasn’t sure what keywords, meta-tags or indeed what an organic ranking was back then. I submitted the site to as many search

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-43732855817633087502009-07-03T17:02:00.006+01:002009-07-03T17:09:13.901+01:00

Flashback to June 2006Mrs G made an appointment for Professor Photo to make a house call whilst I was at work and he arrived with his bag of tricks and an expensive Nikon D2X. Now this was a man who knew how to take photographs and was also used to turning up and working with clients who knew what they wanted. When Mrs G said that we wanted pictures of some shoes, well, that didn’t really help

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-5323012925227523082009-06-27T12:43:00.005+01:002009-06-27T13:20:32.584+01:00

Breaking News indeed. Our little company espadrille made it into The Times this Saturday and one of my photos was featured in the magazine. How cool is that!This is the photo that was featured, although The Times do seem to have some good Photoshop experts as there was no background shown at all.It was only a little feature, but it did make us smile!

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-8731711751809721192009-06-23T12:21:00.003+01:002009-06-23T12:30:18.060+01:00

This is the first of a multi-part episode. Unusually though this story arc is going to be spread over a number of years and is in fact still an on-going saga.Flashback to June 2006Getting the overall design for the first site was pretty easy, although I hadn’t appreciated just how difficult it is to come up with words and content. Luckily I had inherited a whole bunch of lovely prose from the

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-58903263102849796802009-06-22T12:14:00.001+01:002009-06-22T12:15:30.289+01:00

Flashback to June 2006About a month before we opened we figured we had better get a logo and an espadrille website sorted out. Aich creative came up with half a dozen concepts for our branding and after a few adjustments we were ready to go. Now all we needed to do was design our spanky new site. To start off we figured we shouldn’t open an online store immediately and should just concentrate

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-1715219406637065002009-06-18T17:10:00.002+01:002009-06-18T17:19:48.194+01:00

Flashback to July 2006So where to start? I seem to recall it all seemed so simple back in the day. Mrs G had found some products she wanted sell and had located some stock in the UK. She established relationships with suppliers in France and sent out proformas’s spending a significant amount of money, although back then of course Sterling was king. She’d found a little shop, brought some

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-26790390639263669052009-06-17T12:10:00.002+01:002009-06-17T12:13:20.399+01:00

Well now I feel really bad. Here we are a year later and I haven’t posted a thing. I started out with loads of good intentions and even had half a dozen or so postings planned out and half written. Then things got busy at work and I lost the plot a bit. Now I’ve come back and neither I nor Spotlight on my macbook can find a thing I’d written back then.Since I last wrote the economy had nose

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269535459513741891.post-79406630927054612242008-05-28T11:20:00.011+01:002009-06-25T17:21:57.597+01:00

Back in 2006 life seem so simple. We were about to open the shop and now wanted to trade online and begin a short and a simple path to Internet riches.How difficult could it be? Answer - very difficult indeed.From choosing a design, photos, photos, photos, finding words, opening merchant accounts, holding stock, more photos and finally the enormous cost of adwords, it's been a painful

Mike Gallagherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11114783167253713841noreply@blogger.com3