Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

This is a mini-series of posts about making your consignment, resale, or thrift shop’s do what you want it to do:

to get shoppers into your actual, physical, bricks-&-mortar, REAL store.

This is an aspect of web design that is not usually talked about online… because, well because everyone who’s online thinks everyone’s online! But getting Internet surfers to actually step away from the computer/iPad/iPhone and come shopping? A topic WE need to look at more closely.

Now I’m pretty much a dilettante when it comes to designing web sites, but so probably are you.  If you are a web master you probably want to stop reading right here… unless you are designing a site for a shop.

Neither you, the shopkeeper, nor I really CARE a whole lot about our sites… we put all our business energies into face-to-face interactions. What we want our web sites to do is get people in. And to do that, our site has to do two things: First, motivate folks to visit our shops, and first, get our site in front of our potential future clients.

Yup, that’s two “firsts”… because both are vital. We’ll tackle how your site looks, feels, and interacts with real people first, then we’ll take a non-techie look at how spiders “crawl” your site and provide the raw material for how high in search engine results your site will rank.

Day One: Let’s start at the beginning: your front door.

Just like the front door of your physical location, the home page of your site is where most visitors will first encounter your business. It’s also the place where you want to welcome back those who know and love you. Your loyal suppliers and shoppers want to see something new and fresh; your “strangers” want to know what your business is like.

I’m going to make some firm statements here. Your home page should include:

• An exterior photo or graphic of your actual shop.
• Your shop name, logo, tag line, locator line, full physical address.
• The “ambiance” of your shop. Your shop’s branding. Just as you wouldn’t paint a child-like rainbow on the front door of your business if you sell urban-chic merchandise, your home page needs to look like your business.

Why? Okay, the photo or illustration is necessary because you don’t want to be confused with your competition, because you want people to think oh yeh, I saw that place, I’ll have to go there I never knew it was a cool place, and because you want new people to be able to spot your shop amidst the traffic and the noise and the commotion. (An illustration is handy, and can be part of your branding, if your physical building is not as cute, attractive, or compelling as you’d like it to be.  Here’s an example>>>)

Your vital stats: shop name, etc., have to be on your front page so that people know where you are. Simple, huh? So why do so many shops either forget that, or use place names only a local would know, thus leaving new residents, tourists, visitors, passers-through, totally mystified? (Hint: a mystified viewer is a person you have just lost.) Example: My shop was in the Tri-Village area of Columbus Ohio. Great locator line… if you happened to be one of the 1 out of 10 residents of the greater Columbus area who lived there. Saying “Tri-Village” would leave 90% of potential customers confused and even annoyed.

Does your home page “look like” your shop? Whatever the decor, mood, ambiance, branding of your business is, does your web site give the same feeling? Presumably you developed your branding for a target audience, and you want your web site to appeal to the audience that you have created your business to appeal to. No staid graphics and fonts and photos and wording if yours is a teen-to-college market; no pink poodles if you have planned your business to attract, I dunno, poodle-haters?

Here’s a home page that fits all these requirements beautifully. Consign to Design has a rotating “gallery” of photos on their front page… and cleverly has it set to start with an exterior shot of the shop. Notice, too, how many times, in various ways and various positions on the page, they tell you where they are, and add a locator line to help locals fix the store’s location on their mental map. The branding of the page is simple and spare… which allows the home-furnishings customer the whole range of styles the shop carries. Had Consign to Design’s web site leaned towards the traditional, or the whimsical, or the shabby chic or Ikea- or Anthropologie-style, they would have been limiting their appeal. Simple and plain allows the viewer to imagine that this store has the perfect fainting couch or cutting-edge bar stools… as the viewer wishes.

One more tee-tiny detail: You’ll notice that in the photo, the sign says “Open.” It’s amazing to me how many shops post a picture of their shop that says, I kid you not, “Closed.” Duh.

So, this has been Day One of Optimizing your Web Site for Resale Shoppers. How does your home page rank so far? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below. Tomorrow, we’ll delve deeper into the optimal web site for consignment, resale and thrift shops. … just like you hope your viewers do!