Abject apology

Gosh! It's been two months almost since I last posted on the blog. Don't know where that went to!
The Master Lock and Safe website has started producing encouraging levels of sales, despite the postal strike putting people off buying on line. It's taken a while but everything seems to be coming together now. I'm still trying to get the SEO sorted out, but I think that might turn into a permanent task. I'm studying the Adwords campaign to try and get as much out of it as possible for as little outlay as possible. I've given up on Google Analytics and am now using Statcounter with an enlarged log as I seem to be able to track customers much better with this.
There's quite a lot of new product gone on over the past few weeks as well. Loads of keys, digital locks, window lock keys etc., so follow one of the links and have a look. Tell your friends!!!
I've also got my own website up and running as well. http://www.peterdraper.co.uk
was designed using Serif page plus X2 and I think it looks pretty good.
So what's been happening in the world? Went to church as per usual on Sunday and thought that our Remembrance day service was just about the best I've ever been to. I usually end up feeling either annoyed that I've appeared to support a war I don't agree with or annoyed that the preacher hasn't expressed enough support for the troops 'cos it's not their fault that they're asked to fight wars for questionable ends. Sunday however seemed just right. I spoke to several people afterwards and we all felt our Minister Peter got it just right. Well done!!!
On a less serious note I watched bits of the X Factor over the weekend and noticed that part of the incidental music is a bit from Kashmir (I think) by Led Zeppelin not the any of the judges would know that, steeped as they are in stereotyped R'nB. Has it occurred to anyone that Led Zep are just the type of act that X Factor excludes. Frighteningly talented, individual. All the contestants seem to want to be Justin Timberlake or Mariah Carey. If the new Bob Dylan turned up at an audition, he'd never get through the first round!

Progress

Well well! Progress at last. The last couple of weeks suddenly we are getting sales on the website. I put a section of keys cut to code on and we are getting more hits and more sales. we have a small Adwords campaign going, but that is costing us less than before so things are looking up.
I'm now setting up a section on M.Marcus door furniture featuring Heritage Brass and Transitions and I'm going to try to market this as a 'lifestyle product' a bit like Mont Blanc. Don't look just yet 'cos it's not done. Try tomorrow night.

The Vicar's Visit

Had a cracking weekend eating and drinking with friends and then went back to good old SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). I've managed to get the Alt tags working on most of the images on the site and, with our David's help, I am now using search engine friendly URLs. I just need to sort out my keyword density and I will immediately get a high listing on Google! (Ha!).
Anyway picked up a pile more keys to go on the site after lunch but got a phone call from the minister of the church we've just moved to. Can I come for a cuppa and a chat? Rev. Peter Knight of Leyland Road Methodist Church, Southport seems like a smashing guy. Having moved from Tarleton last November, we've finally managed to sort ourselves out to transfer our membership to Leyland Road. The church congregation is very friendly and covers a huge age range. Peter is very forward looking and it makes a real change to not have an organ involved in the service. Music group and modern hymns makes a real change from the very traditional service we used to have at Tarleton.
Peter stayed for about an hour and we chatted about all sorts of stuff as well as church. A very pleasant interlude before going back to keys.
Had a couple of sales from the site over the weekend so we'll just keep plugging away at the SEO and Adwords thing. I will make this work!

Back to work!

Well back to work after a busy weekend. On Saturday a group of us from my Rotary Club pushed some of the residents of Ellerslie Court around Southport Flower Show. A lovely sunny morning and I think all the pushees had a good time.
In the afternoon we went to David & Sarah's for tea and a viewing of the newly decorated dining room. Both were very nice. Dining room looks very elegant and the squid curry was super. Thanks D&S. Couldn't watch Match of the Day 'cos I couldn't stand the sight of Man U winning 5-0.
On Sunday went back to the Flower Show for a church service led by the Bishop of Liverpool in the morning and a proper look around in the afternoon. Church service OK but I need to go to my own church tonight to sing something written in the last 30 years! The flower show is very nice but Heather's more interested than me so, when we'd finished grazing the food stalls, I was ready to go home.
Today I'm hopefully putting some more of the key cutting stuff on the website, so keep an eye on it for new products.

Further website developments

I've spent the last couple of days playing with the Adwords account on both the shop website and the locksmithing site. I've changed keywords and am now waiting to analyse the results. It's so frustrating playing this guessing game with the public. Google's answer is just to use every keyword you can think of and throw money at them, but, in these credit crunch times, that's just not practical.
I've had a load of hits on an experimental 'replacement keys' keyphrase so we've decided to get straight down to putting pre-cut coded keys on the website. I've had a look at one or two of the other sites and can't really say I'm impressed so I'll see whether I can come up with something that is a bit more user friendly.
I spent yesterday negotiating a (hopefully) good deal with Scoot. I find this quite difficult 'cos I'm spending someone else's money, so I think I'm probably bargaining harder than I would if I were using my own. This was particularly difficult as we've just got a breakdown of referrals to the locksmithing site from Yell.com and that is proving to be incredibly poor value for money. Scoot is much much cheaper so hopefully might be more cost effective.

Cropredy 2009

Hello all, got back yesterday from Fairport's Cropredy Convention in Oxfordshire. What a wonderful weekend. We got tremendous sets from Stevie Winwood, Richard Thompson, Seth Lakeman, Ralph Mactell and of course Fairport Convention and met loads of really nice people. Just to add abit of spice to the music, also appearing were Buzzcocks (OK) and Dreadzone. Dreadzone played a set on Saturday afternoon. Described on Wikipedia as an eclectic fusion of dub, reggae, techno, trance, and folk they took the place by storm with a large proportion of the crowd up and jumping. A storming set!!!!!
As usual the crowd ranged in age from 0-110, the beer and food were both excellent and the music fab. However the weather was, unlike last year, beautiful. A far-out experience!
Even the festival pratts couldn't spoil it, and so, to the idiot who got a bit stroppy when my wife (pictured above) got a bit upset at having fag ash flicked on her (bare) knee, to the stupid bitch who thought we were trying to push into the food queue and to the even stupider bitch who ignored about 30 people waiting for a pee and just marched straight into the cubicle in front of me I'd just like to say that even you couldn't come near to spoiling the weekend. Love & peace!
Back to work at the webface now.

Pause for Holidays

Following on from my last post, Cagliari lost 2-0 away at Sampdoria on Wednesday
However tomorrow my two sons and I and my grandson are going to Anfield to watch Liverpool v Atletico Madrid in a pre-season friendly. We hope to run our eyes over Alberto Aquilani, our new signing,(I hope) as well. It'll be Nick's first game and we're on the Kop. Should be ace.

On Sunday the wife and I are going down to the Cotswolds for a few days and then becoming ageing hippies in order to attend Fairport's Cropredy Convention. So this will be the last post for a week or so. Keep clicking on the website links while I'm away and keep your fingers crossed for the weather for us. We're under canvas next week so balmy summer evenings would be good.

Walking with Dinosaurs

As a complete change from locks and websites the wife and I took our grandson (age 7) to Walking with Dinosaurs in Manchester yesterday. It was bril. Hugely enjoyable, exciting and educational. I think I almost managed to explain continental drift and plate tectonics to our Nick. Follow this LINK for a lesson.

Still getting hits on the website despite not having the Adwords campaign going and I'm getting some referrals from this blog, which is ace. I can't tell what's happening with the other website because I forgot to put the Analytics tracking code on the pages! Silly me.

Also, I should admit that I manage Cagliari in Champ Manager on line, and last night I won!!!!! I still really need a forward who can score goals though.

The Battle to Show Discounts

I've spent today re-doing the discount structure on the website. This is one of those areas that always seems to be hard to do exactly the way you want to. Previously a customer had to enter their delivery details to access the discounted prices, which I felt was putting people off. We weren't asking them for anything other than info we would have had to have had if they bought but it seemed to stop people in their tracks. In Interspire, variations of size or colour to an item make dealing with discounts quite restrictive so I'm having to go through the catalogue and the variations altering prices item by item. It's laborious but at least you end up with the discounts you want on the items you want them on!
If anyone reads this and has a way to apply a percentage discount to products and their variations without having customers register first, Id love to hear it!
A man takes his son to the zoo. They pay their money and go in but find that the only animal is a dog in a cage. The man storms back out to the entrance to complain. "Call this a zoo? It's hopeless! There's only one animal and its only a dog!" The guy on the ticket office turns to the visitor and says, "Yes! It's a shitzhu!"
Ho Ho Ho

Post No.1

Hello everyone who may be out there. As you can see if you read my profile, I'm designing a website (see link) selling locks, door handles, safes etc. This will be the third e-commerce site I've done and I like to think my design skills might be improving. This is based on Interspire, but I've also used OS Commerce and J-Shop. I've also set up several websites for organisations and people using an HTML editor and at http://www.masterlockandsafe.com is the other website associated with the shop.
I'll try to update the blog regularly with what I've done and hopefully someone out there might take an interest and give me some feedback.