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Mostly Mommies: Building Community Online
In February 2003, mostlymommies.com became the link between a group of sole proprietors living and working on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. Operating in the cottage industry and selling their crafts at summer fairs in the local area, four mothers decided to bring their crafting community online and create a fair-trade venue where local artisan moms could sell their products year-round to buyers seeking one-of-a kind, hand-made goods. Since its launch earlier this year, the website – an online craft market and information resource centre for mothers – has been attracting thousands of visitors a month, mostly via search engines such as Google. The Mommies’ email newsletter has 417 opt-in subscribers – clients who’ve signed up directly through the website. And, to supplement their Internet revenue, the Mommies have successfully been serving advertising on the website – boasting a clickthrough rate of 5%. The mostlymommies.com community is growing measurably each week, and the website changes regularly to reflect the needs of its users as well as the goals of the Mommies themselves as they test their new e-commerce venture. e-Business Objectives The Mommies’ online objectives were threefold:
Implementation The Vehicle A website was an ideal medium to allow the Mommies to expand their market beyond the craft-fair setting. Selling online would allow Sunshine Coast mothers and home-based artisans to generate revenue from their products year-round without having to travel outside of their own community. Further, a highly-accessible website would allow the Mommies to grow a tradition of building community among parents in the region. The site would offer online family resources, an email newsletter and a support page for information exchange. And finally, the revenue they generated from their year-round Internet sales would allow the Mommies to contribute to a local drop-in program for parents and help maintain the vitality of family support programs in their small community. The Dilemma How could the Mommies differentiate their website from the hundreds of other craft-market websites vying for space on the Internet? And, as importantly, how could they get people to visit the site and return repeatedly? The Strategy 1. Build community online and provide a shopping experience based on fair-trade principles. The mostlymommies.com community highlights value added resources:
2. Optimize the website to ensure that mothers searching the Internet for information and support can find mostlymommies.com quickly and easily. That said, ranking well in search engines was initially a challenge for the site’s developer and one of the Mommies, Jennifer MacPherson of MacFrames Web Design. “I had to learn a lot. Back in February when we went online, we weren’t getting any traffic. I’ve had to research what people were typing in [to the search engines] and then optimize each page separately.” Within months, Jennifer’s hard work began to pay off: the site’s traffic is increasing weekly as her search engine optimization kicks in. In July, 2003 the site saw 2000 visitors; the following month, traffic more than doubled to over 4000. Currently, the site ranks at number six in Google for the search term ‘handmade children’s clothing’ and number one for the search term ‘Sunshine Coast crafts’. 3. Process customer credit card orders with PayPal, a popular, easy-to-use real-time payment solution for small businesses. “With PayPal the buyer is protected. We NEVER see the customer’s credit card information – it goes directly to Pay Pal.” Since Pay Pal has eliminated the need to ‘sign-up’ for their service – a feature which has caused people to be reluctant to use it in the past -- the Mommies claim that their clients are happy to use it. “Our customers are not as insecure about giving their credit card information to such a well-known [and respected] organization.” And, as an added assurance, mostlymommies.com links directly to PayPal’s money back guarantee. That way, customers can see how secure their shopping experience will be. 4. Maintain customer contact through email. Just because the Mommies have gone online, doesn’t mean their business methods have changed. “Keeping that customer contact is very important to us, so we try to keep our email turnaround time to 15-20 minutes.” 5. Test different revenue generation models. Community building online is a primary goal, but revenue generation is also important to the Mommies. “Our online community has the additional goal of supporting mothers who craft by buying their wares. “ To that end, the website generates much of its revenue by hosting pages for sellers seeking to advertise their wares. Each page features up to three items, and includes a rotating logo on the mostlymommies.com homepage and an additional thumbnail image on the site’s ‘shop’ page. By limiting sellers to three items, the Mommies claim they can better manage their growth, in addition to ensuring they advertise only the highest quality crafts. “We don’t want to be the jury, we’d like women to choose their three most appealing crafts – and of course, they can change their items [whenever they want]”. The Mommies also wanted to keep their participation fees reasonable to ensure that women in all socio-economic groups would have the opportunity to sell online. So, they researched the cost of selling on eBay to make certain their fee structure was competitive and attractive. They settled on an up-front fee of $25.00 for six months to host three items. “That is a huge potential [time] savings when you consider that the seller won’t have to log into an account [as they do on eBay] or go through the procedure of listing an item, describing it and linking photos. At Mostly Mommies, [we do it all for you] and your items are up twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.” In addition, the Mommies have recently been using Google AdSense to increase revenue by serving advertisements on their site. AdSense allows the website publisher to place what Google calls AdWords – text based ads – that are relevant to their own site’s content wherever they chose on their site. And, based on how many visitors click on the ad, Google pays the web publisher a fee. Mostlymommies.com currently sees a 5% clickthrough rate -- in six weeks the Mommies have collected $35.00 US in their Google Ad coffers, and are adding about $3.00 each day. This may not seem like a lot, but for no-up front fee and little maintenance, the Mommies are happy with the model. And, they expect their earnings to increase considerably as the site grows in popularity. Lessons Learned The value of offline press Since February, the site’s traffic has been increasing steadily, particularly among women outside Canada. “We have women visiting our site from as far away as Russia and Egypt.” Still, the Mommies weren’t been getting the kind of local traffic they hoped to see. “Only 10% of our online visitors have been from the Sunshine Coast, the rest are [from outside the region].” To increase local awareness, the Mommies promoted the site at craft fairs, swap meets, malls and their local drop-in centre. But were only getting one or two visitors for every twenty people they would hard sell, face-to-face. Then, they decided to run a photo contest online and advertise it in their newsletter, which went out to newspaper editors in the area. “One of the local newspapers picked up the story and we got at least ten lines of coverage about our contest. It seems that that objective print coverage has done more for increasing local awareness about Mostly Mommies than handing out all those business cards.” Not all online advertising models work for every business The Mommies tried at least one ad revenue model with little success before they found Google Adsense. “When the site was first up in February we tried pay-for-purchase affiliate marketing with companies such as Crayola™, but it didn’t work.” Pay-for-purchase or ‘conversion’ advertising models ignore visitor clicks in favor of paying the ad server a fee only when a user who clicks on an ad actually buys something. “There was no buying, so there was no affiliate revenue.” Building community online requires persistence and commitment Being successful online takes effort. During the summer months, the Mommies are hard at work selling their wares and promoting the site at craft fairs. In the fall, it’s back to keeping the website fresh and adding new seller pages – the Mommies hope to build enough awareness to attract five new sellers per week. “People need to realize that they can’t just get their site up and then watch the money roll in – there’s work to do every day.” The Future Grow the Mostly Mommies online community model to encompass communities of mothers world-wide. Recently, the Mommies have had enquiries from women in the US interested in managing online chapters in their own region. Chapters will include resources available in the local area and an e-mall dedicated to crafters in that community. “Crafting is not simply something moms do to pass the time while the kids are napping – these women are artisans and their work is something to be valued. Online community is wonderful… And we want to help women internationally to bring their work to market through an online venue that operates on a fair trade philosophy.” Date: September, 2003 Copyright © 2006, eBusiness Connection. |
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Last Modified: Wednesday February 22nd, 2006, 2:10 pm :
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