Looking For Feedback From Seasoned Sellers

[MissedStitches]

While I'm not new to listing and selling on Square, I have recently changed my business. I no longer crochet or create patterns. I have fallen in love with card-making and would like to make a small hobby-business with it. I have some listings in my square store with the Square site. 

If you have a minute or two, I would love to get some feedback from seasoned sellers!

reneesgreetings.square.site

[maxpete]

@MissedStitches appreciate you sharing this! I couldn't get your website to load, do you mind checking on your end or resending?

[_Violet]

Hi @MissedStitches and @maxpete 👋 I've fixed the link so it routes to your shop now 🙂

[maxpete]

You're on it, thank you!!

[maxpete]

Okay now that I am seeing your site, this looks so good! Love the branding and your card design 😍

Tagging a few community members to weigh in too! @JK_Fiber_Art, @hive23, @Tamyra_Paunchy & @Bronze_Palms 

[JK_Fiber_Art]

Hello MissedStitches,

@maxpetewas kind enough to tag a few people to check out your site.  Very Nice !   Good photos and details !!   The one thing I would include is some additional contact information.  Unless I missed it, I didn't see an address or phone number or direct email address - just a Contact Form.  Personally for me, when I visit a site and the only way to contact someone is an online form, I simply move on.  These days regardless of how professional a site looks, you want to feel comfortable with who you are dealing with.  Small businesses are built by relationships and trust.  Just my thoughts of course.   

[MissedStitches]

As far as I could tell, I added my city and state. I don't want my address known because it's my personal address and not a brick and mortar. I want my address kept private. If you can offer any insight into working the location info, I'm open for it!

[Lou8]

Hi @MissedStitches, 

Updating the location details to only display contact information would be a feature request at this stage. It's a great idea which would definitely benefit business owners who don't have a brick and mortar shop. You can file the request on our Ideate page.

A workaround solution, would be to add a text or text & image section to your website and manually add your contact information such as email and phone number. You'll find more information about sections on our Support Center.

Let me know if you have further questions 🙂. 

[phillipsrw]

Hi @MissedStitches love the new look of your website. it was enjoyable to flick through your designs.

The couple of things I would look to add are some photographs of you making your cards, customers love this, some nice close ups of some of the more engaging processes and perhaps a few more stories/blogs to help your SEO perhaps season related Christmas, Easter and more generic ones for the all year round cards like birthdays, christening, wedding etc. Get those planted now and you will be in a much better position for Christmas. 

[MissedStitches]

I am currently working on creating more inventory. I did some research and found out the top types of cards most purchased so I've started with those types for now. I may create a "profile" photo of me with a few cards, but the card-making process can be found anywhere on YouTube.

[rtfulk]

Your site looks nice, one suggestion I would make.  I would purchase your domain name reneesgreetings.com , then from the company you purchase it from go in and do a redirect to reneesgreetings.square.site.  To me this has two benefits,

1 when you put your website on a business card or anything else it looks established.

 2, when you decide to upgrade your square website you already have your domain and you won’t confuse your existing customers by having two different websites.  
and a third, if you ever decide to upgrade your Square website, I don’t think the .square.site address will work anymore.   

[MissedStitches]

Hey Randy! Coincidentally, I did buy reneesgreetings.com! I completely forgot to put it here, and my brain just went to my square site URL. 😂
I plan to upgrade my Square account, but it's on a list of other items I'd like to achieve first because currently, it's not financially feasible for me. 
I'm building inventory and looking for feedback on my store site from seasoned sellers like you. 😄
Next, I would like to find the free/cheapest ways to begin getting visitors. If you have any feedback in that area as well, I'm all ears! 

[rtfulk]

@MissedStitches Go to the host you purchased your domain name from and do a 301 redirect to reneesgreetings.square.site.  That is a free way to use your domain name now without the cost of upgrading. 

One thing I do to help traffic to my site, go to spyfu.com and enter the websites of other greeting card companies.  Spyfu will give you a list of the top keywords they use, then you can incorporate them into your descriptions for better SEO placement.   They have a free checker you can use, I think you can only check a certain amount a day for free.  

In the back of all your greeting cards I would put a small QR code.  On that QR code I would have it to go to a landing page.  The reason I would use a landing page instead of sending them to your website is you can add so much more information.  On our landing page we have a greeting, all our social media links, link to our website, link to our app, link to all our contact information, example: phone number, address, how they can text us, you could setup a YouTube channel and have a link there so they could watch you making the cards.  I think a landing page gives you a personal connection to your customer, they make a connection , then they make a purchase.  

We use linkpod https://app.linkpod.co  They have been running a lifetime deal lately.  I think it was 57.00 for lifetime.  You can do everything with it. Make QR codes, landing pages etc.  

social media, we are on so many social media sites.   We try to post daily on Facebook, instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, tumblr, X, YouTube, Pinterest, Threads and soon mastodon.  It can be time consuming, there is a company called onlysocial     onlysocial.io they are currently running a lifetime deal for 98.00.  From there you can make one post that goes to all your social

media accounts at one time. You can schedule postings in advance.  What I will do is take one evening and get all my posts together, then schedule them to be posted throughout the week.  I have even scheduled posts 30 days out.  

When we started our business 38 years ago we worked weekend craft fairs, anything where there was people, just to get our name out.  Even today we keep business cards with us ( we also have the QR code with our landing page) on our cards.  

Another thing we have recently started is a blog.  We work fairs now and we always make a post about the fair we are attending in hopes to get a backlink from the fair.  Anything we can do to get eyes on our business.  

sorry it go a little long winded😀

[JUYBoutique20]

I love your new products....Will you eventually add cards for other businesses to buy and sell in their stores?  

[MissedStitches]

Thank you! Glad to hear you like my cards! As for selling to other businesses, that really depends. If it gets to that stage, I would definitely consider consignment shops, but major retailers likely would not be interested as the "big corporations" of Hallmark and American Greetings have that corner and from what I understand, it's tough to get into any of those. I won't be going 'mass-production', as all of my cards are uniquely handmade. 
You are welcome to follow on my Facebook page to see new cards as I make them! https://facebook.com/reneesgreetings

[isabelle]

Great post @MissedStitches !!!

@HC_Charlie don't you sell a TON of greeting cards? 

[HC_Charlie]

Yes @isabelle , Greeting cards were a big seller in my retail store. I was the "anti-Hallmark" in my area LOL...I did sell Papyrus and some other bigger lines that were mass produced, but also featured other smaller boutique makers, many who created their own unique artwork. One suggestion I have for @MissedStitches is in order to scale up your handmade business, just think a little bit about how to make more than one card. What I mean is...you can still create a design from scratch that is uniquely your design, but try to design it so you can "reproduce" that unique design. Rather than create a one-of-a-kind handcut paper card, instead create or print multiple elements you can cut out (or have machined cut) to make a quantity of cards. If you ever want to have retailers stock your cards in any large number, you've got to figure out a way to make more than one card at a time. You also have to think about when you list your items for sale online, you'll need quality photos of your cards. It would me nearly impossible to take a photo every time you made just one handmade card. If you can make handmade multiples of the same design (still handmade, not just one-0f-a-kind), you can use the same photo and list many, many copies of your cards for sale.

Many of the handmade card makers I stocked in my retail store designed their cards "digitally", meaning instead of hand-cutting and gluing elements by hand, they layered digital elements in an electronic scrapbooking type way, either using Photoshop, Canva, or another computer layout/art program. Then they had a master art file they could print MULTIPLE copies of and assemble into cards. It really is a great way to make cards by hand, but with the help of some digital tools. I do this very thing for my handmade ornaments that I wholesale to other gift shops.

Any questions or help you might need, drop me a note or reply, I'd be happy to elaborate on anything more specific. Happy designing and good luck in your venture!!!

[MissedStitches]

Thanks for the feedback! I would say that I'm not a fan of the digital design because to me, that's really just a hop, skip and a jump over to mass-produced by machine- just like Hallmark and American Greetings. I'd prefer to keep my true-to-my-word cards explicitly handmade. This is my hobby that I find great enjoyment from and do not currently have intentions of making it a primary income.

At the moment, I am mostly interested in getting feedback concerning design, SEO, photos as well as marketing to at least begin to have a customer base-however small that might be. 😂 

[Bronze_Palms]

I love how bright and colorful your site is!