Recently I had the opportunity to interview successful e-commerce store owner, Chris Young of ChrisRobinDesigns.com. He sells custom made animal themed jewelry at his online Miva based store. Chris has been in the e-commerce business for over 6 years and his advice and expertise is invaluable.

Site Summary

Number of years your store has been online: 6 Years
Average number of monthly visitors: 6k to 10k
Average number of orders per month: 60 - 100

MVC: Animal themed jewelry is a very niche product. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and why you decided to create and sell animal jewelry?

Chris Young: My background has been the design and manufacturing of precious metal jewelry for many years… mostly custom jewelry and various repair work. My wife and I also have been involved in the pet industry for equally as long as she owns and operates a pet grooming boutique. It was only natural to take my experience and familiarity with both businesses and merge them into one venture. Producing a unique, niche oriented line of jewelry, one that is not easily reproduced, seemed like a natural fit with an online sales distribution channel.

MVC: Your site is built on the Miva 4 shopping cart platform. How did you end up using Miva and what feature do you like and what features do you dislike about it?

Chris Young: We selected the Miva Merchant platform as our shopping cart after a fair amount of research. There are many choices out there and the more we looked the more we saw the need for complete and total flexibility when it came to store design. There is also a significant Miva community to help in terms of products (modules), support, guidance and help. As online shopping continues to evolve, store owners face a never ending set of changes that have to be met, so flexibility in one’s store design is a must.

Having said that, I must say that making those changes within the Miva platform is not the easiest, most intuitive thing to do. Fact is, Miva is clunky. It is cumbersome and at times confusing, especially to the store owner who, wearing many hats, may not be all that familiar with what needs to be done to, say, add the ability to have a customer click and enlarge a picture, just as an example. On the plus side, Miva store owners can have that flexibility, but on the flip side, getting it done is another story.

MVC: As many e-commerce store owners quickly come to find out, one of the hardest aspects of running an e-commerce store is getting targeted traffic to your site. What methods have you used to generate traffic, and which have been the most successful?

Chris Young: Generating traffic to one’s site is probably the greatest challenge we face. But it’s not just traffic, its quality traffic, relevant shoppers – shoppers that buy – not just curiosity seekers. We have advertised in a variety of ways, some of which were more successful than others. Magazine advertising (on a consistent basis) has proven to be very good for us. Of course, we also place in those ads the ability to receive one of our free print catalogs for those unable to use a computer (and yes, they are out there). SEO (search engine optimization) work is critical. We have found Google Adwords to be a waste of time and money. And while EBay may or may not have certain associations with it, we have found it to be very good for customer acquisition, along with sales. We have also found that PR people are full of empty promises… they are good at promoting themselves but rarely follow through with what they say they will do for you. We have yet to embark on any kind of email campaign and will be pursuing that shortly, since we know it is one of the most successfully proven methods.

MVC: The holiday season is no doubt the busiest time for any e-commerce store owner. With them looming right around the corner, what preparations and adjustments do you make to your site in order to ensure a smooth and profitable holiday season?

Chris Young: What preparations do we make to the site for the Holiday selling season? Well, nothing really, at least not so far. In the future we may offer various discount options, i.e. free shipping etc. Probably should give more attention to this area…

MVC: Every e-commerce store owner will admit that they have made some mistakes along the way. Can you name one or two and explain what you have learned from them?

Chris Young:What mistakes have we made? None. Well, except for … oh yeah, and that… and how could I forget when I didn’t…
Actually inventory management  is critical this time of year especially… not having something a customer wants right now is a problem. It’s no secret that online shopping is impulse buying.
Another lesson learned is that no matter how busy you get, customer service has to remain a top priority. As obvious as that sounds, it is easy to become overwhelmed at times (again, wearing so many hats) and it is easy to suddenly not answer those emails as fast, not get that new item up as fast etc etc. We can’t  afford ourselves the luxury of complacency. The need to keep our selection of designs new and fresh has become increasingly apparent to us over time also…

MVC: Building an e-commerce business is not easy. It takes, time, hard work and commitment. What advice do you have for people who are just starting out in this field?

Chris Young: Advice for others? Know your product, know your market, be willing to follow through and finish the game or don’t waste your time. Tenacity. Do your homework. Ideas are a dime a dozen… convincing someone else to purchase them is another story.